On Francis Bacon on Setler Colonialism and Slavery.

Bacon’s little essay, “Of Empire,” (originally from 1612) is really an essay on the monarchic, art of governing, that is, Machiavelli’s subject in The Prince. Here, “Of Empire” really means “Of Personal Dominion.” (The essay is not on empire in the sense I was interested in.) And, not unlike Machiavelli, Bacon’s real subject is the new prince. Bacon’s essay is not very long, and it might have been titled, ‘be careful what you wish for.’ Most of the advice can be summarized as ‘be prudent!’

I was pleasantly surprised that Bacon is a non-dogmatic free trader. When discussing the monarch’s relationship to merchants he writes, “Taxes and imposts upon them do seldom good to the king's revenue, for that which lie wins in the hundred, he loseth in the shire; the particular rates being increased, but the total bulk of trading rather decreased.” My reading relies on the idea that originally ‘imposts’ were customs taxes, that is, a tariff on imported merchandise; and Bacon seems to realize that such duties actually undercut all trade, so also exports “total bulk of trading.” (I think this reading is supported by the thought that for Bacon a merchant is what we would call a long-distance trader.) But it is fine if you think that for Bacon tariffs just undermine or depress total economy activity (another way to read ‘total bulk of trading.’)

The only polemical moment in the essay occurs when Bacon suggests ignoring the ‘Schoolmen’ on just war theory. Against them, Bacon notes there “is no question, but a just fear of an imminent danger though there be no blow given, is a lawful cause of a war.” Of course, there is no higher court of appeal than the monarch himself when such fear is just or not.

I have to check in which edition this argument first occurred. But either way Bacon seems to anticipate or be in accord with Grotius’ views on the legality of pre-emptive strikes/war in the context of imminent attack. On the whole, for great states, Bacon prefers balance of power politics, but this necessitates a willingness to form coalitions and go to war to protect it (“the other two would straightways balance it, either by confederation, or, if need were, by a war.”)

Not unlike, Machiavelli, Bacon also advocates for relatively open immigration policy. His justification for it is not economic in character, but what we might call its deflected impact on military mores:

It is certain, that sedentary and within-door arts, and delicate manufactures (that require rather the finger than the arm) have in their nature a contrariety to a military disposition; and generally all warlike people are a little idle, and love danger better than travail; neither must they be too much broken of it, if they shall be preserved in vigour: therefore it was great advantage in the ancient states of Sparta, Athens, Rome, and others, that they had the use of slaves, which commonly did rid those manufactures; but that is abolished, in greatest part, by the Christian law. That which cometh nearest to it is, to leave those arts chiefly to strangers, (which, for that purpose, are the more easily to be received,) and to contain the principal bulk of the vulgar natives within those three kinds, tillers of the ground, free servants, and handicraftsmen of strong and manly arts; as smiths, masons, carpenters, &c. not reckoning professed soldiers.—”Of the True Greatness Of Kingdoms And Estates.”

Immigration allows for a specialist division of labor between natives and resident alients. It’s pretty clear that this is a kind of partial open borders policy in which the non- proto-martial trades are largely exercised by foreigners. This allows for a kind of specialization in which the local nobility and commoners are exercised for military preparedness also in their ordinary occupations. (Bacon did not wholly foresee that non-trivial amount of military activity could end being sedentary and indoors behind a screen.)

While Bacon clearly thinks that having slaves do the non-proto-martial occupations is the superior institution, I have seen no evidence that he is interested in re-introducing slavery (regardless of his oblique hints that Christianity itself may be problematic in some political contexts). Slavery is a pretty notable absence in New Atlantis’ Bensalem, which is in intertextual dialogue with More’s Utopia (where the Utopians practice penal slavery).

I decided to check this hypothesis by reading “Of Plantations.” ‘Surely,’ I thought, ‘if he advocates slavery he would do so there.’ While I have no personal or ideological interest in defending Bacon, I am pleased to say that this work avoids advocating slavery. (Our expectation that this was uniform stance in the past is itself a barrier to historical understanding, I suspect.) Of course, I welcome hearing of pro-slavery stances in Bacon’s corpus from my learned readers.

However, Bacon is an advocate of what we may call colonial plantations. But he immediately constrains this in a non-trivial fashion: “I like a plantation in a pure soil; that is, where people are not displanted to the end to plant in others; for else it is rather an extirpation than a plantation.” So, while he advocates for settler-colonialism for profit and in order to remove surplus population, he has rather strict constraints on where this can take place.

Of course, one may well wonder (sensitized by a certain critique of Locke), whether in practice Bacon discerns ‘a pure soil’ where another, more justly, may see an ancient grazing land of nomads (etc.). In a very recent paper (here), Richard Serjeantson has plausibly suggested that, in fact, Bacon has territory in Northern Ireland in mind. So, this is very much an imperial British project. Serjeantson himself, quite rightly, notes that Bacon’s more fundamental interest in empire is European; Bacon advocates a British union with the Netherlands (under British leadership). This is not what we expect now.

Serjeantson also suggest that Bacon is not really promoting an “inherently civilising purpose.” I think that’s right if by that we mean the kind of thing Mill promotes in the Victorian Raj, or Hume applauds against the medieval Welsh. But Bacon does not forswear civilizing altogether. Let me quote the passage that I have in mind:

If you plant where savages are, do not only entertain them with trifles and gingles, but use them justly and graciously, with sufficient guard nevertheless; and do not win their favour by helping them to invade their enemies, but for their defence it is not amiss: and send oft of them over to the country that plants, that they may see a better condition than their own, and commend it when they return.

That is to say, Bacon really is not eager to have locals/natives mistreated in any fashion by settler-colonists nor to let superior arms be directed against other locals. This is pretty good evidence for the anti-slavery and generally humane reading of Bacon, I think.

But he does evidently think the colonial settler has a superior civilization relative to the locals (‘savages’). And he thinks the locals will benefit from visits to the superior civilization in the imperial metropole. This is clearly conceived as a kind of act of beneficence. And even if the main purpose is meant to elicit admiration for the civilized homeland, it seems no stretch at all to claim that the underlying point (“commend it”) is to encourage emulation of civilization. Yet, strikingly, and in contrast to much of Bacon’s more general outlook; there is no sense here in which the locals are a source of (local) knowledge or worth studying in their own right.