Was John Locke's Liberalism Proslavery?

In August of 1619, the English settlers in Jamestown, Virginia, bought 20 or more African slaves from English pirates, who had stolen them from a Portuguese slave ship that had forcibly taken them from the west coast of Africa.  This was the beginning of slavery in America, only 12 years after the English had first settled in Jamestown.  Over the next two centuries, over 12 million Africans would be taken captive by slave traders and sold as slaves in the New World.  Over 400,000 of them were sold to British colonists in North America.

In August of last year, on the 400th anniversary of that first landing of slaves in America, The New York Times began its "1619 Project"--a series of articles arguing that America was founded on and shaped by slavery.  It began with a special issue of The New York Times Magazine devoted entirely to the history of slavery and racial segregation in America.  This has sparked an intense controversy over whether these articles accurately depict the importance of slavery as manifesting the racist immorality of American culture, or whether these articles distort that history in ways that advance an ideology of cynical attacks on American traditions.

I will be writing about that controversy in a later post.  Here I am taking up a related controversy.  The 1619 Project has been influenced by historians and other social scientists who in recent decades have contended that the early modern liberal tradition was not only compatible with, but was even dependent upon, slavery.  It is said that the liberal defense of liberty included a defense of the liberty of European slave traders and slave masters to enslave Africans.  Moreover, it is argued that much of the wealth achieved in modern liberal capitalist societies was originally built up through slave labor.  One important piece of evidence for this view of liberalism as founded on slavery is the claim that the preeminent proponent of liberalism--John Locke--justified and profited from slavery.  If this is true, this might help to explain why the signers of the Declaration of Independence could affirm Locke's teaching about the human equality of the natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, while continuing to own slaves: the American Founders were following the example of Locke himself.

THE PROSLAVERY LOCKE?

Those who argue for this view of Locke point to three kinds of evidence: Locke's helping to write the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, Locke's stock investment in the Royal African Company, and his just-war theory of slavery in the Second Treatise.  What I see here, however, is evidence that Locke engaged in secret writing in his often confusing and contradictory account of slavery--so that his careful readers could see that he was condemning slavery without explicitly saying so.  Nevertheless, I must admit that this does not resolve the question of Locke's apparent hypocrisy in supporting the Royal African Company and colonial slavery.

In 1669, the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina were adopted by the eight Lord Proprietors of the Province of Carolina, which included most of what is now North Carolina and South Carolina.  It has often been included in publications of Locke's works (Locke 1997).  One of the eight proprietors was Anthony Ashley Cooper (later the First Earl of Shaftesbury), who employed Locke as an advisor and secretary who was also a member of the Shaftesbury household.  Locke acted as a secretary to the Lord Proprietors from 1669 to 1675.  The original manuscript of the Fundamental Constitutions shows Locke's handwriting in the first two paragraphs and in most of the large number of amendments.  

For those who see Locke as a supporter of slavery the most notorious sections are the two sections that recognize slavery.  In section 98, it is made lawful for slaves to join any church that they prefer; but yet, "no slave shall hereby be exempted from that civil dominion his master has over him, but be in all other things in the same state and condition he was in before."  In section 101, it is declared: "Every freeman of Carolina shall have absolute power and authority over his negro slaves, of what opinion or religion soever."

In 1672, Locke invested in the British slave trade by buying stock in the Royal African Company, which Charles II had just established as a chartered corporation with a monopoly over all British trade with Africa, which included buying enslaved Africans on the west coast of Africa for shipment to the New World (Pettigrew 2013).

In 1690, Locke's Two Treatises of Government was published.  It was an attack on the royal absolutism claimed by the Stuart monarchs and defended by Robert Filmer as an absurd attempt to persuade all men that they are born slaves.  Locke's scorn for slavery began with the first sentence of the book: "Slavery is so vile and miserable and Estate of Man, and so directly opposite to the generous Temper and Courage of our Nation; that 'tis hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman, much less a Gentleman, should plead for't" (FT, sec. 1).  

Oddly, however, Locke also seemed to defend slavery in the Second Treatise when he identified "the perfect condition of Slavery" as one where the slave has "by his fault, forfeited his own Life, by some Act that deserves Death; he, to whom he has forfeited it, may (when he has him in his Power) delay to take it, and make use of him to his own Service, and he does him no injury by it" (ST, sec. 23).  In particular, we can properly identify slaves as those "who being Captives taken in a just War, are by the Right of Nature subjected to the Absolute Dominion and Arbitrary Power of their Masters" (ST, 85).  Scholars like Peter Laslett have inferred from this that Locke regarded "negro slaves as justifiably enslaved because they were captives taken in a just war, who had forfeited their lives 'by some Act that deserves Death,'" and that Locke was satisfied "that the forays of the Royal Africa Company were just wars of this sort, and that the negroes captured had committed such acts" (Laslett 1988, 284-85).

HOLLY BREWER'S ARGUMENT FOR THE ANTI-SLAVERY LOCKE

Challenging  this apparent evidence of Locke's proslavery position, historian Holly Brewer--writing in the American Historical Review (2017)--has argued that Locke and the liberalism he initiated emerged in opposition to slavery and absolutism as based on the same principle of inherited status.  Explaining the idea of hereditary obligation that Locke denied, Brewer wrote: "Kings inherit the right to rule; subjects inherit the obligation to obey; and so did slaves inherit the obligation to obey masters" (2017, 1045).  Locke and Lockean liberalism rejected all of this.  (Brewer's short summary of her argument is available online.)

Brewer denies that the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina--in affirming the master's "absolute power and authority over his negro slaves"--testifies to Locke's support of slavery.  Locke was only acting as a secretary for the eight Lord Proprietors, Brewer insists, so "he wrote Carolina's constitution as a lawyer writes a will" (2017, 1052).  He was not endorsing anything said in the Fundamental Constitutions.

But in saying this, Brewer understates Locke's involvement in Carolina and its Constitutions.  In 1671, he was made a landgrave (a nobleman) of Carolina. Peter Colleton, one of the Lord Proprietors, wrote to Locke in 1673 remarking "that excellent form of government in the composure of which you had so great a hand."  Locke purchased a hundred copies of the Constitutions and distributed them to his friends.  He clearly was proud of what he had done in the Constitutions, and he was involved in revising them in 1782 (Armitage 2004).

Brewer also denies that Locke's stock in the Royal African Company shows his endorsement of the African slave trade.  When Locke received his stock in the RAC in 1672, Brewer explains, he was the secretary to the Council of Trade and Foreign Plantations, which was Charles II's committee with oversight over colonial affairs.  Shaftesbury was the chair of that committee.  Since the crown was short of money at that time, Charles II had both Locke and Shaftesbury paid in RAC stock.

In June of 1675, Locke sold his RAC stock; and Shaftesbury began selling his.  1675 was the year in which Locke and Shaftesbury broke with the Stuart monarchy because of its increasing absolutism, which they saw as the enslavement of all the king's subjects.  They became leaders of the new Whig Party in opposition to the Tories.  Shaftesbury was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower.  Locke fled to France.  In 1683, Locke and Shaftesbury fled to Holland.  Charles II attempted to have Locke extradited on charges of treason.

After 1675, the RAC shifted more towards the slave trade rather than trade in African goods.  Charles II and James II promoted the slave trade because of the huge revenue it brought to the crown.  After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, with William and Mary on the throne, the number of slave trading voyages of the RAC dropped dramatically, as shown in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, although independent traders who competed with the RAC increased their voyages (Pettigrew 2013, 11-13).

In 1696, William created a new Board of Trade and Plantations, and he appointed Locke as one of the members.  Locke used his position on the Board, Brewer argues, to reform the laws in British colonies to favor liberty over inherited status.

The Board began to investigate the laws and practices in Virginia, the first and largest of the colonies in America.  They found many problems.  One of them was that while originally the King had provided that anyone settling in Virginia would be granted 50 acres of land, this rule had been changed so that people were granted 50 acres for each indentured servant or slave that they purchased.  Consequently, large landowners owning many servants and slaves could hold 20 to 30 thousand acres of land, much of it uncultivated.  The Board condemned this headright system as a perversion of the original rule.  They instructed the new Governor of Virginia--Francis Nicholson--to change this.  As chief justice of Virginia's General Court, the Governor in 1699 ruled that the headright of 50 acres of land should go only to individual settlers not to those who might be their masters.  Locke received a written report about this decision saying: "He has made an order against taking up land for the importation of negroes."  In the margin, Locke wrote: "Well Done."  For Brewer, this is a clear indication of Locke's efforts to reduce the slave trade (Brewer 2017, 1065-1070).  Unfortunately, she observes, these efforts were overturned after the death of King William, when Queen Anne renewed the promotion of the slave trade favored by the Stuart monarchs.

Still, however, we might wonder whether Brewer's argument for Locke being anti-slavery is refuted by Locke's just-war theory of slavery--that those who have been taken captive in a just war may by natural right be enslaved as the proper punishment for their crime of unjust aggression.  As Brewer indicates, Locke here seems to be following the traditional justification of slavery, as expressed by Bracton: "Free men are made bond by capture."  But Locke puts severe restrictions on this traditional teaching, so that it cannot justify the actual practice of African-American chattel slavery.

The just conqueror who repels an unjust invasion cannot take the invader's property, which belongs to his family (ST, sec. 180).  Nor can the conqueror enslave those who did not participate in the unjust invasion, because they have not earned the punishment of enslavement (sec. 179).  Nor can the conqueror enslave the children of the unjust invaders, because the children share no responsibility for the unjust war.  Consequently, slavery cannot be an inherited status.

Moreover, contrary to what Laslett says, Locke never says that the slave traders were taking captives in a just war.  In fact, the slave traders were themselves unjust aggressors who took their captives by force, and so their captives would be justified, on Lockean grounds, in rebelling against their captors.

Once one sees that Locke's standards for his just-war theory of slavery cannot possibly be satisfied by African-American slavery, one must suspect that Locke was aware of this, and that he might be intimating to his careful readers the injustice of such slavery.

JAMES FARR:  LOCKE'S SECRET WRITING AGAINST SLAVERY?

James Farr has written some of the best articles on Locke's view of slavery (Farr 1986, 2008).  And although he does not directly say so, I see Farr's writing as suggesting that Locke engaged in secret writing in his account of slavery--so that his careful readers could see that he was condemning slavery without explicitly saying so.

Farr notes that Locke's complicity in the slave trade and in colonial policy allowing slavery contradicts his teaching about human equality in natural rights, and that he "never addressed, much less resolved, this contradiction," because he remained silent about this (1986, 263).

Farr goes on to argue that Locke's just-war theory of slavery is consistent with his natural rights teaching.  But Farr also wants "to show that this theory is woefully inadequate as an account of Afro-American slavery and, further, that Locke knew this.  Indeed, Locke's theory positively condemns 17th century slave practices and any ongoing institution of slavery whatsoever" (264).  So Locke knew that his theory condemned slavery!

Farr also says that "he wrote not a word" to justify New World slavery (2008, 510).  In explaining his just-war theory of slavery, Locke never says that the African-American slaves had been captured in a just war.  Indeed, Locke does not even give one example of people being enslaved in a just war.

 Moreover, Farr says, "no one thought Locke succeeded in justifying slavery in America" (515).  Farr also observes that the antebellum Southern apologists for slavery "rejected Locke's just war theory" and his argument for natural rights in the Second Treatise, which was condemned by people like George Fitzhugh (513).

Farr also notes that Locke ridiculed as childish the notion that "A Negro is Not a Man" because white color is a defining trait of the human species (Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 4.7.16; Farr 1986, 279).

In the Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke deprecates any "Distinction made between men and men, upon account of their different Complexions, shapes, and Features; so that those who have black Hair (for example) or gray Eyes, should not enjoy the same Privileges as other Citizens" (Locke 2010, 55-56).  Locke was not a racist.

So while Locke was silent about how his liberal political theory condemned slavery, he surely understood this.  Moreover, we know that some of Locke's careful readers saw this.  For example, Farr quotes from James Otis' Rights of the British Colonists Asserted and Proved (1764), who quoted Locke's teaching about the natural equality of rights among human beings in support of the claim that "the Colonists are by the law of nature free born, as indeed all men are, white or black." So Otis understood Locke's principles as condemning slavery in all forms, including the American enslavement of African-Americans (Otis 1764, 6, 29; Farr 2008, 511).

Farr says that "Locke is not unlike Aristotle in his mismatch of theory and practice despite their substantive differences about natural slavery" (2008, 520, n. 57).  Aristotle seemed to justify slavery as natural.  But his standards for what counted as a natural slave could not be satisfied by the actual practice of slavery, which was by convention or law (nomos) not by nature (physis).  For that reason, Bartolome de Las Casas could use Aristotle's standards to condemn the enslavement of American Indians as contrary to nature.

All of this looks to me like a secret teaching that slavery is contrary to Lockean natural rights, although Locke does not openly say this.

I grant that this still leaves unresolved the question of Locke's apparent hypocrisy in supporting the Royal African Company and colonial slavery.

REFERENCES

Armitage, David. 2004. "John Locke, Carolina, and the Two Treatises of Government." Political Theory 32: 602-627.

Brewer, Holly. 2017. "Slavery, Sovereignty, and 'Inheritable Blood':  Reconsidering John Locke and the Origins of American Slavery." American Historical Review 122: 1038-1078.

Brewer, Holly. 2018. "Does Locke's Entanglement with Slavery Undermine His Philosophy?." Aeon, September.

Farr, James. 1986. "'So Vile and Miserable an Estate': The Problem of Slavery in Locke's Political Thought." Political Theory 14: 263-89.

Farr, James. 2008. "Locke, Natural Law, and New World Slavery." Political Theory 36: 495-522.

Locke, John. 2010. A Letter Concerning Toleration and Other Writings. Ed. Mark Goldie. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.

Otis, James. 1764. Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved. Boston: Edes and Gill.

Pettigrew, William A. 2013. Freedom's Debt: The Royal African Company and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672-1752. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Locke's Secret Writing on Slavery: Brewer Versus Armitage on the "Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina"

 Anyone who studies closely the life and writings of John Locke will notice that he was a remarkably secretive person.

Maurice Cranston began his biography of Locke by observing:  "Locke is an elusive subject for a biographer because he was an extremely secretive man.  He modified a system of shorthand for the purposes of concealment; he employed all sorts of curious little cyphers; he cut signatures and other identifiable names from letters he preserved; at one time he used invisible ink" (Cranston 1957: xi).

Peter Laslett began his edition of Locke's Two Treatises of Government in a similar way by noticing Locke's strange obsession with concealing his authorship of his writings:

"'Property I have nowhere found more clearly explained, than in a book entitled, Two Treatises of Government.'  This remark was made by John Locke in 1703, not much more than a year before he died.  It must be a rare thing for an author to recommend one of his own works as a guide to a young gentleman anxious to acquire 'an insight into the constitution of the government, and real interest of his country.'  It must be even rarer for a man who was prepared to do this, to range his own book alongside Aristotle's Politics and Hooker's Eccesiastical Polity, to write as if the work were written by somebody else, somebody whom he did not know.  Perhaps it is unique in a private letter to a relative [the Rev. Richard King].  What could possibly be the point of concealing this thing, from a man who probably knew it already?" (Locke 1988: 3).

The best answer to Laslett's question here is that Locke feared persecution if he stated too openly views that would shock the popular prejudices of his day, and therefore he had to engage in secret writing that would conceal his unpopular thoughts from most of his readers.  That Locke himself saw the need to do this is suggested in some of his remarks in his private notebooks that he never intended to be published. 

For example, in an early entry in his Journal (1678), he copied this sentence from a French treatise he was reading: "The popular mind takes offense at everything that conflicts with its prejudices."  He then wrote this annotation: "One ought to take care therefore in all discourses, whether narrative of matter of fact, instructive to teach any doctrine, or persuasive, to take care of shocking the received opinions of those one has to do with, whether true or false."  This was published for the first time in 1830 in Peter King's Life of John Locke (1:227-28).

Locke's concern "to take care of shocking the received opinions" of his readers would explain why he never resolved the obvious contradiction between his apparent acceptance of slavery and his teaching about human equality in natural rights.  As I argued some years ago, Locke had to engage in secret writing to convey to his careful readers his opposition to slavery as unjust oppression, but without explicitly saying so, and thus hiding this from those many readers of his time who would be shocked by this denial of their "received opinions" about the justice of slavery.

And yet, some scholars--such as David Armitage (2004)--have claimed that Locke's role in helping to write and edit the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina shows his active endorsement of African slavery in the Province of Carolina.  But now, we have Holly Brewer's new article that argues that Armitage's reading of the manuscript evidence for the composition of the various versions of the Fundamental Constitutions is mistaken, and that Locke was not actively involved in writing the provisions supporting slavery.

Here is the map for the Province of Carolina, 1663-1729, and the Provinces of North Carolina and South Carolina, 1729-1776.  You might need to click onto the map to enlarge it.

In 1663, Anthony Ashley Cooper (later the First Earl of Shaftesbury) and seven other Lords Proprietors were given "absolute power and authority" over Carolina in a royal charter by Charles II.  This royal grant of power and authority was reiterated in a second charter of 1665 when the territorial reach of Carolina was extended further north and south along the Atlantic Coast, and westward across the continent to the Pacific Ocean.  Ashley became the leader of the Carolina project.

In 1666, Locke became Ashley's personal secretary; and, in 1668, he became the Secretary of the Lords Proprietors, a post that he would hold until 1675.  Years later, after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the installation of King William and Queen Mary, Ashley would appoint Locke as the secretary of the new Council of Trade and Plantations.

In 1669, the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina established the governmental and social order of Carolina.  The was actually the first of five Fundamental Constitutions--the others were issued in 1670, in January of 1682, in August of 1682, and the last in 1698.  For a long time, it was thought that Locke was the primary author of the Fundamental Constitutions.  But now most scholars agree that Locke was only one of many secretaries who wrote or edited these documents; and ultimately the final acceptance of these documents depended on the approval of the Lords Proprietors.

Since the Fundamental Constitutions asserted not only the "absolute power and authority" of the Lords Proprietors over Carolina but also the "absolute power and authority" of Carolina's slave masters over their African slaves, this seemed to contradict the liberalism of Locke's Two Treatises.  But now the "postcolonial" scholarship that has emerged over the past forty years teaches that there is no contradiction here because what we see here is, as Armitage has said, "a mutually constitutive relationship between liberalism and colonialism" (602).  Read in the light of the colonial context manifest in the Fundamental Constitutions, we can see that Locke's Two Treatises were written to justify the absolute power of proprietary lords over their colonies and of colonial settlers over their African slaves and over the Native Americans who would be dispossessed of their lands.

Of all the evidence for this conclusion that Armitage finds in the Fundamental Constitutions, the most dramatic is the "most notorious article"--article 101 of the 1669 version--"Every Freeman of Carolina shall have absolute <power and> Authority over his Negro slaves of what opinion or Religion soever."  Armitage explains: "Though none of his later detractors could have known it, Locke himself had augmented the slaveholders' 'absolute Authority' by adding that '<power and>' in the 1669 manuscript now among the Shaftesbury papers."  And we know that because that insertion of "power and" is in Locke's handwriting (Armitage 2004:609).

Brewer develops various arguments against Armitage's "postcolonial" interpretation of Locke's involvement with the Fundamental Constitutions.  Her most important argument is that Locke did not in fact add the words "power &" to the sentence about the absolute power and authority of masters over Negro slaves in the Fundamental Constitutions manuscript.

Armitage's concern is with Locke's contributions to the version of the Fundamental Constitutions between the first signed document (signed July 21, 1669) and the second signed document (signed Mar 1, 1670).  Armitage claims that Locke was responsible for inserting those two key words--"power &"--to a sentence about the Freeman's "absolute Authority over his Negro slaves."  But if you look at the handwritten manuscript and compare it with other examples of Locke's handwriting using the words "power &," you can see that the "power &" in the Fundamental Constitutions manuscript is not Locke's handwriting.  Brewer reproduces photographs of the texts in her article (pages 16-19), so that her readers can judge this for themselves.  Locke's handwriting does appear in some other places in this manuscript, but his additions have nothing to do with slavery.  (As far as I know, Armitage has not disputed Brewer's claim here by asserting that the words "power &" really are in Locke's handwriting.)

This is consistent with my claim that Locke opposed slavery although he thought he could not say this openly without offending the supporters of slavery.  He did not try to strike out the articles supporting slavery in the Fundamental Constitutions, but neither did he add any language strengthening the document's endorsement of slavery.

Armitage makes further claims about Locke's involvement in the revising of the Fundamental Constitutions in 1782.  He says that "all" of Locke's revisions were accepted, and that the article about the absolute power and authority of masters over slaves "went untouched in the 1682 revisions even as Locke renumbered it with the rest" (Armitage 2004: 615, 619).

This is a crucial point for Armitage's postcolonial interpretation of Locke's Two Treatises because scholars believe that Locke was writing the Two Treatises in 1682 (although it was not published until 1689), and therefore we can see that Locke was continuing to support the slavery article of the Fundamental Constitutions in 1782 just as he was writing the Two Treatises.

But Brewer points out that Armitage ignores the fact that the article about the absolute power of masters over slaves is missing from the Fundamental Constitutions manuscript of August 17, 1682, which was signed and sealed by the Lords Proprietors.  There is no record to explain how or why this happened.  But then the article about absolute power over slaves returned in the final version of 1698 after being absent for sixteen years.  The reason for the article's reappearance in 1698 is no clearer than its disappearance in 1682.

Did someone involved in editing the 1682 document quietly remove the slavery article, hoping that the Lords Proprietors would sign the document without noticing the absence of this article?  Could Locke have done this?  We don't know.  But it's something we might expect if Locke wanted to subvert the practice of slavery in Carolina but without being noticed.

On the other hand, if Armitage is right about Locke's enthusiastic support for slavery, we might expect that Locke would have become a slaveholder himself.  After all, Armitage notes that the Proprietors rewarded Locke for his work on the Fundamental Constitutions by making him a "landgrave" of Carolina, which was a title of nobility.  If he had acted on the privileges to which he was entitled as a landgrave, Locke could have claimed 12,000 acres of land in Carolina, and he could have purchased slaves to work that land for him.  Other landgraves, including those who were not residing in Carolina, did this.  But amazingly, as Brewer points out, Locke never did this, and Armitage is silent about this.

Apparently, Locke had no desire to become a slaveholding land baron in Carolina.  Perhaps because he really did believe what he declared in the first sentence of his Two Treatises:  "Slavery is so vile and miserable an Estate of Man, and so directly opposite to the generous Temper and Courage of our Nation; that 'tis hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman, much less a Gentleman, should plead for't."

REFERENCES

Armitage, David. 2004. "John Locke, Carolina, and the Two Treatises of Government." Political Theory 32 (October): 602-627.

Brewer, Holly. 2024. "Whose Fundamental Constitutions? Locke, Slavery, and Manuscript Evidence." Locke Studies. Volume 2024: 1-57.

Cranston, Maurice. 1957. John Locke: A Biography. London: Longmans, Green and Co.

King, Lord Peter. 1830. The Life of John Locke. 2 volumes. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley.

Locke, John. 1988.  Two Treatises of Government. Edited by Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.