Enlightened Dissent: The voices of anti-imperialism in eighteenth century Britain Andrew Victor ...

418 Pages·2016·2.32 MB·English

Enlightened Dissent: The voices of anti-imperialism in eighteenth century Britain

Andrew Victor Gaiero

Thesis submitted to the
Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the Doctorate in Philosophy degree in History

Department of History
Faculty of Arts
University of Ottawa

© Andrew Victor Gaiero, Ottawa, Canada, 2016
ii

ABSTRACT
“Enlightened Dissent: The voices of anti-imperialism in eighteenth century Britain”
Author: Andrew Gaiero Supervisor: Richard Connors
Submission Year: 2016

This dissertation explores and analyzes anti-imperial sentiments in Britain throughout the
long eighteenth century. During this period of major British state formation and imperial
expansion, there were a surprisingly large number of observers who voiced notable and varied
concerns and opposition towards numerous overseas ventures, yet who have not since received
significant attention within the historical record. Indeed, many critics of British imperialism and
empire-building, from within Britain itself, formed extensive and thoughtful assessments of their
own nation’s conduct in the world. Criticism ranged widely, from those who opposed the high
economic costs of imperial expansion to those worried that a divine retribution would rain down
upon Britain for injustices committed by Britons abroad. Such diversity of anti-imperial
perspectives came from a clearly enlightened minority, whose limited influences upon broader
public opinions had little effect on policies at the time. Successive British administrations and
self-interested Britons who sought their fortunes and adventures abroad, often with little regard
for the damage inflicted on those whom they encountered, won the political debate over empire-
building. However, in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, the perspectives of many of these
individuals would increasingly become highly regarded. Later generations of reformers,
particularly “Little Englanders”, or classical liberals and radicals, would look back reverently to
these critics to draw inspiration for refashioning the empire and Britain’s position in the world.
These eighteenth century ideas continued to present powerful counter-arguments to the trends
then in place and served to inspire those, in the centuries that followed, who sought to break the
heavy chains of often despotic colonial rule and mitigate the ravages of war and conquest.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I now realize that when I was originally inquiring as to the possibility of working on a
dissertation of this nature, and first committed to working on this project, I really had no idea
what I was getting myself into. In the years since then, I have learned much more than I ever
even anticipated and have enjoyed the support of a great many individuals, all of whom deserve
my enduring gratitude. In particular, I wish to acknowledge my doctoral supervisor, Dr. Richard
Connors. I have often thought back to when I initially contacted him and when he agreed to
supervise this research. I remember being thoroughly impressed by his thoughtful intellectual
engagement right from the very beginning. Throughout the project he has shown this same level
of remarkable and unwavering dedication, as he does with all his many other students. The
guidance and support he has provided me, over the course of this endeavour, has been absolutely
tremendous and I simply could not have asked for a better supervisor.
I would also like to extend my gratitude more broadly to the excellent faculty and staff in
the Department of History at the University of Ottawa, who have built such a supportive learning
environment and assisted me greatly throughout this research project. Additionally, I would like
to recognize the helpful staff at the British Library; the Baker Library at Harvard University; and
the Lewis Walpole Library for their assistance during the course of my research.
I also want to express my ongoing appreciation towards my doctoral examiners, who
generously provided me thoughtful and engaging feedback on this dissertation and whose
insightful comments assisted me during the final stages of this process. Thank you to professors
Sylvie Perrier and Lofti Ben Rejeb, from the History Department; Frans De Bruyn, from the
English Department, and Sandra den Otter, from Queen’s University. They have all been
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tremendously supportive of this study. The revisions made as a result of their observations have
helped to improve this work and encouraged me to think about the possibilities for future
research and publications.
I want to acknowledge all my family and friends for their ongoing love and support while
I undertook this extensive research project. I especially want to thank my partner Megan, who
has provided me encouragement on a daily basis and been my biggest supporter throughout. I
also thank my parents, who long ago inspired my love of reading and promoted a lifetime of
learning; my brother and sister, who have challenged me intellectually, as experts in completely
unrelated fields; and my grandmother, who loves to talk about British history with me. As well, I
want to recognize the many great educators I have encountered over the course of many years,
and who encouraged me in my academic growth, including the faculties at both McMaster
University and Brock University, where I early on developed an interest in this subject material.
Funding for this doctoral dissertation has come from a wide range of sources, all of which
deserve my gratitude. In particular, I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Government of Ontario, through the Ontario
Graduate Scholarship (OGS) program. Additionally, I would like to acknowledge the Faculty of
Arts, the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, and the Department of History at the
University of Ottawa, as well as the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) at George Mason
University, for providing their financial support throughout the course of this study.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................................... iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS .............................................................................................................. v
INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................... 1
CHAPTER ONE: QUESTIONING THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF EMPIRE ............ 39
DEBATING DEMOGRAPHY AND THE UTILITY OF COLONIES ................................... 41
ON THE NATURE OF THE EMPIRE TRADE ...................................................................... 78
FINANCIAL BURDENS OF EMPIRE AND THE FISCAL-MILITARY STATE ............... 113
CHAPTER TWO: CHALLENGING BIG SUGAR AND THE SLAVE TRADE .............. 132
JOSEPH MASSIE CONFRONTS THE SUGAR PLANTATION COMPLEX ..................... 134
THE FIRST CARIB WAR ...................................................................................................... 152
WARNINGS ON EMPIRE (COMING HOME) .................................................................... 158
THE WEST INDIA INTEREST AND MASSIE’S REFORM PROGRAM ......................... 164
COLONIES VS. TRADE AND HUMANITY ....................................................................... 173
SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE TRADE ................................................................................ 180
CHAPTER THREE: ADDRESSING PROBLEMS OF DOMINION
IN THE AMERICAS ................................................................................................................ 202
THE ECONOMIC BURDEN OF COLONIES ....................................................................... 203
ON WAR, DOMINION, AND DISPOSSESSION ................................................................. 225
ADVOCATING COLONIAL EMANCIPATION .................................................................. 265
CHAPTER FOUR: DROWNING IN THE MONSOONS OF ORIENTAL
DESPOTISM AND IMPERIAL CORRUPTION .................................................................. 296
DEBATING THE EIC MONOPOLY ..................................................................................... 298
CORRUPTION, ECONOMIC CRISIS, AND COMPANY REFORM .................................. 329
RADICAL AND RELIGIOUS OPPOSITION ....................................................................... 350
CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................................... 376
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 384
1

INTRODUCTION

Many scholars have been captivated by the ironic observation of the late nineteenth
century imperial historian John Robert Seeley that the British “conquered and peopled half the
world in a fit of absence of mind”.1 This often quoted phrase has commonly served as a starting
point for an analysis of the philosophical justifications and legal legitimization that British
imperialists and apologists have offered for the expansion of the British Empire between the
seventeenth and the early twentieth centuries.2 But what of those who questioned or criticized the
emergence of empire, and why, during the same period? Despite post-colonial developments and
a burgeoning literature on the impact of the British Empire in global history, the voices of
contemporaries who raised significant objections to empire, for a range of moral, economic,
political, constitutional, and cultural reasons, have yet to be sufficiently habilitated by historians
of the British Empire. This dissertation serves to redress the existent imbalance by considering
anti-imperialism in Britain in the midst of the overseas imperial expansion during the long
eighteenth century.
One of the first historians to directly address the topic of anti-imperialism within Britain
was Robert Livingston Schuyler, who wrote three articles on the issue: “The Recall of the
Legions: A Phase of the Decentralization of the British Empire”; “The Climax of Anti-
Imperialism”; and “The Rise of Anti-Imperialism in England”, published, respectively, in 1920,
1921 and 1922.3 The first examined the problem of imperial military expenditures, and the desire

1 John Robert Seeley, The Expansion of England: Two Courses of Lectures (London: Macmillan and Co., 1883), 8.
2 For instance, see Bernard Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
3 See Robert Livingston Schuyler, “The Recall of the Legions: A Phase of the Decentralization of the British
Empire,” The American Historical Review 26, no. 1 (1920): 18-36; Robert Livingston Schuyler, “The Climax of
2

on the part of successive British governments to rein in costs of empire or to shift the burden and
responsibility to the colonies themselves. Attempting to tax colonists for this purpose had failed
disastrously in the Thirteen Colonies in the 1760s and 1770s, and until the mid-nineteenth
century the British bore almost the entire economic burden of expansion, except notably in India.
The second article dealt more broadly with early to mid-nineteenth century anti-imperialist
thought, primarily linked to classical liberalism and the Manchester School, as well as “Little
Englanders” associated with William Gladstone. The third publication then traced back many of
those ideas to eighteenth century individuals, such as Adam Smith and Josiah Tucker, who had
earlier framed the debate over empire in Britain, and in turn, inspired those later generations with
their anti-imperial sentiments and ideologies. Thereafter, these articles formed part of his more
extensive book on the subject in 1945, The Fall of the Old Colonial System: A Study in British
Free Trade, in which Schuyler primarily linked anti-imperialism to the early classical liberal
critique of mercantilism, or the ‘Old Colonial System’ and the advocates for free trade.4 In this
regard, Smith and Tucker were among the foremost eighteenth century critics.
Schuyler’s work focused heavily upon Smith, the moral philosopher and political
economist, whom historian Goldwin Smith noted was revered by nineteenth century Liberals as
the original “Little Englander”.5 However, he spent even more time examining the writings of
Tucker, best known as the Dean of Gloucester from 1758-1799, whose economic liberal thinking
was highlighted in Schuyler’s 1931 book, Josiah Tucker: A Selection from His Economic and
Political Writings.6 Schuyler also briefly mentioned James Anderson, Sir John Sinclair, Arthur

Anti-Imperialism in England,” Political Science Quarterly 36, no. 4 (1921): 537-560; and Robert Livingston
Schuyler, “The Rise of Anti-Imperialism in England,” Political Science Quarterly 37, no. 3 (1922): 440-471.
4 Robert Livingston Schuyler, The Fall of the Old Colonial System: A Study in British Free Trade (Hamden, CT:
Archon Books, 1966 [1945]).
5 Schuyler, “The Rise of Anti-Imperialism in England,” 440.
6 Robert Livingston Schuyler, Josiah Tucker: A Selection from His Economic and Political Writings (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1931).
3

Young, and Jeremy Bentham, as contemporaries concerned with the economics of the mercantile
system. He additionally considered the sympathies that the reformers Major John Cartwright and
Granville Sharp, and the radical Richard Price, had for the American colonists, yet noted that
they were not really advocates for separation, as was the anti-imperialist Tucker. Schuyler
pointed to the influence of this economic thinking upon the 1786 Anglo-French commercial
treaty, as well as the vindication of anti-colonial arguments following the reestablishment, and
improvement, of trade between Britain and the United States after 1783. However, he noted that
these ideas did not seriously influence public policies, domestically or within the empire, until
after the Napoleonic Wars. His history of anti-imperial thought in Britain was then carried
forward by the Philosophical Radicals, and other reformers, including utilitarians and classical
liberal economists, who successfully influenced major domestic and imperial reforms.7
Another foundational study regarding imperial ideologies and debates over empire in
Britain came from Klaus Knorr, British Colonial Theories, 1570-1850, originally published in
1944.8 In this work, he identified and examined countless metropolitan authors and their
perspectives regarding colonies between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, effectively
covering a very broad spectrum of attitudes towards the empire and imperialism over a
considerable period. His examination was very good at providing a context and assessing
arguments for and against empire-building. Primarily, these debates revolved around the
economics of empire and the benefits or costs to Britain. This present dissertation has
incorporated aspects of that research, though has more specifically focused upon those
individuals who emerged within the latter group, and within a much narrower time span.

7 On this theme, see William Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice, 1817-1841
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979); and more generally, Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad, & Dangerous People?: England
1783-1846 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 309-371.
8 Klaus E. Knorr, British Colonial Theories, 1570-1850 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1944).
4

Additionally, the influential 1965 work of Donald Winch, Classical Political Economy and
Colonies, was an important starting point regarding the historiography of the many economic
problems of empire.9 The first two chapters that dealt with Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham
were particularly focused upon the late eighteenth century context, and the remainder of the book
built upon those foundations and moved into the era of reform in the nineteenth century, in much
the same way as Schuyler had earlier done. Similarly, Bernard Semmel’s The Rise of Free Trade
Imperialism: Classical Political Economy the Empire of Free Trade and Imperialism 1750-1850,
expanded upon the work of John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson in reforming the debate over
anti-imperialism, particularly in the nineteenth century, by explaining the nature of a
metropolitan ‘official mind’ and the importance of colonial peripheries on British imperial
policies.10 Most notable was Semmel’s revision of the notion that critics of the ‘Old Colonial
System’ and free trade reformers were not necessary anti-imperialists, as many did not share
Richard Cobden’s Manchester School cosmopolitanism, humanitarianism, or pacifism.
Building upon this pioneering scholarship, some of which is now nearly a century old,
research on British anti-imperialism in the nineteenth century and the champions of
decolonization in the twentieth century has especially flourished. For example, Bernard Porter’s
Critics of Empire: British Radicals and the Imperial Challenge, recently reconsiders radical
critiques of New Imperialism.11 He began with an assessment of mid-nineteenth century classical
liberal thought, and then traced its evolution into the early twentieth century where he analyzed it

9 Donald Winch, Classical Political Economy and Colonies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965).
10 Bernard Semmel, The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism: Classical Political Economy the Empire of Free Trade and
Imperialism 1750-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). Also, see John Gallagher and Ronald
Robinson, “The Imperialism of Free Trade,” The Economic History Review, New Series, 6, no. 1 (1953): 1-15. For
an opposing point of view see Oliver MacDonagh, “The Anti-Imperialism of Free Trade,” The Economic History
Review, New Series, 14, no. 3 (1962): 489-501. For an assessment of Gallagher and Robinson, see Anthony
Webster, The Debate on the Rise of the British Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 68-92.
11 Bernard Porter, Critics of Empire: British Radicals and the Imperial Challenge, 2nd ed. (New York: I.B. Tauris,
2008). The first edition of this work was originally published in 1968.
5

alongside Labour and socialist critiques of jingoism and empire. Primarily, Porter focused upon
this highpoint of European conquest and imperialism, especially in Africa; with respect to Britain
in particular, he considered the specific significance of the Boer War and John A. Hobson’s 1902
publication of Imperialism: A Study.12 More recently, Gregory Claeys’ Imperial Sceptics: British
Critics of Empire, 1850-1920, examines intellectual scepticism and philosophical antagonism
towards empire.13 Much like Porter, he considers opposition within Liberal and socialist circles,
which he also links with the anti-imperialism of Positivism. Additionally, he revises notions that
many early nineteenth century reformers, including utilitarians, were anti-imperial. Mira
Matikkala’s Empire and Imperial Ambition: Liberty, Englishness and Anti-Imperialism in Late-
Victorian Britain, likewise considers late nineteenth century anti-imperialism, as part of the
extensive debates over defining the true national identity and in the intellectual separation
between the idealized colonization of the settler empire and the aggressive nature of
imperialism.14 This work especially served to reappraise the “Little Englander” tradition in anti-
imperial thought, which framed debates around the well-being of domestic liberalism, in
emphasizing Englishness, liberty, constitutional rights, good economy, and Parliamentary reform
processes, all qualities and ideals that an authoritarian empire threatened.
Anti-imperial historiography is substantially addressed in Miles Taylor’s 1991 article,
“Imperium et Libertas? Rethinking the Radical Critique of Imperialism during the Nineteenth
Century”, in which he revisited the late eighteenth century critiques of empire and those who
inspired later radicals.15 Though he was primarily interested in the nineteenth century, he noted

12 J. A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (London: James Nisbet & Co., Limited, 1902).
13 Gregory Claeys, Imperial Sceptics: British Critics of Empire, 1850-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2010).
14 Mira Matikkala, Empire and Imperial Ambition: Liberty, Englishness and Anti-Imperialism in Late-Victorian
Britain (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011).
15 Miles Taylor, “Imperium et Libertas? Rethinking the Radical Critique of Imperialism during the Nineteenth
Century,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 19, no. 1 (1991): 1-23.