Social Science and the Ignoble Savage PDF
Preview Social Science and the Ignoble Savage
Social science and the ignoble savage Cambridge Studies in the History and Theory of Politics EDITORS MAURICE COWLING G. R. ELTON E. KEDOURIE J. G. A. POCOCK J. R. POLE WALTER ULLMANN Social science and the ignoble savage RONALD L. MEEK Tyler Professor of Economics University of Leicester CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE LONDON (cid:127) NEW YORK (cid:127) MELBOURNE Published by the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP Bentley House, 200 Euston. Road, London NW1 2DB 32 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022, USA 296 Beaconsfield Parade, Middle Park, Melbourne 3206, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1976 Library of Congress catalogue card number: 75—22985 ISBN: 0 521 20969 2 First published 1976 Printed in Great Britain by Western Printing Services Ltd Bristol Contents Introduction page 1 1 The four stages theory and its prehistory 5 2 Tn the beginning all the World was America 37 3 The French pioneers of the 1750s 68 4 The Scottish pioneers of the 1750s 99 5 The ignoble savage and 'the history of rude nations’ 131 6 Revisionists, poets, and economists 177 Afterword 230 Index 244 v Introduction What was it which gave unity to the ideas about the structure and development of society generated in Europe during that incredible century between the English and French revolu- tions - the century traditionally described as the Enlighten- ment? Basically, I suppose, it was a common concern: to apply to the study of man and society those ‘scientific’ methods of enquiry which had recently proved their worth and importance in the sphere of natural science. The leading assumption of the French and Scottish philosophes was that everything in society and history, just like everything in the physical realm, was bound together by an intricate conca- tenation of causes and effects which it was the main task of the student of man and society - i.e. the social scientist - to unravel. But this, of course, was only the beginning. There were certain other rather more specific ideas which were almost universally held. Among these, perhaps the most pervasive was a sensationalist psychology or theory of knowledge derived in one way or another from Locke. Associated with this, and just as important, was the so-called ‘law of uninten- ded consequences’ - i.e. roughly, the idea that what hap- pened in history was (to quote Ferguson) ‘the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design’. 1 Finally, and perhaps most important of all, there was another associated idea which in effect added a new dimension to the problem of man and society. Man, it was postulated, not only made himself and his institutions: he and his institutions in an important sense were themselves made by the circum- stances in which from time to time and from place to place he happened to find himself. Perhaps the most typical and far-reaching product - or expression, or embodiment, for it was all three - of this set of 1 Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (6th edn, London, 1793), p. 205. 1 Introduction notions, at any rate in the latter half of the century, was the particular theory of socio-economic development which is the main subject of the present book. This theory, in its most general form, was simply that the key factor in the pro- cess of development was the mode of subsistence. As William Robertson put it in his History of America, ‘In every inquiry concerning the operations of men when united together in society, the first object of attention should be their mode of subsistence. Accordingly as that varies, their laws and policy must be different.’ 2 In its most specific form, the theory was that society ‘naturally’ or ‘normally’ progressed .over time through four more or less distinct and consecutive stages, each corresponding to a different mode of subsistence, these stages being defined as hunting, pasturage, agriculture, and commerce. To each of these modes of subsistence, it came to be argued, there corresponded different sets of ideas and.in- stitutions relating to law, property, and government, and also different sets of customs, manners, and morals. For better or for worse, this ‘four stages theory’, as I shall from now on call it for short, was destined not only to dominate socio- economic thought in Europe in the latter half of the eigh- teenth century, but also to become of crucial significance in the subsequent development of economics, sociology, anthro- pology, and historiography, right down to our own time. It is therefore a matter of some importance to investigate its origins and early development; and this is the first main task undertaken in the present book. Many different influences no doubt contributed to the making of the four stages theory. In this book, however, I shall be directly concerned with only one of these - that of the contemporary literature about savage 5 societies, and in particular about the American Indians. It is well enough known that contemporary notions of savagery influenced eighteenth-century social science by generating a critique of society through the idea of the noble savage. It is not quite so well known, I think, that they also stimulated the emer- gence of a new theory of the development of society through 2 William Robertson, Works (Edinburgh, 1890), Vol. n, p. 104. s Here and in most subsequent contexts the word ‘savage’, and also the word ‘civilised’, should be read as if they were in quotation marks. 2
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