5

Liberalism and colonialism:

a critique of Locke and Mill
Bbikhu Parekb

Liberalism is full of strange paradoxes and reveals different faces depending

on one’s angle of vision. It offers one of the most inspiring statements of
human equality, yet some of the greatest liberal philosophers justified
colonialism with a clear conscience. Liberals condemned racist prejudices
and misuse of political power in the colonies, but endorsed both the
economic exploitation of the colonies and arrogant assertions of cultural
superiority. They insisted on protection of the material interests of the
colonial subjects, but thought little of destroying their ways of life. John
Stuart Mill led a most creditable campaign against the brutality of Governor
Eyre of Jamaica, but saw nothing wrong with the colonial context that
made such things possible.
Nearer home, liberals stressed the virtues of individuality, autonomy
and moral self-development, but they vigorously supported the nineteenth-
century capitalism that made these virtues unrealizable for masses of men
and women, and they often resisted attempts by the state to regulate the
evils capitalism produced. They advocated freedom of choice, civil liberties
and an inviolable area of privacy, yet many of the liberal architects of the
New Poor Law of 1834 wanted the workhouses to become ‘objects of
terror’ and to enforce strict segregation of the sexes. Liberalism claims to
be sceptical of all claims to absolute truth, yet for decades liberal econom-
ists and politicians entertained no doubts about their 1aibeUait-e economic
theories, even when the havoc they caused at home and in the colonies,
including Ireland, was too stark and horrendous to be missed.
More recent liberal thought and practice have revealed similar paradoxes
and contradictions. American liberals opposed the McCarthyite witchhunts,
but many of them, including such distinguished liberals as Sidney Hook,
Irving Kristol and Daniel Bell, insisted that their communist fellow citizens
could be legitimately barred from teaching on the grounds that communism
was not an ‘opinion’ but a ‘fanatical conspiracy’ and that its academic
supporter had ‘engaged his intellect to servility’. The Vietnam War was in
some of its crucial phases a liberal’s war, started and supported by liberals
and powered by a missionary liberal ideology. Even as late as 1989, British
intellectuals of impeccable liberal credentials were unhinged when a small
82 I M A G I N A R I E S OF D O M I N A T I O N LIBERALISM A N D COLONIALISM 83
group of British Muslims burned a copy of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic injurious to the naturalls; and ... yt must then necessarily followe (saye they)
V e n u and supported Khomeini’s death threat against the author. Liberals that y t can be no other than a travaile of flat impiety, and displeasing before
who had a good record of fighting racism and promoting black, including God.*
Muslim, interests became fiercely anti-Muslim. Even Roy Jenkins, father
of the Race Relations Act 1976, lamented that ‘we might have been more Critics of English colonization argued that it violated the rights of the
cautious about allowing the creation in the 1950s of a substantial Muslim American Indians to their property and territorial integrity. The Indians
community here’.’ He went further and reached the most bizarre had cultivated and lived on their land for centuries and it was their ‘rightful
conclusion that the Muslim book-burners’ behaviour had strengthened inheritance’. They had also established stable societies which, like their
‘my reluctance to have Turkey in the European community’. Apparently counterparts elsewhere, were entitled to non-interference by outsiders.
all Muslims, like the proverbial Chinese, looked the same to him, and a
England had no ‘right or warrant’ to ‘enter into’, let alone ‘go and live in
threatened misdeed by a section of them was enough to damn the lot. It the heathen’s country’, and was acting in an immoral and un-Christian
was depressing to note how the legitimate liberal rage against the Ayatollah manner. The Revd. Roger Williams, the minister of Salem, criticized the
Khomeini‘s murderous impertinence and the outrageous Muslim support British king because he had ‘no right to grant the lands on which the ,

for it escalated step by even sillier step to a wholly mindless anger at first colony was founded since they belonged to the Indian tribes’. He was
against all Bradford Muslims, then against all British Muslims, then against arrested, put on trial, and eventualiy banished.’
all Muslims, and ultimately against Islam itself. Some liberal commentators, Locke, who had both a philosophical and a financial interest in the
a few of them with a leftist past, became instant experts on the Koran, Americas, was greatly interested in the controversy. He asked the English
attacked its ‘bloodthirsty’ conception of Allah, and compared it unfavour- settlers for information about the Indian way of life, and built up an
ably to the Bible and its ‘loving God’, in the process offering most valuable impressive collection of books dealing with the European exploration of
insights into the tensions and contradictions of the structure of liberal the Americas. His philosophical interest sprang from the fact that unlike
self-consciousness. Hobbes’s largely imaginary state of nature, the Indian way of life offered
Even this brief and sketchy account is enough to indicate that liberalism a realistic contrast to, and provided most valuable insights into, the nature
contains contradictory impulses. The contradiction is not just between and structure of political society. Locke’s interest was not entirely intel-
liberal thought and liberal practice, but within liberal thought itself. Liberal- lectual. His patron the Earl of Shaftesbury had strong financial interests
ism is both egalitarian and inegalitarian, it stresses both the unity of in the New World and, in the words of Locke’s distinguished biographer
mankind and the hierarchy of cultures, it is both tolerant and intolerant, Maurice Cranston, shared Locke’s ‘zeal for commercial imperialism ...
peaceful and violent, pragmatic and dogmatic, sceptical and self-righteous. and the possibilities it offered for personal and national enrichment’. Locke
The origins of its contradictory impulses, the way it accommodates and was also secretary to the Lords Proprietors of Carolina (1668-71) and to
reconciles them in different contexts, the tensions they create in liberal the Council of Trade and Plantations (1673-76). In both these capacities
thought and practice, and so on, raise fascinating questions. Since I cannot Locke played an important part in formulating colonial policies. He was
pursue all of them in this short chapter, I shall concentrate on one of in no doubt that English colonization of North America was fully justified,
them, namely the liberal attitude to colonialism. For analytical convenience and provided its most articulate and influential philosophical defence.
I shall examine this question through the writings of John Locke and For Locke, reason was man’s natural, highest and unique faculty. It was
John Stuart Mill, two of the greatest liberal philosophers, who lived during a natural capacity because man was born with it. Society did, of course,
the two distinct phases of colonial expansion and reflected, articulated develop and cultivate it, but it did not create it. Reason was also the
and deepened the prevailing liberal discourse on the subject. highest human faculty because it alone enabled man to know and control
the natural and the social worlds. And it was unique to man in the sense
that no other species in the world possessed it. Although Locke’s analysis
Locke’s savages of the nature of reason was complex and inconsistent, by and large he
When England began to colonize the so-called New World in the seven- thought that it analysed and reflected on the sense impressions, perceived
teenth century, its actions provoked a muted but fascinating debate. As similarities and dissimilarities between different events and entities, traced
William Strachey, First Secretary to the Colony of Virginia, put it: their causes, and formed universally valid generalizations. Though it was
susceptible to the influences of the passions, prejudices and superstitions
[Of the] clayme which we make to this part of America ... I have observed of the wider society, it was in principle capable of transcending them all
more in clamour (me thought) than at any tyme in force, to cry out still upon and delivering a universally valid body of knowledge about the nature of
yt, calling yt, an unnationall and unlawful1 undertaking ... Why? Because man and the world, morality, politics, the truly good life, and so on. Being
 84 I M A G I N A R I E S OF D O M I N A T I O N LIBERALISM A N D COLONIALISM 85
trained to reason correctly and rigorously and to rise above the distorting of authority entitled in peace and in war to speak and act in the name of
influences of personal passions and popular prejudices, philosophers were the community in all matters of collective importance (which Locke called
particularly equipped to exercise reason and guide mankind. They not sovereignty, ‘decisive power’ or ‘one supreme government’), and a will to
only discovered the true principles of moral and political life but also persist as an independent polity that made it ‘too hard’ for its neighbours
demonstrated their validity, and played a vital cultural role. to attack and overrun it. A truly rational society was governed not by
Locke advanced a set of what he regarded as universally valid proposi- customs and traditional practices, but by general and ‘positive laws’ enacted
tions about man and society. God created men and gave them the world by the supreme legislature and clearly specifying who owned what and
in common. By this Locke meant not positive but negative communism, how transgressions were to be punished. Political power in it was institu-
that is, the world was not a collective human property to be used for tionalized, subject to clearly stated procedures and checks, and separated
collective well-being, but rather it belonged to no one and was available into legislature, executive and judiciary.
to all for their individual use. God’s gift entailed both rights and duties. Locke analysed English colonialism in America in terms of his theory
Every man had a right to mix his labour with nature, and to use its fruits of man and society. He argued that since the American Indians roamed
to satisfy his needs consistently with a due regard for others. Since God freely over the land and did not enclose it, it was not ‘their’ land; they
wanted men ‘to be fruitful and multiply’, every man also had a duty to used it as one would use a common land, but they had no property in it.
develop the earthly resources to the full and maximize the conveniences The land was therefore free, empty, vacant, wild, and could be taken over
of life. As Locke put it, ‘God gave the world to man in common, but ... without their consent. This was odd for, although the Indians did not
it cannot be supposed he meant it should always remain common and build fences or barriers to demarcate their land, they knew what land was
uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the Industrious and Rati~nal.’~ theirs and what belonged to their neighbours, and had thus enclosed it in
Locke’s juxtaposition of ‘Industrious’ and ‘Rational’ is striking. a manner intelligible to them. That was not acceptable to Locke, who
Since all men had identical faculties including and especially reason, only recognized the European sense of enclosure. Even then, Locke faced
and since they were all ontologically dependent on their creator and hence a difficulty. Whilst some Indians did not enclose their land in Locke’s
independent of one another, they were all equal. For Locke, equality was sense, the coastal Indians who lived in villages and engaged in nonsedentary
one of the most basic features of human relationship, and had several agriculture did. English settlers were covetous of these lands, and sought
important implications. It implied that all human beings had equal dignity to take them over to avoid the hard labour of clearing land themselves.
and rights, that they were entitled to the equal protection of their basic They had argued that although the Indians enclosed and owned the land,
interests, that no authority was legitimate unless it was based on their their practice of letting it rot and compost every three years for soil
uncoerced consent, that no one had a right to injure another in the pursuit enrichment demonstrated that they did not make rational use of it. Locke
of his interests, that each should exercise his rights with a due regard for agreed that enclosure was not enough. He observed:
others, and so on. As rational beings, humans were expected to govern
their affairs rationally. Since the use of force signified rejection of reason, ... if either the Grass or his Indosure rotted on the ground, or the Fruit of his
whoever used it without due authorization opted out of the human planting perished without gathering, and laying up, this part of Earth, not-
withstanding his Inclosure, was still to be looked on as Waste, and might be the
community and could be punished and treated like an animal.
Possession of any other.’
Locke had no doubts as to how a truly rational man should live and
how a truly rational society should be organized. The former exhibited Even when Indians enclosed and cultivated land, they were not industrious
such qualities of character as industry, energy, enterprise, self-discipline, and advanced enough to make the bestpossible use of it and produce as
acknowledgement of others as his equals and all that followed from it: much as the English could. Indeed, since they produced not even one-
control of passions, obedience to the law, and reasonableness. A truly hundredth of what the latter could, they were for all practical purposes
rational society established the institution of private property and provided guilty of wasting the land. In Locke’s view, the trouble with the Indians
incentives for industry and the accumulation of wealth, without both of was that they had very few desires and were easily contented. Since they
which men could not discharge their duty to develop the earth’s resources lacked the desire to accumulate wealth, engage in commerce, produce for
and create a prosperous society. Locke was deeply haunted by the idea of an international market, and so on, they had no interest in exploiting the
waste and wanted all the material potentialities of the earth to be fully earth‘s potential to the fullest. In this regard the English settlers were
realized. The duty to be fruitful and multiply ‘contains in it the im- vastly superior and had a much better claim to the land. After all, since
provement too of arts and sciences’, and hence a truly rational society God Himself had imposed on man the duty to maximize the conveniences
encouraged these as well. As for its political structure, it had a clearly of life, the English had both a right and a duty to replace the Indians.
defined territorial boundary, a cohesive, centralized and unified structure Locke acknowledged that the principle of equality required that the Indians
 86 I M A G I N A R I E S OF D O M I N A T I O N LIBERALISM A N D COLONIALISM 87
should not starve or be denied their share of the earth’s proceeds. Since developed arts, sciences and a distinct culture, neither asserted their
the English colonization increased the conveniences of life, lowered prices, independence against outsiders nor insisted on a clearly demarcated territ-
created employment and so on, and thus benefited the Indians as well, orial identity, lacked internal solidity and were therefore a soft target for
Locke though that it did not violate the principle of equality. their neighbours, and so on. Locke could not see how a people devoid of
But even this was not the end of the problem. Locke had hitherto all this could be said to constitute ‘one society’. Since he had a specific
discussed America as if it were no more than a mass of land, and the notion of its oneness or singularity, he insisted that a political society
Indian tribes as if they were no more than a collection of individuals. must be unified in terms of a single and unified system of authority
Vacant lands in Locke’s sense existed in several parts of Europe as well, culminating in a ‘decisive power’ located in a single and clearly identifiable
but he would not allow their colonization because they fell within the centre.
boundaries of specific political societies, whose independence and territorial Locke summed up his view as follows:
integrity had to be respected under international law. As Locke put it,
vacant lands in a political society were under the jurisdiction of the law Let me ask you, Whether it be not possible that men, to whom the rivers and
of the land and not available to ‘all mankind’. Could this not be true of woods afforded the spontaneous provisions of life, and so with no private
the Indians as well? And could not their vacant lands be seen as part of possessions of land, had no inlarged desires after riches or power, should live
their territory, and hence unavailable for colonization? Locke did not think in one society, make one people of one language under one Chieftain, who shall
have not other power to command them in time of common war against their
so. He acknowledged that the Indians called themselves nations and were
common enemies, without any municipal laws, judges, or any person with
ruled by elected kings, but argued that that was a misleading way of superiority established amongst them, but ended all their private differences, if
describing their society, which was not reaily a political society at all. any arose, by the extemporary determination of their neighbours, or of arbit-
First, they lacked sovereignty, that is, a single, unified and centralized rators chosen by the parties?
system of authority: Their structure of authority was fragmented and
chaotic because the right to make peace and war resided ‘either in the Having shown to his satisfaction that Indians lacked a political society,
people or in a council’, whereas the responsibility to conduct the war Locke argued that they were not entitled to have their territorial integrity
rested on the kings. In a properly constituted political society, such a vital respected by others. Theirs was a porous and unstructured society devoid
right as the right to make peace and war ought to be vested in a king or of a clearly established political boundary and without settled ideas on
a ‘federative’ authority. To locate it in the people implied that they had who were insiders and who were outsiders.’ He admitted that they were
not yet developed a structure of authority entitled to speak in their not just a collection of isolated individuals and had developed a society
collective name, and were thus in a state of nature. And to locate it in a with at least an elementary structure of authority, but insisted that this
council, which had no other functions, implied that the society in question only placed them at an advanced stage of the state of nature. The insistence
was divided up into different centres of authority, lacked centralization, that they were in some kind of state of nature was vitally important for
and thus again was not a political society. As for the Indian kings, Locke his defence of English colonialism. It enabled him to draw a qualitative
contended that they were ‘little more than generals of their armies’ who, distinction between Indian and English societies, to argue that the relations
although active and absolute during war, normally exercised ‘very little between the two could only be governed by the individualisticallyoriented
dominion’ and possessed ‘but a very moderate sovereignty’.’ law of nature, and to maintain that the English conflict with Indians, not
Second, as we saw, Locke maintained that political authority in a political being a case of war, was not subject to the laws regulating wars between
society should be institutionalized, exercised through general positive laws, nations.
and be divided into legislature, executive and judiciary. In his view all For Locke, Indians were ‘wild’, ‘like savages’, and devoid of the capacity
these were missing among the Indians. He admitted that since they had to raise themselves unaided to the level of the ‘civilised part of mankind’.
‘no temptation to enlarge their possessions of land, or contest for wider Since they lacked the basic drive to accumulate wealth and engage in
extent of ground’, and since there were therefore ‘few trespasses and few international commerce, without which property, the arts and sciences
offenders’ among them, they had ‘no need’ for these institutions. Such and political society were impossible, they would, if left to themselves, for
few and relatively trivial disputes as occurred among them were settled on ever remain in the state of nature. The English guardianship was in-
an informal basis by turning to their neighbours or to arbitrators chosen dispensable for their historical transition to civility and civilization.
by the parties concerned. In Locke’s view that only showed that the Indians Since Indians were in a state of nature, their relatians with the civilized
did not need and therefore did not possess a political society. Europeans were to be governed by the law of nature and not by the law
Third, Locke argued that the Indians were not ‘one people’ and lacked of nations which presupposed equality between those subject to it. The
a sense of collective identity. They did not speak ‘one language’, had not law of nature enjoined that, as human beings, Indians had rights to life,
 88 IMAGINARIES OF D O M I N A T I O N LIBERALISM A N D COLONIALISM 89
liberty and property, which the English settlers had a natural duty to structure and mode of operation; reason was detachable from, and func-
respect. They were not therefore at liberty to hunt and kill Indians as if tioned best when insulated from, feelings and passions; man had a natural
they were animals, or to enslave them, or to deprive them of the fruits of desire to accumulate wealth and enjoy a life of plentiful material comforts;
their labour. Beyond that, the English settlers had no obligations to them. and so on. Judged by such a view of man, Indians appeared defective and
Since Indians had no property in land, the English were fully entitled to not fully human. L a k e was not wrong to assume that human beings
compel them to live closer together and to acquire the ‘surplus’ land. shared several basic capacities, needs and desires in common. His mistake
Locke also hoped that once the economy was monetized, English settlers was twofold. First, his list of universal human capacities and desires was
would be able to buy up Indian lands and turn the erstwhile owners into narrow, and uncritically universalized those characteristic of the Englishmen
their employees. He was in no doubt that these arrangements were in the of his time. The desires to accumulate wealth, enjoy maximum comforts
interests of all concerned. He was prepared to admit that Indians might and master nature are historically contingent, and there is no obvious
not see things this way, but was convinced that in the long run they reason why all human beings should develop them or why these desires
would ‘think themselves beholden’ to the English. In Locke’s view, English should be given the importance that Locke gave them. Again, Locke was
colonization not only did them no harm, but also respected their natural right to stress human rationality, but wrong to think that reason is in-
rights and conferred on them great economic, moral, cultural, scientific herently calculating, utilitarian, result-oriented or concerned to obtain the
and political benefits. If the obstinate Indians resisted the settlers, they maximum possible advantages from a given unit of human effort. Second,
would have behaved irrationally, and ‘[might] be destroyed as a lion or Locke did not appreciate that even the universally shared human capacities
tiger, one of those wild savage beasts’. and desires are shaped, structured, related and valued differently in different
Locke distinguished two modes of colonization, one based on ‘conquest societies. All men reason, but they do not do so in an identical manner,
by sword’ and represented by the Spanish, the other based on commerce nor do they all dissociate reason from feelings and sentiments, nor do
and represented by the English.’O He unreservedly condemned the former they all give reason the same importance. Locke was wrong to think that
and welcomed the latter. Spanish colonialism violated the natural rights of just because Indians did not give reason as much importance as he did or
the natives, and additionally failed to establish a civilized way of life in the exercise it the way he thought proper, they were subrational. Like many
colonies. In Locke’s view it was also self-contradictory, for the colonial other liberal philosophers after him, he had great difficulty coping with
expansion was motivated by a desire for economic gain, whereas the right difference and equated it with deficiency.
of conquest on which it rested ‘extends only to the lives of the conquered’ Locke’s second assumption related to his monistic vision of the good
and did not give the conqueror a right over the latter’s property. English life. He derived this vision from his view of human nature and, since the
colonialism was not open to these objections. It respected the natural latter was taken to be universally common and used to ground his moral
equality of Indians, it was relatively peaceful, it used force only when they theory, he assumed that only one form of individual and collective life
did not voluntarily part with their vacant and wasted lands, it civilized or was worthy of human beings. He judged the Indian way of life by these
morally uplifted them and drew them into an economically interdependent standards and found them wanting. Locke’s moral imagination was char-
world, and it furthered the interests of mankind. Locke had no doubt at acterized by a simple-minded dualism. All ways of life were either civilized
all that in colonizing America, the English performed the remarkable or primitive, and those falling within each category were in turn homo-
moral miracle of serving God, mankind, Indians and themselves. geneous and differed at best only in degrees. He never asked if the Indian
way of life might not be good in its own way, represent a different view
Why Locke went wrong of human flourishing, and contain elements missing in his own way of life
and from which he might learn something. Even when Locke noticed that
Locke stressed human equality yet justified the English subjugation of Indians led peaceful and contented lives, were ‘free of hurry and worry’
Indians, including annexation of their land. How could an egalitarian as a contemporary missionary put it, did not quarrel over property, settled
premiss yield such patently inegalitarian conclusions? Only two explanations disputes peacefully, avoided litigation and generally did not commit of-
are possible. Either his reasoning was faulty and involved illicit steps, or fences, the qualities he himself admired in other contexts, he did not ask
it rested on assumptions with inegalitarian implications. As we saw, by and how these qualities were developed and nurtured by the Indian way of life
large his reasoning was impeccable. The fault lay with his assumptions and whether it might have useful lessons for him. Instead he dismissed
which, despite his confidence, were anything but self-evident and morally them as deficiencies born out of lack of ambition and drive. Since he
innocent. considered Indians savage, he was convinced that they could not have
First, Locke’s thought rested on a narrow view of human nature. For anything good about them, and since their way of life was treated as an
him, man was essentially rational; reason had a natural and uniform undifferentiated and homogenous whole, Locke did not think it necessary
 90 I M A G I N A R I E S OF D O M I N A T I O N LIBERALISM A N D COLONIALISM 9’
to approach it with sensitivity and discrimination and distinguish its good sovereignty, it must clearly distinguish between and institutionalize the
and bad features. Convinced of the absolute superiority of the civilized legislative, executive and judicial powers, it must be governed by positive
way of life, he was unable to view the Indian society with critical sympathy or deliberately enacted laws, it must feel possessive about its territory, it
and use it to interrogate his own. In Locke’s na’ively dualist framework, must be powerful and cohesive enough to stand up to its neighbours, and
the Indian way of life was the ‘absolute other’ and had no moral claims so on. He could not imagine that other societies might organize their
to his respect. collective life differently. Since he looked for Indian analogues of European
Third, Locke not only saw nothing valuable in the Indian way of life institutions, he totally misunderstood the Indian way of life. He did not
but uncritically analysed it in terms of culturally specific English categories, notice that men though the exercise of power was not formally institution-
and totally misunderstood it. As a result, his analysis of it was unable to alized among Indians, it was governed by an intricate system of procedures
protect him against the understandable European bias. For him land must and contained its own checks and balances; he did not appreciate that
be owned, or else it was not property. It never occurred to him that land although disputes appeared to be settled on an individual and ad hoc basis,
might be used but not owned, that it might be owned but not to the the settlement was embedded in and sanctioned by the authority of the
exclusion of others, or that the very idea of owning land may appear odd wider way of life; and he did not notice either that although the Indian
and sacrilegious to communities who define their identity in terms of, and ‘laws’ were not formally enacted and written down, there was a clear
therefore see themselves as an inseparable part of, their land. For Locke, consensus on what counted as ‘laws’, how they derived their authority and
owning must involve enclosure. It did not occur to him that one might who was entitled to interpret and enforce them. Some European travellers,-
own land but leave it open to the use of those whose needs are greater or and even English settlers, had written reports about the Indian political
who require occasional or regular access to it for their survival. Even so system that corrected these and other misunderstandings. Locke chose to
far as enclosure was concerned, Locke insisted that it must be of only one believe only those that confirmed his preconceptions.
kind. It had to involve unambiguous and physical demarcation, fencing, Fourth, for Locke humanity was a status, a rank, with its own dignity
the drawing of a boundary; an informal, notional and relatively permeable and corresponding rights and obligations.” Man occupied a middling rank
boundary would not do. For Locke, labour too had to be of a specific kind within the universe. Infinitely inferior to God, he was the equal of his
to qualify as such. It had to involve physical appropriation such as plucking fellow humans and vastly superior to the animals. It was because he was
a fruit or picking up the animal one has killed. He dismissed planting, human, that is, a being endowed with reason, that he was entitled not to
hunting, trapping, fishing and nonsedentary agriculture as ‘spontaneous be treated like an animal and to enjoy equality with other men. But precisely
provisions’ or products of ‘unassisted nature’ and, except for the very last because he was human, he had a duty to lead a certain kind of life. For
step of picking or killing, not forms of labour. Locke said that land must Locke, humanity was not a state of being to be accepted with gratitude,
be used and not wasted, but again he defined <waste’and ‘use’ in extremely and human capacities were not faculties to be exercised and enjoyed as
narrow and utilitarian terms. Land that was used for hunting, roaming for one preferred. Human life had a purpose, an overarching goal, namely to
fun, or chasing animals was said to be wasted. Cultivation too was narrowly understand and master the world, and human capacities were a means to
defined to mean ‘improvement’, and the latter in turn was taken to mean a that goal’s realization. Life therefore was a task to be diligently executed,
maximum yield of the conveniences of life. As a result, the Indian practice a responsibility to be conscientiously discharged. The misguided Indians
l of not exploiting land to the fullest, letting it ‘rest and breathe for a while’, treated life as fun and as a festival, and lacked the kind of moral seriousness
and allowing animals their share of access to it was dismissed as irrational Locke expected of human beings. Since they failed to live up to the full
and wasteful. Locke insisted too that claims to property must be based on demands of their human dignity, status or rank, they were not yet fully
labour, be it one’s own or one’s servants’. This culturally loaded argument equal to the English and could be legitimately subjected to the process of
undermined Indians’ claim to their land, based as it was on the ground civilization.
that they had lived on it for decades, that their Gods and dead spirits Given these and related assumptions, it is easy to see how Locke
inhabited it, that their customs were interwoven with it, and so on. They deduced his defence of English colonialism from an egalitarian premiss.
did, of course, labour on it but that was incidental. It was not their land Indians were human beings, and, like the rest, entitled to protection of
because they laboured on it; rather, they laboured on it because it was their their basic rights and interests. This is why Locke condemned in the
land, which they owed it to their ancestors to keep in good condition. strongest possible terms the outrageous Spanish treatment of the Indians,
Locke’s conception of political society displayed a similar European and took great pains to show that English colonization was in their ultimate
bias. He uncritically universalized the emerging European, especially Eng- interest. Precisely because Indians were human beings, they were expected
lish, state, and he condemned other societies for failing to be like it. For to live up to the rational and moral imperatives of their human status.
him, a political society properly so called must have a single seat of Since they had not fully yet developed their rational capacity and lacked
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92 LIBERALISM A N D COLONIALISM
an adequate understanding of what it was to be human, they were not other faculties. ‘Among the works of man, which human life is rightly
equipped to define their interests themselves and could not be allowed to employed in perfecting and beautifying, the first in importance surely is
lead their self-chosen way of life. Locke’s principle of equality accepted ! man himself.”’ As a self-creating being, his ‘comparative worth as a human
them and other ‘savage’ people as equal oyects of concern, but not as self- 1 being’ consisted in becoming ‘the best thing’ it was possible for him to
defining subects entitled to full and equal self-determination. The manner i become. He was constantly to improve himself, develop new powers,
in which Locke defined and defended equality thus had both egalitarian cultivate a ‘striving and go-ahead character’, and evolve a life best suited
and inegalitarian implications, and both justified colonialism and regulated ! to his ‘natural con~titution’.’~ For Mill only such an autonomous and self-
its excesses. It had an egalitarian form but its inegalitarian assumptions 8 determining being had ‘character’ or ‘individuality’. ‘One whose desires
gave it an inegalitarian content, and it legitimized violence against the and impulses are not his own has no character, no more than a steam-
poor at home and the ‘savages’ abroad provided, of course, that that ! engine has a chara~ter.”~
violence did not exceed certain limits and served their long-term interests For Mill, as for other nineteenth-century liberals, individuality was an
as defined by their masters. extremely difficult and precarious achievement. It required the courage to
I
Whilst Locke’s principle of equality offered at least some moral pro- be different, the willingness to make choices and to accept responsibility
tection to Indians, it offered them no pohical protection. Indians were I
for their consequences, thinking for oneself, and so on, which most human
entitled to equality as individuals, but not as an organized society. As ! beings found painful. In Mill’s view, human beings had both a natural and I
individuals their basic rights and interests were to be fully protected. a historically acquired tendency towards conformity, which only a few
However since, in Locke’s view, they had failed to establish political were able to fight successfully on their own. The tendency to conformity
societies and were not nations, their ways of life and territorial integrity I was for obvious reasons reinforced by vested interests, including not only
had no moral claims on outsiders and could be dismantled. As Locke rulers and religious establishments but also corporate and self-reproducing
defined equality, it obtained only between the civilized nations and placed i institutional structures. For Mill as for most other liberals, individuality
the non-civilized societies outside the pale of international law and morality. ! represented human destiy, but it was not underwritten by and even went
Interpersonal relations between all men were subject to the laws of nature, I against some of the deepest tendencies of human nature. There was a
but not international relations. The distinction between an egalitarian ,i profound tension between human nature and human destiny, between
I
interpersonal morality and an inegalitarian political and international moral- i what human beings tended to do and what they ought to do. The liberal
ity is central to Locke’s thought, and indeed to most of the liberal tradition. I
way of life required them to rebel against themselves, and only a few, the
I ‘salt of the earth‘ as Mill called them, were capable of it. The rest had to
Mill and the Indians be educated into it and, until such time as they were ready, held in check.
Like Locke, Mill divided human societies into two, but his principle of
During the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, European classification was different. In some societies, which he called civilized,
t
colonialism entered a second phase. Hitherto the ‘empty spaces’ of such human beings were in the ‘maturity of their faculties’ and had ‘attained
areas as North America, Australia and New Zealand had been subject to the capacity of being guided to their own improvement by conviction or
colonization. Now it was the turn of the heavily populated countries of persuasi~n’.’~ In his view most European societies had ‘long since reached’
Asia and later of Africa. Europeans were interested primarily not so much that stage. By contrast all non-European societies were ‘backward’, and
in unburdening their surplus population and settling in these countries as human beings there were in a state of ‘nonage’ or ‘infancy’. Mill did not
in trade, commerce and political control. This new phase of colonialism, think much of Africa, a ‘continent without a history’. And although he
usually called imperialism, needed a philosophical defence. Although Lock- thought that India, China and ‘the whole East’ had begun well, he was
ean arguments were not without value, they needed to be revised to suit convinced that they had been ‘stationary for thousands of years’.
the new circumstances. Among the many liberal writers who provided Such backward societies were incapable of being improved by ‘free and
such a defence, John Stuart Mill was the most influential. Just as Locke equal discussion’ and lacked the resources for self-regeneration. Like Locke,
was closely associated with English colonization in North America, J.S. he argued that ‘if they are ever to be farther improved, it must be by
Mill was closely associated with the East India Company. He entered its foreigners’. He did not think much of the likely objection that all societies,
service in 1823, was eventually promoted to the highly influential post of including the backward, had a right to territorial integrity. Like Locke, he
examiner, and remained one until I 85 8, the year the British government argued that the right to nonintervention, like the right to individual liberty,
abolished the company and took direct control of India. only belonged to those capable of making good use of it, that is, to those
For Mill, man was a progressive being whose ultimate destiny was to ‘mature’ enough to think and judge for themselves and to develop unaided.
secure the fullest development of his intellectual, moral, aesthetic and Since backward societies lacked that capacity and were basically like

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94 LIBERALISM A N D COLONIALISM

children, the right to nonintervention was ‘either a certain evil or at best ethnic loyalties and even less sympathy for the desire to preserve ethnic
a questionable good for them’ and only perpetuated their peoples’ primitive identities. Nor surprisingly, many Canadian commentators have criticized
and subhuman existences. For Mill, as for Locke, the right to non- his cultural ‘chauvinism’, and some have even accused him of racism. Mill
intervention only applied to the relations between civilized societies. enthusiastically welcomed the Durham Report, calling it an ‘imperishable
Mill’s defence of colonialism was based on his theory of man sketched memorial of that nobleman’s courage, patriotism and enlightened liberty’.l9
above. Since, according to this theory, non-Europeans were moral and Just as Lord Durham wanted the French Canadians to become English,
political infants, and thus below the age of consent, a ‘parental despotism’ Macaulay wanted to make the Indians English in all respects save the
by a ‘superior people’ was perfectly ‘legitimate’ and in their own long- colour of their skin. Liberals in other parts of the British Empire felt the
term interest. It facilitated their transition to a ‘higher stage of develop- same way about the indlgenous ways of life and thought. Drawing inspira-
ment’ and trained them in ‘what is specifically wanting to render them tion from Mill they wondered why people should remain attached to their
capable of a higher civilisation’. As human beings, such backward indi- traditions and customs, and why the colonial rulers should not use a
viduals had equal moral claims to the pursuit and protection of their subtle mixture of education and coercion to get them to adopt the liberal
interests with the members of civilized societies, but as collectivities they ways of life and thought.
had no pobtical claims to independence and self-determination. This is Although Mill stressed the value of diversity, he defined its nature and
precisely the argument Locke had made in relation to American Indians. permissible range in narrow terms. As we saw, he linked diversity to
Unlike the Canadians, Australians and other British dominions who were individuality and choice, and valued the former only in so far as it was
of ‘European race’ and of ‘her own blood’, non-Europeans were only fit for grounded in the individualist conception of man. This ruled out several
a ‘government of leading-strings’.16Their affairs were best run by a body of forms of diversity. It ruled out traditional and customary ways of life, as
carefully selected, well-meaning and professionally trained bureaucrats free well as those centred on the community. It also ruled out ethnically
from the control of elected politicians who were all bound to be subject to grounded ways of life as weu as those limited to a ‘narrow mental orbit’
the influence of shifting public opinion. Mill was convinced beyond a or ‘not in tune’ with the dominant trend of the age. Although he did not
shadow of doubt that the colonial bureaucracy should not be accountable dismiss them, Mill took a low view of ways of life that stressed content-
to the ‘second and third class’ of elected representatives either in Britain or ment and weak ambition rather than a go-getting character, or placed little
in the colonies. That was why when the British parliament abolished the value on worldly success and material abundance. As one would expect,
East India Company and brought India under direct British rule, Mill chose Mill cherished not diversity per se but liberal diversity, that is, dlversity
to take early retirement rather than cooperate with the new arrangement confined within the narrow limits of the individualist model of human
even on an experimental basis.” That was also why he kept resisting right excellence. In his relation to nonliberal ways of life, Mill displayed consider-
until his last working days every parliamentary attempt to give the Indians a able intolerance. His intellectual tools were too blunt to allow him to
measure of self-rule. Even when Ceylon, which was directly under the make sense of them, and he thought them inhuman and stifling. He
Colonial Office, was granted considerable local autonomy with no apparent dismissed them as illiberal and sought to dismantle them. If that required
adverse results, Mill continued to argue against its extension to India. a vigorous policy of assimilation, he saw nothing wrong in it. And if some
Mill maintained that just as a civilized society had a right to rule over measure of coercion and violence was necessary, he accepted it as morally
a primitive or semi-civilized society, a more civilized group or nationality legitimate. More so than Locke, Mill condemned the racist arrogance of
within a civilized society had a right to ‘absorb’ and dominate inferior and the misuse of political power by the colonial bureaucrats, so much so
groups. He had no doubt that the Breton and the Basque stood to benefit that many of his countrymen called him a lover of the blacks and some
greatly if absorbed into the French ‘nation’ and given the opportunity to of his obituarists could not restrain their relief at his death. And yet he
share in the latter’s dignity, power and civilization. The Scottish Highlanders had no difficulty sharing the colonial contempt for native cultures and
and the Welsh too would gain if absorbed into the British, by which Mill approving of the violence used to dismantle them.
meant the English, way of life. This view lay at the basis of Mill’s approval Although Mill is separated from Locke by a century and a half and
of Lord Durham’s Report on Canada. Lord Durham was hostile to the sometimes speaks in different idioms, there are remarkable similarities
‘backward’ French Canadians’ ‘vain endeavour’ to preserve their cultural between their vocabularies, approaches and assumptions. Both talk of
identity, and insisted that their true interests lay in being subjected to the reason, progress (Mill more so than Locke), liberty, autonomy, civilization.
‘vigorous rule of an English majority’, that ‘great race which must ... be Both divide human societies into ‘civilized’ and ‘primitive’, and treat each
predominant over the whole’ of North America.” Although Lord Durham category as homogeneous and undifferentiated. Both treat non-European
advocated responsible government for Canada and was genuinely liberal ways of life with contempt, think that they have nothing to learn from a
in several respects, he had very little understanding of the strength of critical dialogue with them, and make no effort to understand them from
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I M A G I N A R I E S OF D O M I N A T I O N LIBERALISM A N D COLONIALISM
96 97
within. Both use educational metaphors to conceptualize colonial rule, which justification of colonialism was one but not the only expression.
and see it as a pedagogical process. This allows them to assimilate colonial Since both writers drew upon and developed the liberal tradition of
violence: to legitimate chastisement, to conceal its true nature, to blame thought, it is hardly surprising that their assumptions continue to inform
the victims for provoking it, and to justify it in terms of the latter’s long- that tradition and explain some of the actions and utterances listed at the
term interests as well as those of the human civilization itself. beginning of this chapter. Liberals believe in equal respect for persons,
Both Locke and Mill shared a firm belief in the equality of men and tolerance, fairness, and so on. They are also convinced, however, that the
used it to justify and regulate colonial rule. Unlike the conservative individualist way of life is the best and even the only rationally defensible
defenders of colonialism, they were concerned (Mill more than Locke) one, that those that differ from it are mistaken and in need of education
about the well-being of the natives, and condemned the racism, misuse of and even perhaps coercion, that liberals can only feel safe in a world that
political power, and violation of basic human rights that accompanied has become thoroughly liberal, that human beings are only contingently
colonial rule. While respecting the demands of equality up to this point, related to their cultures, and so on. Although liberalism has mellowed
neither writer recognized the natives as self-determining subjects entitled over the years and become self-critical, these and related assumptions still
to define their true interests themselves and to lead their preferred ways continue to dominate it and emasculate the force of its liberal and egalit-
of life. The transition from the equality of all men to the unequal treatment arian impulses. Liberals do believe in equal respect for all human beings,
of some was effected by both writers by means of such steps as belief in but they find it difficult to accord equal respect to those who do not
the uniformity of human nature, a monistic vision of the good life, value autonomy, individuality, self-determination, choice, secularism, ambi-
contempt for those who differed from the latter and the consequent failure tion, competition and the pursuit of wealth. In the liberal view, such men
to allow them to speak for themselves, a recurrent tendency to see and women are ‘failing’ to use their ‘truly’ human capacities, to live up to
difference as deviation, and a pervasive mood of cultural narcissism. the ‘norms’ of their human ‘dignity’ or ‘status’, and are thus not ‘earning’
Both Locke and Mill also failed to understand the extremely complex their right to liberal respect. For reasons of prudence and out of respect
relationship between human beings and their cultures. They rightly insisted for the liberal principle of tolerance, liberals do not generally persecute
that being reflective and self-critical, human beings were able to take a nonliberals, but they feel uneasy and even threatened in their presence
critical view of their cultures and possessed capacities that were not always and do all in their power to undermine them, even exerting enormous
realized in their cultures. This meant that while cultures could be graded, social and political pressures and using schools as tools of cultural engin-
human beings could not. The separation between human beings and their eering. This explains the liberal attitude to communists in the 1950s and
cultures protected the two writers against racism and gave them the to the ethnic minorities, Muslims and other religious groups, today.
conceptual tools to criticize it. But it also created problems. While rightly Liberals grant equality to all men on condition that they share and
stressing that human beings were not prisoners of their cultures, Locke live by the narrowly defined liberal values of choice, autonomy, self-
and Mill took the simple-minded view that cultures were like clothes, determination, and so forth. Equality as defined by the liberal therefore
external to those involved and to be discarded when more fashionable is a dubious gift and often serves as the ideological means to mould its
ones became available. This prevented them from noticing that cultures recipients in the liberal image. The liberal views on tolerance, fairness,
could not be dissociated from their human bearers and judged (let alone justice and personal responsibility have a similar thrust. When critically
graded) in the abstract, and that even if European culture could be shown examined, the central assumptions informing liberal thought turn out to
to be superior to non-European cultures, it was not necessarily better for be problematic. As pointed out by critics of liberalism from Hegel onwards,
non-European societies to whose tastes, traditions, temperaments and the socially transcendental individual as imagined by the liberals is a fiction;
habits of thought it was ill-suited. This does not mean that cultures could human beings and the cultures they both inherit and re-create are infinitely
not or should not be criticized and changed, but rather that demands for varied, and their visions of good life are sometimes incommensurable.
changes must come from within them, and that changes do not take roots Unless a theory of man recognizes the legitimacy of deep differences and
unless they are grafted onto the critically teased-out resources of the gives them an ontological status, it cannot avoid setting up narrow norms
cultures concerned. The task of civilizing other societies is deeply problem- and throwing up inegalitarian and even imperialist impulses. Obviously,
atic, and tests on dubious assumptions. we cannot tolerate all differences, but the determining principle should be
dialogically derived and consensually grounded, not arbitrarily imposed by
a narrowly defined liberalism. Liberals cannot consistently be dogmatic
Why liberalism becomes illiberal about their own beliefs and sceptical about all others, or talk about an
I have so far concentrated on showing how and why Locke and Mill, open-minded dialogue yet both exclude some and conduct the dialogue
starting with egalitarian premisses, reached inegalitarian conclusions, of on their own terms. They need to take a sustained critical look at their

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98 IMAGINARIES OF DOMINATION

basic assumptions that both generate, and prevent them from noticing
and restraining, their illiberal and inegalitarian impulses.

Notes
I am grateful to my friend Jan Nederveen Pieterse for his valuable comments. The
section on J.S. Mill draws on my ‘Decolonising liberalism’ in Alexsandras Shtromas,
The End of ‘Zsms’? (Oxford, Blackwell, 1994). I am grateful to Will Kymlicka for his
many helpful comments on that essay.

I . The Independent, 4 March 1989. For a detailed discussion, see my ‘The Rushdie
affair and the British Press’, in Parekh (ed.), Free Speech (London, Commission for
Racial Equality, I 990).
I. William Strachey, The Historie Irf Travaile into Vitginia (London, 161z), pp. ~ f .
j. For an excellent discussion of these critics and of Locke, see James Tully, An
Approach t o Political Philos@lp: Locke in Contexts (Cambridge, Cambridge University I
Press, 1993), Chapter 5 . For a discussion of Roger Williams’s case, see The Cambridge I
Histoty of the British Ernpire, Vol. I (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 19z9), ~

pp. ‘63-4.
4. Second Treatise, $. 34.
y . Ibid., $. j 8 .
6. Ibid., 5. 107f.
7 . Ibid., 5. 1 0 8 .
8 . The Third L,etter Concerning Elerafion, cited in Tully, p. I j r .
9. That a political society should be ‘too hard‘ for its neighbours is discussed in
Second Treatise, $. 42. I have so far concentrated on showing that contrary to Locke’s
assertions, the Indians had established the two vital institutions of property and
political society. This challenges his conceptualization of and conclusions about
them, but not his premisses. To challenge the latter, one would need to criticize his
views on man’s relation to the shared earth, the nature of equality, the way he
justified private property and limited others’ claims on it, and so on. I do not
I
I
~

mount such a critique here. i

10. Ibid., $. 180, and chapter XVI in general. See also Patrick Kelly (ed.), h c k e
on Moqt (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1g91), pp. rzrf.
I I . The ideas of status and rank occur in almost all of Locke’s moral and political
writings and are packed with normative implications. Mill’s conception of human
dignity, with its quasi-aristocratic connotation, bears a close resemblance to it and
plays a similar role in his thought. A good deal of the liberal tradition presupposes
an unarticulated cosmology and a view of man’s status in the universe.
I I . J.S. Mill, Utilitarianistz, Liberg and Representative Government (London, Dent,
1912), p. I 17.
1 3 . Ibid., pp. 117, 1 1 8 and 1 2 5 ,
14. Ibid., p. 1 1 8 .
1 5 . Ibid., p. 73.
16. Ibid., pp. 377, j78 and 199.
17. Ibid., pp. 386f and 391f.
1 8 . Sir C.P. Lucas, Lord Durham’s Report on the Afairs of British North America
(Oxford, Clarendon Press, I 9 I I ) , Vol. I I , pp. 285 ff.
I 9. Utilitariantstr, Liberg and Representative Government, p. j 77.