Abstract
For Burke, the history of the Americas was largely the continuation of European history. Although he was critical of the avarice and injustice of the European adventurers to the New World, he recognised that the colonies there and the commerce conducted with them had been greatly beneficial to Europe. In his view, the fierceness and the extreme cruelty of the Amerindians ‘dehumanised’ themselves, and the history of the Amerindians did not constitute the primary aspect of his views on the history of the Americas.
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Notes
- 1.
For eighteenth-century historiography of this subject, see Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, IV, part three; Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, How to write the History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (California, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001).
- 2.
The date of composition of the Account can be estimated as the summer of 1756 by the internal evidence of the work. See Lock, Edmund Burke, I, 129.
- 3.
Lock, Edmund Burke, I, 169.
- 4.
For this, especially, see Hoffman, Edmund Burke, New York Agent with his Letters to the New York Assembly and Intimate Correspondence with Charles O’Hara 1761–1776.
- 5.
For this, see Lock, Edmund Burke, I, 138–40; Nelson, ‘A Map of Mankind’, pp. 153–5.
- 6.
Account, I, 5.
- 7.
Ibid., I, 8: ‘It must not be omitted here, in honour to the sex, and in justice to Isabella, that this scheme was first countenanced, and the equipment made by the queen only; the king had no share in it’.
- 8.
Ibid., I, 22.
- 9.
Ibid., I, 31–2.
- 10.
Ibid., I, 35.
- 11.
Ibid., I, 53–4.
- 12.
Ibid., I, 59.
- 13.
Ibid., I, 59.
- 14.
Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World : From Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 96–7, 100.
- 15.
For the Burkes’ characterisation of Columbus, see also Nelson, ‘A Map of Mankind’, pp. 159–60.
- 16.
Account, I, 68.
- 17.
Ibid., I, 71.
- 18.
Some years later, Burke expressed a negative assessment of Cortez and Pizarro as tyrants oppressing the native inhabitants of the New World. See ‘Burke to Charles O’Hara [ante 23 August 1762]’, in Corr., I, 147.
- 19.
Account, I, 128–9.
- 20.
Ibid., I, 129.
- 21.
Ibid., I, 129–30. The Peruvians ‘seem to have had a strong resemblance to the antient Egyptians’ (ibid., I, 130).
- 22.
William Robertson, The History of America, in The Works of William Robertson, IX, 203.
- 23.
Ibid., in The Works of William Robertson, IX, 209–10. See also the Annual Register for the Year 1777 (London, 1778), p. 218 (second pagination). The editor, at length reviewing and largely commending Robertson’s History of America, wrote: ‘These inhuman subverters of the empire of the Incas, destitute of the genius and greatness of mind of Cortes, exceeded him so far in cruelty, that their barbarous actions, if they cannot lessen the enormity, at least take away from the effect produced by the recital of the worst parts of his conduct. These cruelties appear the more lamentable, as the manners, disposition, government, the civil and religious institutions of the Peruvians, were moderate, mild, and equitable; far removed from the harshness of government, fierceness of disposition, gloomy superstitions, and bloody rites of the Mexicans.’
- 24.
Account, I, 156; for Gasca , see ibid., I, 157. ‘Peter de la Gasca , a man differing only from Castro, that he was of a milder and more insinuating behaviour, but with the same love of justice, the same greatness of soul, and the same disinterested spirit.’ Robertson’s Gasca has the same character. See Robertson, The History of America, in The Works of William Robertson, IX, 125–6, 146–8.
- 25.
Account, II, 5–7.
- 26.
Ibid., II, 7.
- 27.
Ibid., II, 215–6.
- 28.
Lock, Edmund Burke, I, 140.
- 29.
Account, I, 50–1.
- 30.
Ibid., II, 90–1.
- 31.
Ibid., II, 284.
- 32.
Ibid., II, 55–6.
- 33.
Smith, Wealth of Nations, II, 572.
- 34.
Account, II, 104–5.
- 35.
Ibid., II, 104–5.
- 36.
Ibid., I, 124.
- 37.
Jeffrey Smitten, ‘Impartiality in Robertson’s History of America’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 19 (1985), 56–77 (at 62–3).
- 38.
Account, I, 265.
- 39.
Ibid., I, 274–5.
- 40.
Ibid., I, 300–1.
- 41.
Ibid., I, 46–7.
- 42.
Ibid., II, 8, 53–4, 280–2.
- 43.
Ibid., II, 53–4.
- 44.
Ibid., II, 119; ibid., II, 281.
- 45.
Ibid., II, 8.
- 46.
Ibid., II, 47.
- 47.
Ibid., II, 15–7.
- 48.
Ibid., II, 110–1.
- 49.
Ibid., II, 107.
- 50.
Ibid., II, 176.
- 51.
Ibid., II, 161–2.
- 52.
Ibid., II, 288–9.
- 53.
Ibid., II, 289–93.
- 54.
Observations on a Late State of the Nation, in WS, II, 193–4.
- 55.
Cf. Smith, Wealth of Nations, II, 558. According to Smith, unlike the modern European colonies in America and the West Indies, both Roman and Greek colonies ‘derived their origin either from irresistible necessity, or from clear and evident utility’.
- 56.
‘Speech on Declaratory Resolution (3 February 1766)’, in WS, II, 50.
- 57.
Speech on Conciliation with America, in WS, III, 111–4. Cf. Observations on a Late State of the Nation, in WS, II, 143. In 1789, David Ramsay showed the same figures to the whole export trade of England in 1704 and the export to the colonies in 1772 as Burke’s, but he may have consulted Burke’s work. See David Ramsay , The History of the American Revolution, ed. Lester H. Cohen (2 vols., Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1990), I, 48. For Ramsay’s History of the American Revolution, see O’Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment, Chap. 7.
- 58.
See Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (2 vols., Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1975), II, 1168; WS, III, 120 (editor’s note). In 1790, for instance, 60.9 percent of the colonists were of English descent, 8.7 percent were German and 1.7 percent were French.
- 59.
Speech on Conciliation with America, in WS, III, 130, 164.
- 60.
Ibid., in WS, III, 127. See also ibid., in WS, III, 120. The Americans were ‘not only devoted to Liberty, but to Liberty according to English ideas, and on English principles. Abstract Liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.’
- 61.
By saying so, ‘Burke came closer to the historical uniqueness of English-speaking America’; see J.G.A. Pocock, ‘Political Thought in the English-Speaking Atlantic, 1760–1790: (i) The Imperial Crisis’, in The Varieties of British Political Thought, 1500–1800, ed. idem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 277–8.
- 62.
Speech on Conciliation with America , in WS, III, 121–2.
- 63.
Josiah Tucker, A Letter to Edmund Burke (Glocester, 1775), pp. 18–9.
- 64.
Speech on Conciliation with America , in WS, III, 122–3.
- 65.
Ibid., in WS, III, 123 (editor’s note). See Andrew Burnaby, Travels through the Middle Settlements in North America in the Years 1759 and 1760. With Observations upon the State of the Colonies (2nd edn., Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1960; first published in 1775), pp. 22–4: ‘In consequence of this, they seldom show any spirit of enterprize, or expose themselves willingly to fatigue. Their authority over their slaves renders them vain and imperious, and intire strangers to that elegance of sentiment, which is so peculiarly characteristic of refined and polished nations. Their ignorance of mankind and of learning, exposes them to many errors and prejudices, especially in regard to Indians and Negroes, whom they scarcely consider as of the human species; so that it is almost impossible, in cases of violence, or even murder, committed upon those unhappy people by any of the planters, to have the delinquents brought to justice: for either the grand jury refuse to find the bill, or the petit jury bring in their verdict, not guilty … The public or political character of the Virginians, corresponds with their private one: they are haughty and jealous of their liberties, impatient of restraint, and can scarcely bear the thought of being controuled by any superior power. Many of them consider the colonies as independent states, not connected with Great Britain, otherwise than by having the same common king, and being bound to her with natural affection.’
- 66.
Tucker, A Letter to Edmund Burke, pp. 22–3.
- 67.
Speech on Conciliation with America, in WS, III, 123–5. In his History of American Revolution, Ramsay echoed (or even lifted some passages from) Burke’s ‘Speech on Conciliation with America’. See Ramsay, History of American Revolution, I, 26–30.
- 68.
For the intellectual relationship between Burke and Tucker, see J.G.A. Pocock, ‘Josiah Tucker on Burke, Locke , and Price: A Study in the Varieties of Eighteenth-Century Conservatism’, in idem, Virtue, Commerce, and History, pp. 157–191.
- 69.
Tucker, A Letter to Edmund Burke, p. 19: ‘THE present Dissenters in North-America retain very little of the peculiar Tenets of their Fore-fathers, excepting their Antipathy to our established Religion, and their Zeal to pull down all Orders in Church and State, if found to be superior to their own.’
- 70.
Ibid., pp. 10–1.
- 71.
Ibid., p. 14.
- 72.
O’Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment, p. 20.
- 73.
Account, II, 191.
- 74.
Ibid., II, 222–3. The authors also commended religious toleration in Rhode Island, where there ‘is an unlimited freedom of religion, agreeable to the first principles of it’s foundation’ (ibid., II, 165).
- 75.
Ibid., II, 148.
- 76.
Ibid., II, 146.
- 77.
Ibid., II, 155.
- 78.
Ibid., II, 211–2. Later, in his Speech on Conciliation with America, Burke described Raleigh as ‘one excellent individual’. See WS, III, 132. Cf. Robertson, The History of America, in The Works of William Robertson, XI, 36, 49.
- 79.
Account, II, 212–5.
- 80.
Ibid., II, 257. As Nelson points out, Burke came to know Oglethorpe in the 1760s through Samuel Johnson and the Club circle. In a letter of 1777, Burke commended him as ‘one of the most distinguished of their founders’. See ‘Burke to General James Oglethorpe (2 June 1777)’, in Corr., III, 344; Nelson, ‘A Map of Mankind’, pp. 180–1. In 1780, in the context of his censure of the board of trade, Burke asserted that ‘Georgia, which, till lately, has made a very slow progress; and never did make any progress at all, until it had wholly got rid of all the regulations which the board of trade had moulded into its original constitution.’ See Speech on Economical Reform, in WS, III, 537.
- 81.
Account, II, 288.
- 82.
The Burkes, however, considered that it was absurd for the colonies to use exactly the same laws as England, since they were already different political societies shaped by their historical experience and their unique circumstances. See ibid., II, 296. The Burkes’ Montesquieuan position was compatible with that in the Abridgment and the Reflections: law needs to be changed according to circumstances.
- 83.
Speech on Conciliation with America , in WS, III, 164.
- 84.
‘Address to the Colonists’, in WS, III, 279, 283.
- 85.
Even Burke mentioned the possibility of civil wars . See ibid., in WS, III, 283: ‘It may not even be impossible, that a long course of war with the Administration of this Country, may be but a prelude to a series of wars and contentions among yourselves’. See also Annual Register … for the Year 1766, pp. 41–2. According to the author, in the course of history, the colonies were ‘gradually’ shaped into their present various constitutions ‘by accident and circumstances’ as all other governments were, but these colonies ‘were never separated from the mother country’. This was the situation of British America, which was a product of history, and they and the British government should preserve it. Like Burke, taking into consideration the historical path of the colonies, the author reached his own conclusion. Different colonies have different systems of government, and once the colonies lost the authority of the British parliament over them, ‘there would be no end of feuds and factions among the several separate governments’, ending up with the undesirable situation that the colonies must change their constitutions and create new governments, or ‘fall under some foreign power’. The author’s Burkean arguments and choice of words might persuade modern readers to reconsider its authorship.
- 86.
Speech on American Taxation (19 April 1774), in WS, II, 426–9.
- 87.
Northamptonshire MS. A. XXVII. 55.
- 88.
Northamptonshire MS. A. XXVII. 56.
- 89.
For this, see Stephen Conway, ‘From Fellow-Nationals to Foreigners: British Perceptions of the Americans, circa 1739–1783’, The William and Mary Quarterly, 59 (2002), 65–100. See also P.J. Marshall, The Making and Unmaking of Empires: Britain, India, and America c. 1750–1783 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 356, 358.
- 90.
‘Burke to Dr John Erskine (12 June 1779)’, in Corr., IV, 87.
- 91.
‘Burke to Benjamin Franklin (28 February 1782)’, in Corr., IV, 419. See also ‘Burke to Henry Laurens (27 March 1782)’, in Corr., IV, 428.
- 92.
For his advocate of the repeal, see Parliamentary Register, VII, 106; Morning Chronicle, 3 May 1782, both cited in, WS, IV, 130 (editor’s note). For his comments on the revision, see ‘Hints of a Treaty with America’ (ante 20 March 1782), in WS, IV, 130–1.
- 93.
‘Hints of a Treaty with America’, in WS, IV, 128–31.
- 94.
‘Speech on Quebec Bill (6 May 1791)’, in WS, IV, 329.
- 95.
Oracle, 7 May 1791.
- 96.
Third Letter on a Regicide Peace, in WS, IX, 325.
- 97.
‘Speech on Quebec Bill’, in WS, IV, 329–30. See also Bourke, Empire and Revolution, p. 922.
- 98.
Cf. Cañizares-Esguerra, How to write the History of the New World, pp. 48–9: the enlightened Scottish historians such as Robertson and Kames did not see that the Amerindians well fitted with their stadial theories.
- 99.
William Guthrie, A New Geographical, Historical and Commercial Grammar; and Present State of the Several Kingdoms of the World. (9th edn., London, 1785), p. 763. Guthrie continues: ‘So striking seemed the disparity between the inhabitants of Europe, and the natives of America, that some speculative men have ventured to affirm, that it is impossible they should be of the same species, or derived from one common source. This conclusion, however, is extremely ill founded.’ See also P. J. Marshall and Glyndwr Williams, The Great Map of Mankind: Perceptions of New Worlds in the Age of Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 187.
- 100.
Cañizares-Esguerra, How to write the History of the New World, pp. 48–9.
- 101.
Account, I, 166. Cf. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. James T. Boulton (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958), p. 59, where the author seems to assume the people to be religious: ‘Almost all the heathen temples were dark. Even in the barbarous temples of the Americans at this day, they keep their idol in a dark part of the hut, which is consecrated to his worship.’
- 102.
Ibid., I, 166–7: ‘The Americans have scarce any temples. We hear indeed of some, and those extremely magnificent, amongst the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians; but the Mexicans and Peruvians were comparatively civilized nations. Those we know at present in any part of America are no way comparable to them.’ Here there seems to be an assumption that the civilised people are usually religious.
- 103.
Account, I, 161.
- 104.
Lock, Edmund Burke, I, 137.
- 105.
See Joseph-François Lafitau, Customs of the American Indians compared with the Customs of Primitive Times by Father Lafitau, ed. W.N. Fenton and E.L. Moore (2 vols., Toronto, 1974), I, 28–30, 92, 281. See also Ronald L. Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 58; Marshall and Williams, The Great Map of Mankind, pp. 204–5.
- 106.
Robertson, The History of America, in The Works of William Robertson, VIII, 181–98. Robertson was very critical of Lafitau’s work. See ibid., in The Works of William Robertson, VIII, 182, 470.
- 107.
Address to the Colonies [January 1777], in WS, III, 281–82: ‘You will not, we trust, believe, that born in a civilized country, formed to gentle manners, trained in a merciful religion, and living in enlightened and polished times, where even foreign hostility is softened from its original sternness, we could have thought of letting loose upon you, our late beloved Brethren, these fierce tribes of Savages and Cannibals, in whom the traces of human nature are effaced by ignorance and barbarity. We have wished to have joined with you, in bringing gradually that unhappy part of mankind into civility, order, piety, and virtuous discipline, than to have confirmed their evil habits, and encreased their natural ferocity, by fleshing them in the slaughter of you, whom our wisher and better ancestors had sent into the Wilderness, with the express view of introducing, along with our holy religion, its humane and charitable manners.’
- 108.
Parl. Hist., XIX, 695. See also ibid., XIX, 697: ‘their employment could have answered no purpose; their only effective use consisted in that cruelty which was to be restrained; but he shewed, that it was so utterly impossible for any care or humanity to prevent or even restrain their enormities, that the very attempt was ridiculous’.
- 109.
Account, I, 162.
- 110.
Ibid., I, 163.
- 111.
Annual Register … for the Year 1763, p. 32.
- 112.
Robertson’s discussion of the Amerindians in his History of America was one of the most celebrated parts of his work and explicitly pointed to their racial inferiority. According to Robertson, ‘the inferiority of the Americans was conspicuous’. They were utterly unacquainted with metals, and in the case of war they were easily defeated by civilised nations, despite the fact that fighting was the chief occupation of their men, because of their lack of foresight and their inferior weapons. See Robertson, The History of America, in The Works of William Robertson, VIII, 126, 167–8. In the famous letter to Robertson in 1777, Burke wrote that his analysis of the Amerindians was the most interesting part of the book. Nevertheless, ‘I only think that in one or two points you have hardly done justice to the savage Character’ of the Amerindians. See ‘Burke to William Robertson (9 June 1777)’, in Corr., III, 351. The Annual Register for 1777 also stated: ‘Dr Robertson has taken no notice of the eloquence or poetry of the Americans, which are among the most distinguished properties of mankind in a state of savage nature.’ See Annual Register ... for the Year 1777, p. 218 (second pagination).
- 113.
Annual Register … for the Year 1763, p. 23.
- 114.
Account, I, 284–6. See also Vindication, in WS, I, 150 (‘the horrid Effects of Bigotry and Avarice, in the Conquest of Spanish America’).
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Sato, S. (2018). The History of the Americas: The Spread and Transformation of ‘Europe’. In: Edmund Burke as Historian. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64441-7_4
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