Enlightened history and the decline of nations: Ferguson, Raynal, and the contested legacies of the Dutch Republic
2009; Routledge; Volume: 36; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2009.11.003
ISSN1873-541X
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Economic and Social Studies
ResumoAbstract This article examines and compares Adam Ferguson's and Guillaume-Thomas Raynal's analyses of modern commercial states by reconstructing their accounts of the history and politics of the Dutch Republic. For both writers, the Dutch case stood as a clear instance of the political dangers implicit in a particular type of commercial polity, and both sought to apply its lessons to an understanding of the future of their own states. Although Ferguson's and Raynal's arguments about the decline of the Dutch trading state overlapped, their analyses reflected different evaluations of the relationship between modern states and modern economic institutions (trading companies and public debts). The broader purpose of the article is to shed light on the distinctive theories of commerce and models of European development that informed the major works of Enlightenment historiography and political thought produced by Ferguson and Raynal in the 1760s and 1770s. Keywords: FergusonRaynalMontesquieuDutch RepublicCommerceCommercial statesRepublicanismEnlightenment historyPublic debtColoniesStadtholderate Acknowledgements This article was written during my tenure as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow between 2005 and 2008. I gratefully acknowledge the Academy's support during this period. I would also like to thank Koen Stapelbroek and Charles-Edouard Levillain for their comments on previous versions of this article, and Pernille Røge, who provided helpful comments on an early draft. Notes 1 All subsequent references are from the following editions: Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, ed. Fania Oz-Salzberger (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995), and Guillaume-Thomas-François Raynal, A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies, trans. J. O. Justamond, 8 vols. (London, 1783). In this study I have followed several recent scholars of the Histoire des deux Indes in making no attempt to distinguish between the numerous collaborators involved in Raynal's enterprise, preferring to treat the work as an integrated whole. 2 On Enlightenment narratives of civil government and conceptions of the ‘progress of society in Europe’ (the phrase, of course, is chiefly associated with William Robertson's famous 1769 text, A View of the Progress of Society in Europe from the Subversion of the Roman Empire to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century), see especially J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion. Volume Two. Narratives of Civil Government (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999), and Karen O’Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment: Cosmopolitan History from Voltaire to Gibbon (Cambridge, 1999). 3 On pre-eighteenth-century ideas of ‘decline,’ see especially Peter Burke, “Tradition and Experience: The Idea of Decline from Bruni to Gibbon”, Daedalus, 105: 3 (1976), pp. 137–52; J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion. Volume Three. The First Decline and Fall (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003). 4 See especially the “Introduction”, and other essays collected in Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2005). 5 Louis, chevalier de Jaucourt, ‘Provinces-Unies’, in Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert (eds), Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une société des gens de lettres (17 vols, Paris, 1751–61), vol. 3, pp. 519–22. 6 Isaac de Pinto, Letters on the American Troubles; translated from the French of M. de Pinto (London, 1776), p. 42. 7 Arthur Young, Political Essays concerning the state of the British Empire (London, 1772). 8 Young, Political Essays, p. 76. 9 Gabriel Bonnot, abbé de Mably, Phocion's Conversations: or, the relations between morality and politics [1763] (London, 1769), p. 287. For Mably's comments on the negative impact of commerce upon the Dutch constitution itself, see abbé de Mably, Remarks concerning the government and laws of the United States of America: in four letters, addressed to Mr. Adams (London, 1784), pp. 221–5. 10 Charles Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, Reflexions on the causes of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire (London, 1759), p. 33. I have preferred the eighteenth-century translation of this passage to the one contained in David Lowenthal's otherwise excellent translation. Compare Montesquieu, Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline, trans. with intro. and notes by David Lowenthal (Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company, 1999), p. 47. 11 See for example, [Anon.], Remarks on the letter address’d to two great men. In a letter to the author of that piece (3rd edition, London, 1760), pp. 16–7; [George Stuart], Reflections, moral and political, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1787), vol. 1, pp. 179–80. 12 Charles Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, eds. Anne M. Cohler, Basia C. Miller & Harold Stone (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 328. 13 Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, p. 131. 14 Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, p. 48. 15 On ‘doux commerce’ see Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1977); see also Laurence Dickey, “Doux-commerce and Humanitarian Values: Free Trade, Sociability and Universal Benevolence in Eighteenth-Century Thinking”, Grotiana, 22–3 (2001–02), pp. 271–317. 16 For a recent study of Ferguson's acceptance of commerce see Marco Geuna, “Republicanism and Commercial Society in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Case of Adam Ferguson”, in Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner, Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage. Volume II (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 177–96. Studies that deal, in whole or in part, with the Histoire des deux Indes that I have found particularly useful include Yves Benot, Diderot, de l’athéisme à l’anticolonialisme (Paris, François Maspero, 1970); Girolamo Imbruglia, “Despotisme et féodalité dans l’Histoire des deux Indes”, in Anthony Strugnell & Hans-Jurgen Lüsebrink (eds). L’Histoire des deux Indes: réécriture et polygraphie (Oxford, The Voltaire Foundation, 1995); Peter Jimack & Jenny Mander, “Reuniting the World: The Pacific in Raynal's Histoire des deux Indes”, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 41:2 (2008), pp. 189–202; Sankar Muthu, Enlightenment Against Empire (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2003); J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion. Volume Four. Barbarians, Savages, and Empires (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005). 17 Ferguson, Essay, p. 198. 18 Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, p. 165. 19 Adam Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, ed. R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael & P. Stein (Indianapolis, Liberty Fund, 1982), p. 238 [iv.99–100]. 20 Ferguson, Essay, p. 217–8. See also Mably, Phocion's Conversations, pp. 155–7, 285–6. 21 Ferguson, Essay, p. 211. 22 Ferguson, Essay, p. 208. 23 Ferguson, Essay, p. 214. 24 Ferguson, Essay, pp. 214–5. 25 Ferguson, Essay, p. 202. 26 For Temple's own version of the argument that overpopulation and lack of viable agricultural territory were preconditions and stimuli for Dutch trade, commerce and industry, see especially Sir William Temple, Observations on the United Provinces of the Netherlands (Edinburgh, 1747), p. 145. 27 Ferguson, Essay, p. 116. For the passage from Rousseau, see Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the origin and the foundations of inequality among men, in Rousseau, The Discourses and other early political writings, ed. & trans. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 142. 28 Ferguson, Essay, p. 116. 29 Compare Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and other later political writings, ed. & trans. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), p. 72. 30 Ferguson, Essay, p. 222. 31 Adam Ferguson, Principles of Moral and Political Science, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1792), vol. 2, p. 452. 32 Ferguson, Essay, p. 223. 33 Ferguson, Essay, p. 154. 34 Ferguson, Essay, p. 241. 35 Ferguson, Essay, p. 178. 36 Ferguson, Essay, p. 179. 37 Ferguson, Essay, p. 126. 38 Ferguson, Essay, p. 145. 39 Ferguson, Essay, p. 148. 40 Ferguson, Essay, p. 132. 41 Adam Ferguson, The History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic, 5 vols (2nd ed., Edinburgh, 1799), vol. 1, pp. 120–1. 42 Raynal, History, vol. 1, p. 21. 43 Raynal, History, vol. 8, p. 189. 44 Raynal, History, vol. 8, p. 237. 45 Raynal, History, vol. 8, p. 240. 46 Raynal, History, vol. 1, p. 124. 47 Raynal, History, vol. 3, p. 228. 48 Raynal, History, vol. 3, p. 191. 49 Raynal, History, vol. 8, pp. 212–3. 50 Raynal, History, vol. 8, p. 216. 51 Raynal, The History of the Office of Stadtholder from its origin to the present times (London, 1747), p. 47. 52 See the useful discussion of Raynal's History of the Parliament of England in J. H. M. Salmon, “Liberty By Degrees: Raynal and Diderot on the British constitution”, History of Political Thought, 20:1 (1999), pp. 87–106. 53 Raynal, Stadtholder, p. 24. 54 Raynal, Stadtholder, pp. 21–3, 31. 55 Raynal, Stadtholder, pp. 50–1. 56 Raynal, History, vol. 1, p. 235. 57 Raynal, History, vol. 1, p. 392. 58 Raynal, History, vol. 1, p. 246, 353. 59 Raynal, History, vol. 1, p. 242. 60 Raynal, History, vol. 1, pp. 364–7. 61 Raynal, History, vol. 1, pp. 393–4. 62 Raynal, History, vol. 1, pp. 396–7. 63 Raynal, History, vol. 1, p. 399. 64 Raynal, History, vol. 1, pp. 286–7. 65 Raynal, History, vol. 1, p. 369. 66 Raynal, History, vol. 1, p. 373. 67 Raynal, History, vol. 1, p. 379. 68 Raynal, History, vol. 8, p. 185. 69 Raynal, History, vol. 7, p. 522. 70 Raynal, History, vol. 8, p. 132. 71 Raynal, History, vol. 8, p. 132. 72 Raynal, History, vol. 8, pp. 68–9; 170–1. 73 Raynal, History, vol. 7, p. 554. 74 Raynal, History, vol. 2, p. 426. 75 Raynal, A Letter from the Abbé Raynal to the National Assembly of France, on the Subject of the Revolution, and the Philosophical Principles which led to it (London, 1791). 76 Raynal, History, vol. 2, pp. 223–431; vol. 8, p. 274. 77 Raynal, History, vol. 8, p. 223. 78 Raynal, History, vol. 8, p. 232. 79 John Andrews, An Essay Upon Republican Principles (London, 1783), pp. 25–7. 80 John Andrews, A defence of the stadtholdership; wherein the necessity of that office in the United Provinces is demonstrated; and the designs and conduct of that part that opposes it are examined (London, 1787). 81 Antoine-Joseph Barnave, Power, Property, and History: Joseph Barnave's Introduction to the French Revolution and Other Writings, trans. with an introductory essay by Emanuel Chill (New York, Harper Torchbooks, 1971), pp. 103–5. 82 Raynal, History, vol. 8, pp. 21, 72.
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