Spread of Enlightenment in the Colonies

Spread of Enlightenment in the Colonies

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The ideas of the European Enlightenment did not remain confined to England and France — they travelled outward, taking distinctive local forms in Britain’s American colonies and, later, in Meiji-era Japan. This article traces the spread of Enlightenment thought into the American colonies, examining its six key ideas and leading thinkers, before turning to the parallel — and quite differently inflected — reception of Enlightenment ideas in Japan during the Meiji Restoration, a theme relevant to the UPSC History Optional syllabus on the diffusion of Enlightenment thought beyond Europe.

American Enlightenment

• The American Enlightenment occurred during the eighteenth century among thinkers in British North America and the early United States, inspired by the ideas of the British and French Enlightenments. It led to the American Revolution and the creation of the American Republic.
  • Based on the metaphor of bringing light to a “dark age,” the Enlightenment shifted allegiances away from absolute authority — whether religious or political — toward more sceptical and optimistic attitudes about human nature, religion, and politics.
• In the American context, thinkers such as Thomas Paine, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin invented and adopted revolutionary ideas about scientific rationality, religious toleration, and experimental political organisation — ideas with far-reaching effects on the development of the fledgling nation.
  • Some coupled science and religion in the notion of deism; others asserted the natural rights of man in the anti-authoritarian doctrine of liberalism; and still others emphasised the cultivation of virtue, enlightened leadership, and community in early forms of republican thinking.
• At least six ideas came to define American Enlightenment thinking: deism, liberalism, republicanism, conservatism, toleration, and scientific progress. Many of these were shared with European Enlightenment thinkers, though in some instances they took a uniquely American form.

The Pre- and Post-Revolutionary Context

• The pre- and post-revolutionary era in American history generated conditions for Enlightenment thought to thrive on a scale comparable to the European Enlightenments.
• In the pre-revolutionary years: Americans reacted to the misrule of King George III, the unfairness of Parliament (“taxation without representation”), and exploitative treatment at the hands of the English colonial power.
  • The Englishman-turned-revolutionary Thomas Paine wrote the famous pamphlet decrying the abuses of the North American colonies by their English masters.
• In the post-revolutionary years: A whole generation of American thinkers founded a new system of government on liberal and republican principles, articulating their enduring ideas in documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, and the United States Constitution.
• Although distinctive features arose in the eighteenth-century American context, much of the American Enlightenment ran continuous with parallel experiences in British and French society.

Four Shared Themes of European and American Enlightenment

• Modernization: Beliefs and institutions based on absolute moral, religious, and political authority — such as the divine right of kings and the Ancien Régime — became increasingly eclipsed by those based on science, rationality, and religious pluralism.
• Skepticism: Many Enlightenment thinkers — especially French philosophes such as Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot — subscribed to some form of scepticism, doubting appeals to miraculous, transcendent, and supernatural forces that potentially limited the scope of individual choice and reason.
• Reason: A universally shared reason, definitive of human nature, became a dominant theme in Enlightenment writing, particularly in Immanuel Kant’s “What is Enlightenment?” and his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.
• Liberty: Liberty and rights assumed a central place in theories of political association — specifically as limits on state authority, originating prior to the advent of states (that is, in a state of nature) and manifesting in social contracts, especially in John Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government and Thomas Jefferson’s drafts of the Declaration of Independence.

Six Key Ideas of American Enlightenment

At least six ideas came to punctuate American Enlightenment thinking: deism, liberalism, republicanism, conservatism, toleration, and scientific progress. Many of these were shared with European Enlightenment thinkers, but in some instances took a uniquely American form.

Deism

• European Enlightenment thinkers conceived tradition, custom, and prejudice as barriers to gaining true knowledge of the universal laws of nature.
  • The solution was deism — understanding God’s existence as divorced from holy books, divine providence, revealed religion, prophecy, and miracles, and instead basing religious belief on reason and observation of the natural world.
  • Deists appreciated God as a reasonable Deity: God created the universal laws that govern nature, and afterward humans realise God’s will through sound judgment and wise action.
  • Rather than fight members of the Catholic faith with violence and intolerance, most deists resorted to tamer weapons such as humour and mockery.
• Both moderate and radical American Enlightenment thinkers — including James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and George Washington — were deists.
  • Many subscribed to the populist version of deism advanced by Thomas Paine in The Age of Reason.
  • Franklin was remembered for stating at the Constitutional Convention that “the longer I live, the more convincing proof I see of this truth — that God governs in the affairs of men.”
  • In what became known as the Jefferson Bible, Jefferson chronicles the life and times of Jesus Christ from a deist perspective, eliminating all mention of miracles or divine intervention.
• For deists such as Jefferson, God never loomed large in humans’ day-to-day life, beyond offering a moral or humanistic outlook and the resource of reason to discover the content of God’s laws.
  • American deists did not, however, deny God’s existence, largely because the majority of the populace remained strongly religious, traditionally pious, and supportive of the good works — such as monasteries, religious schools, and community service — performed by the clergy.

Liberalism

• Another idea central to American Enlightenment thinking is liberalism — the notion that humans have natural rights, and that government authority is not absolute but based on the will and consent of the governed.
  • Rather than a radical or revolutionary doctrine, liberalism was rooted in the commercial harmony and tolerant Protestantism embraced by merchants in Northern Europe, particularly Holland and England.
  • Liberals favoured the interests of the middle class over the high-born aristocracy, an outlook of tolerant pluralism that did not discriminate between consumers or citizens based on race or creed, a legal system devoted to protecting private property rights, and an ethos of strong individualism over the passive collectivism associated with feudal arrangements.
• The claim that private individuals possess fundamental God-given rights — to property, life, liberty, and the pursuit of their own conception of the good — begins with the English philosopher John Locke, but also finds expression in Thomas Jefferson’s drafting of the Declaration of Independence.
  • The U.S. Bill of Rights — the first ten amendments to the Constitution — guarantees a schedule of individual rights based on the liberal ideal, including freedom of speech, religious liberty, the right to bear arms, and habeas corpus, among others.

Republicanism

• While prefigured by the European Enlightenment, the American Enlightenment also promoted the idea that a nation should be governed as a republic, with the state’s head popularly elected rather than appointed through a hereditary bloodline.
  • As North American colonists became increasingly convinced that British rule was corrupt and inimical to republican values, they joined militias and eventually formed the American Continental Army under George Washington’s command.
• The Jeffersonian ideal of the yeoman farmer — rooted in the similar Roman ideal — represented the eighteenth-century American as both a hard-working agrarian and a citizen-soldier devoted to the republic.
  • When elected to the highest office of the land, George Washington famously demurred when offered a royal title, preferring instead the more republican title of President.
• Republican ideas were a formative influence on American Enlightenment thinking.

Conservatism

• Though the Enlightenment is more often associated with liberalism and republicanism, an undeniable strain of conservatism emerged in its last stage, mainly as a reaction to the excesses of the French Revolution.
  • In 1790, Edmund Burke anticipated the dissipation of order and decency in French society following the revolution, in his Reflections on the Revolution in France.
  • Though it is argued that Burkean conservatism was a reaction to the Enlightenment (or anti-Enlightenment), conservatives were also operating within the framework of Enlightenment ideas — turning some Enlightenment claims about human nature back upon themselves, and showing them to break down when applied more generally to human culture.
    • For instance, Enlightenment faith in universal declarations of human rights could do more harm than good when they contravened the conventions and traditions of specific nations, regions, and localities.
  • Similar to the classical republicans, Burke believed human personality to be the product of living in a political society, not a set of natural rights that predetermined social and political relations.
  • Conservatives attacked the notion of a social contract as a mythical construction that overlooked the plurality of groups and perspectives in society — a fact that made universal consent impossible. Burke, however, insisted only on a tempered version of Enlightenment ideas, not their wholesale rejection.
• Conservatism featured strongly in American Enlightenment thinking.
  • While Burke was critical of the French Revolution, he supported the American Revolution, for disposing of English colonial misrule while creatively readapting British traditions and institutions to the American temperament.
  • American Enlightenment thinkers such as James Madison and John Adams held views that echoed, and in some cases anticipated, Burkean conservatism — leading them to criticise the rise of revolutionary France and the popular pro-French Jacobin clubs during and after the French Revolution.
  • In the forty-ninth Federalist Paper, James Madison deployed a conservative argument against frequent appeals to democratic republics on constitutional questions, since these threatened to undermine political stability.
    • Madison’s conservative view was opposed to Jefferson’s liberal view that a constitutional convention should be convened every twenty years, since “the earth belongs to the living generation,” and each new generation should be empowered to reconsider its constitutional norms.

Toleration

• Tolerance of difference developed in parallel with the early liberalism prevalent among Northern Europe’s merchant class.
  • It reflected the belief that hatred or fear of other races and creeds interfered with economic trade, extinguished freedom of thought and expression, eroded the basis for friendship among nations, and led to persecution and war.
  • Tiring of religious wars, European Enlightenment thinkers imagined an age in which enlightened reason, rather than religious dogmatism, governed relations between diverse peoples with loyalties to different faiths.
• American thinkers inherited this principle of tolerant pluralism from their European Enlightenment forebears.
  • Inspired by the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, American Calvinists created open, friendly, and tolerant institutions such as the secular public school and democratically organised religion.
  • Many American Enlightenment thinkers, including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, read and agreed with John Locke’sA Letter Concerning Toleration, in which Locke argued that government is ill-equipped to judge the rightness or wrongness of opposing religious doctrines — that faith could not be coerced, and that any attempt to do so would result in greater religious and political discord.
    • Civil government, therefore, ought to protect liberty of conscience and the right to worship as one chooses, while refraining from establishing an official state-sanctioned church.
  • For America’s founders, the fledgling nation was to be a land where persons of every faith, or no faith, could settle and thrive peacefully and cooperatively without fear of persecution by government or fellow citizens.
• Benjamin Franklin’s belief that religion was an aid to cultivating virtue led him to donate funds to every church in Philadelphia.
  • In 1777, Thomas Jefferson drafted a religious liberty bill for Virginia to disestablish the government-sponsored Anglican Church — often referred to as “the precursor to the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment” — which eventually passed with James Madison’s help.

Scientific Progress

• The Enlightenment enthusiasm for scientific discovery was directly related to the growth of deism and scepticism about received religious doctrine.
  • Deists engaged in scientific inquiry not only to satisfy their intellectual curiosity, but to respond to a divine calling to expose God’s natural laws.
  • Advances in scientific knowledge — whether the rejection of the geocentric model of the universe through the work of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, or the discovery of natural laws such as Newton’s mathematical explanation of gravity — removed the need for a constantly intervening God.
• With the release of Sir Isaac Newton’sPrincipia in 1660, faith in scientific progress took institutional form in the Royal Society of England, the Académie des Sciences in France, and later the Academy of Sciences in Germany.
  • In pre-revolutionary America, scientists or natural philosophers belonged to the Royal Society until 1768, when Benjamin Franklin helped create, and then served as the first president of, the American Philosophical Society.
  • Franklin became one of the most famous American scientists of the Enlightenment period, owing to his many practical inventions and theoretical work on the properties of electricity.

American Enlightenment Thinkers

Thomas Paine

• Thomas Paine was an England-born political philosopher and writer who supported revolutionary causes in both America and Europe.
  • Published in 1776 to international acclaim, Common Sense was the first pamphlet to advocate American independence, and is credited with playing a crucial role in convincing colonists to take up arms against England.
  • In it, Paine argues that representational government is superior to monarchy or other forms of government based on aristocracy and heredity. The pamphlet proved so influential that John Adams reportedly declared: “Without the pen of the author of ‘Common Sense,’ the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain.”
• After writing The American Crisis papers during the Revolutionary War, Paine returned to Europe and offered a stirring defence of the French Revolution with Rights of Man.
  • He published Rights of Man in two parts, in 1791 and 1792, as a rebuttal of the Irish political philosopher Edmund Burke and his attack on the French Revolution, of which Paine was a supporter. Paine journeyed to Paris to oversee a French translation of the book in the summer of 1792.
• His political views led to a stint in prison; after his release, he produced his last great essay, The Age of Reason, a controversial critique of institutionalised religion and Christian theology.
  • Paine’s two-volume treatise on religion was published in 1794 and 1795, with a third part appearing in 1802.
  • The first volume criticises Christian theology and organised religion in favour of reason and scientific inquiry, functioning as an advocacy of deism; the second volume offers a critical analysis of the Old and New Testaments, questioning the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Benjamin Franklin

• Benjamin Franklin — author, printer, scientist, and statesman — led America through a tumultuous period of colonial politics, revolutionary war, and its founding as a nation.
  • In his Autobiography, he extolled the virtues of thrift, industry, and money-making, holding that the self-interested pursuit of material wealth is only virtuous when it coincides with the promotion of the public good through philanthropy and voluntarism — what is often called “enlightened self-interest.”
• He believed that reason, free trade, and a cosmopolitan spirit serve as faithful guides for nation-states to cultivate peaceful relations.
  • Within nation-states, Franklin thought that “independent entrepreneurs make good citizens,” because they pursue “attainable goals” and are “capable of living a useful and dignified life.”
  • In his Autobiography, Franklin claims that the way to “moral perfection” is to cultivate thirteen virtues: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility.
• Franklin favoured voluntary associations over governmental institutions as mechanisms to channel citizens’ extreme individualism and isolated pursuit of private ends into productive social outlets, not only advising his fellow citizens to create and join such associations but also founding and participating in many himself.
  • Franklin was a staunch defender of federalism, a critic of narrow parochialism, and a strong advocate of religious liberty.

Thomas Jefferson

• A Virginian statesman, scientist, and diplomat, Thomas Jefferson is best known for drafting the Declaration of Independence.
  • Agreeing with Benjamin Franklin, he substituted “pursuit of happiness” for “property” in Locke’s schedule of natural rights, so that liberty to pursue the widest possible human ends would be accommodated.
• Jefferson also exercised immense influence over the creation of the U.S. Constitution through his extended correspondence with James Madison during the 1787 Constitutional Convention — since Jefferson himself was absent, serving as a diplomat in Paris.
  • Just as he saw the Declaration as a test of the colonists’ will to revolt and separate from Britain, he also saw the Convention in Philadelphia, almost eleven years later, as a grand experiment in creating a new constitutional order.
• As Jefferson put it: “Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.”
  • Jefferson’s words capture the idea that constitutions are living documents, transforming over time in pace with popular thought, imagination, and opinion.

James Madison

• Heralded as the “Father of the Constitution,”James Madison was one of the most influential architects of the U.S. Constitution, as well as a man of letters, a politician, a scientist, and a diplomat who left an enduring legacy on American philosophical thought.
  • As a tireless advocate for the Constitution’s ratification, Madison advanced his most groundbreaking ideas while jointly authoring The Federalist Papers with John Jay and Alexander Hamilton.
• Two of his most enduring ideas are contained there: the large republic thesis, and the argument for separation of powers and checks and balances (influenced by Montesquieu, the seventeenth-century French philosopher).
  • In the tenth Federalist paper, Madison explains the problem of factions — namely, that the development of groups with shared interests is inevitable, and dangerous, to republican government. If factions are vanquished, he warns, the liberty upon which their existence and activities are founded would in turn be destroyed.
  • When factions form inside government, a clever institutional design of checks and balances — first John Adams’s idea, whereby each branch would have a hand in the others’ domain — would avert excessive harm, so that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”

John Adams

• John Adams was also a founder, statesman, diplomat, and eventual President who contributed to American Enlightenment thought. Among his political writings, three stand out:
  • Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1776)
  • A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Against the Attack of M. Turgot (1787–8)
  • Discourses on Davila (1791)
• In the Dissertation, Adams faults Great Britain for deciding to introduce canon and feudal law — “the two greatest systems of tyranny” — to the North American colonies.
  • Once introduced, elections ceased in the colonies, British subjects felt enslaved, and revolution became inevitable.
• In the Defense, Adams offers an uncompromising defence of republicanism.
  • He disputes Turgot’s apology for unified and centralised government, arguing that insurance against consolidated state power, and support for individual liberty, require separating government powers between branches and installing careful checks and balances.
  • Nevertheless, he argues, a strong executive branch is needed to defend the people against “aristocrats” who will attempt to deprive liberty from the mass of people.
• Revealing the Enlightenment theme of conservatism, Adams criticised the notion of unrestricted popular rule, or pure democracy, in the Discourses.
  • Since humans are always desirous of increasing their personal power and reputation, he held, government must be designed to constrain the effects of these passionate tendencies, writing: “Consider that government is intended to set bounds to passions which nature has not limited; and to assist reason, conscience, justice, and truth in controlling interests which, without it, would be as unjust as uncontrollable.”

Japanese Enlightenment

• During the Meiji Restoration, English and French civil society was introduced into Japan — in particular, utilitarianism from England and the popular sovereignty of Jean-Jacques Rousseau from France.
  • The thinkers of the early Meiji period advocated a British-derived Enlightenment drawn from Western civil society, attempting to critique Japanese traditional authority and feudalism.
  • However, they ultimately fell into harmony with the government, accepting modernisation “from above” without radicalism.
• In 1873, Mori Arinori formed Meirokusha, a cultural association whose members shared common ground on points such as regarding practical learning as important.
  • Mori Arinori promoted national education as Minister of Education.

Fukuzawa Yukichi

• He introduced British utilitarianism to Japan, and advocated natural rights on the assumption that human rights were given from heaven.
  • He considered the development of civilisation to be the development of the human spirit, holding that the independence of the individual led to the independence of the country as a whole.
  • He held that there is no single ideal form of government.
• While members of Meirokusha ultimately advocated harmonisation between government and people, democratic thinkers absorbed radical people’s-rights ideas from France, and supported national resistance and revolution — verbally — against the Meiji oligarchy.

Itagaki Taisuke

• In 1874, Itagaki Taisuke introduced a proposal for the establishment of an elected legislature, and was known as “Rousseau of Japan.”
  • He took a prominent part in bringing about the Meiji Restoration and in guiding the nation through the period of transition, and was a strong advocate of representative government.
  • He was the leader of the Liberal Party, and he and his followers stood for the rights of man; his movement spread nationwide as the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement.
  • Ueki Emori helped Itagaki, and drew up a radical draft on his behalf.

Prince Yamagata

• He had the chief share in organising the modern Japanese army, and was the first to forge an Empire.
  • Not merely a military man, he was also an important political figure — the leader of the War Party, and the political opponent of Count Ito, who headed the Peace Party.

Count Ito

• He was the father of the Japanese constitutional system. He undertook an extensive tour of the West to study different forms of constitution, and was greatly influenced by Bismarck.
  • On his return, he framed a constitution on the Prussian model, finding it more suitable to conditions prevailing in Japan than the constitutions of other Western countries.
  • He created new orders of nobility, establishing five ranks: Prince, Marquis, Count, Viscount, and Baron.

Count Okuma

• Like Itagaki, he supported the constitutional movement, but was not prepared to go as far as Itagaki proposed.
  • He founded a new party, the Progressive Party, which advocated reforms along conservative lines.
  • He proved himself an able finance minister, favoured a gradual extension of the franchise, and was opposed to imperialism.

Nakae Chomin

• Strongly influenced by Rousseau, Nakae Chomin argued for people’s sovereignty and individual freedom.
  • However, taking Japan’s specific situation into account, he pointed out the importance of parliamentary monarchy, holding that the Imperial Constitution should be gradually revised by the Diet.

The Democratic Trend of the Late Meiji and Taisho Era

• From the late period of Meiji to the Taisho era, a democratic trend spread against the backdrop of a growing bourgeois political consciousness, leading to political movements for safeguarding the Constitution and for popular election.
  • Yoshino Sakuzo argued for party cabinet politics and popular election, without deeply pursuing the question of who was sovereign — insisting instead that the political goal should aim for people’s happiness, and political decisions for people’s intentions.
  • Minobe Tatsukichi interpreted the sovereign not as the emperor, but as the state — holding that the emperor merely exercised his power as the highest organ under the Meiji Constitution. Though his theory was widely acknowledged at first, he was later politically suppressed by the military and the rightists.
  • In 1911, Hiratsuka Raicho formed Seitosha, calling for the awakening of women’s own consciousness and the development of the feminist movement.

The Years 1853–1894: The Transformation of Japan

• Japan was a feudal state, kept in seclusion, with the Emperor serving as a mere figurehead while real power lay with the Shogun — originally the Emperor’s chief officer, who had come to monopolise power.

Opening of Japan to Western Exploitation

• Japan had wrapped itself in rigid seclusion, but in 1853, its veil was opened by the USA, when the US Navy appeared in Japanese waters to demonstrate strength, demanding protection for American sailors and permission for American ships to enter Japanese ports.
  • Japan was forced to accept a treaty opening two ports to Americans; by 1867, almost all European nations had concluded treaties with Japan, securing commercial rights, open ports, extra-territorial rights, and control over tariffs.

Restoration of the Meiji Emperor

• The opening up of Japan by foreigners gave rise to an anti-foreign movement, which soon developed into agitation to abolish the Shogunate, blamed for allowing foreigners into the country.
  • Many feudal lords with strong anti-foreigner sentiments demanded that actual power be restored to the Emperor. In 1867, the Shogunate was abolished and imperial authority restored, marking the start of the Meiji era.

Internal Reconstruction of Japan

• Centralisation of authority: The abolition of the Shogunate paved the way for the centralisation of authority — the state’s first need — with the abolition of feudalism as the next step.
• Abolition of feudalism: Feudal lords voluntarily surrendered their fiefs to the Emperor, becoming ordinary subjects in the eyes of the law; the old warrior class, the Samurai, also gave up their class privileges. In one stroke, feudalism was abolished, paving the way for organising the state on a national basis — a change so sudden, and inspired by such unselfish patriotism, that it is rare in history.
• National army: With the end of feudalism, fighting ceased to be the privilege of the Samurai warrior class, and was substituted by a national army recruited from all sections of society.
• Social changes: As a result of the nationalisation of the army, an important social change took place — the old distinction between warrior class and commoners disappeared, and everyone became equal in the eyes of the law.

Westernisation of Japan

• Japan studied the affairs of Western Europe and adopted Western institutions and technology.
  • New constitution: A new constitution was framed on the Prussian model, with the Emperor as head of state and a representative assembly of two houses — an arrangement that avoided the excesses of democracy while still encouraging talent from every class in the service of the nation.
  • New code of law: New legal codes, based on those of France and Prussia, were built; objectionable features of the old laws, such as the use of torture, were abolished. Japan hoped the new codes would help in eliminating extra-territoriality.
  • Progress of education: Compulsory elementary education was introduced for both boys and girls. Universities and technical schools on Western lines were founded under state supervision, with emphasis placed on vocational education; foreign teachers were invited, and English was made compulsory in schools.
  • Army and Navy: The army was nationalised, reorganised on Prussian lines, equipped with modern weapons, and compulsory military service introduced; steps were taken to build the navy on British lines.
  • Economic progress: In an amazingly short time, Japan equipped itself with railways, telegraphs, postal facilities, and steamships. Mines were developed, and new industries involving machinery and large-scale production were introduced; the currency was reformed, the banking sector developed, and international commerce increased several-fold.
• By 1894, Japan had practically completed the transition period of its history that had begun in 1853, transformed from a backward feudal state into a modern state.

(Enlightenment in Latin America is covered under the chapter on Liberation from Colonial Rule — Latin America, and the Indian Enlightenment is covered under Modern Indian History.)