Dear HES List:
I am writing to the list as a student of Hegel's political philosophy
who knows a little (but not enough) about Smith and Ricardo.
I am writing an article about colonization and decolonization in
Hegel's political thought. Because Hegel engaged classical political
economy (he mentions "Smith, Say, and Ricardo" in The Philosophy of
Right, sec. 189), I am wondering what Smith and Ricardo thought about
why colonies came into existence and what they thought about colonial
independence. I would very much like either some secondary articles
or some references to Smith's and Ricardo's texts.
(When I do a journal search at the Vassar library for "Ricardo" and
"colonies," I get a lot of scientific entries, where an author's
first name is Ricardo and he is studying colonies of germs or
insects.)
1. Hegel makes two arguments about why colonies come into existence.
In his early lectures, he suggests that the agricultural revolution
drives poor agricultural workers off their lands and, while some may
find jobs in cities, others emigrate to colonies. In The Philosophy
of Right, he argues that a modern economic system produces more than
it can consume and so the modern state is driven to seek markets
abroad, to engage in overseas commerce, and to export its superfluous
workers to underdeveloped lands where they can claim and work the
soil.
It has been years since I read the full Wealth of Nations, and I
teach it from an abridged edition (I guess you get what you pay
for!), but I do not remember specific discussions about the formation
of colonies. Nor, when I look through Ricardo's Principles, do I
find anything there. Does either have a theory of the formation of
colonies?
(As far as I can tell, both Smith and Ricardo do not worry so much
about the displacement of agricultural or industrial workers as does
Hegel. For Hegel, the displacement leads to colonies; for Ricardo,
it is 'an evil to which a rich nation must submit,' and Smith seems
to feel the same way about demobilized soldiers.)
2. When I move to the question of decolonization, I know that Smith
argues against monopolistic corporations like the East India Company,
but I do not remember (nor do I find in Ricardo) any explicit
argument for the independence of the colonies. I find a strong
inferential argument: because Ricardo especially (and he quotes
Smith to his side on this point) so favors free international trade,
any colonial arrangement to the intended or purported benefit of the
mother country would turn out to clog the flow of free trade and
hence to cause harm to both colony and mother country.
Hegel too says that independence benefits both colony and mother
country: the colony seeks independence because the mother country
does not gives the colonists the rights of the Europeans, and the
eventual independence is beneficial for both, just as the freeing of
the slaves benefitted both slave and master.
I infer that, while Ricardo is making an economic argument that
colony and mother country benefit economically from free trade (which
implies the breakdown, I think, of the colonial relation), Hegel is
making a different, perhaps more psychological or political argument,
that independence means that the European country is no longer
undergoing the defective understandings and actions of the master,
just as the former colony is no longer forced to be slave-like.
In any case, I would appreciate whatever help anyone can give.
Thank you.
P.S. To get more esoteric, I wonder about colonies in Sir James
Steuart's ... Principles of Political Oeconomy -- Hegel wrote a
(lost) commentary on that work in his youth, and some of its
principles recur (unreferenced) in The Philosophy of Right. I
studied it long ago, could not find anything on colonies when I
looked at it again tonight, and noted that 'colonies' was not an
index entry.
Peter G. Stillman
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