Chapter 5: Discovering Man in Nature

The search for the primitive man and the state of nature. 


I.  Abbé Guillaume Thomas François Raynal  -  Histoire des deux Indes  (History of the Two Indies)
     (1st ed. 1772. last edition 1780)

A powerful attack on colonization in India and the Caribbean.  The book first discusses the Portuguese and their oriental colonies, going on to give a history of Britishand French enterprises, then Spanish and Dutch, in the Orient.  It then turns its attention to European conquests in the Americas, giving an account of atrocities against slaves in New Guinea (by Diderot) and presenting a table of French and British colonies in North America, after which there is a series of essays on religion, politics, war, commerce, moral philosophy, etc.

The book was enhanced by many authors between the first publication in 1772 and the final in 1780.
Diderot is thought to have written maybe a third of the book.  Diderot proudly called it "the book that will give birth to Brutus."  Raynal, who was more conservative than Diderot, angrily claimed Diderot had betrayed him.


French colonial empires: 

French colonial empires - green = 1600 and 1700s, blue = 1800s

Article on the French East India Company (est 1660)


British colonial empires:

List of abolitionist forerunners 

II.   Travel writers were unreliable in their accounts, they were mostly sailors, soldiers, merchants or missionaries.  They often wrote about the sexual habits of natives because this titillated European readers.  Many Enlightenment thinkers understood this.  This led to scientific expeditions.  


III.  Diderot claims that because natives are not subject to the social problems of Europeans, the accepted story that these problems are because of the Fall from Grace in Genesis is untrue, that European social problems are of man's making through choices they have made.  "Social institutions derive neither from the needs of nature nor from the dogma of religion."  They were created by the founders and legislators of individual societies. 


III.   Scientific voyages for more objective observations and analysis of other peoples.


      1767 - 1769 - Louis-Antoine de Bougainville  (Tahitians) 


      1768 - 1779 - James Cook - three Pacific voyages  


      They both bring native peoples back to Europe - Aotourou (Tahitian)


Fictitious Works on visiting foreigners and commenting on European customs and mores:

      Montesquieu - Lettres persanes (Persian Letters)  (1721) 

      Diderot - The Supplement to Bougainville's Voyage  (1772)