"Trade, Plantations, and Property: John Locke and the Economic Defense of Colonialism"

by Arneil, Barbara (1994)

Abstract

John Locke's Two Treatises of Government has long been recognized as a tract which addresses the questions raised by the domestic political developments in England during the Restoration period,' but the importance of English foreign policy, in particular the colonization of America, has been largely overlooked. Given the quantity of books and correspondence in Locke's possession concerned with America and its natives, the number of specific references Locke makes to America in the Two Treatises, and Locke's involvement, through his patron the Earl of Shaftesbury, in the development of colonial policies throughout his life, this oversight is surprising. By examining the seventeenth-century political controversy surrounding England's colonization of America, one can discover that the debate was fierce and that critics of colonial policy far outnumbered those who supported it during this period.

Keywords

Locke, History, History Of Ideas, Colonialism, Economic History, Political Economy, Labor

Themes

On Locke

Links to Reference

• http://www.jstor.org/stable/2709924
• http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2709924
• https://www.jstor.org/stable/2709924?casa_token=gTaFxQs9PjkAAAAA:5NdU21IhEhAKTuBD742xTpc4OrXZoYs8H7yzCUI8KjuhjMQ9RI3F3GYsgn6b-p5tLAKMF0XBiLBx7ogd7JrmjAHRZPMeRBXq8CxaOwhoaS4dLYe5cItZ
• https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2709924.pdf?casa_token=qVqAgF7BPRgAAAAA:uttT7TXyQCcYbTBapeKYu0l32_wlUGwoZ_8OtGXTLxVNlN3o45FJTWjMBcEd4jWx7gnMaYPeo9nUC2Bf6R9LFmy9vdrdeIs4g5eZUttg0q6dcJddHiL4

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