In a pure soil’

Colonial anxieties in the work of Francis Bacon

Dados Bibliográficos

ID11344720
AutoresSarah Irving (0000-0001-8470-175X, a King's College , Cambridge , UK, autor correspondente)
Ano2006
Volume32
Fascículo3
Páginas249-262
Data de publicação2006-09-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoHistory of European Ideas (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0191-6599 • E-ISSN: 1873-541X
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2006.03.001
OpenAlexW2037651231
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas13

Early modern natural philosophers such as Francis Bacon are frequently seen as providing a legitimating ideology for British imperial expansion. Although this has been challenged by one recent study, much of Bacon's work on English colonisation remains unexplored. This article argues that far from being an ideological apologist for English colonisation, Bacon had two sets of colonial anxieties. The first derived from a tradition of civic humanism which concerned the moral corruption, dispossession of indigenous people and the greed involved in the British colonization of Ireland and America. Bacon's second anxiety was not moral but epistemological, and stemmed from his natural philosophy. For Bacon, colonies were not simply new commonwealths, they were places which potentially produced the natural knowledge vital for the recreation of man's original, epistemic empire over the world. Consequently, Bacon was not only interested in the morality of colonising, but also whether the knowledge produced in colonies was reliable. An exploration of Bacon's views on colonisation also offers us a point of entry into the scholarly debate about the relationship between Bacon's natural philosophy and his political thought

Archaeology · British Empire · Colonialism · Colonisation · Colonization · Empire · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Humanism · Ideology · Indigenous · Morality · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Ecology · History · Law · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity