Ham's vicious race: slavery and John Milton

Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Wntr, 1997 by Steven Jablonski

John Milton would have been aware of the debates at Valladolid, if only through a brief account of them which appeared in Samuel Purchas's Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes, a book which Milton knew well and quoted from in his commonplace book.(2) But whether or not Milton had any more direct contact with Sepulveda's ideas, he certainly knew of the Aristotelian concepts that underpinned Sepulveda's arguments. Indeed, Sepulveda's claim that warfare against the Indians is justified by their failure to observe right reason and their related failure to embrace Christianity receives an echo in one of the most chilling passages in Paradise Lost: God's command to the loyal angels at the outset of the War in Heaven that they

subdue By force, who reason for thir Law refuse, Right reason for thir Law, and for thir King Messiah, who by right of merit Reigns.

(6.40-3)(3)

My intention here is not to argue that Milton, like Sepulveda, approved of the Spanish treatment of the Indians on the grounds that they were natural slaves; although it is suggestive that Milton characterized the Indians in a passage from his Second Defence of the English People as degenerate barbarians, demon-worshipers, and "the most stupid [stolidissimos] of mortals,"(4) he had no love for Spanish imperialism, and his own nephew translated one of Las Casas's indictments of Spanish cruelty as The Tears of the Indians.(5) What I do mean to argue is that Milton, like Las Casas himself, was at least open to the possibility that forced subjugation would be justified against any people fitted by nature for servitude, assuming that such people actually existed. As I shall demonstrate in this essay, Milton not only accepted the principles behind the concept of natural slavery but also recognized the existence of such people in the world. He identified these slaves, however, not with the natives of the New World but with the black Africans of the Old.

The great influence of Aristotle's concept of the natural slave is perhaps at odds with his rather confused and probably contradictory treatment of the subject in the Politics.(6) According to Aristotle, "from the hour of their birth, some [people] are marked out for subjection, others for rule." Natural slaves differ from their more fortunate fellow humans in that they possess only enough reason to apprehend what is rational without being capable of deliberation or forethought. For such people to be ruled over by their rational superiors is only just and expedient according to the same principle by which the soul rules over the body and reason over the passions. This arrangement parallels the rule of human beings over tame animals and men over women; in fact, Aristotle did not scruple to compare natural slaves to beasts and the acquisition of them to hunting. Yet Aristotle also acknowledged that not all actual slaves were slaves by nature, and he distinguished between true natural slaves and those he called slaves by convention, people who were forced into slavery by accidents of fortune, such as capture in warfare, without being fitted by nature for this servitude. Although he is unclear on this point, he appears to have held both that only non-Greeks or "barbarians" could be natural slaves and that some of these barbarians were naturally more servile than others.

Aristotle's concept of natural slavery faded from view during the first centuries of the Christian era only to be revived and Christianized by St. Thomas Aquinas. As Aquinas explained the concept in his Summa Contra Gentiles,

Now since man has both intelligence and sense and also bodily strength, these, by the disposition of divine providence, are subordinated to one another on the pattern of that order that is found throughout the universe . . . For the same reason there is an order to be found among men themselves; for men of outstanding intelligence naturally take command, while those who are less intelligent but of more robust physique, seem intended by nature to act as servants; as Aristotle points out in the Politics. Solomon also was of like opinion, for he said: "Let the foolish serve the wise" (Proverbs, XI, 29); and again: "Seek out from the people wise and God-fearing men who shall be judges over the people at all times" (Exodus, XVIII, 21-2).(7)

Thus sanctioned with the dual authority of philosophy and theology, reason and revelation, the idea of natural slavery was passed down to later Christian writers, and Sepulveda was only one of several who used it to justify the Spanish treatment of the Indians.(8) He is important not for any great originality in his thought but for the thoroughness and rhetorical force with which he sought to extend Christian just-war theory to include unprovoked offensive actions against those who qualified as irrational barbarians. Whereas earlier Christian theorists maintained that it was permissible to enslave a people defeated in a just war, Sepulveda followed Aristotle in arguing that a people's natural slavery makes warfare against them just.(9) He did not hesitate to understand natural slavery in racial and ethnic terms and explicitly identified black Africans as natural slaves while seeing the natives of the New World as at best just a step above this level.(10) As he saw it, these inferior beings were so deficient in the right reason that allows fully developed men and women to recognize and avoid sin that they could only be expected to commit notorious crimes on a regular basis and, indeed, could be identified precisely by their habitual sinful practices such as cannibalism and human sacrifice. It was a great blessing for these people to be subjected to the rational rule of others, for this not only prevented them from continuing in their sinful ways but also allowed them to learn better habits from their intellectual superiors. To be sure, natural slaves may not welcome this subjection, but their sinful and foolish desires must not be heeded by the civilized Christian who considers only their true needs. Taking this principle to its logical conclusion, Sepulveda went so far as to invoke the Golden Rule - "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" - as a divine imperative for forcing people into slavery.(11)