Oriental Despotism and the Limits of Doux Commerce,from Montesquieu to Raynal

Geographies of Despotism

Callanan urges readers to learn from Montesquieu’s particularistic liberalism by pointing to our contemporary political situation and, in particular, the failed attempt to democratize states in the Middle East and North Africa. According to Callanan, these attempts failed because Western liberals, unlike Montesquieu, did not take into account the cultural preconditions that had to be met for liberal democratic institutions to thrive on foreign soil (Callanan 2018, 3). ⁵ That Callanan takes non-European, in this case predominantly Muslim, nations as his example of nations “not yet ready” for liberty is not a coincidence. Self-consciously or not, it conforms to Montesquieu’s own characterization of liberty, according to which liberty is at least in part geographically specific to European nations. Yet for Montesquieu, the assumption that despotism was entrenched in non-European, usually Asian, states functioned to dramatically limit his reformist aims. For Montesquieu, not only did Asian states tend to have illiberal cultures, but they also did so because of deeply entrenched moral and physical causes.

When Montesquieu wrote that Asian states were despotic, he was drawing on a long tradition in European political thought. As far back as Aristotle, writers noted that non-Western governments were characterized by tyrannical rule and an endemic absence of freedom. These perceptions were reinforced by the popular travel writing of seventeenth-century Europeans, including those of Paul Rycaut (1629–1700), François Bernier (1625–1688), and Jean Chardin (1643–1713). These writers had painted an image of actual regimes, including the Ottoman and Mughal empires, as characterized by absolute and arbitrary rule, as well as insecure property rights and arbitrary criminal punishments (Curtis 2009; Rubiés 2005). In The Spirit of the Laws (1748), Montesquieu systematized these observations by making “despotic” government one of three types of government, alongside republics and monarchies. ⁶ The laws of each nation, Montesquieu wrote, arose from and conformed to features such as the mores, religion, wealth, climate, and territory of each nation—and despotic governments were likely to arise in the “Orient” for both moral and physical reasons (I.3, 9).

Before moving on to explain why this was the case, we must first understand Montesquieu’s conception of despotism itself, which he developed in contrast to monarchy. Both were forms of “rule of one,” but they should not be confused for the other. If monarchical government was “that in which one alone governs, but by fixed and established laws,” despotic government was the rule of one without laws (II.1, 10). Monarchies were governed by laws thanks to the “intermediate powers” of nobles that placed limits on the prince’s arbitrary will. By contrast, despotic governments had no such intermediate powers and left everything to the “momentary will of the prince” (II.4, 17–19). This meant that there could be no “tempering, modification, accommodation, terms, alternatives, negotiations, remonstrances. . . . Man is a creature that obeys a creature that wants” (III.10, 29).

An important consequence of the limits on the prince’s will in a monarchy was that individuals could have a sense of security in their property and persons, in contrast to despotic governments where they could not have this sense of security. Montesquieu described despotic governments, at least in their ideal-typical form, as those in which the “prince declares himself owner of all the land and heir to all of his subjects” (V.14, 61). Under a despotic government, individuals had no reason to be industrious or to engage in commerce, because their property could be taken away from them at a moment’s notice (V.15, 65). Furthermore, because individuals had no natural love of their country or sense of individual honor, as they had in republican and monarchical governments, respectively, they had to be forced to follow the laws by way of severe punishments, which violated one’s right to property and security (VI.9, 82). That despotic governments generally did not provide a sense of security meant that they were devoid of liberty. Montesquieu had described liberty itself as “the tranquillity of spirit which comes from the opinion that each one has of his security,” and saw safety from arbitrary criminal punishment as the hallmark of liberty itself (XI.6, 157). ⁷ This meant that whereas monarchy was a form of “free government,” despotism was not. There were variations within despotic and monarchical governments, but Montesquieu believed that there was nonetheless an important line between the two regime types.

Having distinguished monarchies and despotic governments in this way, Montesquieu associated the former with the customs and climates of Europe and the latter with those of Asia. As Paul Rahe has written, Montesquieu did not believe that climate simply determined human action and wanted to recognize the agency that humans had in shaping their destiny (Krause 2003, 239; Rahe 2009b, 153; Samuel 2009, 313). However, he also believed that climate itself shaped the upper limits of agency, such that hotter climates like those of Asia bred greater submission to the conditions of the climate (Parekh 1999, 74; Rahe 2009b, 156–57). This meant that Europeans were less likely to be faced with the threat of despotism and more likely to successfully defend themselves against such a threat if it ever arose.

The first factor that gave rise to despotism in Asia was the hotter climates. The vigor inspired by colder climates led men to be industrious as well as to fight for their liberties, whereas the passivity engendered by hot climates led to “no curiosity, no noble enterprise, no generous sentiment” (XIV.2, 234). “Therefore,” Montesquieu wrote, “one must not be surprised that the cowardice of the peoples of hot climates has almost always made them slaves and that the courage of the peoples of cold climates has kept them free” (XVII.2, 278). Physical causes then also interacted with, and were reinforced by, moral causes such as religion: in India, Montesquieu wrote, the passivity generated by the climate was also reflected in the metaphysical views of Hinduism, adherents of which saw “inaction as the most perfect state and the object of their desires” (XIV.5, 236).

Finally, “the liberty of Europe and the servitude of Asia” could also be explained by differences in terrain: whereas in Europe there were natural obstacles such as rivers and mountains, in Asia there were large plains that could be conquered and subjugated under a single empire (XVII.4, 280; XVII.6, 283). He thus summarized the difference between Europe and Asia:

In Europe, the natural divisions form many medium-sized states in which . . . without laws [each] state falls into decadence and becomes inferior to all the others.

This is what has formed a genius for liberty, which makes it very difficult to subjugate each part and to put it under a foreign force other than by laws and by what is useful to its commerce.

By contrast in Asia there reigns a spirit of servitude that has never left it, and in all the histories of this country it is not possible to find a single trait marking a free soul; one will never see there anything but the heroism of servitude. (XVII.6, 284)

As can be seen from this passage, Montesquieu was willing to be quite categorical about the differences between Europe and Asia, which mapped on to the differences between monarchy and despotism. In this analysis, he connected the geography and climate of each region to the “spirit of liberty” or “spirit of servitude” that they generated.

Despite the clear line Montesquieu usually drew between monarchy and despotism, there were instances of governments that seemed to blur the boundaries between the two regime types. Montesquieu saw China as a despotic government that embodied features of more moderate government in its regulation of mores and criminal laws (V.19, 71; VI.9, 82). In his Pensées, Montesquieu went even further than this to once suggest that China was a “mixed government” that had sometimes tempered the despotism that naturally arose from its climate (Montesquieu 2012, 560–61). When he wrote the Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu did not make this argument himself but acknowledged that some missionaries had characterized China as a mixed government worthy of praise. If they were correct, then Montesquieu “would therefore have made an empty distinction in establishing the principles of the three governments.” Montesquieu nonetheless insisted that the missionaries were incorrect, and that his distinction between monarchy and despotism still stood. The Chinese did not possess virtue and honor to the degree that such missionaries had stated. Montesquieu unequivocally concluded that even though laws had reigned in earlier periods, the expansion of territory had rendered China “a despotic state whose principle is fear” (VIII.21, 126–128). ⁸ His statements to this effect far outnumbered those in which he noted the moderate, republican, or monarchical features of Chinese government (Kow 2014, 353; Rahe 2009b, 127).

Montesquieu’s typology of regimes deviated from earlier typologies, such as Aristotle’s, that saw despotism as merely a corrupted form of monarchy rather than a distinct form of government. Montesquieu, too, thought that monarchies could become despotic, but he did not think that such corruption was inevitable. As his discussion of China suggests, he believed that it was necessary to make a conceptual distinction between monarchy and despotism. What was Montesquieu’s intention in making this distinction?

The standard explanation is that Montesquieu intended to warn existing monarchies about the dangers of despotism and correct their course so that they did not fall from monarchy into despotism (Krause 2001; Richter 2006, 155; Rubiés 2005, 168; Schaub 1995, 6–7). ⁹ As Sharon Krause has written, “Montesquieu’s explicit identification of despotism with the empires of the East conceals his implicit warning about the dangers of despotic rule in the West” (Krause 2001, 259). Montesquieu found despotic tendencies even in Europe, in the French monarchy’s aim of territorial expansion, as well as in the abuses and immoderation of Catholic authorities (Gilmore and Sullivan 2017; Rahe 2009b, 26; Sullivan 2017). On this view, Montesquieu may have wanted to establish a distinction between monarchy and despotism because he wanted to emphasize the unattractive nature of the latter (Krause 2001, 236). This may have been a particularly urgent task given that some European commentators at the time were drawn to the enlightened despotism represented by China (Krause 2001, 251).

Although it is true that Montesquieu perceived despotic traits to be a threat everywhere, it does not seem that he saw a pressing need to warn Europeans of the impending danger of decline into despotism. Those who argue that Montesquieu intended to issue a warning to European monarchies often base their claims on “implicit” worries about European despotism; they even argue that Montesquieu made his point by “[deflecting] attention away from the French monarchy” (Krause 2001, 252, emphasis mine). Even if such an interpretive approach could be justified by Montesquieu’s supposed fear of censorship and persecution in France, this reading does not fully explain why Montesquieu made complacent generalizations about “most kingdoms in Europe,” and not just France, having a moderate government—in contrast to the “atrocious despotism” of Turkey (XI.6, 157). After his famous description of the English constitution, which Montesquieu said had liberty for its direct purpose, Montesquieu said that he did not intend to disparage other governments that possessed more moderate liberty. He continued, “the monarchies we know do not have liberty for their direct purpose as does the one we have just mentioned,” but they nonetheless possessed a “spirit of liberty” that set them apart from despotic regimes (XI.7, 166).

Montesquieu’s complacency toward European monarchies is clearly visible from his emphasis on the differences in the physical conditions that gave rise to monarchy and despotism. After comparing the climates of Europe and Asia and how they gave rise to liberty and servitude, respectively, Montesquieu wrote that “liberty never increases in Asia, whereas in Europe it increases or decreases according to the circumstances” (XVII.3, 280). This meant that although despotism could arise in Europe, it was a temporary and reversible phenomenon. Discussing the example of Muscovy, a state that he argued had temporarily fallen into despotism, Montesquieu stated that “one can trust to the climate that it has not lost [its laws] irrevocably” (XVII.3, 281). It seems, then, that Montesquieu’s intention was not to warn of the impending danger of despotism but instead to defend monarchy by assuring his European readers that it was different from despotism. ¹⁰ Despotism was something that happened elsewhere, in the climate and conditions of Asia.

The Transformation of Despotic Government

What followed, for Montesquieu, from his theory of Oriental despotism? Despite his negative portrayal of Asian governments, Montesquieu was opposed to the imposition of laws—no matter how ideal they could be in the abstract. This was because he believed that ideal laws varied according to the local context. In contrast to scholars who have painted Montesquieu as an advocate of bringing civilization through conquest and commerce, I argue that he had little faith in such reform projects.

Montesquieu was critical of any attempt to force changes in the laws because of his view that whatever laws existed were there for a reason. As he wrote in the preface to Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu did “not write to censure that which is established in any country whatsoever.” He continued, “If I could make it so that everyone had new reasons for loving his duties, his prince, his homeland and his laws . . . I would consider myself the happiest of mortals.” Montesquieu cautioned against rashly attempting to change the laws, except in the most exceptional of circumstances (preface, xliv). At best, laws could be changed through slow, indirect means; to do otherwise would be “tyrannical” (XIX.14, 315). This reasoning applied to despotic states as well, but as there were no laws in despotic states properly speaking, Montesquieu reasoned that any form of change would be even more dangerous and potentially destabilizing. Attempting to change the “mores and manners” of a despotic state would be to “overturn everything,” because those mores and manners were responsible for upholding order in the place of laws (XIX.12, 314).

Montesquieu’s view that, in the vast majority of cases, what is was what ought to be stood in tension with his moral condemnation of despotism. ¹¹ This led to an impasse in his work: despotism was the worst of all possible governments, but there was little that could be done about it. He did suggest two means of bringing about salutary changes in mores and laws from outside by what he considered to be relatively “gentle” means, although ultimately he remained skeptical of the prospects of such reform.

The first method Montesquieu discussed was benign conquest. It is widely accepted that Montesquieu was critical of aspirations to “universal monarchy,” which referred to a totalizing, imperial kind of domination over other states. Montesquieu associated vast extents of territory with despotic government, and so empire was in itself a kind of despotic government in Montesquieu’s schema (II.5, 20; X.16, 152; Mosher 2012, 115). However, some scholars have argued that Montesquieu was open to a softer kind of conquest (Howse 2006, 700; Mosher 2012, 131–54). ¹² In a chapter called “Some advantages for the conquered peoples,” Montesquieu wrote that conquest can sometimes lead to positive outcomes in a corrupt government. This view is reflected in his often-quoted statement that “A conquest can destroy harmful prejudices, and if I dare speak in this way, put a nation under a better genius.” In this passage, he goes on to criticize the Spanish for failing to bring “gentle religion” and reform to Mexico after conquest: “They could have set the slaves free, and they made freemen slaves. They could have made clear to [the Mexicans] that human sacrifice was an abuse; instead they exterminated them” (X.4, 142).

However, these statements do not amount to a justification of conquest for the purpose of reform. First, as Keegan Callanan rightly points out, Montesquieu’s intention here is not to justify conquest by its positive effects but rather to state what the conqueror should do once a conquest has been made (Callanan 2018, 255). This is why Montesquieu states that “It is for the conqueror to make amends for part of the evils he has done” (X.4, 142, emphasis mine). As this quote shows, Montesquieu’s point is to say that if the Spanish were to conquer the Mexicans, they could have at least “made amends” for the evils of conquest by bringing good laws to the conquered.

Secondly, even in his discussion of jus post bello, Montesquieu stressed the importance of leaving the conquered nation its laws and its mores, limiting the possibility of “curing” the ills of despotism. Alexander the Great—the very figure that represents Montesquieu’s endorsement of benign conquest for many scholars—was praiseworthy for Montesquieu because he “left to the vanquished peoples not only their mores but also their civil laws and often even the kings and governors he had found there” (X.14, 150). In the chapter immediately following his discussion of Alexander, Montesquieu wrote that there was another practice that was “equally proper for moderating despotism and for preserving the conquest” (X.15, 151). Instead of attempting to mix and unite the conquering and conquered, the “Tartars”—or the Mongols—that conquered China created troops and tribunals that were half Chinese and half Tartars, so that the two could serve as a check on each other’s power. Finally, Montesquieu spoke highly of the European practice of establishing commercial colonies to benefit from exclusive trade without imposing the laws of the metropole (XXI.21, 390). In all these examples, Montesquieu exhorted conquerors to leave the conquered their customs and laws. The conquest could moderate despotism, as Montesquieu wrote in the example of China, but it would not fundamentally change the despotic nature of the government.

This brings me to the second possibility for reform to which Montesquieu appealed: the civilizing force of commerce. Keegan Callanan has persuasively argued that Montesquieu promoted commerce as a “potential path to a liberal culture that does not require resort to illiberal methods of coercive cultural transformation” (Callanan 2018, 237). It is true that Montesquieu believed commerce to be a potent force in softening mores and making individuals and nations more gentle with each other in Europe. This idea, which is one of Montesquieu’s best-known and most influential, is known as doux commerce. Montesquieu famously wrote that “commerce cures destructive prejudices, and it is an almost general rule that everywhere there are gentle mores, there is commerce and that everywhere there is commerce, there are gentle mores” (XX.1, 338). Commerce led to peace rather than endless wars and conflict by uniting nations through their mutual utility. It also opened nations up to interaction with others, which led to awareness of others and even cultural mixing (XX.1–2, 338–339). Additionally, Montesquieu asserted that commerce had the effect of curbing absolute power. Montesquieu even gave an account of European history in which the rise of commerce had led to the liberalization of European monarchies (XXI.20, 387). On Montesquieu’s historically dubious account—which is central to Hirschman’s account of doux commerce—the monarchs of Europe had historically oppressed the Jews and customarily appropriated their wealth. When, in response, the Jews invented letters of exchange, princes had to moderate their excesses of power because those excesses could drive out the Jews, along with their wealth. In other words, princes came to realize that it went against their own interests to oppress and harass their subjects (Hirschman 2013, 71–76).

Yet despite his generally optimistic views on the civilizing force of commerce, Montesquieu also expressed serious doubts that commerce could “cure destructive prejudices” outside of Europe. First, he said that it was “useless” to talk about commerce in a despotic government, because it did not have the requisite freedom to encourage individuals to be acquisitive and industrious (XX.4, 341). This was because individuals had no guarantee of security in their property and no guarantee that their long-term investments would pay off, when the despot could seize anything at a moment’s notice. In despotic governments, even merchants lived “from day to day; if [a merchant] burdened himself with many commodities, he would lose more on the interest owed on the purchase than he would make on the commodities” (V.15, 65). The “idea of despotism,” for Montesquieu, was encapsulated in a short story: “When the savages of Louisiana want fruit, they cut down the tree and gather the fruit” (V.13, 59). Despotic governments were characterized by this constant killing of the golden goose.

Second, Montesquieu saw the culture of despotic regimes as static due to the physical factors that had caused despotism in the first place. These physical factors were the “cause of the immutability of religion, mores, manners, and laws in the countries of the east.” Even fashion “[remained] in the East today as they were a thousand years ago” (XIV.4, 235). The immutability of Asian cultures meant that, for Montesquieu, subjects of most Asian despotisms were therefore less inclined to commerce. He wrote that Indians possessed a combination of natural abundance and a lack of aspiration toward European luxury, both produced by the warmer climate. This meant that the modern depictions of Indians were the same as ancient depictions—essentially, that their culture had not changed in centuries. More problematically, it also meant that there was a natural limit on commerce between Europe and India. Because Indians did not need or want European goods, but Europeans did want goods from India, trade was one-sided (XXI.1, 354).

In one positive example that Montesquieu gave of how despotic states can be reformed, he wrote that Peter the Great of Muscovy (Russia) enacted reform by giving new examples and indirectly prompting change in manners rather than imposing abrupt changes in the laws. He made women “dress in the German way, and he sent them fabrics. They immediately appreciated a way of life that so flattered their taste, their vanity, and their passions, and they made the men appreciate it” (XIX.14, 315). Presumably, such new fashions would then open the people to commerce, which would then bring about a further transformation in mores. Callanan cites Montesquieu’s discussion of Muscovy as an example of Montesquieu’s “liberal particularist model of political reform” (Callanan 2018, 252). But such a model of change requires the people’s openness to being influenced by new examples and goods from abroad—a disposition that Montesquieu did not believe the subjects of Oriental despotism possessed. Montesquieu further stated that Peter the Great had succeeded because the Muscovites’ despotic and oppressive norms were foreign to the European soil and had only been established by conquest. Peter had only been trying to reinstate the European mores and manners that were natural to Europe; “the empire of climate is the first of all empires” (XIX.14, 316). In this way, while acknowledging that despotism could arise in Europe as well as in Asia, Montesquieu reserved his faith in the possibility and even long-term probability of reform for Europe.

Montesquieu recognized variation even within despotic regimes in the East and believed that some were not entirely devoid of security, industry, and commerce. He recognized that the Chinese had established landed property—as we have seen, an essential precondition for the flourishing of commerce (Montesquieu 2012, 551). He claimed that China’s early rulers had established good laws that encouraged industry, in order to counteract the effects of the climate (XIV.5, 236; XIV.8, 237; XVIII.6, 288)—or alternatively, contradicting himself, that the necessity bred by the climate encouraged industry in China (XIX.10, 313; XIV.20, 321). ¹³ In any case, regardless of the source of China’s industriousness, Montesquieu saw it as something that hindered international commerce rather than promoted it. The Chinese were industrious to the point of being so acquisitive and unscrupulous that “no commercial nation can trust them” (XIX.10, 313). There was a thriving internal commerce in China, but externally, “no European trade has dared undertake [commerce] in their name” (XIX.10, 314; XXI.21, 393; Haskins 2018, 920–24).

Even if European traders could gain access to Chinese trade in the future, Montesquieu seemed skeptical that such trade would transform cultural conditions. He explicitly noted that China was an exception to doux commerce, as commerce “has never been able to inspire in [the Chinese] the good faith natural to it” (XIV.20, 321). He insisted that manners in China were “indestructible” (XIX.13, 315). Montesquieu established a contrast between China and Muscovy through Book XIX, chapters 13 to 20: he alternated between discussing China, where he argued that a change in mores was practically impossible, and Muscovy, where he argued that change was possible and even under way. He concluded, “let us not compare the morality of China with that of Europe” (XIX.20, 321). This statement resonated with the one in which Montesquieu used the example of Muscovy to support the proposition that despotism could be overcome in Europe but not in Asia (XVII.3, 280).

In Montesquieu’s skepticism about the possibility of transforming despotic government in the so-called Orient, we see several themes that were to shape the views of those who wrote about despotism after him. First, Montesquieu’s commitment to the view that despotism was the product of physical and moral causes that are particular to the nation also led him to be wary of any attempt to change governments through force. Second, although Montesquieu saw commerce as a relatively gentler way of changing mores, he also believed that despotic governments provided hostile terrain for commerce. As we will see, both of these themes were directly taken up several decades later by the Abbé Raynal, in his writings on India in the Histoire. Unlike Montesquieu, Raynal more optimistically claimed that commerce could take root and become a civilizing force in India. However, his suggestions for making India a more fruitful terrain for commerce entailed accepting monopolies and even the use of military force—rendering commerce less “free” than it appeared at first.

Despotism in the Histoire des deux Indes

The Histoire des deux Indes was compiled by Abbé Guillaume-Thomas Raynal and published in 1770, 1774, and 1780. It was a best-selling book that spawned dozens of pirated editions and continued to circulate even after it was officially censored in 1781. The Histoire was a sprawling, “polyphonous” book, but its central aim was to document a history of global commerce (Duchet 1991). Scholars have tended to stress two sides of the Histoire that seem in tension with one another: on the one hand, the Histoire denounced slavery and the violence of Europeans in other parts of the world, which has even led some scholars to call the text not only anti-slavery but also anticolonial (Muthu 2009; Terjanian 2013). On the other hand, scholars such as Sunil M. Agnani have argued that the text also endorsed a kind of “soft colonialism” that would be established with the consent of the colonized and would benefit the colonizers and colonized alike (Agnani 2013; Michaud 2014; Strugnell 2011; Thomson 2017; Tricoire 2018). As Agnani points out, Raynal did denounce the currently existing form of colonialism, but only to advocate for a “softer,” more economically profitable and sustainable form of European dominance—one created by the consensual mixing of populations and trade (Agnani 2013, 40).

Although Agnani is largely correct on this point, he understates Raynal’s own ambivalence about the prospects of the civilizing project and the extent to which Raynal believed that despotic mores made hostile terrain for commerce. Raynal did see commerce as a means of attaining European dominance, but through supposedly consensual and mutually beneficial means. However, blaming the despotic nature of non-European countries, he had to admit that even such commerce would not naturally be established. Even Raynal, who conformed to the archetype of the eighteenth-century doux commerce theorist even better than his predecessor Montesquieu, had to admit the limits of commerce. ¹⁴

Raynal wrote about India as the British East India company rolled out an unprecedented territorial campaign in which the idea of Oriental despotism took on even greater real-world significance. Significant changes had taken place on the global stage since the publication of Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws in 1748. First, France and Britain had been entangled in the global conflict that was the Seven Year’s War. France’s defeat and the subsequent signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1763 led to France’s loss of colonies and trading posts in the Americas. These developments dovetailed with the dramatic rise of British territorial power in India: with the decline and fragmentation of the Mughal Empire, the British East India Company launched the project of territorial conquest in a manner that had not been seen before. The Battle of Plassey, in 1757, was a major turning point in this project, as the British gained control over the Mughal province of Bengal, installed new rulers, and gained access to tax revenues. As the British expanded their rule, some used the trope of Oriental despotism to justify conquest (Abbattista 2006; Travers 2007, 5). By contrast, Raynal used the ideology of Oriental despotism not to endorse conquest but to criticize it. The persistence of despotic traits meant that such traits could not be transformed by territorial conquest; instead, they could only be transformed by less coercive means, such as commerce. Yet for Montesquieu as for Raynal, despotism simultaneously demanded and hampered commerce.

Raynal affirmed the idea that India was characterized by a climate and religion that predisposed its people to despotic rule, which made European rule by conquest costly and dangerous. Following the traditional account, Raynal wrote that the Indians were subjugated under despotism, which he took to mean the arbitrary and tyrannical reign of the ruler. This led to “civil slavery,” or a lack of security in one’s person and property (V.34, 687). ¹⁵ Following Montesquieu’s account, the lack of security in property was one of the supposed hallmarks of a despotic regime. Raynal wrote, “The Indian is not the master of his life: we do not know of any law which protects him against the caprices of the despot, nor even against the fury of his delegates” (V.34, 687). He continued this description to argue that the Indian was not the master of his mind, because knowledge was forbidden to him; he was not the master of his fields, because “the lands and their productions belong to the sovereign,” and he was not the master of his industry because his goods and riches could be taken from him at any moment (V.34, 687).

He gave two main causes for this endemic despotism; one was the climate, which had a softening and enervating force on the body and soul alike (V.34, 688). Another cause of despotism was religion. It was possible that “religious or moral institutions could overcome physical influences,” but these institutions only furthered despotism. Raynal argued that the Indians lacked military virtue because of the principle of “metempsychosis,” according to which individuals feared harming all men and animals because they could contain the soul of one’s father or of one’s chief (V.34, 688). Because of their indulgent way of life, they not only lacked virtue but also discipline. The troops, according to Raynal, “eat a prodigious quantity of rice in the evening, and after their supper take drugs which plunge them into a deep sleep” (V.34, 690–691). In this account—in both the description of despotism itself and the causes to which he attributed it—Raynal closely followed Montesquieu’s description of Oriental despotism.

What followed from this description? Raynal, like Montesquieu, was critical of the way in which conquest was usually carried out by European powers, because of the physical factors that caused Oriental despotism in the first place. Relying on a Montesquieuian account of the determinism of physical forces, Raynal argued that these forces made the Indians easier to conquer, but that those forces would ensnare the Europeans in turn. As Raynal put it, the Europeans had only won because they conquered “timid weavers and merchants, armies without courage and without discipline, weak princes, jealous of one another.” They did not realize that the physical causes of such weakness—“excessive heat of the climate, continual fatigue, innumerable illnesses”—would ultimately weaken and ruin the Europeans, too (V.34, 691). This was why all the conquerors of India to date—“the Tartars, the Turks, the Persians, even the Europeans”—had taken on “Indian nonchalance” after being exposed to the climate and to its people. Therefore, by attempting conquest and direct rule over Indians, Europeans would not be able to reform despotism but instead fall prey to its physical causes. ¹⁶

Commerce as Corrective

Raynal’s preferred alternative to territorial conquest and direct rule over Indians was commerce. More optimistically than Montesquieu, Raynal argued that commerce could act as a gentle civilizing force on the Indians without imposing costly and counterproductive rule by force. Here, however, he also faced the problem that Montesquieu had: the conditions that had caused despotism in India also led to unfavorable conditions for commerce. This meant that Europeans needed to form large trading companies that would undercut competition and ensure that this trade was profitable for the Europeans. In this way, Raynal, too, acknowledged the limits of reform through commerce: if the Indians did not consent to trade on the Europeans’ terms, which they were likely not to do, then the prospects of such reform were limited.

At first, it seems that Raynal argued for commerce rather than conquest on the grounds that it would have been a consensual, mutually advantageous exchange that would have also had positive effects on Indian mores. Despite his emphasis on consensual negotiation and exchange, however, Raynal had a predetermined conception of what the outcome of that negotiation would be: the promotion of European interests. He wrote about what could have been if the Europeans had taken this route of commerce:

If we had carried to the Indians procedures established on good faith; if we had made known to them that reciprocal utility is the basis of commerce; if we had encouraged their culture and their industry, by exchanges equally advantageous for them and for us: imperceptibly, we would have reconciled the spirit of these peoples. (V.34, 697)

The view that commerce would have been mutually advantageous to the Indians and Europeans followed from Raynal’s generally positive views on commerce. Siding with Montesquieu in an ongoing eighteenth-century debate about the moral effects of commerce, Raynal criticized the “moralists,” the critics of commerce and luxury, for arguing that men could only be happy if they were deprived (V.33, 677–678).

Raynal suggested that commerce would have had particularly meaningful impacts on a despotic state like India. The changes in mores and in the Indians’ “prejudices,” he argued, could have changed their government (V.33, 697). Then the Europeans would have “come to the point of living among [the Indians]” in peace, and even establishing new “[homelands] for each people of Europe” (V.33, 697). It was only the misconduct of the Europeans—the competitive alliances they had made with local princes, and the Europeans’ otherwise violent and exploitative dealings with the locals that had foiled this plan.

This raised the question: what if the Indians did not want commerce with the Europeans, changes in their government, or European settlements in their lands? These possibilities threatened Raynal’s ideal of perfect reciprocity and mutual benefit. Whereas in the previously described passages, Raynal took for granted that the Indians would have agreed to the Europeans’ propositions, he also acknowledged that such agreement might not, and indeed did not, always take place. Commerce in India was threatened by what Raynal described as the natural abundance of India and its endemic despotism. First, there was the problem that Europe needed far more goods from India than India needed from Europe. Raynal, like Montesquieu, simple-mindedly attributed the Indians’ lack of demand for European goods to the fact that—again, because of their climate—they had “few needs, little ambition, little activity.” “As the value of all objects has no other measure than the need and fancy of the exchangers,” he concluded, “it is obvious that in India our goods are worth very little, while those which we buy there are worth a lot” (V.35, 704). This posed a problem: if commerce was based on reciprocal need, but the Indians did not actually have any need for European goods, then Raynal’s plan of consensual, mutually beneficial trade would not bear fruit.

More importantly, as Montesquieu had written, subjects of a despotic nation, with no security in their possessions, would have little incentive to engage in commerce because of institutional factors. Raynal wrote,

Imagine men overwhelmed and corrupted by despotism, workers unable to undertake anything on their own; and on the other hand, nature even more fruitful than authority is greedy, providing lazy peoples with a subsistence that meets their needs, their desires: and one will be astonished that there is [even] the least of industry in India. (V.35, 700)

According to Raynal, the lack of security caused by despotism simultaneously dampened domestic industry and, directly as a consequence, threatened European interests in trade. As a result, European traders had to guard their profits by ordering their woven goods in advance and paying in increments rather than all at once (V.35, 700). This required a large amount of capital that individual traders did not have.

Raynal had to concede that competition would “[reduce] commodities to their fair value,” resulting in a loss for the European traders and eventually in the discouragement and even potential annihilation of European trade with India (V.35, 703). Even if this were the natural consequence of supply and demand in the market, Raynal was not willing to accept it. As a countermeasure, he argued that small companies should unite into larger ones, consolidating their capital, insulating them from losses, and thereby enabling longer-term investments in the fickle business environment of India. It would be acceptable and even necessary for the government to encourage companies to unite (V.35, 706).

In addition to the despotism of the Indians, another obstacle that Raynal perceived to realizing the civilizing potential of commerce was the despotism of the British. This led him to endorse the use of force to restore free trade—revealing the not-so-doux means that were necessary to realize the ends of doux commerce. The purpose of trading companies, Raynal wrote, had been distorted by European states that had gradually outsourced sovereign power to their trading companies and allowed them to make peace and war, as well as build fortresses and maintain troops (V.35, 706–707). Raynal described how the Battle of Plassey, the victory of the British, and their subsequent seizure of Bengal had been a turning point in this progression. Raynal concluded that as the British East India company had transformed from a “trading company” to a “territorial power,” the British had become worse despots than the former Mughal rulers (III.35, 377; III.38, 380). This nullified the civilizing potential of commerce and worsened despotism in India.

The despotism of the British in India was, for Raynal, the natural consequence of the climate. As he had argued, despotism was so endemic to India that any conqueror would fall into the same patterns itself. What, then, did Raynal believe should be done in response to the despotism of the British? Surprisingly given his criticism of the militarized fortification of European trading posts, Raynal exhorted the fortification of French ports to serve as a counterweight to British power in the region. France possessed an island of great strategic advantage: the “Isle of France,” or current-day Mauritius. Located “at the entrance to the Indian Ocean,” it provided “an inestimable advantage for a nation which has no port in India” (IV.32, 538). Raynal’s position was that the French government should offer greater protection to the French merchants through supplying naval forces and securing its two ports. In the long run, Raynal extolled the European powers to agree on an “exact neutrality” (IV.32, 543). If the French signaled greater respect for the locals, they could come to be “regarded as the liberators of Indostan” and the “idol of the princes and the peoples of Asia” (IV.33, 544). Placing a check on the monopolistic and even despotic practices of the British would open up trade between Europe and Asia. Raynal and Diderot, yet again, did not consider whether these gradual changes in mores and growth in commerce was what the Indians themselves wanted.

Ultimately, the combination of Raynal’s doux commerce ideals and the supposedly nonideal circumstances of “Oriental” and “British” kinds of despotism led to a justification of not only large, consolidated trading companies that were insulated from competition but also to the militarization of French trading posts in the region. Both were practices that seemed to deviate from his principle of free trade completely devoid of the use of force, even if Raynal remained firmly opposed to actual territorial conquests and the extension of sovereignty to trading companies. Only in this way could Raynal imagine a future in which it was possible for commerce to bring benefits to India and Europe alike.

Conclusion

Reading Montesquieu and Raynal’s responses to the so-called problem of Oriental despotism reveals that doux commerce ideology was far more limited in its optimism and its aspirations than today’s accounts suggest. This was because optimism about the civilizing power of commerce came into direct conflict with perceptions of Asian climate and culture. Therefore, even though the so-called doux commerce theorists were largely critical of war and violence and believed that commerce could serve as a more benign civilizing force, they also had to admit that even the expansion of markets relied on the use of force.

The thesis of Oriental despotism deserves censure, as it reflects a pejorative and overgeneralized account of the political systems of vast swathes of the world. However, eighteenth-century writers’ reliance on this trope reveals a genuine problem that they faced: others were not always willing to engage in commerce, or engage in it in a way that was mutually agreeable. Eighteenth-century Europeans explained away this fact of disagreement through the thesis of Oriental despotism. Yet their explanation reveals that for all that was said about commerce, it could not in practice spontaneously harmonize the interests of different parties.

That advocates of the doux commerce thesis themselves doubted the extent to which commerce was a civilizing force may lead us to question whether their theory is so useable today in theorizing political reform. It may be the case even today that commerce is established and accompanied by significant political friction; to ignore that friction would be naïve and potentially even dangerous.