The ambiguities and resources of comparative method

Comparison and contrast were used by eighteenth-century European thinkers to characterise their nations and continent, as well as their historical epoch. This was done by distinguishing the arrangements of each nation from its neighbours’, by contrasting European regimes, societies, economies, cultures, and religions with those elsewhere in the world, and by juxtaposing their own time with periods preceding it. This comparative mode of analysis was deployed in conflicts between the champions and enemies of Enlightenment, in the sharp disagreements separating defenders of absolutism from those opposed to it, and in disputes about established churches and their theologies. Although political theory was often conducted through comparison and contrast between European regimes, the application of the method to the rest of the world was no less significant. Some modern interpreters hold that European thinkers assumed their continent’s superiority, and thus that ‘Enlightenment’ went hand in hand with imperial subjugation of non-Europeans. Others, on the contrary, say that xenophilia, étrangisme, and the conviction of European inferiority, decline, and corruption prevailed among intellectuals (Baudet 1988, pp. 50–1).

This chapter addresses some of the numerous and complex ways in which European writers used comparative discourse. It examines the extent to which key concepts in this discourse were shaped by theorists’ preferences and their positions on domestic controversies within their respective nations, as well as on issues during conflicts among European states within their own continent and in overseas competition for colonies. It asks whether there was any consensus about the superiority of Europeans over the rest of world, or about the legitimacy of European conquests, colonisation, and commerce, including the slave trade.