Abstract

This chapter first summarizes John Locke's personal connections with America, alerting that biography cannot determine authorial intention or philosophical coherence. Next, it surveys Locke's preoccupation with anthropology, noting that his attitude to non‐Europeans was by no means wholly negative. Locke's political and moral philosophy was richly informed by literature we would today call anthropological. The chapter then sketches early‐modern arguments for empire, in order to exclude some possibilities from Locke's repertoire, before turning to Locke's manifesto for English agrarian development in the Americas. This is followed by a brief juxtaposition of Locke and African slavery. Finally, several difficulties are raised about the postcolonial case, which render Locke's position altogether more ambiguous than it may seem. Locke is sometimes ambiguous about the reason for American failings, Locke attributes their subsistence economy to lack of commercial opportunity, the absence of money and the markets it engenders.