Francis Bacon on Imperial and Colonial Warfare

Abstract

This article offers a textual and historical reconstruction of Francis Bacon's thought on imperial and colonial warfare. Bacon holds that conquest, acquisition of peoples and territory through force, followed by subjugation, confers a legal right and title. Imperial expansion is justified both by arguments concerning the interstate balance of power and by arguments related to internal order and stability. On Bacon's view, a successful state must be expansionist, for two key reasons: first, as long as its rivals are expansionist, a state must keep up and even try to outpace them, and, second, a surplus population will foment civil war unless this “surcharge of people” is farmed out to colonies. These arguments for imperial state expansion are held to justify both internal and external colonization and empire. Paradoxically, Bacon holds that the internally colonized may be treated with greater severity, as suppressed rebels, than the externally colonized, who are more fitly a subject of the ius gentium. Bacon holds that toleration offers both an imperial stratagem and a comparative justification for why English and British imperial expansion is more desirable than Spanish imperial expansion. The article concludes with reflections about how one might understand the place of imperial and colonial projects in Bacon's thought, contending that these projects are central to an understanding of Bacon's political aims and thought more broadly.

Relationship between Islam and the West: From Historical Review to Clash or Cooperation?

“…The first form of data are Chiara, 2016;Bottici and Challand, 2013;Erdem, 2002;Hoge et al, 2010;Samuel, n.d.;Mottahedeh, 2003;Norris and Ronald, 2002;Rizvi, 2018. While for the second data, I classify it into four forms: a. data on cooperation and clashes between Islam and the West in the field of science, especially in the field of philosophy such as Grant, 2007;D'Ancona et al, 2017;Sharif, 1963;Zonta, 2007;Urvoy, 2017;Watt, 1973;Rosenthal, 1958 and so on;b. data on the crusade's events and how economic cooperation worked in it, such as al -Faruque, 1988;Fancy and Green, 2021;Gilli-Elewy, 2011;Jacoby, 2017;SUDRAJAT et al, 2008;c. data on cooperation and clashes in the history of imperialism and democracy such asAkhavi, 2023; Abdillah, 2015;Fadel, 2010;Yumitro and IP, 2017;Pierce, 2014;d. data on war and tolerance during the colonialism era such as Fernandez et al, n.d.;Zeitlin, 2021;Churchill, 1867. Third, in interpreting the above data, I apply a historical approach. In short, I examine past facts and historical data through verification, interpretation, and explanation through critical thinking of scientific research methods.…”

“…In classical colonial theory, Francis Bacon argues that the regional expansion of an empire through the acquisition of peoples and territories by force, followed by conquest, is justified. For him, a successful country is an expansive country (Zeitlin, 2021). The problem is that no country wants to be colonized.…”