‘How could Locke's passionate advocacy of universal natural rights be squared with an institution that annihilated these rights altogether?’ (Farr 1986, 263). Locke returns us to questions of slavery and war, and to the status of barbarians. I have written elsewhere about Locke's theory of property and its relationship to colonialism, and about the distinction he makes between drudgery and slavery. In this chapter, I consider Locke's vexed relationship to the idea and the politics of slavery in more detail. What is the significance of his personal connections to the slave trade and to the institution of slavery in Carolina? In accounting for the politics behind slavery, Locke helps us to explore some of the links between theory and practice, and between ideology and context. In studying these links, what emerges is an ambiguity and a complexity that is perhaps unexpected from a modern perspective within which slavery is regarded as a universal wrong and natural rights as underpinning our understanding of that wrongness. This chapter is not about resolving the contradictions that emerge, but about exploring what they mean for the politics of slavery. Neither is it my aim to condemn or to exonerate Locke as an individual, but rather to think about how his involvement in the slave trade fits with his wider theory and worldview and about how later reactions to and interpretations of his theory have shaped how we give slavery a history and how we think about it as a political relation.

LOCKE'S THEORY OF SLAVERY

In 1668, Locke was appointed secretary to the Lords Proprietors of Carolina and helped to write its Fundamental Constitutions, which granted every free man absolute power and authority over his ‘Negro slaves’, and at the same time made it lawful for slaves to choose their own congregations and guaranteed their freedom of conscience. Their baptism allowed for the existence of Christian slaves, who remained subject to the civil dominion of their masters. In 1671, Locke took out shares in the new Royal African Company and in 1672 he was part of the company of merchant adventurers trading in slaves with the Bahamas. In 1673, he became secretary to the Council of Trade and Foreign Plantations and served until 1674.