Philosophical History at the Cusp of Globalization: Scottish Enlightenment Reflections on Colonial Spanish America

This article contributes to the evaluation of how historical philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment reflected upon incipient processes and forces of globalization. Drawing upon assessments of colonial Spanish America by late eighteenth-century Scottish philosophical historians, including William Robertson, Lord Kames, John Millar, Adam Smith and David Hume, the article considers the challenges Enlightenment-era thinkers encountered in balancing universal accounts of mankind with extensive human difference in a context particularly defined by European-managed trade and migration flows. By emphasizing the challenges that individual philosophical historians confronted in narrating processes of cultural and national change in the Americas during the early modern period, this article reveals a core tension between two basic components of Enlightenment-era historiography: national character and progress. The ‘discovery’ of the New World has long been heralded as an epochal event. Thinkers from the sixteenth century onwards judged it a sacred historical milestone. Spanish historian Francisco López de Gómara [c.1511—c.1566] went so far as to declare it “the greatest thing since the creation of the world, excluding the Incarnation and the death of He who created it” (Gómara 1552, dedication; Burke 1995, pp. 40–41). In the eighteenth century, Adam Smith recast this narrative in terms of global trading relations, naming this discovery as one of the “two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind” (Smith 1776, vol. 2, p. 235), the other being the Portuguese rounding of the Cape of Good Hope. He likewise drew upon circulating early modern paradigms in designating ‘the sacred thirst of gold’ as the force “that carried Cortez to Mexico, and Almagro and Pizarro to Chili [sic] and Peru” (Smith 1776, vol. 2, p. 154). Smith situated the discovery and conquest of the New World as landmark events in the initiation of mercantile globalization, both being driven on by the rapacious desire of Europeans for profit. Yet other Enlightenment thinkers remained compelled by the events as watersheds in the global spread of Christianity. During the Nicholas B. Miller, Universität Potsdam (UP) / Universidade de Lisboa OpenAccess. © 2018 Nicholas B. Miller, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492415-015 1760s and 1770s, the clerical historian William Robertson, Smith’s friend and associate in Edinburgh, engaged in a systematic attempt to appraise the history of the New World as one of the planting of European social, cultural and religious forms overseas. First published in 1777 in two volumes as the History of America, Robertson’s work placed its attention particularly on “the most splendid portion of the American story”: that of “the discovery of the New World, and of the progress of the Spanish arms and colonies there” (Robertson 1777, vol. 1, p. vi). While the contributions of the Scottish Enlightenment to the practice of history have recently been subjected to renewed attention, the engagement of its historical thought in reference to Spanish America has yet to be considered at length (Sebastiani 2013, pp. 1– 102; Allan 2013, pp. 307–342; Quiro Chueca 2005, pp. 160– 163). This article addresses this gap by examining discussion of colonial Spanish America in historical works composed by a range of Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, including Henry Home (Lord Kames), John Millar, James Dunbar and James Beattie—along with Robertson and Smith—and thereby offers new insights into the comparative horizons of historical knowledge in the Scottish Enlightenment. In particular, they reveal aspects of these thinkers’ contributions to what David Hume heralded the ‘science of man’, which ostensibly sought to derive practical political lessons from the philosophical synthesis of empirical evidence about societies across the globe and throughout history. The case study of Spanish America affords particular insights into how practitioners of the ‘science of man’ engaged in inter-regional comparison and grappled with the question of conquest-induced change in collective identities, or, as they rendered it, national character. Modes of narrating the Spanish conquest Latin America has tended to be marginalized in historical accounts adopting global frames of analysis. Budding world or global historians—and universal historians before them—have found it difficult to reconcile comparative methodologies based on relatively static core cultural zones (civilizations) with Latin America’s mestizo formation. Rather than constituting a distinct core culture, Latin America tends to be viewed as a contact point of competing traditions: linked on the one hand, through many cultural similarities—from religion to language—to Europe and North America; and perceived on the other hand as a region with a distinct character, separated in terms of economic power and geopolitics from the Western core encapsulated in organizations like NATO (Feres Jr. 2008). 192 Nicholas B. Miller

The 'discovery' of the New World has long been heralded as an epochale vent. Thinkers from the sixteenth century onwards judgedi tas acred historicalm ilestone. Spanish historian Francisco López de Gómara [c.1511Gómara [c. -c.1566] went so far as to declare it "the greatest thing since the creation of the world, excludingthe Incarnation and the death of He who created it" (Gómara1552, dedication; Burke 1995,pp. 40 -41). In the eighteenth century, Adam Smith recast this narrative in terms of globaltrading relations,naming this discovery as one of the "two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind" (Smith 1776, vol. 2, p. 235), the other being the Portuguese rounding of the Cape of Good Hope. He likewise drew upon circulating earlymodernparadigms in designating 'the sacred thirst of gold' as the force "thatcarried Cortez to Mexico, and Almagro and Pizarro to Chili [sic] and Peru" (Smith 1776,vol. 2, p. 154). Smith situated the discovery and conquest of the New World as landmark events in the initiation of mercantile globalization, both being driveno nb yt he rapacious desire of Europeans for profit. Yeto therE nlightenment thinkers remained compelled by the events as watersheds in the global spread of Christianity. During the 1760s and 1770s, the clerical historian William Robertson, Smith'sfriend and associate in Edinburgh, engaged in asystematic attempt to appraise the history of the New World as one of the planting of European social,cultural and religious forms overseas. First publishedin1777 in twovolumes as the HistoryofAmerica, Robertson'swork placed its attention particularlyon"the most splendid portion of the American story":that of "the discovery of the New World, and of the progress of the Spanish arms and colonies there" (Robertson 1777,vol.1 ,p .vi).
While the contributions of the Scottish Enlightenment to the practice of history have recentlyb een subjectedt or enewed attention, the engagement of its historical thoughti nr eference to Spanish America has yett ob ec onsidered at length (Sebastiani 2013,p p. 1-102;Allan 2013,p p. 307-342;Quiro Chueca 2005,p p. 160 -163). Thisa rticle addresses this gapb ye xaminingd iscussion of colonial Spanish America in historical works composed by ar angeo fS cottish Enlightenment thinkers, including Henry Home (LordK ames), John Millar, JamesDunbarand James Beattie-along with Robertson and Smith-and thereby offers new insights into the comparative horizons of historicalknowledge in the Scottish Enlightenment.Inparticular, they reveal aspects of these thinkers' contributions to what David Hume heralded the 'science of man',which ostensibly soughtt od erive practical political lessons from the philosophicals ynthesis of empirical evidence about societies across the globe and throughout history. The cases tudyo fS panish America affords particulari nsights into how practitioners of the 'science of man' engaged in inter-regional comparison and grappled with the question of conquest-induced changei nc ollective identities, or, as they rendered it,n ational character.

Modes of narrating the Spanish conquest
Latin America has tendedt ob em arginalized in historicala ccounts adopting global frames of analysis.Budding world or global historians-and universal historians before them-have found it difficult to reconcile comparative methodologies based on relatively static corec ulturalz ones (civilizations) with Latin America's mestizo formation.R ather than constituting ad istinct corec ulture, Latin America tends to be viewed as ac ontact point of competing traditions: linked on the one hand, through manycultural similarities-from religion to language-to Europe and North America; and perceivedo nt he other hand as ar egion with adistinct character,separated in terms of economic power and geopolitics from the Western coree ncapsulated in organizations like NATO (Feres Jr.2 008).
In the ageofEnlightenment,trajectories towards the 'two Americas' binaryaw ealthy, Protestant,E nglish-speaking North opposed to ap oorer,C atholic, Spanish-and Portuguese-speaking South-weres till onlye mbryonic. Twoa lternative paradigms predominated. One, championed by naturalhistorians such as George-Louis LeclercdeBuffonand Cornelius De Pauw,took its lead from climatic and geological speculationst op olemicallyd ismiss America as al iterally 'newer' world, defined by degenerative climatic conditions retarding the development of all living creatures.I nt he case of humans,t his likewisei mpacted their intellectual and psychicfaculties (Carbia 1943;García Cárcel 1992).Alternatively, America was taken as alaboratory of comparative settler colonialisms. In the caseo fS panish America,the leyenda negra dovetailed with physical theses of Americand egeneration, subjecting Spanish Americanc reoles to double demerits in the eyes of various European publics, bornef rom ad ecadent,u n-Enlightened home culture (Spain) and as nativesofadegenerative continent.Intriguingly,t his led to am acrohistorical vision duringt he eighteenthc entury contrasting the glory of the two most extensive pre-Columbian civilizations (Mexico, represented by the Aztecs;a nd Peru, by the Incas) with as upposedlydecadent and baroque Spanish colonial present.Contemporary anti-Spanish polemics of the Enlightenment, which sawS pain as the embodiment of all thatwas ill with the ancien régime,t hus rendered the history of Spaniard influencei nt he New World as one of decadence and decline.
The history of European colonialism and expansion excited great interest in the Enlightenment for adiverse rangeoffigures,from novelists and playwrights to historians and political economists. Spanish America held particulara ppeal as ashining example of these processes. In Abbé Raynal'scritical history of European colonialism, the Historie des deux Indes,A merica featured as ap oster child of the ills of conquest,plantation slavery and imperial rivalry.Scottish Enlightenment discussion of these phenomena tendedtobeless vociferous,inline with its generallyc onservative political orientation. Smith critiqued American plantation slavery as being economicallycounter-productive duetodiscouraging investments in productivity,b ut failed to voice much sympathyf or the human livesitdestroyed. His protégéJohn Millar wasmore vocal in this regard, concluding the third edition of his Origin of the Distinction of Ranks with hopes of the imminent abolition of slavery.
Whereas Smith and Millar discussed contemporary Americanc onditions within their treatises on political economya nd historical jurisprudence, Raynal and his co-writers, includingD enis Diderot,d id this through ap oliticization of the genres of the travel narrative and accounts of foreign lands. These genres had been the primary disseminators of informationabout the world beyond Europe ever since the first great drama of Columbus'ss tumbling upon the islands of the Caribbean. Jesuits and missionary learned men, soldiers like Bernal Díaz (who accompanied Cortés'sinvadingforce) and hybrid figures such as Garcilaso de la Vega (who defended the honor of his Incaa ncestors by writing ad escription of the Inca empire before its fall) all produced descriptions of the distant lands they had the occasion to visit or belong to, covering matters ranging from epicbattles to descriptions of government and attire. In the eighteenth century,imperial bureaucrats and natural scientists such as La Condamine, Antonio de Ulloa and JorgeJ uan continued the practice of offering extensive descriptions of the inhabitants of the lands through which they travelled. Theseaccounts contained much useful information, but for the most part lacked ahistorical dimension. They represented the political and economic orders of non-European and past societies (as was the case with the Aztecs and Incas) as basicallystatic entities. The travel narrative offered ad escription of the conditions of ad ifferent place, not the patterns or processes of changeoperative in these places.Information about the Americaswas additionallyprovided through earlymodern, 'great man'-focused historical narration, with the discovery as well as the conquests of Mexico and Peru presented as heroic endeavors led by Columbus, Cortésand Pizarro (Burke 1995,p p. 31-51).

Staging Americans in stadialh istory
Building upon the works of seventeenth-century French historian Jean Baudoin, ac oterie of British historians from the mid eighteenth century onward (David Hume, EdwardG ibbon, John Millar and William Robertson) soughtt oc ompose adifferent sortofhistory (Miller 2017). Rather than focusingonspecific battlesor illustrious leaders of the past,they charted broader stories of the rise and fall of empires and the transition of societies to different governmental, legal, economic and property orders.F or our purposes here, the contribution of the clericturned-historian William Robertson is of prime interest.R obertson served as Principal of the University of Edinburgh for three decades duringt he height of the Scottish Enlightenment,a nd was well connected with all its major figures. Following the success of his Historyo fS cotland (1759) and Historyo fC harles V (1769), Robertson turned his attention west to engagew ith Europe'se xpansion into America and the amalgamation of the Western Hemisphereinto the European sphere of power (Lenman 1997, pp. 200 -201).
Events in the 1770sundermined the basic premise of Robertson's History. The AmericanR evolution left it unclear how linked the western hemisphere would remain with Europe. In terms of public demand, the events certainlyp romised great public interest in an ew history of the Americas-but at the same time, anyc ritical comments about Britishc olonial policy could be interpreted as acts of sedition, as unpatrioticallys iding with colonial rebelso veraunified transoceanic British commonwealth. Striking acautious balance between the two, Robertson limited coveraget oS panish America when he released the work in 1777. His broader ambition went unfulfilled. His son posthumouslyp ublishedhis unfinished work on the British North Americanc olonies in 1796 (Robertson 1796); Robertson never made much progress with the histories of the colonies of the other European powers.I na ny case, Robertson'sm ain interests had already been oriented to Spanish America-as having the longest history in the region and as site to the most significant events. Robertson benefitted in this endeavor from aunique assortment of manuscriptdocuments, direct testimony( via questionnaires) and an array of earlier published works that no historian of his generation had yete xplored in such depth (Cañizares-Esguerra2 002, pp. 38 -59). Crucialw ereR obertson'sc lose connections with the BritishA mbassador to Spain, LordG rantham, and the collaboration of his chaplain Waddilove( Lenman 1997, pp. 202-06).
Robertson'sh istory of Spanish America rant otwo volumes and eight chapters,b ut corresponded to three basic phases: the state of American peoples before the Spaniards (books IV and VII); the decisive turning points of discovery and conquest (I-III,V-VI); and the aftermath (VIII). Robertson beganwith discovery and conquest-unsurprisingly,given that they had long proven theirpower to captivate reader interest.The majority of Robertson'shistory of Spanish America consisted of exciting and well documented (albeit rather conventional) narrativeso fthe adventures of Columbus,Cortés and Pizarro. Robertson'smostinnovative historiographical contributions came after these narratives, wherein he recounted the condition of the inhabitants of the Americas prior to the arrival of the Europeans.H es eparatedt he Aztecs and the Incas from the rest of pre-Columbian Spanish societies, categorizing the latter as 'savage' and the former as 'half-civilized'.H et hereby situated American peoples within the framework of stadial history,which assigned various societies around the world to different temporalstages of development within auniversal historicalschemaofmaterial, moral and social progress (Sebastiani 2014;Berry 2011, pp. 2-19;M iller 2017). Stadialhistory aspired not to understand the unique, internal historical processes of changew ithin individual societies, but rather to synthesize au niversal processo fs ocial development out of dissonant testimony-one culminating at an end of history located in contemporary 'commercial' European society.R obertson and other practitionerso fs tadial history refurnished the ahistorical tendency of travel narration, providing putativelyempirical evidence for auniversal history of mankind.
The development of the Spanish colonial order in the Americaswas by Robertson'stime astory centuries old. JamesDunbar [1742 -1798], Professor of Moral PhilosophyatKing'sCollege, Aberdeen, described colonial society as ahumiliating disaster for the natives of America,whom the Spaniards had shunted to aposition below African slaves ( Dunbar 1780,pp. 394-96). Dunbar wondered if the inhabitants of 'the empires of Peru and Mexico' would have chosene xtinction over such ad isgrace, should they have known their eventual destiny ( Dunbar 1780,p p. 394-96). Dunbar did not tender ar esponse to the famous essayc ompetition of 1785 on whether the discovery of America had been beneficial or harmful to the human race, but was adamant about the devastatingi mpact of discovery for the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas: "The pen drops from my hand, in recitingthe enormities acted by Europeans in the new hemisphere" (Dunbar1 780, p. 396). Dunbarh ere pointed, albeit darkly, to the emergence of Spanish America out of the ashes of destruction, and the founding of acolonial society upon the basis of ar acialized order that forced the indigenous inhabitants to perpetuallyr elive their defeat.
There are at least two ways to understand whyDunbarexpressed more sympathyf or the plight of the descendants of the Inca and Aztec empires than for their European counterparts, the Spanish conquerors. One could ground his comments within alocal, intra-European political context,attributing them variablyt othe leyenda negra,i nter-imperial rivalry and Enlightened contempt for the Spanish Empire. Going deeper into the history of medial representations of other societies, we could alternatively emphasize the function of the Aztecs and Incas as compellingthinkingdevices for eighteenth-century thinkers to contemplatea lternative forms of social order and governance.
Henry Home, LordK ames [1696 -1782], aprominent figure in the Edinburgh legal establishment and av itall ink between wealthyS cottish patrons and philosophers, admired botht he Aztecs and Incas, noting that "there never was a country destitute of iron, wherea rts seem to have been carried higher than in Mexico" (Kames 1774,v ol. 2, pp. 97-98). Kames further wrotet hatt he Incas held "an absolutemonarchy[…]but the farthest in the world from being despotic: on the contrary,wef ind not in history anyg overnment so well contrivedf or good of the people" (Kames 1774,vol. 2, p. 96). Kameswas relatively restrained in his praise. Aberdonian poet and moral philosopher James Beattie [1735 -1803] declared that "every bodyh as heard of the magnificence, good government, and ingenuity,o ft he ancient Peruvians" (Beattie 1771,p .5 09). Farther afield, in Germany, the Cameralist thinker Johann Heinrich Gottlob Justi [1717-1771]brilliantlyevidencedthe potencyofpre-Columbian American civilizations as exemplars of government.A dmiring the efficacy of collectivist practiceso fn ational granaries and land redistribution, Justi praised the supposedl awgivero ft he Incas as 'the second Lycurgus',g oing so far as to call him the better Lycurgus! (Justi 1762,p .5 46) Robertson'sl engthydiscussion of the 'Mexicans and Peruvians' began with the dismissive prefacethat neither society could be compared with the Romans, nor wereeither entitled to rank reproduced most of what had been written about their institutions and accomplishments without qualification( Kontler 2014, p. 140). It is likelyt hat an earlyf orm of the chapter constituted the source base for Kames' commendation of both societies in his Sketches (1774). Adam Smith mayh aveb een the decisive factor behind Robertson'sr hetorics, given that he wasone of their greatest skeptics in the eighteenth century.AsChristian Marouby has explored, Smith'sm arginalization of the achievementso fp re-Columbian Americans ocieties arose from the contradiction they posed to his model of agricultural progress in his rendition of stadial history (Marouby 2007,p p. 85 -102).S mith, inspired by local Scottish conditions,c laimed that the domestication of animalswas anecessary precondition to extensive agriculture. The empirical recordo ft he indigenous inhabitants of the Americas openly contradicted this thesis. Not onlyw as it widelyn oted thatv arious tribes raised crops while lacking domesticated livestock, but the Aztecs and Incas werefamed to have ruled over great empires of millions of inhabitants.Interms of the former groups,S mith suggested thatp lant-based sustenancew as mere 'seasoning' to game, constitutings implyalocal variant of savagery.A sf or the Inca and Aztec, Smith mocked the limits of their contribution to the global economy. In the Wealth of Nations,h ew rotet hat in spite of "all the wonderful tales which have been published concerning the splendid state of those countries in ancient times […]all the ancient arts of Mexico and Peru have never furnished one single manufacturetoEurope" (Smith 1776,vol. 1, p. 254). Robertson'sfidelity to standing historicalt estimonyp revented him from making such ab razen movea s openlyc ontradictingi t. He affirmedt hatm ost of what had been written about the Aztec and Incah ad been credible. Yet, in forcingastadial interpretation of their societies, he stumbled into contradictions at the intersection of his competing ambitions of aprovidentialist history of America, an exhaustively documented history of the region, and as tadial history of the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas.

Robertson'sm illenarian and coloniald isappointments
As the Scottish Enlightenment'sg reatest advocate of global evangelization and the civilizingmission, Robertson was captivated by the earlymodern Spanish attempt to convert the inhabitants of the Americas. While incomplete, it marked the greatest extensionofChristianity'sglobal footprint in amillennium. In Robertson'sprovidentialist understanding of human history,Spain'sconquest of the Americasw as part of ad ivine plan to extend Christianityg lobally. LikeS mith and Millar,R obertson was highlyc ritical of the colonial practices of plantation slavery,but his religious convictions made him sympathetic to European colonialism as am eans of achieving the conversion of all mankind to Christianity.
The shortest part of the Historyo fA merica was that which recounted the contemporarystate of Spanish America. It was, however,the onlyextended treatment by aS cottish Enlightenment thinker of the colonial social order produced in the aftermath of conquest.R obertson wasu nsparing in his contention that Spainh ad failed to properlyC hristianize the indigenous people, blaming the spontaneous actions of men on the ground, rather than imperial design. Additionally,h ew as adamant that the Spaniards had squandered their fortune of Americand omination through economic incompetence and mismanagement. Robertson made sure to note thatt he tide seemed to have turned with the coming of the Bourbon kings. He lauded the administrative reform effortso fC arlos III and his father Felipe V, as well as their promotion of freer trade between the different lands of America (Robertson 1777,vol. 2, pp. 415 -418). On ap ersonal level, Robertson'spraise of the Bourbon reformsmight also be attributed to gratitude to Carlos III for tolerating his project of ahistory of the New World-though Robertson never managed to obtain access to manuscript materialss equestered at Simancas( Armitage1 995,p .66).
Robertson recounted the social world of Spanish America through the prism of the sistemadecastas, acomplex status system thatfeatured aspectrum of racial categories assigned mainlyo nt he basis of racial descent,b ut also of individual distinction (Miller 2013,pp. 21-32). Robertson balanced two theories surroundingthe emergence of mixed-race 'casta' peoples-an intentional politics of national integration on the one hand,a nd basic lust on the other: As the court of Spain, solicitous to incorporate its new vassals with its ancient subjects, earlyencouraged the Spaniardssettled in America to marry the nativesofthe country,several alliances of this kind were formed in the infant colonies. But it has been moreowingto licentious indulgence, than to compliancewith this injunction of their sovereigns, that this mixed breed has multiplied so greatly, as to constituteaconsiderable population in all the Spanish settlements. ( Robertson 1777,vol. 2, p. 368) Robertson sought to rigorouslyd ocument his studya nd offered precise footnotes,i ncludingp agen umbers, to his sources. However,a sw as typical in the Scottish Enlightenment,t hese citations frequentlyh eld onlyatenuous connection with the original claim of the source. Robertson cited three references in support of the claim that Spanish sovereigns ordered their subjects to mix; none, however,h ad actuallymadethis claim themselves. In his citation of ar ecompilation of the Laws of the Indies carried out under Carlos II in 1680,and his two citations from Antonio de HerrerayTordesillas's Historia general de los hechos de los Castellanos en las islas, ytierra-firme de el mar océano (1601-15), the closest assertion one can find is the order givent ot he earlyG overnor of Hispaniola Nicolás de Ovando to promoteChristianization through intermarriage-not explicit political vassalization! Robertson speculated that Spaniards maintained the sistemadecastas to intentionallyexcite racialtensions for theirown advantages, fomentinghatred between Africans and Indians for purposes of colonial order.D unbar repeated the point (Dunbar1780, p. 394-95). The Spaniards "endeavored to prevent every intercourse that might form ab ond of union between the two races" (Robertson 1777,vol. 2, p. 370). Unlikeinotherparts of the hemisphere, the black population in Spanish America allegedlyr esented nativep eople and viewed themselvesa s closer to the whitep opulation than to the native population (Robertson 1777, vol. 2, pp. 369 -70). Robertson sawt his as emanating both from the black community itself as well as from Spaniard design: "By an artful policy"-both laws and injunctions-"the Spaniards derives trength from that circumstance in populationw hich is the weakness of otherE uropean colonies" (Robertson 1777, vol. 2, pp. 369 -70). The center of interracial tension in Spanish America for Robertson was Peru. Although the peninsularleadership persistentlysoughttohave Indians accepted to priesthood and religious orders,Peruvian orders continually ignored them (Robertson 1777,vol. 2, p. 506). To Robertson, nothing demonstrated more the insurmountable 'hatred and contempt of the Indians among the Peruvian Spaniards' (Robertson 1777,vol. 2, p. 506). He thought this discorda lso defined relations between Indians and black people: "[although the] negroes seem to be more numerous […]t hey maintain their ascendant over the Indians, and the mutual hatred of one to the other subsists with equal violence" (Robertson 1777,vol. 2, p. 369).
Robertson alsoe mphasized cleavagesw ithin the white (or Spaniard) population of Spanish America,b eginning his discussion of the sistema with ad istinctionbetween peninsulares (Spaniards born in Europe) and criollos (Spaniards born in the Americas). It was here whereh ed amned Spanish America as ad ecayeds ociety.R obertson described creoles as: languid and unenterprising: by the enervatinginfluence of asultry climate, by the rigour of ajealous government,a nd by their despair of attainingt hat distinctiont owhich mankind naturallya spire, the vigour of their minds is so entirelyb roken, that ag reat part of them wastelife in luxurious indulgences, mingledwith an illiberal superstition still moredebasing. ( Robertson1 777,vol. 2,p. 367) Due to their superiority complex derivedf rom living in ac aste-ridden society, they wereu nwilling to do anym anuall abor,a nd unlike peninsulares,who actuallyc reated new fortunes in the Americas, creoles merelyl ived off the inheritance of theirpredecessors (Robertson 1777,vol. 2, pp. 366 -368). Robertson'sdiscussion pointed to ag reat polemic thatp layedo ut further afield in the Enlightenment in the 1760s and 1770s, following Cornelius de Pauw'spublication of Recherches philosophiquessur les Américains in Berlin in 1767.Asevidence that America wasadegenerative land, de Pauw pointed to the inability of anyAmerican creole to make as ingle significant intellectual achievement!R obertson's renderingdid not go this far,but recycled the general opinion in eighteenth-century Europe of the decadence of Spanish Americanc reoles.
Conclusion: Patriotism and the dilemmao ft he historical formationso fn ational character Around the turn of the nineteenth century,c ontexts across America witnessed the rise of patriotic creole discourses thatc ountered the degeneration thesis with patriotic celebrations of their own localities and communities (Entin 2013,p p. 19 -34;C añizares-Esguerra2 002).T his refutation of climatism via regionali dentity formation was paralleled in the Scottish Enlightenment with the attempt to de-prioritize environmental explanations of human differencei n favoro fn ational character.While Scottish historians of the second half of the eighteenthc entury followed David Hume in understanding national character as ap rincipal differentiator of peoples across the world, they did not possess ar igorous explanation of the effects of time and historical processes upon the emergence, formation and evolution of these characters.This followed in good part from their inability to fullye scape climatica nd geographical explanations of human difference.H ume'si nfamous speculations upon essential raciali nequalities-that black people weren aturallyi nferior to other varieties of man -did not constitute the path taken up by most of his Scottish Enlightenment suc-cessors.I tb etrayed, however,the limits of his own methodologicalc onsistency in his proposition of as cience of man, givent hat it took the synthesis of all human experience as its starting point.The famouslye clectic (and self-contradicting) Henry Home enthusiasticallyresortedtoclimate as one of manypossible causes for anygiven historical facet,yet even the more rigorous Glaswegian Professor of Civil JurisprudenceJ ohn Millar was unable to fullyescape its rhetorical power.I nt he introduction to the third edition of his Distinction of Ranks,M illar claimed that climate had little explanatory power: "How manynations are to be found, whose situation in point of climate is apparentlysimilar,and, yet, whose character and political institutions are entirelyo pposite?" (Millar 1779,p .1 3) Nevertheless,h is natural history of mankindw as unable to offer ac onvincing explanation for whyn ationalc haracters themselvesc hanged outside of historical accident (Millar 1779,p .1 4).
In the case of William Robertson, the absenceo fah istoricizedc onceptualization of collective identity formations led to ac onventional portrayal of Spanish Americancreoles and mixed peoples as crude versions of peninsular models. Rather than paying attention to how forces such as conquest and intermarriage could produce new national characters,R obertson drew upon two older discourses:( i) decadence, via latent civic humanist strictures of the consequences of extreme inequality;a nd (ii) heat-induced indolence,via climatism. Although Robertson noted with hope the recent reforms of the reformist Bourbon monarch Carlos III, he conjured ad ismal imageo fc ontemporary Spanish America, rife with ethnic tensions, dominated by degenerate creoles and decayedfrom centuries of administrative and economic mismanagement.H eh ad receivedm ore sympathetic testimonyf rom people with actual experience in the Americas through aseries of questionnaires he commissioned, but chose to ignore this testimonya nd to relyi nstead upon contemporary tropes.What Robertson reveals abovea ll is the depth to which colonial Americansocieties lacked concrete cultural identities in the eyes of eighteenth-century European observers. Thisl acuna was soon confronted. His original project of am agnum opus recounting the spread of European nations to the Western hemisphere wasdisrupted mid-composition by whitee lites in the British North American colonies.Ageneration of Spanish American creole thinkers reared in their would soon join theirranks. Incipient globalization processes would indeed deepen the mark of European institutions and epistemologies upon the rest of the world-but in different ways than Robertson anticipated.