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World History 2

<OpenstaxParagraph>
	The topic of <OpenstaxTerm>natural rights</OpenstaxTerm>, rights possessed by all human beings, such as the right to life and liberty, formed the focus of many philosophical treatises and conversations in the eighteenth century. Based on the premise that all people have fundamental and inalienable rights, rights that cannot be revoked or rescinded by human laws, the concept of natural rights originated not in the Enlightenment but in far older traditions of justice and natural law. In the ancient Persian tradition of <OpenstaxTerm>Zoroastrianism</OpenstaxTerm>, for example, the concept of <OpenstaxEm>asha</OpenstaxEm>, meaning “God’s will,” connoted the unchangeable law that emanates from the divine and governs the universe. Although many ancient religious and philosophical traditions developed interpretations of natural law, European Enlightenment thinkers transformed such ideas into a political system, which was novel at the time. The growing emphasis on reason and the desire to improve human life in the eighteenth century led Enlightenment philosophers to envision political systems based on natural rights, rather than the divine right of kings or traditional Christian social hierarchies.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	One of the first Enlightenment thinkers to tackle the issue of natural rights was the English philosopher John <OpenstaxTerm>Locke</OpenstaxTerm>, who argued that people have fundamental rights to life, liberty, and property. In his influential work of political philosophy, <OpenstaxTerm><OpenstaxEm>Two Treatises of Government</OpenstaxEm></OpenstaxTerm>, he argued that all people are born in a state of freedom and that government should exist only by their consent, a principle called <OpenstaxTerm>popular sovereignty</OpenstaxTerm>. Although Locke and his European contemporaries asserted the inherent equality of all humans, their interpretation of equality is somewhat paradoxical, since in practice they supported the unequal institutions of colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade that deprived all but White men of their natural rights.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxNote>
	<OpenstaxNoteTitle> Link to Learning </OpenstaxNoteTitle> 
	<OpenstaxParagraph>
		The text of <a href="https://openstax.org/l/77LockeTreat">John Locke’s <OpenstaxEm>Second Treatise of Government</OpenstaxEm></a> is presented by Project Gutenberg. Published in 1690, this text establishes Locke’s position on civil society. Chapters VII and VIII, in particular, explain Locke’s interpretations of the relationship between natural rights and civil society.
	</OpenstaxParagraph>
</OpenstaxNote>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Like Locke and his contemporaries in England, key figures of the French Enlightenment also debated the scope of natural rights. François-Marie d’Arouet, more commonly known by his pen name <OpenstaxTerm>Voltaire</OpenstaxTerm>, was an especially vigorous advocate of intrinsic rights and freedoms. An outspoken critic of the Catholic Church, the aristocracy, and the French monarchy, he was particularly focused on defending religious toleration, freedom of speech, and the innate utility of reason, which he did in such works as <OpenstaxEm>Treatise on Tolerance</OpenstaxEm> and <OpenstaxEm>Republican Ideas</OpenstaxEm>. In his most famous work, the 1759 satire <OpenstaxEm>Candide</OpenstaxEm>, Voltaire mocked both established religion and secular government. His contemporary <OpenstaxTerm>Montesquieu</OpenstaxTerm> also wrote extensively about the relationship between laws and rights. Montesquieu was principally concerned with the concept of political liberty and enforcing the separation of a state’s legislative, executive, and judicial powers as a means of keeping the government in check, which he discussed in his 1748 book <OpenstaxEm>The Spirit of the Laws</OpenstaxEm>.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	The tension between state authority and the right of individuals to make decisions for themselves likewise inspired the work of Jean-Jacques <OpenstaxTerm>Rousseau</OpenstaxTerm>, whose contributions to Enlightenment philosophy included his influential treatise <OpenstaxEm>The Social Contract</OpenstaxEm>. Dating to the era of Plato and Socrates in the fourth and fifth centuries BCE and to the second-century BCE Buddhist text <OpenstaxEm>The Mahāvastu</OpenstaxEm>, <OpenstaxTerm>the social contract</OpenstaxTerm> is an idea centered on the belief that individuals surrender their natural rights to the state, which is then charged with the task of maintaining and protecting those rights. In his assessment of natural rights, Rousseau contends that the formation of human communities makes interdependence necessary and requires reconciling individual freedoms with the sovereignty of the state. Individuals must be free to do as they choose, but the government must also be able to restrict people’s actions in order to protect the rights of all. He also discussed the theory of the <OpenstaxTerm>general will</OpenstaxTerm>, a concept by which a state can be legitimate only if it is guided by the will of the people as a whole, rather than the whims of an elite minority.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Whereas Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau reinforced the distinction between inalienable rights and the authority of the state, some philosophers of the era, such as Jeremy <OpenstaxTerm>Bentham</OpenstaxTerm> and Edmund <OpenstaxTerm>Burke</OpenstaxTerm>, cast doubt on the very existence of natural rights. Bentham was an English lawyer known for his adoption of <OpenstaxTerm>utilitarianism</OpenstaxTerm>, a political philosophy that emphasized the goal of achieving the greatest good for the greatest number of people. He contended that rights came into being only as a creation of the state and did not exist outside the confines of civil society. Even if a government did not do what the general will wished or disregarded the supremacy of natural law, Bentham wrote, disputing its legitimacy could lead only to chaos and lawlessness.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Like Bentham, the Irish philosopher Edmund Burke also rejected the concept of <OpenstaxTerm>popular sovereignty</OpenstaxTerm>. Although he did not dispute the existence of natural law, he argued that natural rights became irrelevant with the formation of civil society, since only people of virtue and good judgment should be permitted to exercise political power. They would serve in the best interests of the people, who, according to Burke, would naturally give up their selfish desires and individual will in the interests of the state.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Although the <OpenstaxTerm>Enlightenment</OpenstaxTerm> produced a wide range of opinions about the origins and meaning of natural rights, it also enabled people to think more critically about their relationship with the state and the legitimacy of <OpenstaxTerm>revolution</OpenstaxTerm>. While some thinkers such as Burke and Bentham defended the supremacy of the state over individual rights, others such as Locke and Voltaire championed the integrity of natural rights and believed that political liberty could not be interfered with. As the argument continued during the Enlightenment period, it expanded into discussions of <OpenstaxTerm>social contract theory</OpenstaxTerm> that focused more specifically on the ethics and legitimacy of law and the political order.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxNote>
	<OpenstaxNoteTitle> Dueling Voices </OpenstaxNoteTitle> <OpenstaxH3> Enlightenment Perspectives on Natural Rights </OpenstaxH3>
	<OpenstaxParagraph>
		In the following excerpts, you will read two different perspectives on <OpenstaxTerm>natural rights</OpenstaxTerm>. The first excerpt, from a treatise written by seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke, asserts Locke’s claim that people are naturally free and possess rights that are independent of laws imposed by any society. In the second, a late eighteenth-century treatise written in response to the declarations of rights associated with the French Revolution, English philosopher Jeremy Bentham asserts that such rights cannot exist without government and laws. As you read these two sources, consider the differing ways in which they each describe the existence of rights beyond the reach of the state.
	</OpenstaxParagraph>
	<OpenstaxBlockquote>
		<OpenstaxParagraph>
			The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another’s pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours. Every one, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station willfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.
		</OpenstaxParagraph> 
		<OpenstaxParagraph>
			—John Locke, <OpenstaxTerm><OpenstaxEm>Two Treatises of Government</OpenstaxEm></OpenstaxTerm>
		</OpenstaxParagraph>
	</OpenstaxBlockquote>
	<OpenstaxBlockquote>
		<OpenstaxParagraph>
			How stands the truth of things? That there are no such things as natural rights—no such things as rights anterior to [existing before] the establishment of government—no such things as natural rights opposed to, in contradistinction to, legal: that the expression is merely figurative; that when used, in the moment you attempt to give it a literal meaning it leads to error, and to that sort of error that leads to mischief—to the extremity of mischief. . . . Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense,—nonsense upon stilts. But this rhetorical nonsense ends in the old strain of mischievous nonsense for immediately a list of these pretended natural rights is given, and those are so expressed as to present to view legal rights. And of these rights, whatever they are, there is not, it seems, any one of which any government can, upon any occasion whatever, abrogate [do away with] the smallest particle.
		</OpenstaxParagraph> 
		<OpenstaxParagraph>
			—Jeremy Bentham, <OpenstaxTerm><OpenstaxEm>Anarchical Fallacies</OpenstaxEm></OpenstaxTerm>
		</OpenstaxParagraph>
	</OpenstaxBlockquote>
	<OpenstaxUl>
		<OpenstaxLi>
			How do Locke and Bentham’s views of natural rights differ?
		</OpenstaxLi>
		<OpenstaxLi>
			How might their differing views influence their perceptions of the role of the state?
		</OpenstaxLi>
		<OpenstaxLi>
			With which view—if either—do you agree? Why?
		</OpenstaxLi>
	</OpenstaxUl>
</OpenstaxNote>

7.1.2 Natural Rights

1 Understanding the Past

1.1 Developing a Global Perspective

1.1.1 World History as Preparation for Life After College

1.1.2 World History and Global Citizenship

1.1.3 Features of This Textbook

1.2 Primary Sources

1.2.1 Learning to Evaluate Documents and Images

1.2.2 Documentary Sources: Competing Narratives

1.2.3 Textual Sources: The Importance of Language

1.2.4 Hidden in History

1.3 Causation and Interpretation in History

1.3.1 Levels of Causation

1.3.2 Interpretation in History

2 Exchange in East Asia and the Indian Ocean

2.1 India and International Connections

2.1.1 The Mughal Empire

2.1.2 The Sultanate of Gujarat

2.1.3 The Rise of the Maratha Empire

2.1.4 European Colonialism

2.2 The Malacca Sultanate

2.2.1 The Rise of the Malacca Sultanate

2.2.2 European Malacca

2.3 Exchange in East Asia

2.3.1 Japan

2.3.2 China’s Dynastic Exchanges

2.3.3 Korea and Its Neighbors

3 Early Modern Africa and the Wider World

3.1 The Roots of African Trade

3.1.1 Saharan Trade Routes

3.1.2 The Spread of Islam

3.1.3 The Mali Empire

3.2 The Songhai Empire

3.2.1 The Rise of Imperial Songhai

3.2.2 The Reign of Askia the Great

3.2.3 The Decline of Songhai

3.3 The Swahili Coast

3.3.1 The Rise of the Swahili City-States

3.3.2 Slavery on the Swahili Coast

3.3.3 The Contest for the Swahili Coast

3.4 The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade

3.4.1 The Role of Kanem-Bornu

3.4.2 The Arrival of Europeans

3.4.3 The Later Trans-Saharan Slave Trade

4 The Islamic World

4.1 A Connected Islamic World

4.1.1 Politics and Religion in the Ummah

4.1.2 Islamic Trade Networks

4.1.3 Technology in the Islamic World

4.2 The Ottoman Empire

4.2.1 Culture and Society

4.2.2 Expansion, Revolutions, and Reform

4.2.3 Science and Technology

4.3 The Safavid Empire

4.3.1 The Rise of the Safavid Empire

4.3.2 Establishing Shi‘ism as the State Religion

4.3.3 Safavid Government and Culture

5 Foundations of the Atlantic World

5.1 The Protestant Reformation

5.1.1 The Origins of the Protestant Reformation

5.1.2 Calvinists, Anabaptists, and Anglicans

5.1.3 The Catholic Reformation and the Wars of Religion

5.2 Crossing the Atlantic

5.2.1 The Rise of Maritime Nations

5.2.2 The Columbian Exchange

5.3 The Mercantilist Economy

5.3.1 The Rise of Mercantilism

5.3.2 Mercantilism and the Expansion of Empire

5.3.3 Mercantilism and Its Critics

5.4 The Atlantic Slave Trade

5.4.1 Slavery and the Triangular Trade

5.4.2 African and North American Slavery

5.4.3 The Economics of Slavery

6 Colonization and Economic Expansion

6.1 European Colonization in the Americas

6.1.1 Spain’s Encomienda System

6.1.2 English Settlements in North America

6.1.3 French and Dutch Settlements

6.2 The Rise of a Global Economy

6.2.1 The Seven Years’ War

6.2.2 British Influence in India

6.2.3 China’s Dominance in Trade

6.2.4 Colonial Resistance and Revolution

6.3 Capitalism and the First Industrial Revolution

6.3.1 From Mercantilism to Capitalism

6.3.2 Mechanization

6.3.3 Marxism

7 Revolutions in Europe and North America

7.1 The Enlightenment

7.1.1 The Authority of Reason

7.1.3 Social Contract Theory

7.2 The Exchange of Ideas in the Public Sphere

7.2.1 Public Debate and Dissent

7.2.2 The Republic of Letters

7.2.3 Academies, Universities, and Intellectuals

7.3 Revolutions: America, France, and Haiti

7.3.1 The American Revolution

7.3.2 The French Revolution

7.3.3 The Haitian Revolution

7.4 Nationalism, Liberalism, Conservatism, and the Political Order

Question	Answer
a concept in political philosophy by which the state can be legitimate only if it is guided by the will of the people as a whole	general will
the idea that government should exist only by the consent of the governed	popular sovereignty
an implicit agreement among members of a society to surrender their natural rights to the state, which is then charged with maintaining and protecting those rights	the social contract