Religion, Race, and the Limits of Progress in the Global Histories of William Robertson

William Robertson (1721 – 1793) was one of the most prolific historians of the Scottish Enlightenment, whose works were bestsellers in the late eighteenth century. In his writings on non-European societies in the Americas and India he often emphasised the limited nature of the societal progress they had achieved and even seemed capable of achieving. Here I consider the reasons for Robertson’s scepticism. Although ideas of racial difference play some role in explaining his attitude towards native Americans, they are not sufficient to do so. They also do not apply to his interpretation of Hindu civilisation. More significant, it will be argued, are Robertson’s views on the obstacles pagan religion imposes on societal progress, and which, he believed, could only be removed by knowledge of Christianity. In that respect, non-European civilisations such as the Aztecs, Incas, or Hindus were comparable to the pagan societies of classical Greece and Rome, which combined high levels of refinement with elements of barbarism, even savagery, and superstition. Robertson’s approach is indebted as much to the Querelle des Anciens et Modernes and Protestant ecclesiastical history, as it is to more familiar ‘stadial’ models of historical interpretation that are more commonly associated with Scottish Enlightenment histories.