Robinson Crusoe an “Island” Novel? -2

“Man is a terrestrial being,” says Carl Schmitt in his work Land and Sea; he is “one who sets foot on land.” While stating that man (German, Landwesen; corresponding to the English “terrestrial”) is a “land-being,” a being that walks on land (Landtreter), Schmitt also points out a distinction: “This is where he stands and the ground beneath him; he secures his perspective through this, and it determines his impressions and the way he observes the world. It is not merely his horizon, but also the form of his walk and movements, and even his body itself that he acquires as a living being born on and moving across the earth.”

This is a perspective that accomplishes two things at once. First, it perceives the planet it inhabits in relation to its terrestrial existence: “As a consequence, it designates the celestial body it inhabits as ‘Earth’ [Arz].” Second, this planet is not entirely composed of land or soil; three-quarters of it is water, while only one-quarter is land, that is, dry land—so much so that even the “largest landmasses on this planet float like islands.” Nevertheless, although the planet he inhabits is spherical, and although he refers to it as a “terrestrial globe” (Erdball) or “earthly sphere” (Erdkugel), he does not, based on the volume occupied by water, call it a “marine globe” (Seeball) or a “sea sphere” (Seekugel) (p. 52).

Thus, according to Schmitt, the human horizon is ultimately bound to the Earth.

However, this does not mean that humanity has always been defined in this way. In his 1963 book Partisan, published as a kind of appendix to his 1932 work The Concept of the Political, Carl Schmitt notes that space, like the sea, is open to the appropriation of “everyone,” yet ultimately to whoever claims sovereignty over the Earth; he implies that a “spatial revolution,” similar to the one that occurred in the transition to a maritime conception of sovereignty, could also take place, and that “astronauts” and “cosmonauts” in space might have the chance to transform into “cosmo-pirates or even cosmo-partisans” (p. 109).

Therefore, if it is to occur at all, humanity’s appropriation of outer space will unfold much like its appropriation of the sea. In that case, how can it be said that we are terrestrial beings? According to Schmitt, at least insofar as the horizon is drawn on land, humanity is a terrestrial entity. However, as if to object to interpretations that identify Robinson with “everyone” in The Concept of the Political, he adds an intriguing point by equating “everyone” with “humanity”: “Humanity cannot wage a war, because it has no enemy, at least on this planet” (p. 84). Perhaps, if there are other beings in space, humanity—as a being that walks on Earth—could wage a war in the name of humanity; yet on this planet, this is not possible. Schmitt’s explanation on this matter is also persuasive: “The concept of humanity itself excludes the concept of the enemy, because the enemy continues to be human on the other side, and therefore there is no specific difference between the two concepts… When a state wages war against its enemy in the name of humanity, this is not a war of humanity, but rather a war in which a state seeks to fully appropriate a universal concept against the enemy it is fighting.”

This means that Robinson’s being described as “everyone” does not indicate a universal validity; rather, it shows that he appropriates universality in the name of “everyone” as “an ideological apparatus highly suited to imperial expansionist activities and, with its moral-humanitarian character, to the use of economic imperialism” (p. 85). At least on this planet—and certainly on a deserted island where the anxiety produced by a footprint (or, to put it in Joyce’s terms, a miraculous sign) can only be alleviated by acknowledging the existence of savages.

Then, could Robinson be a “pirate” who, like the “cosmo-pirate” or “cosmo-partisan” that Carl Schmitt claims might emerge in the race for the appropriation of space, also lays claim—under this very title—to a universality encompassing “everyone”? Is the possibility of Robinson as a pirate feasible?

Although Robinson Crusoe is a novel that reflects island consciousness and views the world from the island, since it is not strictly an island novel, Robinson’s adventures outside the island—apart from the note that he abandoned his “middle-class” life by disobeying his father’s advice in pursuit of adventure—are generally not taken into account in analyses of the novel.

Yet the novel has certain specific junctures both before and after the island which, if overlooked, can lead not only to a misinterpretation of the novel but also to its dilution, as if it had been passed through a sieve. One such moment emerges after Robinson, having disobeyed his father’s advice, first began to make money through voyages from Hull to London and then from London to Guinea; after, during a second voyage to Guinea, his ship was captured by “Turkish pirates,” and—unlike the other sailors—the captain of the ship chose to keep him in his own house rather than sell him in the market, as a result of which he remained a slave in the Maghreb for about two years; after escaping from this slavery with a young Muslim Maghrebian named Ksuri, and while fleeing, instead of steering toward the free world—Europe—he turned toward the African coasts and wandered for some time in the hope of encountering a European ship; after the small boat in which they fled drifted along the African shores for a while and they were rescued by a Portuguese ship; after he sold to the captain of this ship bound for Brazil both the hides of the animals they had captured along the African coasts and Ksuri himself—on the condition that he would be freed after converting to Christianity ten years later; after arriving in Brazil, completing the procedures of naturalization and obtaining a residence permit; after purchasing land with the money he had earned to establish a plantation, and devising ways to bring to Brazil a portion of the money he had entrusted to a widow in London during his first Guinea voyage in order to develop this plantation; and finally, after the need for slaves to work on this plantation arose and they began to consider solutions to this problem together with neighboring plantations.

[At this point, two notes in parentheses: In Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography, G. A. Starr argues that Robinson and Ksuri consciously chose this escape route—not toward Europe but toward the open sea—and that, rather than moving toward places where a settled civilization existed, they withdrew (in the Schmittian sense) into an “empty space,” toward a place that would further worsen his “spiritual condition,” and toward a place where God’s all-encompassing will would lead him to salvation and render him chosen (p. 88). Second, unfortunately, Göktürk has translated all instances of the word “plantation” in Robinson Crusoe as “farm.” Thus, both the historical meaning and the colonial connotation of the term “plantation” have been lost.]

In fact, on this colonial plantation in Brazil, Crusoe seems to have fallen onto a “deserted island” even before he is cast onto the “deserted island.” In this region where plantations are located, he has no one to speak to except for “a Portuguese neighbor named Well, born to English parents.” He does every task on the plantation with his own hands (just as he will when he is cast away on his deserted island).

Moreover, in this plantation life in Brazil, he feels as though he has fallen into the “middle-class” life his father had advised him not to abandon. It is like a “deserted island” to him, to such an extent that he is “a thousand miles away from his home, in a wilderness among strangers and savages, unable to send word to any corner of the world about what he is doing” or “even what he is.”

Nevertheless, when the money he had entrusted to a widow in London reaches him, he hires “a black slave and a European servant” for himself. And he remains in Brazil for four years. He also earns a good income from his plantation (pp. 53–57).

There is, however, one problem. The environment is overwhelmingly Catholic. Although he does not regard them as “neighbors” in terms of his faith, Crusoe—who claims that he has no one to speak to—learns the languages of these Papists and establishes acquaintances both with his “colonial [planter] friends” and with the merchants at the port. In fact, he is instilling in them the ideology of the island: “During my conversations with them, I mostly spoke of my two voyages to the Guinea coast, of how trade was conducted there with the blacks—using trifles such as beads, toys, knives, scissors, hand axes, and pieces of glass—and how, not only gold dust, ivory, and Guinea spices, but even slaves to be employed in Brazil could be acquired.”

The problem, however, lies here: “They listened very attentively to what I said, especially to my remarks about purchasing black slaves. At that time, the trade in black slaves had not yet fully taken off; however, since it could only be conducted with the assiento or special permission of the King of Portugal and the King of Spain, very few blacks could be brought in, and those were sold at very high prices” (p. 57).

What is assiento? The Turkish translator of the book, Göktürk, provides no note regarding the term. However, there is a note on the term by Thomas Keymer and James Kelly, who edited the Oxford World Classics edition of Robinson Crusoe: “Since Spain had no foothold on the slave coast, contracts were granted to foreign nations, companies, and individuals to supply African slaves to their colonies [dominions] in the New World. After Portugal’s asiento de negros came to an end, the slave trade to Spanish America became almost entirely illicit until 1702, when the monopoly was granted to the French Guinea Company. Crusoe is mistaken in asserting that a contract was mandatory in 1659; however, from 1662 onward, a formal asiento was briefly held by Genoese merchants. After the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), the asiento was transferred to the British South Sea Company; however, following various wartime suspensions—the first in 1718—it was abolished in 1750” (pp. 262–263).

In fact, this note is not very explanatory either; however, Carl Schmitt, in Land and Sea, provides a framework through which we can understand the matter: As soon as America was discovered—although Columbus had arrived there without knowing it was a new continent—in 1493, the Spaniards obtained a papal bull from Pope Alexander IV stating that the newly discovered West Indies were granted, on the basis of apostolic [papal] authority, as a temporal fief of the Church to the King of Castile and León and his heirs. In the bull, a line was drawn in the Atlantic Ocean running approximately one hundred miles west of the Azores and Cape Verde. All discoveries to the west of this line were granted to Spain by the Pope as a fief. The following year, through the Treaty of Tordesillas, Spain reached an agreement with Portugal that all lands discovered to the east of this line would belong to Portugal (p. 118).

 

The lands divided as “fiefs” by a papal bull were, in a rather peculiar manner, conceived as empty spaces. For a long period, Spain and Portugal regarded the lands beyond the ocean as their own property on the basis of the bull obtained from the Pope and sought to keep all forms of trade in these lands (including slavery) under their control. Then, the Protestant peoples—who did not accept the papal bull, and indeed did not accept the Papacy itself—entered into a struggle of appropriation with the Spaniards and the Portuguese.

“Through the Reformation, the Protestant peoples explicitly rejected every form of authority of the Roman Papacy. Thus, the struggle to seize the lands of the New World turned into a conflict between the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, and between the Spaniards representing global Catholicism and the Huguenots [French Protestants], the Dutch, and the English representing global Protestantism” (p. 119).

The struggle (including the slave trade) was won by English Protestantism, which emerged with the principle that “all trade is free trade.” The Treaty of Utrecht was the triumph of those who had transformed from “shepherds” into “sons of the sea”; it signified the validation of the English understanding and dominance that advocated conducting all forms of land and sea trade “freely,” without seeking permission from any authority other than the British king. In short, Robinson advises the colonists around him to pursue this “free trade”—a form of trade which, in his time, could only be carried out through piracy.

 

He will indeed reap the rewards of his advice. For one day, when he passionately declared before a “community” composed of colonial plantation owners and merchants that they could once again bring slaves from Guinea, he was visited the next morning by three men who stated that they were in need of slaves. They had come with a “secret offer,” on the condition that he tell no one: they were planning to prepare a ship and send it to Guinea; their aim was to “bring a black person secretly in a single voyage to Guinea”; since they could not “sell them openly,” they planned to “distribute them among their own plantations”; would Crusoe become the “cargo officer” of the ship for this secret voyage to Guinea, intended to bring slaves secretly and distribute them secretly? (pp. 57–58)

This, then, is the most Schmittian moment of the novel Robinson Crusoe. In an environment where all commercial permissions are held by the kings of Spain and Portugal through a decree issued by the Papacy, and which is manifestly Catholic—thereby causing him to feel as though he has fallen onto a “deserted island” even before actually reaching one— Crusoe is confronted with an offer to set sail once again as the “cargo officer” on a secretly organized expedition intended to bring slaves to plantation owners who appear to have been persuaded through the spread of island consciousness.

Of course, he accepts the offer; and of course, the ship on which he is wrecked and ends up on the “deserted island” is precisely the ship on which he had set out for this pirate-like venture. Thus, the pirate Crusoe is cast from one ‘deserted island’ onto another.

 

Therefore, there is not much distance between engaging in pirate slave trade and, in the wake of a footprint, accepting the existence of savages. Nor is there much distance between the ordinary individual—said to have opposed nature and tradition during the Enlightenment—and the economic individual who, in pursuit of his own interests, seeks to impose order first on his island, then on the Earth, which is transformed into the open sea and subjected to appropriation, and even on outer space.

Moreover, there is a similar gap between the self-confidence underlying all those Enlightenment-era aspirations of deserted islands, Robinson-like existence, and living as though outside society even while within it, and anthropological insecurity.

But how, then, will this piracy justify itself?