Bid Defiance to the World:
Anxiety, Capitalism, and the Problem of Progress
in Defoe’s Captain Singleton
Despite the profound richness of Defoe’s novel in terms of its complex exploration of European markets and networks of trade, its poignant investigation of the means by which identity is constructed and lived, and its anxious engagement with globalization and the rise of capitalism as a dominant mode of economic distribution and social organization, surprisingly little critical attention has thus far been paid to the considerably aberrant but fascinating Captain Singleton. As critic Ian Newman has judiciously noted, this paucity of consideration by critics might be easily accounted for in the context of prevailing trends and paradigms of analysis in the field of 18th-century literary study—trends which many of the bizarre and confounding features of Defoe’s novel tend to controvert or disrupt. Newman writes, “Captain Singleton has never fit comfortably into the stories that are told about the rise of the novel…While Defoe has always been considered a key figure in the establishment of the genre… Captain Singleton is frequently ignored” (Newman 566-67). The novel’s inarguably strange and vexing conclusion, wherein Defoe’s apparent interest in both modern subjectivity and Christian redemption is ostensibly subverted or abandoned altogether, has been for critics perhaps the most frustrating component of the narrative. The denouement of Defoe’s novel—in which Singleton and Quaker William settle in England and withdraw from society, having made no meaningful or proportionate attempt at providing restitution for their many and terrible crimes—has seemed utterly incommensurable with the identity-centered questions and problems variously raised and examined throughout the rest of Captain Singleton. However, the implicit assumption of critics that the conclusion of Defoe’s narrative ought to in some measure account for all that precedes it reveals a problematic and deeply entrenched set of expectations related to substance, structure, and cohesion in the genre of 18th-century realism. Although Captain Singleton’s conclusion has been read as a hasty and incoherent attempt to close the narrative—a feature of the novel which seems unconscious of the redemptive bent or trajectory of Defoe’s fictional account of the lives of Singleton and his band of pirates—the novel’s peculiar and seemingly disjointed denouement might be read more profitably as an element of the text which serves the dual and paradoxical function of suppressing and expressing the apprehensions and queries which the narrative respectively evinces and explores. Examined in such a manner as I have suggested, the novel’s troubling conclusion might ultimately be read as symptomatic of the text’s anxiety about the increasing dominance and ubiquity of capitalism in the 18th century as well as the complex of ideologies and lived experiences which such a system necessarily implies and produces.
From the outset of the narrative, Captain Singleton displays a profound interest in the exploration of various economic systems which generate or facilitate radically different forms of social organization. As Singleton and his marooned comrades traverse the African continent and ultimately embark upon a seafaring life largely oriented toward piracy, roving between South America and the Arabian Gulf, the small band of men—in terms of its internal management and arrangement—moves through a series of social formations which progressively resemble the established capitalist structures and systems of Europe. The group’s first attempt to organize themselves, however, bears a closer resemblance to collectivism than to anything which might be called capitalistic. As Singleton relates,
"…the first thing we did was to give everyone his Hand, that we would not separate from one another upon any Occasion whatsoever, but that we would live and die together; that we would kill no Food, but that we would distribute it in publick; and that we would be in all things guided by the Majority, and not insist upon our own Resolutions in any thing… that we would appoint a Captain among us to be our Governour… and that every one should take Turn, but the Captain was not to act in any particular thing without Advice of the rest…" (Defoe 20-21).
Although the myriad necessities engendered by the abandonment of Singleton’s gang on the island of Madagascar to a great extent dictate and require such a method of social organization, this particular moment in the text seems to exhibit Defoe’s often implicit interest in modes of living outside of capitalist economic and social structures. The manner in which the marooned sailors determine to organize themselves might be described as a variant of direct democracy, one which tempers a potential devolution into ochlocracy (mob rule) or anarchy by ascribing political and social authority to one central figure. Further, this mode of organization might be interpreted as a tepid critique of European structures of power and governance which differ considerably from this primitive form of collectivism. Such differences are most easily articulated in predominantly economic terms: the newly established society of Singleton and his shipmates entirely lacks the class structures which dominated Europe in the 18th century and, in terms of the distribution of capital, possesses only a meagre economy oriented solely toward subsistence. Ultimately, this passage merely demonstrates the first instance of an explorative vein or tendency which runs throughout the whole of Defoe’s novel—a thread, as I have stated, which evinces an interest in economic and social alternatives to capitalism.
As the narrative of Captain Singleton unfolds, Defoe brings to light the somewhat perturbing reality that the Earth no longer contains such wilderness as can accommodate an escape from established European systems of economy and government. Singleton and his crew, even in the far-flung locale of Madagascar, only achieve a subversive or deviant existence on the periphery of the burgeoning British Empire—a retreat beyond which is either impossible or unimaginable. Emanating from the British Isles, the many routes by which trade and political influence travel and circulate have begun—speaking both historically and in terms of Defoe’s text—to constrict and envelop the globe like the tangled branches of an arterial network. Although it might be reasonably argued that the travel of Singleton’s crew through Africa along an East/West axis represents a movement from the exterior to the interior (even boundary) of the British Empire, noting that the natives of Madagascar and eastern Africa have never encountered Europeans, one might assert relatively unproblematically that the reaches of empire transcend mere global geography and have invaded or embedded themselves in the psyches of Singleton and his crew. That is to say, Singleton, despite his persistent characterization of himself as homeless (and implicitly or stylistically as faceless), is possessed of an identity which has been radically shaped and determined by contact with the imperialist and capitalist ideology of 18th-century Britain.
A particularly striking instance in which this psychology of capitalism manifests in Singleton’s behavior toward his shipmates occurs shortly after the group’s resolution to distribute all its assets “in publick.” After calling together a council with the purpose of gathering and calculating the amount of money which the group collectively possesses, Singleton offers his contribution in an ostensibly shrewd but manipulative maneuver: “…I pulled out a Moydore and the two Dollars I spoke of before. This Moydore I ventured to shew, that they might not despise me too much for adding too little to the Store, and that they might not pretend to search me.” Curiously, Singleton immediately relays that “our money did us little service, for the [natives] neither knew the Value of the Use of it, nor could they justly rate the Gold in Proportion with the Silver” (Defoe 23). Despite the circumstantial uselessness of Singleton’s money, his inherent greed and self-interest (what might justly be called a capitalistic impulse) exerts such a powerful influence over his actions that he determines to withhold the greater part of his worthless capital from the other sailors. This obsession with the accumulation wealth, largely in the form of precious metals and commodities such as ivory, only intensifies as Singleton and his gang press westward into the African continent. These early and conspicuous passages in Defoe’s novel seem to establish a framework or structure in which the development of the sailors’ society mirrors 18th-century accounts of the history of economic development, accounts which often suggest the emergence of capitalism as inevitable. Defoe’s attempt to explore alternative modes of living by physically removing his characters from the influence of Europe, coupled with Captain Singleton’s early intimation of capitalism’s rise as inexorable (even predetermined), evokes a sense of anxiety related to entrapment. Thus, Singleton’s pointless display of avarice in the aforementioned scene serves both to portend the forthcoming events of the novel and to gesture toward the narrative’s troubling conclusion.
In support of such a reading of the novel, critic Timothy Blackburn has argued that the societal development of Singleton and his crew mirrors the Lockean narrative of civil and economic progress. For Blackburn, Defoe’s narrative sees Singleton move through distinct formative stages: the “state of nature,” the “state of war,” the “state of reason,” and the “state of civic society” (Blackburn 121). Although Blackburn explores these parallels between Captain Singleton and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government in order to argue solely for the existence of a coherent conceptual structure in the novel, a feature which many critics see as utterly absent from Defoe’s text, this analysis might also be martialed to emphasize what I have suggested as Singleton’s inability to construct either an identity or a means of existing outside of or without significant relations to European systems of governance and social organization. Singleton’s oft displayed but never fulfilled impulse to subvert or complicate the Lockean narrative of progress—perhaps best exhibited by his desire to settle permanently in Madagascar—seems indicative of what I have described as the text’s anxious engagement with capitalism. Singleton’s fruitless attempts to find a home outside of European institutions of economy and government culminate in the many and various frustrations of the novel’s denouement. Before an analysis of the narrative’s end can be productively explored, however, a number of the succeeding stages of development through which the sailors’ society passes ought to be interrogated.
Following the sailors’ establishment of a collectivist organization—reminiscent of the hunter-gather societies of prehistoric man or Locke’s “state of nature”—Singleton and his crew begin to exhibit an increasing interest in predatory trade, as opposed to foraging and theft, as the economic center of their mode of living. As critic Jeremy Wear has observed, “In the novel… capital accumulation looks more like an exercise in who steals more effectively, rather than who establishes or invigorates trade networks…Defoe places strictly legal trade on an uncertain continuum with piracy.” Of the novel’s many characters who in some measure inhabit this continuum, the Artificer perhaps best exhibits the novel’s struggle to confront and meaningfully deal with “the ambiguous morality of economic imperialism” (Wear 575, 578). Having recognized the worthlessness of their European money in the context of their isolated and alien position in Africa, Singleton and his crew endeavor to create some form of currency to facilitate both trade and generally peaceful exchanges with the natives. The Artificer, more frequently referred to as the Cutler, devises and implements a plan through which the revitalization of the group’s money (in terms of exchange value) might be effected through a physical transformation of the coins themselves. Singleton relates,
"When [the Artificer] had for about a Fortnight exercised his Head and Hands at this Work, we try’d the Effect of his Ingenuity; and having another Meeting with the Natives, were surprized to see the Folly of the poor People. For a little Bit of Silver cut out in the Shape of a Bird, we had two Cows… For one of the Bracelets made of Chain-work, we had as much Provision of several Sorts, as would fairly have been worth in England, Fifteen or Sixteen Pounds" (Defoe 28).
Although this method of commerce seems to be situated less precariously on the spectrum of morality than the sailors’ earlier interactions with the natives, it only serves to facilitate a more peaceful means of pillaging the unwitting Africans and to decrease the potential of provoking ire and violent conflict. Singleton continually iterates the natives’ unawareness of the value ascribed to precious metals in Europe, often joking that they seem to prefer iron trinkets to the obviously more valuable counterparts made of gold and silver. As Singleton observes, “thus, that which when it was in Coin was not worth Six-pence to us, when thus converted into Toys and Trifles, was worth an Hundred Times its real Value, and purchased for us any thing we had occasion for” (Defoe 28). Notably, Defoe makes no substantial attempt either to justify or excuse or to censure or condemn these predatory exchange tactics. Noting that the British Empire relied on similar methods of predation in the 18th century in order to forward the causes of imperial expansion and global colonization, this moment in Defoe’s text “underscores the [historical] slippage between piracy and legitimate trade” and thus evinces some degree of anxiety or ambivalence about the moral dimensions of economic imperialism (Wear 569).
The most morally problematic component of 18th-centruy European economic systems was, of course, the utter dependence of early capitalism on slave labor, an economic reality which Defoe also explores as the society of Singleton and the marooned sailors continues to evolve. Having moved through two distinct stages of social formation—what I have called primitive collectivism and predatory mercantilism—Singleton and his gang reorganize themselves as a direct result of an impulse to preserve and accumulate property. In order to solve the problem of immobility generated by the sailors’ inability to simultaneously transport and guard their provisions, Singleton proposes the capture of a small group of Natives for use as slaves:
"The next thing we had to consider was, how to carry our Baggage, which we were first of all determined not to travel without… At last I proposed a Method for them, which after some Consideration, they found very convenient; and this was to quarrel with some of the Negro Natives, take ten or twelve of them as Prisoners, and binding them as Slaves, cause them to travel with us, and make them carry our Baggage" (Defoe 50-51).
Although Singleton’s gang swiftly carries out this proposal to use captured Africans as beasts of burden, the group exhibits some sense of moral unease or ambivalence about the practice of slavery by demanding some (admittedly scanty) justification for the enslavement of the hitherto peaceful natives. Of his proposition, Singleton immediately relays that “this Council was not accepted, at first, but the Natives soon gave them reason to approve it…we found some Knavery among them at last” (Defoe 51). Following a blundered attempt to trade with the natives, whereby an African cheats one of Singleton’s men out of several iron trinkets, the sailors promptly murder the swindler, and a brief and gruesome battle ensues, after which Singleton’s gang apprehends the bewildered survivors. Trifling and feeble as the loss of several mangled shards of iron might seem as a justification for murder and enslavement, in considering prevailing racial ideologies of the 18th century, the initial hesitation of Singleton’s crew to capture and subjugate the Africans seems significant. This moment of reluctance and the ethical queries which it unavoidably implicates will resurface in the novel’s final pages, wherein the question of Singleton’s redemption from a long and profitable life of iniquity becomes intimately bound up with the question of how to redistribute or employ the protagonist’s ill-gotten wealth as an act of atonement.
More consequentially for the present discussion, however, this scene marks the transition of the economic and ideological base upon which the sailor’s society rests from predatory mercantilism (engendered by the group’s initial disenfranchisement) to something more like full-blown capitalism (inspired predominantly by the community’s common desire to accumulate wealth before returning to Europe). The capture and subsequent use of the African natives as slaves might be easily regarded as a microcosmic representation of the dependence of 18th century (i.e. “civilized”) economies on forced labor. To gesture back to Blackburn’s reading of the novel, this moment in Defoe’s text also serves to reinforce the conceptual structure of Lockean social and civic development as an inevitable progression. By marooning Singleton and his fellow mutineers on the island of Madagascar and consequently forcing them to traverse the entire expanse of an unexplored continent, Defoe creates a plausible set of circumstances in which a group of men might figuratively “start over” and shape the evolution of their society from its establishment through to its final stages in a setting ostensibly removed from the cultural and historical influence of Europe. The execution of this allegorical framework in Captain Singleton poignantly echoes Locke’s ideas and sentiments about government, history, and progress. The central philosophical component of the novel’s narrative of social and civic development might be described as what historian Joyce Appleby identifies as the argument which defines Locke’s economic discourse—an assertion of “the existence of natural social laws which [operate] automatically and independently of man-made institutions” (Liberalism and Republicanism 67).
As importantly, noting that Singleton’s gang does not merely exploit the captured Africans in order to facilitate communication with other native groups and continue the practice of commercial predation, the group’s acquisition of slaves seems to be the only significant action which allows for truly capitalistic enterprise throughout the rest of Captain Singleton’s African episode. Following their apprehension, the slaves are soon forced to scour the countryside (for a period of months) in a search for gold and ivory which is ultimately and excessively fruitful, thus marking a transition of the sailors’ society from an emphasis on subsistence and trade to an emphasis on accumulation. Without the swift accretion of this tremendous mass of capital, many of the events of the novel’s second half, in which Singleton and his crew are forced either from greed or self-preservation to pose as merchants, would be rendered impracticable. However, upon their seaward departure from Africa’s western coast and into a life of piracy, Singleton’s crew frees the majority of the captured natives, and the novel to a considerable extent abandons its ostensible interest in the aforementioned allegorical rendering of Lockean precepts. Contrary to the assertion of critics like Blackburn and Newman, Captain Singleton’s second half seems almost entirely bereft of the conceptual structure which Defoe establishes in the African episode. If the “coherence” of Defoe’s narrative as Blackburn identifies it persists through the whole of the novel, the pace at which Defoe constructs the text’s central allegory is slowed so considerably in the narrative’s second half as to accentuate conceptual tensions and inconsistencies. Throughout the course of the various exploits of Singleton’s crew as pirates and merchants, the economic basis of the group undergoes few if any significant alterations; the sailors’ society merely moves through a series of episodes and adventures which closely resemble the commercial and cultural transactions of European capitalists in the 18th century.
The novel’s second half seems more deeply invested in “[rehearsing] the ethical and discursive justifications for predatory capitalism” than in elaborating an extended universal metaphor of economic and social progress (Wear 569). The sea, like the African interior, represents a space largely abstracted from contact with Europe—a space in which capitalism as a mode of economic distribution and social organization is possible, but not inevitable. Singleton often questions (even condemns) the value of the group’s obsessive and tireless efforts to accumulate greater stores of gold and various commodities: “…we had Wealth enough…we should content our selves to retire… and bid Defiance to the World” (Defoe 182). The ocean also provides Singleton’s crew with a space in which the operations of capitalism entirely eschew their dependence on slavery, a reliance which appears woefully unavoidable in Africa. As Newman observes, “maritime space represents a place without belonging; it exists suspended among political, economic, and national affiliations, and it holds a position outside the temporalities of possessive individualism and the telos of property” (Newman 578). These crucial differences seem to contradict (at the very least to complicate) the implicit argument regarding social and civic development made in the narrative’s African episode. Ultimately, the novel’s two distinct halves produce incoherencies, dissonances, and contradictions which remain unaddressed until the narrative’s conclusion.
Having traversed the vast expanse of the world’s oceans, Singleton eventually resolves that his crew should “leave off being Pyrates, and turn Merchants” (Defoe 199). Although this determination to abate his criminal activities serves to direct readers’ attention to the question of the protagonist’s impending redemption, Singleton’s phrasing in this passage again suggests the uncomfortable proximity of piracy to so-called legitimate commerce on the spectrum of seafaring enterprises. As Joyce Appleby has observed, the nearly perpetual state of hostility among European nations in the 18th century often blurred considerably the distinctions between commerce and combat on oceanic trade routes:
“Europe’s endemic warfare lent some legitimacy to attacks on the high seas because all countries issued what were called letters of marque—licenses—to the owners of vessels to arm them for the purpose of capturing enemy merchant ships. As long as two countries were at war, as was much of the time, privateers were part of the nations’ armed forces” (The Relentless Revolution 37).
Considering the ambiguous and ethically problematic manner in which piracy and privateering were legally distinguished—coupled with Singleton’s deft ability to evoke sentiments of sympathy and empathy—Defoe’s ostensibly bizarre attempt to handle and resolve the question of Singleton’s redemption in the novel’s denouement seems less perturbing and odd. If the only meaningful difference between pirates and privateers in the 18th century had been national affiliation and fidelity, then Singleton’s central fault or crime must be his perennial homelessness, his utter lack of identification as English. In a conversation with Quaker William which ultimately leads to Singleton’s return to Europe, William asserts that “it is natural for most Men that are abroad to desire to come Home again at last, especially when they are grown rich…” (Defoe 256). To this argument, Singleton replies, “Why, Man, I am at Home, here is my Habitation, I never had any other in my Life time… I can have no Desire for going any where for being rich or poor, for I have no where to go.” William responds simply: “art thou not an Englishman?” (Defoe 256). Thus, the novel’s resolution and Singleton’s redemption depend less on the atonement of crimes than on an act of settling down, of ceasing movement, of finding a home at last.
However, Singleton and William soon begin to fixate on the question of what precisely ought to be done with their considerable mass of ill-gotten wealth. Singleton’s obsession might be easily observed in his framing of the questions of absolution and reformation in distinctly economic terms. He records that in the course of his conversations with William, the Quaker convinced him “…that the Time of Account approached; that the Work that remain’d was gentler than the Labour past, viz. Repentance, and that it was high Time to think of it” (emphasis mine). Although Singleton initially contends that the best course of action would be to abandon the tainted capital entirely, William ultimately forwards an argument that they ought to “keep [the treasure] carefully together, with a Resolution to do what Right with it [they] were able.” William asks, “…who knows what Opportunity Providence may put into our Hands, to do Justice at least to some of those we have injured…” (Defoe 267). Problematic as this scheme seems from its inception—any conscientious reader unavoidably confronts the displacement of redemptive agency and economic restitution onto the abstract figure of god’s providence as a precarious maneuver, if not as an outright abdication of moral culpability—the pair never carries out this proposed project of atonement in any meaningful or proportionate manner. Singleton and William merely confer a large sum of money (though a relatively trifling portion of their fortune) to William’s poverty-stricken sister, a sum which Singleton nevertheless recovers through his marriage in the novel’s penultimate paragraph.
The necessity of the narrative to answer for or to solve this economic and moral quandary unavoidably gestures backward—toward the allegorical framework of the novel’s African episode and toward the ways in which Singleton’s life as a pirate complicates this allegory. As I have variously examined, Defoe’s use of Singleton’s crew as a microcosm for Locke’s theories of social and civic development not only serves to reiterate an existing argument in the form of fiction, but to evoke tension, contradiction, and anxiety about pre-industrial capitalism as the dominant mode of international exchange and as a system which radically determines the arrangement of European societies. In producing the appearance of resolution in Captain Singleton’s final pages, Defoe attempts to subdue or quiet these apprehensions. The perpetually homeless Singleton appears to find a home at last, his life of crime appears to recede as a distant memory, and the products of his criminal exploits appear to be put to noble use. Of course, the circumstances of the narrative’s conclusion only achieve a tenuous sense of verisimilitude. Defoe’s text actively controverts and disrupts all of these appearances of solution and nebulous gestures toward closure: Singleton withdraws entirely from English society, vowing to never speak the national language in public and posing as a wealthy Grecian merchant; the severity and variety of his past crimes are never commensurably balanced with his acts of restitution and reform; and the whole of the former pirate’s fortune is maintained and withheld from any use which might be considered altruistic or noble. As a frustration or abandonment of the novel’s interests in exploring economic and social alternatives to capitalism and in examining the morally objectionable and criminal operations inherent to European economic systems, the novel’s denouement poignantly and paradoxically expresses the very anxieties which it simultaneously attempts to suppress: unease about the relationships between historical narratives and realities, capitalism and slavery, piracy and “legitimate” trade, and redemption and atonement.
If, as a number of critics have suggested, Captain Singleton ought to be read as an extensive metaphorical rendering of a process of social and economic development which, according to prevailing 18th-century theories and ideologies, is both natural and inevitable, then the vexing denouement which Defoe offers is ultimately the only conclusion which such a narrative allows. As 20th-century historian Henri Pirenne argues in his influential essay “The Stages in the Social Development of Capitalism,” the historical trajectory of mercantile capitalist classes has tended toward only one outcome. Of the behavior of such classes in historical moments which exert profound pressures upon enterprising men, Pirenne writes “we do not see [capitalists] pushing forward into the career which opens itself before them, unless as lenders of money. In their turn, and as we have seen at each great crisis in economic history, they retire from business and transform themselves into an aristocracy” (Pirenne 28). Although Defoe represents the pressures which exert themselves upon Singleton as predominantly religious in character, the novel’s conclusion also implicates historical circumstances which demand the protagonist’s withdrawal from piracy. The necessity of Singleton and William to disguise themselves as foreigners in order to avoid detection speaks to the historical suppression of piracy by European nations (often involving cruel and violent executions and punishments) as international trade and capitalism at large began to flourish in the 18th century (The Relentless Revolution 38). The question of redemption through Christianity which Defoe raises in the novel’s final pages might even be read as an attempt to mask motives informed by considerations of economy and self-preservation as acts of piety, confession, and submission to god. Whatever the case may be, Singleton’s retirement into an unmistakably aristocratic position, having maintained the greater part of his fortune and invested the rest in foreign markets, serves in some measure to emphasize the aforementioned paradox of the novel’s conclusion. Moreover, in a reading of Captain Singleton as possessed of distinct metaphorical resonances with the Lockean narrative of mankind’s social evolution and the inexorable rise of capitalism, the novel’s disquieting and conflicting denouement reflects neither an act of authorial haste nor an instance of conceptual incoherency, but the irresistable conclusion of a historically predetermined narrative—the culmination of which is the only one possible.
Works Cited
Appleby, Joyce. Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992. Print.
Appleby, Joyce. The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011. Print.
Blackburn, Timothy C. "The Coherence of Defoe's "Captain Singleton"" Huntington Library Quarterly 41.2 (n.d.): 119-36. JSTOR. Web. 11 Nov. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3817470 .>.
Defoe, Daniel. Captain Singleton. New York: Oxford UP, 1990. Print.
Newman, Ian. "Property, History, and Identity in Defoe's Captain Singleton." Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 51.3 (2011): 565-83. Project MUSE. Web. 11 Nov. 2014. <http://muse.jhu.edu/sel/summary/v051/51.3.newman.html>.
Pirenne, Henri. The Stages in the Social History of Capitalism. Memphis: Bottom of the Hill, 2011. Print.
Wear, Jeremy. "No Dishonour to Be a Pirate: The Problem of Infinite Advantage in Defoe's Captain Singleton." Eighteenth-Century Fiction 24.4 (2012): 569-96. Project MUSE. Web. 11 Nov. 2014. <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ecf/summary/v024/24.4.wear.html>.