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This was a time of glaring contradictions in the way Europeans, in Britain especially, came to see humanity.

On the one hand, from the 1660s onwards, new understanding of science and a new appreciation of the arts brought freer humanist ideas. These valued critical thinking and emphasised the value of human beings. Developments in astronomy, physics, medicine and literature focused on experiment and human understanding rather than religious law. The movement known as the Enlightenment opened up ideas of personal liberty. Enlightenment thinkers started to question traditional authority, believing that humanity could be improved through rational change, and that everything in the universe could be rationally explained. In England a new political settlement reduced the power of the monarchy and gave more freedom to Parliament.

However, at the very same time, the Royal African Company was building its slave fortresses and the East India Company was extending its trading posts in Asia. Africans were being enslaved and transported across the Atlantic and Indians were becoming locked into Britain’s trading network as child servants and nannies. This exploitation of human beings for profit was justified by dehumanising them with the idea that they were less human than Europeans. Racist ideas built around skin colour spread and infected all aspects of society.