The violence of Peter Wilkins - violence and Utopia in an eighteenth-century novel

For years I have been fascinated with Utopian fiction, i.e., stores that depict ideal societies, usually serving as a form of contemporary social commentary. In what we might call self-labelled Utopian fiction – that is fiction directly or indirectly inspired by Thomas More’s novel Utopia and thereby written after its publication in 1516 – the key recognisable elements of such societies are often well developed and used in a variety of different ways. However, similar forms of social commentary through imaginary places are found in abundance prior to More’s novel, and to fully understand the genre of Utopian fiction and its many complex components, it is often necessary to cast a very broad chronological net to see how the invention of, or reflections on, non-existent places function within a given discourse. I am currently dedicating some time to this kind of literature, and I hope to be able to develop my thoughts on various subjects pertaining to Utopian societies in the coming months.

Recently, I finished reading one such Utopian novel, published in 1751, namely The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins by Robert Paltock. The novel describes the eponymous protagonist’s journey from England to Africa and onwards to a land far to the south, in which he encounters a country of winged humans. Through his familiarity with metal and firearms – above all cannons salvaged from the ship on which he arrived – Peter Wilkins aids the king of the flying people to quell a rebellion and once more unite the vast kingdom. Desirous to spread Christianity and abolish slavery, Wilkins reforms the society of the kingdom, and continues to extend the territory of the king right to the very edge of the continent (which is the hypothesised southern land which was not yet documented by 1751). The novel is a troubling mix of imperialism, evangelism and abolitionism which really captures the complexities of eighteenth-century discourse, and provides an interesting and worthwhile read.

For my current purposes, my main interest in The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins is the function of violence in the making and sustaining of the Utopian society. The aspect of violence is an integral part of many Utopian stories, and violence serves different functions in how the ideal society is understood. In some cases, an ideal society is marked by the absence of violence, in other cases the ideal society is brought about through violence, and in yet other cases the ideal society is sustained by violence. Not infrequently, violence serves both a creating and a maintaining function in a Utopia. (I have written on the role of violence in Utopian societies in this blogpost.)

The case of The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins is somewhat peculiar, because it belongs to a particular sub-genre of the Utopian story that combines elements of the Robinsonade. In other words, the plot of the novel revolves around one – sometimes more – individuals shipwrecked and cast ashore in a strange and unknown country, whose society is in many ways radically different from their own. Such stories differ from the general plot of Thomas More’s Utopia, in which the reader receives a travelogue from a traveller who has arrived at the ideal society and then left it without any trouble or hindrance. The style of the travelogue renders the story more descriptive, and the polemical edge of this description is perhaps sharper in other, more adventure-like stories.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of Utopian stories that employ elements of the Robinsonade is that like Robison Crusoe his island, so the protagonists of these stories often employ their technological knowledge and/or political precepts from their native countries to transform Utopia. In some such cases, the Utopia in question might be an ideal society that is destroyed by the application of the protagonist’s programme, perhaps most famously in Ludvig Holberg’s Niels Klim’s Undeground Travels. In other Robinsonade-cum-Utopian stories, it is the protagonist who creates the ideal society by transforming the Utopia – the no-place or imagined place – in accordance with their principles and their ambitions. The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins belongs to the latter category.

Peter Wilkins becomes acquainted with a society where the people are noble, industrious, clever, and have obtained a high-level intricate society of complex rituals, traditions and administration. Yet their primary technology is stone, they are a slave society, and their form of religion consists of what the Anglican Peter Wilkins deems idolatry. By the end of Peter’s time in this country – Normnbdsgrsutt [sic!] – the society remains a kingdom, but all slaves are now free, its territories are vastly extended, they have colonised previously uninhabited areas, taken up the use of metal, and adopted a version of their religion that does not contain idol-worship. This transformation comes through battles against rebellious subjects and through the conquest of a country of slave-holders. At the heart of this transformation is Peter Wilkins’ use of cannons and pistols, against which the pike-wielding armies of flying men stand no chance.

The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins provides an interesting and disturbing example of how envisioned ideal societies are heavily intertwined with the use of violence. The grand reforms of Normnbdsgrsutt and other neighbouring kingdoms are first of all made possible through violent means. Even if, as in this case, the violence is a response to extraneous violence, this response is not the end. Instead, Peter Wilkins goes further in his ambitions and takes advantage of the newly-established peace to control resources and initiate the production of metalwork. While the fabrication of armament is not mentioned as one of the pursuits of this metalwork, the cannons and pistols brought by Peter Wilkins would provide suitable models for copying should the flying people so desire. There is perhaps a hint of regret about this possibility in an aside comment in which the protagonists darkly questions whether his efforts of civilising have been all that positive.

The role of violence in The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins is a curious reminder that ideal societies are not necessarily brought about or sustained through ideal means, and that a potential for rot exists at the heart of most, if not all, of these Utopias. Robert Paltock’s novel is an importance case study in this regard, because it combines violence used to obtain goals with which few would not sympathise – the abolition of slavery – with violence used to extend territory and evangelise. Moreover, the possible future fabrication of firearms and cannons lurks as a devouring shadow at the edges of this transformed society, notwithstanding a prophecy of prosperity for 1500 years.

The violence in The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins forces us to grapple with the following question: how ideal are our visions of ideal society? Moreover, how do we avoid violence? How do we prevent the rot of violence at the heart of reforms and transformations? These questions are especially important due to the polemic function of Utopian stories. They are meant as social commentary, as a way to help us recognise errors in our own society and help us envision ways to deal with those errors. The question is whether we recognise those of our solutions that carry the rot within them, or whether we employ those faulty solutions only to end up with faulty replacements.