Colonial rulers sincerely believed God and self-interest were compatible

Evidence

When King Manuel of Portugal wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain that “the principal motive of this enterprise [da Gama’s voyage to India] has been … the service of God our Lord, and our own advantage” (quoted in Hale 1966, 38)—thereby neatly and conveniently bringing God and Mammon together into the same sentence—he probably saw no obvious contradiction between them. These fervently religious Catholic rulers fully believed what they were saying. To them, serving God and pursuing “our advantage” were not necessarily at odds. They lived and fully believed their own ideology. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 585

Categorization

• XREF: Gramsci’s point that dominant groups live their own ideology rather than cynically deploy it; connects to hegemony’s ‘common sense.’ — connects to: Locke justified private land ownership by divinely commanded labor and dominion. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 360
• SEED: Article angle: the sincerity of colonial ideology — how genuine belief in divine mission and naked self-interest coexisted without felt contradiction — as a corrective to both conspiracy-theory and ideology-as-lies readings of empire.
• SHARE: For someone teaching colonial history: King Manuel’s letter genuinely merging ‘service of God’ and ‘our own advantage’ in one sentence, believed sincerely.