Modern rights theory arose in the centers of the slave trade

Evidence

It was no accident that the beginnings of modern rights theories are to be found in Portugal and the Netherlands, the main centers of the slave trade at that time. Thus according to the Portuguese theologian Molina, liberty as property could be traded. Man was pictured as a free being, capable of making his own economic and moral decisions, and of being bound by their consequences. Paradoxically, this picture of the individual as sovereign could be made to yield a defense of slavery and of absolutism. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 634

Categorization

• SHARE: For anyone working on the ideology of early capitalism or Atlantic slavery: the geographic correlation between rights-theory origins and slave-trade hubs.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: whether the author intends a causal claim (slave trade stimulated rights theory) or a conjunctural one.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 634