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This paper aims to examine Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe Trilogy, that is, Robinson Crusoe (1719), The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1720), and Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1720), as a meta-narrative that justifies Daniel Defoe’s conviction about the British venture into the South Seas. Daniel Defoe strongly believes that Britain’s success as a trading nation depends on the successful venture into the South Seas. His last novel, A New Voyage Round the World (1724), is literary propaganda for his conviction about the South Seas where, the anonymous speaker asserts, there are ample opportunities to gather infinite wealth free from the law of scarcity. This paper argues that Robinson Crusoe Trilogy serves as the passage to the South Seas because Defoe reveals in these novels why his island is a failure as a colony, how fierce is the competition for advantageous trade in the China Sea, and why it is impossible to have the favourable balance of trade with China, the master of 18th-century global commerce. Robinson Crusoe Trilogy expresses Defoe’s argument as a mercantilist, this paper suggests, that Britain should establish free and advantageous trade with a region where there are favourable conditions for trade. Robinson Crusoe Trilogy becomes the passage to the South Seas because Defoe, through the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, argues this fantastic region is indeed the South Seas. However, this paper contends, through making promises about the future venture into the South Seas, Defoe becomes entangled with the capitalism working the whipping machine, as capitalism operates by making promises about the future (attracting investment/raising debt), converting that promise (investment/debt) into stock, and postponing the realization of the promise while inflating the share price. By fantasizing about a South Seas that is free from the law of scarcity but cannot exist in reality, Defoe implicates himself unwittingly with the South Sea Bubble which comes to burst in 1721.
