Mayflower

The Mayflower is named as the ship on which the Pilgrim Fathers made a declaration in 1620 that gives a concrete historical instance of society formed by mutual agreement. In the account of social-contract theories, the declaration illustrates the principle that political society can originate in a compact among the people themselves, rather than a contract between a people and its ruler.

The 1620 Declaration

The Pilgrim Fathers’ declaration aboard the Mayflower describes its signatories as covenanting and combining themselves together into a civil body politic. The ship anchors this act of agreement to a specific setting and occasion; the passage presents the declaration as the best-known instance of the social-contract theory’s practical use.

Place in Social-Contract Theory

The Mayflower example belongs to the theory’s second form: society is understood as originating in, or resting on, agreement among the individuals who compose it. This differs from the earlier model of a contract between rulers and ruled, which could frame popular resistance as a demand that a monarch honor constitutional obligations. In the second model, the compact joins individuals to form a political community.

The declaration’s language points toward popular sovereignty, since the people constitute the civil body through their agreement. The account notes, however, that this implication did not dictate one settled political conclusion: before Jean-Jacques Rousseau developed the theory into a philosophical defense of complete popular sovereignty, it had also been used to support opposing principles. Thomas Hobbes, for example, treated the original agreement as one among individuals but argued that they thereby transferred sovereignty wholly and permanently to a government. The Mayflower’s significance in the passage is therefore both historical and conceptual: it supplies a memorable instance of collective political founding while introducing a theory whose political meaning remained contested.