Daniel Defoe adopted a form of the spiritual autobiography for his first novel Robinson Crusoe, allowing the eponymous hero to describe his life as commercially and religiously advantageous. The novel, despiteits religious tone, reveals Crusoe’s ceaseless attempt to satisfy his desireof acquisition. Indeed, Ian Watt, in The Rise of the Novel, identifiedCrusoe as an economic individual in the early modern age. Crusoe’splantation in Brazil, cultivated by indentured servants and slaves, bringsan enormous sum of money by the novel’s conclusion, and his slavingtrade to Guinea ends in his isolation on the island. His wealth, rooted inslavery and colonization, enables us to read his account of life alongwith his colonial desires, and it is interesting that he is not entirelyinsensitive to the wrongs of slavery and violence against natives. Hisjustification of colonial desires, which an economic reading of the novelilluminates critically, is intriguingly involved in his humane emotions. Inthis paper, I do not challenge but rather reinforce the economic approachto the novel by demonstrating that Crusoe’s emotions—such as pity,compassion, anxiety, fear, abhorrence, and indignation—allow him todisclaim any responsibility for his colonial desires and thus legitimizehis pursuit of interest. At first, I examine how Crusoe justifies hisslavery in the case of Xury and Friday and then reinterpret the massacrein the novel in terms of Crusoe’s emotions. Crusoe, a colonialist during the early modern age, betrays humaneemotions to depict himself as a man of humanity. Yet his heartlesspursuit of interest is never defeated by his humane concern about others. While he always endeavors to gratify his desires, and enjoys the benefitsthereof, slavery and the massacre portrayed in the novel demonstrate thatCrusoe not only denies any sort of responsibility for such atrocities butalso attempts to evade criticism of his decisions and behaviors. Thenovel, written when British colonial involvement in the New World wasgrowing, not only depicted the acquisition of advantages but alsoincluded the elaborated rhetorical strategy of self-justification, making evident the close relationship between the rise of the novel and economic transformation in Britain.