John Pope Hennessy and the translation of 'slavery' between late nineteenthcentury barbados and Hong Kong

History Workshop Journal

Volumn 55, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 1-24

  Lambert, David ^a   Howell, Philip ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 3242876364     PISSN: 13633554     EISSN: 14774569     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hwj/55.1.1     Document Type: Article

References (109)

1. John Hammond and Barbara Hammond, James Stansfeld: a Victorian Champion of Sex Equality, Longmans, London, 1932, p. 214.
2. This paper represents an initial investigation into part of Pope Hennessy's 'imperial career'. A longer piece addressing it in its entirety, and therefore a more global treatment of the 'translation of slavery', is being prepared.
3. Peter Burroughs, 'Imperial Institutions and the Government of Empire', in The Oxford History of the British Empire: Vol. 3 - The Nineteenth Century, ed. Andrew Porter, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999, pp. 170-97.
4. Ernest Eitel, Europe in China: the History of Hong Kong from the Beginning to the Year 1882, Luzac and Co., London, 1895, p. iii.
5. John Benyon, 'Overlords of Empire? British "Proconsular Imperialism" in Comparative Perspective', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 19:2, 1991, pp. 164-202.
6. Ronald Robinson, 'The Excentric Idea of Imperialism with or without Empire', in Imperialism and After: Continuities and Discontinuities, ed. Wolfgang Mommsen and Jürgen Osterhammel, Allen and Unwin, London, 1986, pp. 267-89;
7. Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997.
8. Rhodes House Library (RHL), MSS British Empire, Pope Hennessy Papers, s.409, Michael Hicks Beach to Pope Hennessy, no date.
9. Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830-1867, Polity, Oxford, 2002, p. 20.
10. Alan Lester, Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth Century South Africa and Britain, Routledge, London, 2001;
11. Alan Lester, 'Obtaining the "Due Observance of Justice": the Geographies of Colonial Humanitarianism', Environment and Planning D: Society & Space 20:3, 2002, pp. 277-93;
12. Alan Lester, 'British Settler Discourse and the Circuits of Empire', History Workshop Journal 54, autumn 2002.
13. Hall, Civilising Subjects, p. 65.
14. Kate Lowe and Eugene McLaughlin, 'Sir John Pope Hennessy and the "Native Race Craze": Colonial Government in Hong Kong, 1877-1882', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 20:2, 1992, pp. 223-47, ref. on p. 229.
15. A useful source on Pope Hennessy's life is by his grandson: James Pope Hennessy, Verandah: Some Episodes in the Crown Colonies, 1876-1889, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1964.
16. Lowe and McLaughlin, 'Sir John Pope Hennessy', p. 240.
17. Odile Goerg, 'Between Everyday Life and Exception: Celebrating Pope Hennessy Day in Freetown, 1872-c.1905', Journal of African Cultural Studies 15:1, 2002, pp. 119-31;
18. Suzanne Miers, 'Slavery to Freedom in Sub-Saharan Africa: Expectations and Reality', in After Slavery: Emancipation and Its Discontents, ed. Howard Temperley, Frank Cass, London, 2000, pp. 237-64;
19. Raymond Dumett and Marion Johnson, 'Britain and the Suppression of Slavery in the Gold Coast Colony, Ashanti and the Northern Territories', in The End of Slavery in Africa, ed. Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, 1988, pp. 71-116;
20. Raymond Dumett, 'Pressure Groups, Bureaucracy, and the Decision-Making Process: the Case of Slavery Abolition and Colonial Expansion in the Gold Coast, 1874', The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 9:2, 1981, pp. 193-215.
21. Pope Hennessy, Verandah.
22. Hall, Civilising Subjects; Lester, Imperial Networks;
23. John L. Comaroff, 'Images of Empire, Contests of Conscience: Models of Colonial Domination in South Africa', in Tensions of Empire, ed. Cooper and Stoler, pp. 163-97;
24. Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism's Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government, Polity, Oxford, 1994.
25. Charles Swaisland, 'The Aborigines Protection Society, 1837-1909', in After Slavery, Temperley, pp. 265-80.
26. See also Rick Mitcham, Geographies of Global Humanitarianism: the Anti-Slavery Society and the Aborigines Protection Society, 1884-1933, unpublished PhD dissertation, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2001.
27. Nancy Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain 1800-1960, Macmillan, London, 1982;
28. Subjugation and Bondage: Critical Essays on Slavery and Social Philosophy, ed. Tommy Lott, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, Maryland, 1998, p. xviii.
29. See After Slavery, ed. Temperley.
30. Frederick Cooper, Thomas Holt, and Rebecca Scott, Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Post-Emancipation Societies, University of North Carolina Press, London, 2000.
31. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: a Comparative Study, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1982.
32. See also Julia O'Connell-Davidson, Prostitution, Power and Freedom, Polity, London, 1998.
33. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1966.
34. Compare Ronald Richardson, Moral Imperium: Afro-Caribbeans and the Transformation of British Rule, 1776-1838, Greenwood Press, London, 1987.
35. Michael Craton, Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies, Cornell University Press, London, 1982;
36. Hilary Beckles, Bussa: the 1816 Revolution in Barbados, Department of History, UWI and Barbados Museum and Historical Society, Barbados, 1998.
37. Owing to the ambiguity of the Colonial Office's constitutional agenda, these events are also known as the 'Federation Riots'. For accounts of these events, see Michael Craton, 'Continuity Not Change: the Incidence of Unrest among Ex-Slaves in the British West Indies, 1838-1876', in Caribbean Freedom: Society and Economy from Emancipation to the Present, ed. Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd, James Currey, London, 1993, pp. 192-206;
38. George Belle, 'The Abortive Revolution of 1876 in Barbados', in Caribbean Freedom, ed. Beckles and Shepherd, pp. 181-91.
39. For examples of this historiographic perspective, see Bruce Hamilton, Barbados and the Confederation Question, 1871-1885, Government of Barbados, London, 1956;
40. Claude Levy, Emancipation, Sugar and Federalism: Barbados and the West Indies, 1833-1876, University of Florida, Gainesville, 1980.
41. British Parliamentary Command Papers (C.) 1539, No. 64, p. 122, Pope Hennessy to Carnarvon, 11 March 1876;
42. C.1539, No. 8, pp. 140-1
43. Enclosure in Pope Hennessy to Carnarvon, 24 March 1876; Barbados House of Assembly, Memorial to Her Majesty the Queen relative to the conduct of His Excellency John Pope Hennessy, Governor of Barbados and certain members of the Executive Council, Bridgetown, 1876.
44. For example, Levy, Emancipation, Sugar and Federalism.
45. Examples of this interpretation include Belle, 'The Abortive Revolution'; Craton, 'Continuity Not Change'; Alana Johnson, 'The Abolition of Chattel Slavery in Barbados, 1833-1876', Unpublished Ph. D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1995.
46. O. Nigel Bolland, 'Systems of Domination after Slavery: the Control of Land and Labour in the British West Indies after 1838', in Caribbean Freedom, ed. Beckles and Shepherd, pp. 107-23, ref. on pp. 107-8.
47. Barbados Department of Archives, Barbados Blue Book of Statistics, R.1, Return of the Population; K.1, K.2, Political Franchise.
48. Craton, 'Continuity Not Change', ref. on p. 199;
49. O. Blouet, 'Education and Emancipation in Barbados, 1833-1846: a Study of Cultural Transference', Ethnic and Racial Studies 4:2, 1981, pp. 222-35.
50. Belle, 'The Abortive Revolution'.
51. Johnson, 'The Abolition of Chattel Slavery', p. 325.
52. C.1539, No. 10, p. 23, S. Freeling to Carnarvon, 24 July 1875;
53. C.1679, No. 17, p. 56, Enclosure in Pope Hennessy to Carnarvon, 11 July 1876.
54. C.1559, No. 62, pp. 158-9, Pope Hennessy to Carnarvon, 14 May 1876;
55. C.1539, No. 77, p. 139-40, Enclosure in Pope Hennessy to Carnarvon, 22 March 1876. For a discussion of Masters and Servants Acts, see Bolland, 'Systems of Domination after Slavery'.
56. Public Record Office (PRO), CO32/3, Barbados Government Gazette, No. 925, Copy of Pope Hennessy's 'Minute on Prison Discipline', 17 Feb. 1876.
57. PRO, CO321/9, Pope Hennessy to Carnarvon, 22 March 1876.
58. PRO, CO321/5, Annotation to Pope Hennessy to Carnarvon, 10 December 1875.
59. PRO, CO321/14, Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society to Carnarvon, 19 September 1876. For Pope Hennessy's correspondence with humanitarian organizations, see RHL, Anti-Slavery Papers, MSS British Empire, s.18, c.137/234-55. The Rhodes House collection only contains material from Pope Hennessy during his time in Hong Kong and Mauritius, which would suggest that his links to humanitarian organizations began to develop during his tenure in Barbados. The humanitarian interest in Pope Hennessy can perhaps be attributed to both his reformist governorship in Barbados and the fact that the mid 1870s saw efforts at terminating slavery in the British West African Settlements, where he had previously served and in which he remained interested. Of course, this suggests an even more complex 'translation' of slavery than this paper is able to explore.
60. C.1539, No. 77, pp. 139-40, Enclosure in Pope Hennessy to Carnarvon, 22 March 1876. See also letter from A Looker-On' to the Editor, The Times, 2 May 1876.
61. C.1539, No. 10, p. 23, Enclosure in S. Freeling to Carnarvon, 24 July 1875. This letter was sent by an anonymous white Barbadian to a leading supporter of Confederation, supposedly as a warning. This was at a time, in summer 1875, when it was the anti-Confederationists who were seeking to mobilize popular opinion against Colonial Office policy by spreading rumours that it would mean the return of slavery. During Pope Hennessy's governorship, of course, it was Confederation that came to be seen as a source of liberation from the continuing 'slavery' in Barbados. The significance of the letter is that it gives some sense of how slavery continued to impinge on popular politics in the mid 1870s, particularly the memory of the 1816 'Bussa's Rebellion'.
62. Hilary Beckles, 'Bussa and Nelson: Part 1', Sunday Sun, Bridgetown, Barbados, 9 July 2000, p. 9A;
63. 'Bussa and Nelson: Part 2', Sunday Sun, 16 July 2000, p. 8A.
64. Quoted in Beckles, 'Bussa and Nelson: Part 2'.
65. Greville Chester, Transatlantic Sketches in the West Indies, South America, Canada and the United States, Smith, Elder and Co., London, 1869, p. 95.
66. C.1539, No. 102, pp. 177-9, James Walker to Carnarvon, 22 April 1876.
67. For a discussion of the origins of the resonance of a Haitian 'race war', see D. Greggus, 'British Opinion and the Emergence of Haiti, 1791-1805', in Slavery and British Society, 1776-1846, ed. James Walvin, Macmillan, London, 1982, pp. 123-49.
68. On the link between events in Jamaica and Barbados, see PRO, PRO30/6/50, Carnarvon Papers, cutting, Pall Mall Gazette, 19 April 1876.
69. C.1539, No. 134, p. 204, Carnarvon to Pope Hennessy, 29 April 1876;
70. C.1559, No. 78, p. 187, Enclosure in Pope Hennessy to Carnarvon, 30 May 1876.
71. C.1539, No. 79, p. 141, Enclosure in Pope Hennessy to Carnarvon, 24 March 1876.
72. PRO, PRO30/6/85, Carnarvon Papers, Memorandum from Pope Hennessy, no date. See also Dumett, 'Pressure Groups'; Swaisland, Aborigines Protection Society'.
73. PRO, CO321/18, Enclosure in Thomas Daniel Hill to Carnarvon, 7 March 1877.
74. PRO, PRO30/6/50, Carnarvon Papers, Pall Mall Gazette, 19 April 1876.
75. For discussions of the translocal significance of Morant Bay, see Thomas Holt, The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832-1938, John Hopkins University Press, London, 1992;
76. Catherine Hall, 'Rethinking Imperial Histories: the Reform Act of 1867', New Left Review 208, 1994;
77. Catherine Hall, White, Male and Middle Class: Explorations in Feminism and History, Routledge, New York, 1988, pp. 255-95.
78. Pope Hennessy maintained a considerable correspondence with Disraeli during his gubernatorial career and with the Tories in power in 1876 he might have been able to secure a colonial promotion, despite the difficulties of his time in Barbados. Nevertheless, we have been unable to uncover specific historical evidence about the role of patronage in this instance. For correspondence between Pope Hennessy and Disraeli (1865-1874), see Bodleian Library, Special Collections and Western Manuscripts, Dep. Hughenden, 59/4. It is also worth noting that until the 'Confederation Riots', Pope Hennessy had a fairly good reputation within the Colonial Office, particularly for successfully overseeing the transference of Dutch settlements during his time in charge of the British West African Settlements. See Bodleian Library, Special Collections and Western Manuscripts, Ms. Eng. c.4107, Kimberley Letters, Earl of Kimberley to Pope Hennessy, 6 May 1872.
79. Quoted in Hammond and Hammond, James Stansfeld, p. 214.
80. PRO, CO129/189, H. K. 14124, Herbert briefing Michael Hicks Beach, 19 Nov. 1878. For reference to Pope Hennessy's 'mischievous intrigues', see CO129/179, despatch 172, 2 Feb. 1878.
81. The Times, 3 August 1882.
82. Swaisland, Aborigines Protection Society'. See, for example, RHL, MSS British Empire, Anti-Slavery Papers, s.18, c.137/234-255, Letters from Pope Hennessy to Frederick Chesson.
83. RHL, MSS British Empire, Anti-Slavery Papers, s.18, c.137/236, Pope Hennessy to Chesson, 1 April 1879.
84. RHL, MSS British Empire, Anti-Slavery Papers, s.18, c.137/240 and 241, Pope Hennessy to Chesson, 8 June 1884.
85. For general discussion of the mui tsai, see Maria Jaschok and Suzanne Miers, 'Women in the Chinese Patriarchal System: Submission, Servitude, Escape and Collusion', in Women and Chinese Patriarchy: Submission, Servitude and Escape, ed. Maria Jaschok and Suzanne Miers, Zed, London, 1994, pp. 1-24;
86. Norman Miners, 'The Abolition of the Mui Tsai System, 1925 to 1941', in Hong Kong Under Imperial Rule 1912-1941, ed. Norman Miners, Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1987, pp. 170-90;
87. Susan Pedersen, 'The Maternalist Moment in British Colonial Policy: the Controversy over "Child Slavery" in Hong Kong, 1917-1941', Past and Present 171, 2001, pp. 161-202.
88. See Philip Howell, 'Prostitution and Racialised Sexuality: the Regulation of Prostitution in Britain and the British Empire before the Contagious Diseases Acts', Environment and Planning D: Society & Space 18:3, 2000, pp. 321-39;
89. Philippa Levine, 'Modernity, Medicine, and Colonialism: the Contagious Diseases Ordinances in Hong Kong and the Straits Settlements', Positions 6:3, 1998, pp. 675-705;
90. Kerrie L. MacPherson, 'Caveat Emptor! Attempts to Control the Venereals in Nineteenth Century Hong Kong', in New Countries and Old Medicine, ed. Linda Bryder and Derek A. Dow, Auckland Medical History Society, Auckland, 1995, pp. 72-8.
91. PRO, CO129/205, HK 12623, Correspondence of Pope Hennessy, no date; Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Working of the Contagious Disease Ordinance, 1867, in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1879.
92. See also C.3093, 'Correspondence relating to the working of the Contagious Diseases Ordinances of the colony of Hong Kong'.
93. C.3185, 'Correspondence respecting the Alleged Existence of Chinese Slavery in Hong Kong', p. 5.
94. C.3185, 'Correspondence', pp. 234, 2, 6.
95. C.3185, 'Correspondence', p. 50.
96. C.3185, 'Correspondence', pp. 52, 53.
97. C.3185, 'Correspondence', p. 50, emphasis added. For discussion of the discourse of differentiation and the registers of racism
98. see Stuart Hall, 'The Multi-Cultural Question', in Un/settled Multiculturalisms: Diasporas, Entanglements, Disruptions, ed. Barnor Hesse, Zed, London, 2001, pp. 209-41.
99. C.3185, 'Correspondence', p. 109.
100. Elizabeth Sinn, 'Chinese Patriarchy and the Protection of Women in Nineteenth-Century Hong Kong', in Women and Chinese Patriarchy, ed. Jaschok and Miers, pp. 141-70
101. ref. on p. 146. See also Elizabeth Sinn, Power and Charity: the Early History of the Tung Wah Hospital, Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1989;
102. Anonymous, History of the Po Leung Kuk Hong Kong 1878-1968, Hong Kong, no date;
103. Henry James Lethbridge, 'The Evolution of a Chinese Voluntary Association in Hong Kong: the Po Leung Kuk, Journal of Oriental Studies 10:1, 1972, pp. 33-50.
104. Sinn, 'Chinese patriarchy', p. 148.
105. C.3185, 'Correspondence', pp. 4, 79, 82.
106. See Miners, Hong Kong under Imperial Rule
107. and Pedersen, 'Child Slavery', for the twentieth-century question.
108. C.3185, 'Correspondence', p. 81, Earl of Kimberley to Pope Hennessy, 29 Sept. 1880.
109. C.3185, 'Correspondence', p. 96.