"Dread of insurrection": Abolitionism, security, and labor in Britain's West Indian Colonies, 1760-1823

William and Mary Quarterly

Volumn 66, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 757-780

  Fergus, Claudius ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES   (Trinidad and Tobago)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 77949822662     PISSN: 00435597     EISSN: 1933-769     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (89)

1. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1972), 323 ("seasoning")
2. Eric Williams, The British West Indies at Westminster, 1789-1823: Extracts from the Debates in Parliament (1954; repr., Westport, Conn., 1970), 19 ("true feelings of men")
3. For planters' focus on ameliorating women's conditions, see J. R. Ward, British West Indian Slavery, 1750-1834: The Process of Amelioration (New York, 1988), 156
4. David Brion Davis added the corollary that amelioration was intended to increase the security of the colonies. See Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, N.Y., 1966), 397
5. On the economic value of the colonial economy (including labor) to British consumers and the Exchequer, see James Ramsay, An Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies (London, 1784), 106-7
6. Most of this capital was owned by metropolitan mortgage houses. For Lord Penrhyn's 1789 speech appealing for prudence on any new official policy on the slave trade, see The Speeches . . . on a Motion for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, in the House of Commons, May the 12th, 1789 (London, 1789), 27
7. Edward Long, The History of Jamaica; Or, General Survey of the Antient and Modern State of that Island (London, 1774), 2: 444 (quotations)
8. For a discussion of Jamaica's Maroon wars and attendant treaties, see Mavis C. Campbell, The Maroons of Jamaica, 1665-1796: A History of Resistance, Collaboration and Betrayal (Granby, Mass., 1988), 154, 156
9. For an anthropological perspective drawing heavily on Maroon oral tradition, see Werner Zips, Black Rebels: African-Caribbean Freedom Fighters in Jamaica, trans. Shelly L. Frisch (Kingston, Jamaica, 1999), 62-63
10. For a discussion on ongoing insurgency after Tacky's War, see James Robertson, "Tacky Plus 5? The Slave Uprising in St. Mary's in 1765: The Experience and the Imagination of a Slave Revolt in Jamaica" (paper presented to the 39th meeting of the Association of Caribbean Historians, Kingston, Jamaica, May 2007)
11. See also Campbell, Maroons of Jamaica, 155
12. For accounts of the 1760 uprising, see Long, History of Jamaica, 2: 440-68
13. Richard Hart, Slaves Who Abolished Slavery, vol. 2, Blacks in Rebellion (1985; repr., Kingston, Jamaica, 2002), 151-52
14. The African as natural enemy resonated with many abolitionists. To James Ramsay, "Master and slave are in every respect opposite terms; the persons to whom they are applied are natural enemies to each other." See Ramsay, Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves, 173
15. Henry Brougham's articulation of this image was more poignant: "The negroes ... are the enemy most to be dreaded in America by all Europeans; they are the natural foes of those white men who are distinguished from them by indelible marks in body, and by marks almost indelible in mind." See Brougham, An Inquiry into the Colonial Policy of the European Powers (Edinburgh, 1803), 2: 301
16. The statement is repeated in Opinions of Henry Brougham, Esq. on Negro Slavery: With Remarks (London, 1826)
17. For William Pitt's use of internal "security," see Williams, British West Indies at Westminster, 23
18. For Wilberforce's reference to "internal tranquility," see House of Commons, May 30, 1804, Parliamentary Debates, 2: col. 455
19. For a projection of multifaceted materialist objectives of amelioration, see Davis, Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 397
20. For an overview of the concept of "creole," see Franklin W. Knight, "Pluralism, Creolization and Culture," in General History of the Caribbean, ed. Knight (London, 1997), 271-86, esp. 271-75
21. Roger Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760-1810 (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1975), 387 ("less than compelling")
22. Seymour Drescher, "The Limits of Example," in The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, ed. David P. Geggus (Columbia, S.C., 2001), 10-14, S.C. 10-12 ("motion for abolition," 12)
23. Robin Blackburn, "Haiti, Slavery, and the Age of the Democratic Revolution," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 63, no. 4 (October 2006): 643-74 ("failure of all attempts," 673)
24. Rejection of the security factor in abolition was equally strong among early advocates of economic determinism. To C. L. R. James, British parliamentarians discussed colonial security merely "to keep the people quiet." See James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, id rev. ed. (New York, 1963), 135 (quotation), 132-33
25. Eric Williams echoed that refrain. See Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1944). 147
26. For David Brion Davis's qualified concurrence with Drescher and Anstey on the nexus between British policymakers' fear of Haiti and abolition, see Davis, "The Impact of the French and Haitian Revolutions," in Geggus, Impact of the Haitian Revolution, 3-9
27. Even historians who discount the moral factor in abolition acknowledge the indispensable role of metropolitan abolition societies and the masses in politicizing the abolition of Britain's Atlantic slave trade after 1787. As Eric Williams recognized, to disregard the abolition movement is "to ignore one of the greatest propaganda movements of all times." See Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, 178
28. More than mere propaganda, the movement was a new venture into the making of the British public sphere. As Seymour Drescher has demonstrated, "It was British public opinion that launched the great 'takeoff of abolitionism in the winter of 1787-88." See Drescher, "Paradigms Tossed: Capitalism and the Political Sources of Abolition," in British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery: The Legacy of Eric Williams, ed. Barbara L. Solow and Stanley L. Engerman (New York, 1987), 191-208 (quotation, 200)
29. Since his seminal Econocide, Drescher has remained the cornerstone of modern scholarship on philanthropy in abolition. See Drescher, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Pittsburgh, Pa., 1977)
30. George Canning, "On the Cultivation of the Island of Trinidad, May 27, 1802," in R. Therry, ed., The Speeches of the Right Honourable George Canning. With a Memoir of His Life (London, 1828), 2: 31
31. "warriors in Afric," 2: 442
32. impatient spirit," 2: 444), 432, 436-37
33. In support of Edward Long's influence, see Anthony J. Barker, The African Link: British Attitudes to the Negro in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1550-1870 (London, 1978), 41
34. To Peter Fryer, the History of Jamaica was "the pivotal book in the turn to pseudo-scientific racism." See Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London, 1984), 165
35. For a broader discussion on health and mortality rates, see Richard B. Sheridan, "Crisis of Slave Subsistence in the British West Indies during and after the American Revolution," WMQ 33, no. 4 (October 1976): 615-41
36. Sheridan, Doctors and Slaves: A Medical and Demographic History of Slavery in the British West Indies, 1680-1834 (New York, 1985)
37. See also Dave Gosse, "Health Conditions on Selected Plantations in Jamaica in the Early Nineteenth Century," Journal of Caribbean History 40, no. 2 (2006): 215-34
38. Jerome S. Handler, "Diseases and Medical Disabilities of Enslaved Barbadians, from the Seventeenth Century to around 1838," Journal of Caribbean History 40, nos. 1-2 (2006): 1-38, 177-214
39. For Ramsay's analysis of the economics of amelioration, see Ramsay, Objections to the Abolition of the Slave Trade, with Answers (London, 1788), 22
40. In essence, Ramsay was appealing for a more progressive capitalist approach to sugar planting. He promoted the maximization of profits: "Though slaves be now raised to a price that few old settled plantations can afford to give, yet this is all the care taken in most of them to raise a young generation." See Ramsay, Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves, 89 (quotation). For Ramsay as mentor to William Wilberforce on the economics of amelioration, see Ramsay to Wilberforce, Nov. 24, 1787, in Wilberforce MSS, d.14, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Eng., 148-48v
41. W. Major to William Wilberforce, Feb. 20, 1792, "Correspondence with George III, 1791-1805," Melville Papers Vol. 1, in British Library, Additional Manuscripts 40100, fol. 23v (quotation)
42. [London] Morning Post and Fashionable World, Feb. 21, 1794, 3 (quotation)
43. James, Black Jacobins, 135
44. For preinvasion negotiations between Saint Domingue royalists and the British, see Vernault de Charmilly to Robert Hobart, Oct. 16, 1802, War Office 1/73, fols. 396-97, British National Archives, Kew, Eng. For an overview of the eastern Caribbean situation, see Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2004), 230
45. "Minutes of the House of the Assembly of Dominica," Dec. 10, 1794, Colonial Office 71/27, British National Archives
46. Michael Craton, Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies (Ithaca, N.Y., 1982), 190 ("Black Caribs"), 189 ("Grenada")
47. "Minutes of Council," Sept. 21, 1795, CO 1/84, British National Archives
48. Dubois, Colony of Citizens, 227 ("soldiers")
49. "Copy of contract signed by S. Chollet and C. Cuyler enclosed in Dundas to Cuyler," Jan. 18, 1798, WO 1/86, fol. 619, ibid. ("prime new slaves")
50. "Head of Instructions to General Hunter," Jan. 26, 1797, WO 1/86, fol. 259, ibid. ("picking"). Within two years of the first levy of black conscripts in 1794, Africans constituted seven-eighths of the British army and noncommissioned officers in the Caribbean and one-third of its commissioned officers. For civil and military authorities' instructions to recruiting agents, see William Bentinck, 2d Duke of Portland, to Major-General Gordon Forbes, Aug. 25, 1795, CO 140/84, British National Archives. On attention to the youth and physical fitness of recruits, see General Cornelius Cuyler to Henry Dundas, Apr. 4, 1798, WO 1/86, fol. 671, ibid
51. For details of the 1792 parliamentary pledges to gradually abolish the slave trade, see Sheila Lambert, ed., House of Commons Sessional Papers of the Eighteenth Century (Wilmington, Del., 1975), 82: 305-13. For sources of recruits, see John Vaughan to Edward Bryan, Mar. 15, 1795, CO 152/77, fol. 94, British National Archives; S. Chollet to Cornelius Cuyler, Mar. 21, 1798, WO 1/86, fol. 627, ibid.; Cuyler to Dundas, Mar. 29, 1798, WO 1/86, fols. 631-33, ibid. For plans to purchase from the African coast, see Ralph Abercromby to Dundas, Mar. 28, 1796, WO 1/85, fol. 297, ibid
52. For a critical review of British casualties in the Saint Domingue campaign, see David Geggus, "Yellow Fever in the 1790s: The British Army in Occupied Saint Domingue," Medical History 23, no. 1 (January 1979): 38-58, esp. 48
53. For the latest revised estimates of British casualties, see Davis, "Impact of French and Haitian Revolutions," 3-9, esp. 6
54. Robin Blackburn alleges that British casualties in the Caribbean were greater than those in Europe. See Blackburn, WMQ 63: 647. For the War Ministry's growing concern over the rising cost of the Saint Domingue occupation, see Henry Dundas to Gordon Forbes, May 6, 1796, WO 6/6, fol. 55, British National Archives; Dundas to Forbes, July 9, 1796, WO 6/6, fol. 61, ibid.; John Graves Simcoe to Dundas, May 8, 1797, WO 6/6, fols. 130v-31
55. For a carryover of abolitionists' concerns over the huge cost of the British campaign in the Caribbean a full decade after its conclusion, see James Stephen, England Enslaved by Her Own Slave Colonies: An Address to the Electors and People of the United Kingdom (London, 1826), 50
56. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1975), 441 ("Trinidad Question"); Thomas Picton to Henry Dundas, July 30, 1799, in Letter Book of Colonel Thomas Picton 1799, BL Add. MS. 36870, letter 35 ("Island")
57. The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803 (London, 1820), 36: col. 865
58. William Wilberforce and James Stephen contended that as early as 1800 the newly conquered colonies were already accounting for three-fourths of Britain's slave trade. See Stephen, The Crisis of the Sugar Colonies; Or, An Enquiry into the Objects and Probable Effects of the French Expedition to the West Indies; and their Connection with the Colonial Interests of the British Empire. To which are Subjoined Sketches of a Plan for Settling the Vacant Lands of Trinidada (London, 1802), 158
59. Anstey, Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 333
60. Henry Brougham rejected this claim, arguing for no more than 25 percent. See Brougham, Inquiry into the Colonial Policy, 1: 533
61. For estimates on slave imports to Trinidad from 1798 to 1808, see Cecil Ashton Goodridge, "Land Labour and Immigration into Trinidad, 1783-1833" (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 1969), 113
62. For support of lower imports, see Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, Wis., 1969), 71
63. Peter Dixon, Canning: Politician and Statesman (London, 1976), 30 ("closely concerned")
64. Stephen, Crisis of the Sugar Colonies, 158 ("conquered Colonies"). In 1797 the leading spokesman for the West India interest, Charles Ellis, successfully moved for amelioration in lieu of abolition. Amelioration would be the solution for the evil of population decline and the formula for effecting the gradual abolition of the slave trade. The motion gave the West India interest a major political victory over those advocating abolition of the slave trade
65. Parliamentary History of England, 36: cols. 854-82 (quotation, 36: col. 870)
66. The Parliamentary Debates: Forming a Continuation of the Work Entitled "The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803," new ser. (London, 1826), 14: col. 974 ("influence of this religion"), 15: col. 1357 ("abstract proposition"), 15: col. 1361
67. Brougham, Inquiry into the Colonial Policy, 2: 451 ("new- modelling"), 1: 468 ("disproportionate")
68. William Paley to William Wilberforce, Feb. 1, 1788, in Wilberforce MSS, 14v, 103
69. Parliamentary History of England, 33: col. 276 ("justice and humanity"), col. 278 ("By persisting")
70. Michael Duffy, "The French Revolution and British Attitudes to the West Indian Colonies," in A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean, ed. David Barry Gaspar and David Patrick Geggus (Bloomington, Ind., 1997), 78-101 ("was a theme," 93). William Wilberforce had prefaced his speech with the abject submission, "As the plea of justice and humanity had been so often urged upon this subject, and urged in vain, he was afraid it was hopeless."
71. For a variant of this quotation, Michael Duffy, A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean, ibid., 93
72. Cobbett's Parliamentary Debates, during the Second Session of the Second Parliament (London, 1804), 2: col. 455 (quotation)
73. Wilberforce's understanding of humanity was consistent with the prevailing view that it was an elitist sentiment. To Adam Smith, "The amiable virtue of humanity, requires, surely, a sensibility much beyond what is possessed by the rude vulgar of mankind." See Smith, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," in Essays . . . by Adam Smith (1759; repr., London, 1869), 24
74. On Wilberforce's apprehension of a race war in the British colonies, see Cobbett's Parliamentary Debates, 2: cols. 446, 457
75. Cobbett's Parliamentary Debates, 8: col. 661 ("Was it a theory"), col. 660 ("so far from the abolition"), col. 702 ("justice and humanity"), col. 954
76. Charles James Fox, The Speech of the Rt. Hon. Chas. James Fox, in the House of Commons, June 10th, 1806. On a Motion Preparatory to the Introduction of a Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (Newcastle, Eng., 1824), 7 ("these islands")
77. Parliamentary History of England, 31: cols. 1345-1413 ("I have compared," 31: col. 1351); James Stephen to William Wilberforce, June 24, 1796, in Wilberforce MSS, 15v, 55v ("very good authority"); Henry Dundas to General Cornelius Cuyler, Jan. 18, 1798, WO 1/86, fol. 523, British National Archives ("circumstances")
78. [London] Morning Post and Fashionable World, Jan. 9, 1795, [2] ("Paper of the People")
79. Robert Hobart to Thomas Picton, July 18, 1802, CO 296/4, fols. 27v-28, British National Archives; Hobart to Commission, Oct. 16, 1802, CO 296/4, enclosure no. 20, fol. 72, ibid.; Hobart to Commission, Oct. 16, 1802, CO 296/4, enclosure no. 20, fol. 70, ibid. Convicts were to be transported with their families with land granted to them on a reduced scale
80. See James Millette, The Genesis of Crown Colony Government: Trinidad, 1783-1810 (Curepe, Trinidad, 1970), 134-35. On Trinidad's governor's response to the challenge of the creole colonization project, see Hobart to Picton, July 18, 1802, CO 296/4, fol. 28v, British National Archives
81. William Layman, Outline of a Plan for the Better Cultivation, Security and Defense of the British West Indies (London, 1807), iii-iv ("was induced to take"), iv ("providing an effectual substitute"); "Memorandum," 1803, Board of Trade 6/70, British National Archives ("spread themselves"); Colonial Department to Kenneth Mācqueen (Most Secret), Apr. 21, 1803, ibid. ("Events"). On the broader economic and strategic objectives of Chinese immigration, see "Remarks on Mr. Farquhar's Observations of Settling Chinese . . . ," Board of Trade 6/70, British National Archives
82. Joseph Foster Barham, "Plan for the Establishing a Chinese Colony in Jamaica," enclosed in Barham to William Wyndham, Aug. 28, 1806, BT 6/70 ("remote influence")
83. Ward, British West Indian Slavery, 52 ("Mesopotamia"), 92, 214
84. For the support of family-sized farms for cultivating nontraditional crops, see the opinion of John Sanderson, contemporary political activist resident in Trinidad, in [Sanderson], Emancipation in Disguise; Or, The True Crisis of the Colonies . . . (London, 1807), 177
85. On Britain's reneging on promises of land and freedom to enslaved soldiers for loyal and dedicated military service, see Ralph Woodford to Henry Bathurst, 2d Earl Bathurst, Oct. 3, 1814, CO 295/37, British National Archives. The discharged soldiers became major suppliers of rice and plantains to locally based military units. The legal status of Africans conscripted by purchase was the subject of divergent legal opinions of British Crown lawyers from the late 1790s. See Roger Norman Buckley, Slaves in Red Coats: The British West India Regiments, 1795-1815 (New Haven, Conn., 1979), 63-81
86. See Dale H. Porter, The Abolition of the Slave Trade in England, 1784-1807 (Hamden, Conn., 1970)
87. The premier study for this period remains Anstey, Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition. Folarin Shyllon claimed his work as the first to restore James Ramsay's position as one of three abolitionists most deserving of the sobriquet "Saints" (the others being Grenville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson). See Shyllon, James Ramsay: The Unknown Abolitionist (Edinburgh, 1977), viii
88. Though Howard Temperley deals mainly with antislavery in the postemancipation period, his first chapter trumpets the success of British humanitarianism in the abolition of slavery in England, the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, and the abolition of colonial slavery. See Temperley, British Antislavery, 1833-1870 (Columbia, S.C., 1972)
89. This idea is a modification of David Eltis's advice that scholarly issues ought not to be left prima facie only. See Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge, 2000), 265