Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
P. J. Marshall
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Management

Burke’s involvement with the West Indies has attracted little attention. Yet it is a topic that throws important light on his views on the British Empire as a whole and on his work as a political ‘man of business’, as well as raising questions about the extent of his humanitarian sympathies, in this case for enslaved Africans. Burke could be a fierce critic of imperial abuses, but he had high ideals for what the empire ought to be and was willing to take a full part both in shaping policy for the empire and in seeking imperial opportunities for advancement for his family and friends. The Introduction outlines the development of Burke’s concern for the West Indies from the pursuit of personal advantage for his connections, to the political management of West Indian interests, and ultimately to participating in the great public debate on slavery and the slave trade.

Edmund Burke and the British Empire in the West Indies

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. Marshall
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Political Connection ◽  
The West ◽  
Plantation Economy ◽  
Comprehensive Plan ◽  
Important Addition ◽  
Personal Level

In the later eighteenth century the West Indian sugar islands were a source of conspicuous wealth for some individuals and an important addition to the resources of Great Britain. They were generally reckoned to be the most valuable of Britain’s imperial possessions, a view which Burke fully endorsed. This book examines his long involvement with the West Indies, at a personal level through the ambitions of his brother and some of his closest friends, as a politician and what contemporaries called ‘a man of business’ in the management of a great national asset and in trying to win the support of powerful West Indian interests for his political connection. He became a participant in debates about the ethics of enslavement and the slave trade. Burke deplored both slavery and the trade, but he recognized that the plantation economy of the West Indies depended on them and that therefore they played a crucial role in Britain’s immensely valuable Atlantic commerce. The policies that he advocated for the further development of the West Indian and African trades inevitably involved more enslaved Africans in the British Empire and on occasions he was drawn into implicitly endorsing the slave trade. Except for a few years from 1788 to 1791, Burke was not prepared to countenance immediate abolition of the trade, but he did devise a comprehensive plan for reforming both it and the institution of slavery, that in the very long term would make both redundant.

The Origins of the Commission System in the West India Trade The Alexander Prize Essay

1952 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 89-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. G. Davies
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
West Indian ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
Direct Administration ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
The Government ◽  
Prize Essay

The half-century which followed the capture of Jamaica in 1655 was characterized by the consolidation rather than by the expansion of the English interest in the West Indies. In the political sphere this consolidation took several forms. The acquisition of Jamaica, by far the largest English West Indian colony, and the termination of proprietary rule in, the Caribee Islands in 1663 brought the greater part of the English West Indian empire under the direct administration of the Crown. As a corollary to this extension of Crown rule, the creation of effective institutions for the government of these and other colonies became a matter of urgent necessity. After a series of experiments in the decade following the Restoration, the constitution in 1672 of the Council of Trade and Plantations inaugurated 'a more thorough system of colonial control than had been established by any of its predecessors'. The sum effect of these developments was that London became, in a way that it had never been before, the place where all the major decisions affecting the destinies of the West Indies were taken. From London there issued not only Crown-appointed governors and a stream of Orders-in-Council, but also declarations of the King's pleasure on such minor questions as appointments to colonial judgeships and seats in colonial councils.1 To London there flowed, besides acts of colonial legislatures for approval or rejection, a torrent of complaints and petitions for redress.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 223-234
Author(s):  
P. J. Marshall
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
West Indian ◽  
The West ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
National Importance

The Conclusion restates the narrative theme of the book in briefly tracing the growth of Burke’s involvement with the West Indies through the private interests of his close connections, to making policy on an issue of great national importance, and finally to Burke’s defining of his views on slavery and the slave trade through his Negro Code and his participation in the abolition debates of the late 1780s and early 1790s. It explores his views on these issues further through a brief comparison of his attitude to abuses being perpetrated in India. For a number of reasons Burke’s crusades on India were less inhibited than was his campaign for reform of slavery and the slave trade. The chapter concludes that Burke’s concern for the value of the West Indian asset to Britain and his inability to feel the same intensity of sympathy for the plight of Africans that he did for Indians account for his willingness to make practical compromises with slavery and the slave trade, even though he regarded both as morally indefensible.

Bryan Edwards, F.R.S., 1743-1800

2000 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-222
Author(s):  
Olwyn M. Blouet
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
New World ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
West Indian ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
World Environment ◽  
Member Of Parliament

Bryan Edwards was a Jamaican planter and politician who published a well–respected History of the West Indies in 1793. He articulated the planter view concerning the value of the West Indian colonies to Great Britain, and opposed the abolition of the slave trade. Edwards disputed European scientific speculation that the ‘New World’ environment retarded nature, although his scientific interests have largely gone unnoticed. Elected a Fellow of The Royal Society in 1794, he became a Member of Parliament in 1796, and wrote a History of Haiti in the following year. As Secretary of the African Association, Edwards edited the African travel journals of Mungo Park.

Introduction

Almost Home ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruma Chopra
Keyword(s):  
Nova Scotia ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
British Empire ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
The West ◽  
Circuitous Route ◽  
Nova Scotian

This chapter sets the context for the Maroon relocations to Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone. It describes the reconfiguration of the British Empire in the aftermath of the American Revolution, and the importance the British placed on colonizing under-populated zones with loyal subjects. It explores the importance of laborers and settlers—voluntary and involuntary, white and black—for the security of faraway settlements. Second, it examines how the growing abolition movement in England affected the West Indies and shaped utopian visions for Sierra Leone. Last, it explores how the Maroons survived slavery, and benefited from abolitionism and an expanding British Empire. Three successive ex-slave migrations – of the London poor in 1787, of the Nova Scotian loyalists in 1792, and of the Jamaican Maroons in 1800 –established British claims in West Africa. This work describes the circuitous route taken by the last group of free blacks who entered West Africa before the end of the slave trade in 1807.

Abolition, Revolution, and Renewed War

2019 ◽  
pp. 202-222
Author(s):  
P. J. Marshall
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Public Support ◽  
West Indian ◽  
The West ◽  
French West Indies ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Financial Difficulties

After 1783 and the presentation of a Quaker petition to Parliament, a highly organized campaign for the immediate abolition of the slave trade gained strong public support. Until 1788, Buke seems to have maintained his preference for the comprehensive reforms over a long period that he had outlined in his Negro Code. In the parliamentary debates from 1788 to 1791, however, he openly sided with immediate abolition. Thereafter, evidently concerned by the extent to which abolition of the slave trade was coming to be identified with other radical reforms, which he deplored, and perhaps concerned at the prospect that revolutionary upheavals in the French West Indies would spread to the British islands, he reverted to being an advocate of gradual reform. He submitted his Code to ministers in 1792 and it was later taken up by those who were looking for an alternative to abolition. By then, the West Indies were taking a lower place than the threat of Revolutionary France in Burke’s calculations. In previous wars he had pressed for British resources to be sent to the West Indies. Now he regarded West Indian campaigns as a diversion from the European war. At the very end of his life, however, the resources of the West Indies helped to relieve his acute financial difficulties. He was awarded a crown pension on funds derived from West Indian duties.

Mutinies and Ethnicity

2021 ◽  
pp. 214-307
Author(s):  
Keith Grint
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Military Establishment ◽  
The West ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Foreign Labour ◽  
Contemporary Situation ◽  
The Military

The complexity of the causes of mutinies are captured in this chapter that focuses upon the role of ethnicity. Starting with the British West India Regiment in 1801, we examine the importance of the slave trade in supporting the recruitment to the British Army in the West Indies and consider how the ‘alternatives’ of slavery or forced recruitment are not regarded as alternatives by many ex-slaves. The chapter then moves on to the largest event to rock the early British Empire, the ‘mutiny’ or ‘1st War of Independence’ in India between 1857 and 1858. The nomenclature is a signal of the meaning of the events for different actors involved, and this ambiguity runs into the Curragh ‘Incident’ that has all the hallmarks of a mutiny, except it is staged by the military establishment not by the military subordinates. And if the British thought 1858 was the last time they would see Indian soldiers or sailors mutinying against them, they were wrong: in Singapore in 1915 and then in the Royal India Navy in 1946, the British Empire is forced to look at itself—but chooses not to. Finally, we consider the way British Foreign Labour Battalions were treated in France, compared to the treatment meted out to domestic units, and then consider the role of racism in the Port Chicago mutiny of 1944 which has echoes of the contemporary situation in the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.

“The place I had long desired exceedingly to see…”: Olaudah Equiano’s England

2020 ◽  
pp. 13-19
Author(s):  
Gleb V. Aleksandrov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
Olaudah Equiano ◽  
The West ◽  
African Heritage ◽  
Abolitionist Movement ◽  
European Culture

The essay examines the image of England in the The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, the autobiography of a former slave and a key figure of the early abolitionist movement. After being captured and enslaved in his early teenage years, Equiano was intimately familiar with both the life of slaves in the West Indies and in America, and the life of common Englishmen, as well as the life of wealthy and educated gentry. Equiano's book is undoubtedly rooted in the European literary tradition, but the author nevertheless attempted to maintain a connection with his African heritage, and his attitude towards European culture is to a certain degree that of an outsider. The issue of Equiano's complex identity, as well as his influence on the abolitionist movement has been thoroughly exam-ined and researched, but one aspect that remains consistently underrepresented is the imperial element. Equiano lived at the time when the idea of empire was already fairly articulated, and, while hailing from the “Black Atlantic” community, Equiano certainly was familiar with the British Empire and its institutions (which partially overlap with the Black Atlantic, but neither was the Black Atlantic com-munity completely within the British Empire, nor was the imperial experience limited to the Atlantic slave trade). Therefore, when addressing Equiano's iden-tity, it may be productive to examine its imperial element, as well as its African, European, and American components. This essay explores the image of England in Equiano's autobiography, including its imperial context, and Equiano's attitudes towards the Empire in general.

scholarly journals West Indian Literature and Federation: Imaginative Accord and Uneven Realities

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-86
Author(s):  
Alison Donnell
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
Community Building ◽  
West Indian ◽  
The Political ◽  
Indian Literature ◽  
Political Consciousness ◽  
The West ◽  
Literary Expression ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Economic Markets

This essay explores the particular importance conferred on literary expression within a wide range of writings dedicated to understanding and responding to the project of the West Indies Federation. Although federation was conceived, and briefly achieved, as a political expression of community building and people making, the consistent practice of referencing and invoking literary works across these writings reveals the project’s central and necessary investment in the reimagination of identities and belongings. Yet while the literary expression of a West Indian sensibility helped to articulate the political consciousness necessary for change, it could not finally overcome the sources of tension in the region. Importantly, too, the same West Indian writers who symbolized the collective belonging to the region, so cherished by federation, were themselves embroiled in the discordant realities of economic markets and measures and caught between national and international belongings.

THE (SLAVE) NARRATIVE OF JANE EYRE

2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Sun-Joo Lee
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Jane Eyre ◽  
Slave Narrative ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
The West ◽  
American Slavery ◽  
Indian Slavery ◽  
At Home

InImperialism at Home, Susan Meyer explores Charlotte Brontë's metaphorical use of race and empire in Jane Eyre. In particular, she is struck by Brontë's repeated allusions to bondage and slavery and wonders, “Why would Brontë write a novel permeated with the imagery of slavery, and suggesting the possibility of a slave uprising, in 1846, after the emancipation of the British slaves had already taken place?” (71). Meyer speculates, “Perhaps the eight years since emancipation provided enough historical distance for Brontë to make a serious and public, although implicit, critique of British slavery and British imperialism in the West Indies” (71). Perhaps. More likely, I would argue, is the possibility that Brontë was thinking not of West Indian slavery, but of American slavery.

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