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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Caribbean Commission

1949 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 166-166
Keyword(s):  
Dominican Republic ◽  
United Nations ◽  
West Indies ◽  
West Indian ◽  
The West ◽  
French West Indies ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The United Nations

The third session of the West Indian Conference opened at Guadeloupe, French West Indies on December 1, 1948 and closed on December 14, after considering policy to be followed by the Caribbean Commission for the next two years. The Conference was attended by two delegates from each of the fifteen territories within the jurisdiction of the commission and observers invited by the commission from Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and the United Nations and its specialized agencies.

Fetishism and the Moral Marketplace: How Abolitionist Sugar Boycotts in the 1790s Defined British Consumers and the West Indian "Other"

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Laurel Carmichael
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Class Consciousness ◽  
Direct Link ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
The West ◽  
The People

<p>In the early 1790s more than 300,000 Britons boycotted West Indian sugar in one of the most impressive displays of public mobilisation against the slave trade. Many of those who abstained were inspired by William Fox’s 1791 pamphlet An Address to the People of Great Britain on the Utility of Refraining from the Use of West India Sugar and Rum. The abstention movement gained momentum amidst the failures of the petition campaign to achieve a legislative end to the slave-trade, and placed the responsibility of ending slavery with all British consumers. This thesis draws from cross-disciplinary scholarship to argue that the campaign against slave sugar appealed to an idealised image of the humanitarian consumer and maligned slave. Writers such as Fox based their appeal on a sense of religious duty, class-consciousness and gendered values. Both the domestic sphere and the consumer body were transformed into sites of political activism, as abolitionists attempted to establish a direct link between the ingestion of sugar and the violence of colonial slavery. Attempts to encourage consumers’ sympathetic identification with the plight of distant slaves occurred alongside attempts to invoke horror and repulsion at slave suffering. The image of the West Indian slave presented to consumers was one shaped by fetishized European imaginings. The decision to abstain from slave sugar, therefore, was not only motivated by genuine philanthropic concerns, but the desire to protect the civilised and refined modern consumer, from the contaminating products of colonial barbarity.</p>

The high frequency P and S phases from the West Indies

1962 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 957-962
Author(s):  
D. H. Shurbet
Keyword(s):  
High Frequency ◽  
West Indies ◽  
West Indian ◽  
The West ◽  
Long Duration ◽  
Probable Presence ◽  
Minimum Velocity ◽  
Velocity Channel

abstract The long duration and high frequency of P and S phases from earthquakes along the West Indian island are are deseribed. These phases have been described previously in the literature without explanation. It is shown that the long duration, high frequency, and velocity of both phases can be explained as due to a minimum velocity channel slightly below the M-discontinuity. Other observations are shown to indicate the probable presence of the minimum velocity channel.

III. Fowell Buxton and the New African Policy, 1838–1842

1950 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
West Indian ◽  
The Gambia ◽  
Sugar Production ◽  
The West ◽  
British Caribbean ◽  
Long Run

‘The Black in the West Indies will.… receive his Emancipation at the expense of his Brethren in Africa.’ So the Lieutenant-Governor of the Gambia had forecast before the 1833 Act, and he was right, although for the wrong reasons. Emancipation cramped the sugar production of the British Caribbean, but it did not affect the sweet tooth of the sugar consumer, and as West Indian output fell, sugar production in Cuba and (less noticeably) in Brazil rose sharply. Outproduced, undersold and overcultivated, the West Indian plantations began to lag as competitors, a result inevitable in the long run, but accelerated by the freeing of the slaves.

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