Conclusion: Legacies

Smeathman dies in London from a ‘putrid fever’ in July 1786. The Committee for the Black Poor sully his posthumous reputation, possibly because of his support for a mixed-race constitution in Sierra Leone. They fail to see that Smeathman’s scheme for commercial agriculture, powered by the labour of redeemed slaves, presented a small step forward in recasting the relationship between forced labour and empire. Smeathman’s essay on the West African termite has many afterlives, especially in terms of its engravings, but the big book on Africa and the West Indies—his ‘Voyages and Travels’—is never published.

Antislavery

Smeathman arrives in the West Indies mid-1775, just as the American revolution begins. He makes numerous comparisons between tropical nature in its ‘rude’ (African) state and its ‘cultivated’ (West Indian) version, He also observes the various societies of the different islands and, appalled by the cruelty of plantation slavery, starts to reconsider Quaker Fothergill’s plans for ‘legitimate’ African commerce. The flogging of slaves in public places shocks him into sketching two of these scenes, one of which is particularly chilling because it is conducted by a white woman. Smeathman decides to return to England and compile his ‘Voyages and Travels’, a book which would reveal the truth about ‘those little known and much misrepresented people the Negroes’.

Prospects

Chapter 2 begins with the intellectual stimulus of Smeathman’s voyage through tropical waters to West Africa. His powers of close observation are exercised on creatures such as the polyp, an exemplary case of the plant-animal continuum which was so perplexing to naturalists. Upon arriving at the Isles de Los, Smeathman is affronted by the sights and sounds of slavery. Pity for the enslaved, especially the women nursing babies, is accompanied by admiration of the scale and efficiency of the slave trade’s organization. In comparison his fieldwork equipment looks puny to the slave traders who consider their ‘collections’ to be far more significant, and certainly more profitable.

Prodigal Returns

After nearly nine years’ absence Smeathman returns to London in late 1779. Since he sent his subscribers mainly insects from West Africa, they are unhappy with him, and he argues with Banks, now President of the Royal Society. Nevertheless Banks supports Smeathman in publishing his landmark essay on the West African termite in the Transactions of the Royal Society (1781). Smeathman also provides Drury with life histories of the African insects featured in volume 3 of his Illustrations of Natural History (1782). Other roles include working as an elocutionist, public lecturer, and British Museum guide. In 1783 he travels to Paris where he moves in Benjamin Franklin’s circle and participates in the craze for ballooning. Since he is finding it difficult to get sponsors to finance a return trip to West Africa, he hopes to make enough money for that purpose from his aeronautical experiments. He publishes his ideas for a mixed-race society of free planters entitled Plan of a Settlement to be made near Sierra Leona (1786), secures funding from the British Government and the Committee for the Black Poor, but dies on the eve of setting out.

Doldrums

Smeathman returns to the Bananas where, instead of collecting, he cultivates a large provision garden for the slave ships. His chief staples were Palma Christi, pepper, and Guinea rice but rice cultivation was James Cleveland’s preserve. Cleveland also objected to Smeathman’s attempts to intensify the women’s methods of growing and harvesting the rice. In the end Cleveland’s cattle destroy Smeathman’s garden. Broken in health, and dreading the oncoming wet season, Smeathman joins a fully slaved and leaky ship bound for the West Indies. As a passenger unconnected to the trade, Smeathman’s experience of the middle passage offers new perspectives and insights.

Currency

Since slaves are the chief currency on the coast, and the Banana islands were an important holding place prior to shipping, Smeathman starts trading in them, revealing in his letters the intertwining of natural history with the slave trade and the rise of racial science, the latter bolstered by Linnean classification. Most of this chapter is set on the slave factories of Bunce Island and the Isles de Los, where the Linnaean botanist Anders Berlin dies and where Smeathman further observes the ships’ captains, sailors and surgeons as they load their human cargoes. He also comments on the vicious guns-for-slaves cycle, composing a gothic set-piece on the horror of slavery, but including in this picture the trade’s orderly economy.

Introduction: Smeathmania

The Introduction describes the setting up of Smeathman’s collecting expedition in London in 1771, including details of his main sponsors, Dru Drury, Joseph Banks, and the Quaker physician John Fothergill. The recent and celebrated return of the Endeavour, laden with exotic naturalia, provided a dramatic instance of what a well-equipped expedition to unknown parts might achieve. The presence of Smeathman’s archive in Uppsala, Sweden, indicates his importance as one of Linnaeus’ lesser known disciples. His journals, plus his Shandyesque letters to friends and sponsors, are testimony to the collaborative dimension of knowledge-making in this period, rivalling in importance the insects, plants, and shells he sent home to Liverpool and London.

Metamorphosis

Chapter 1 explores how the natural history discourses of taxonomy and classification are linked to the discourses of human improvement, social rank, and order. Smeathman’s early years in Scarborough are recounted, together with his entry into the world of gentlemen collectors in London, presided over by Dru Drury. The uncertain meaning and status of natural history is discussed by way of the collectors’ rivalry and the many satires of Banks. Did science legitimize empire, or was it the other way around? And what is the link between collecting and territorial conquest? Finally, the popularity of travel books meant that Smeathman must protect his chief investment—the narrative of his tropical adventures.

Residence

Smeathman arrives at the Banana Islands and meets the Clevelands and Corkers, powerful mulatto chiefs. He describes various aspects of African life, from cures for exotic tropical diseases to African oratory and the Poro, West Africa’s secret society. He is inducted by the Clevelands to the landlord–stranger relationship, part of which involves him gifting to James Cleveland a fancy toy from London, an electrical machine. He establishes a reputation as a good doctor, visits the Plantains and the Sherbro, including Corker Town, the Kamaranka river, and Sherbro Island.

Housekeeping

Linnaeus considered prudent domestic management an essential part of natural history business. This chapter documents Smeathman’s survival tips for the tropics, including ‘going native’ and adhering to a native diet. But despite this, and his strategy of marrying in several times to the local trading dynasties, he failed to thrive domestically. Frustrated at being obliged to engage with local labour on African terms, and complaining constantly of the obstacles impeding his fieldwork, his achievements were nevertheless deeply indebted to local people. From his letters we see how his collecting activities were regarded, especially by the women in his household who mocked him and refused to obey his orders. At home, Drury convinces the Duchess of Portland to subscribe £100 to Smeathman’s expedition.