The Making of the Free Ports Act

Burke became involved with West Indian issues at the very beginning of his political career. The brief Rockingham administration of 1765–6 was committed to measures to improve flows of trade around the British Atlantic, of which the West Indies was a crucial component. As the prime minister’s secretary, Burke was deeply involved in these measures. The main problem which they sought to remedy was the inability of the British West Indies to produce commodities needed in other parts of the Atlantic in sufficient quantities. These commodities were principally sugar and raw cotton for Britain and molasses for British North America. The remedy chosen was to allow foreign supplies of these commodities to enter the British system through what were called free ports in two British islands—Dominica and Jamaica. Burke was particularly influential in the provisions of the act relating to Dominica, whose ports were intended to draw in produce, especially raw cotton, from French islands that the British had occupied during the war. In return, they would export British manufactures and slaves to foreign colonies. Getting the act through Parliament required the careful balancing of interests, notably those of the North American colonies and of the West Indies. Burke was in the thick of these negotiations, forming many contacts with merchants. The act, by letting in foreign produce to British islands, marked a significant breach in the hitherto sacrosanct doctrine of imperial self-sufficiency.

Conclusion

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.

William Burke and Guadeloupe

William Burke gained the very desirable office of Secretary in the new regime established in the French island of Guadeloupe after the British conquest of 1758. The autonomy guaranteed to the French population under the terms of Guadeloupe’s surrender, however, limited the pecuniary advantages which he could obtain there. For much of his tenure he was in Britain, where he orchestrated a vigorous campaign for Guadeloupe to be turned into a permanent British colony. In his pamphlets, William, assisted by Edmund, argued cogently for greater value to be attached to gains in the Caribbean than to territorial aggrandizement on the North American continent. He was opposed by Benjamin Franklin among others. Whatever their merits, William’s arguments could not overturn long-established strategic priorities, in which new acquisitions in the West Indies did not feature highly. Guadeloupe went back to France in 1763 and William lost his office.

The Negro Code

What came to be known as Burke’s ‘Negro Code’ was a draft for an act of Parliament, whose aim was to put an end over a long period to ‘all traffic in the persons of men’ and to the holding of them in ‘a state of slavery’. The measures to bring this about were comprehensive and detailed. ‘Civilization and improvement’ were to be spread in Africa by the exertion of British influence, so that other forms of trade would replace slaving. Improved conditions for the slaves were to be imposed in the West Indies, so that the enslaved population would reproduce itself and there would be no need to import new slaves. By religious instruction, the cultivation of family life, and the acquisition of property rights, the enslaved were to be gradually prepared to become a free labour force. Underlying this very ambitious programme were assumptions about the backwardness of Africa on the universal scale of human progress, which necessitated outside influence for it to develop beyond the barbarism of enslaving its people, and about the degradation of the slave populations, which meant they would not be fit for freedom for a very long time. Probably drafted in 1780, Burke’s Code was almost immediately overtaken by the mass popular movement to abolish the slave trade.

The Working of the Slave Trade

The slave trade was an essential link in Britain’s system of Atlantic trade. As an MP who specialized in commercial questions, although Burke disliked it, he could hardly have avoided some involvement with it. Two particular instances are discussed in this chapter. As MP for Bristol in 1775, Burke supported his constituents’ objections to the Board of Trade against duties being levied on slave imports into Jamaica with an ostensible aim of controlling the growth of the African population of the island. The duties were disallowed. Between 1772 and 1779 Burke took a close interest in the affairs of the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa, a body set up to facilitate the slave trade through its posts on the African coast. In Parliament he defended the Company against proposals to change its constitution, and he vindicated the conduct both of the London members of the Company’s committee, which included a close family friend, and of the Company’s servants in Africa. In doing so, he implicitly endorsed the Company’s raison d’être, the supply of slaves from Africa, even though he also publicly expressed his unhappiness about the inhumanity of such a trade.

Richard Burke and St Vincent

The fertile soil and numerous rivers of St Vincent, annexed in 1763, offered potentially good plantation land, which was to be sold on behalf of the British crown by a government commission. Over large parts of the island, however, British settlement conflicted with the claims of Carib peoples. Europeans made distinctions between small communities of what they called Red Caribs, and much larger ones of Black Caribs, who were predominantly the descendants of escaped African slaves. Richard Burke tried to circumvent the restriction that Carib land could only be obtained through the government commission. by dealing directly with the Red Caribs, who agreed to sell him land that he hoped to resell at a large profit for his own benefit. The Black Caribs, however, would not consent to dispose of their land to the British. They were eventually coerced to do so by force in what was called the Carib War of 1772. Edmund Burke strongly supported his brother’s purchase, while very much disapproving of the use of force against the Black Caribs, even if he thought it impolitic to say so publicly while Richard was negotiating with ministers. Richard’s purchase was eventually annulled in Britain, so that he gained nothing from his attempted speculation. But Edmund’s involvement in the affairs of the Caribs gave him insights into the plight of indigenous peoples in an expanding British empire.

Richard Burke and Grenada

Grenada was the most important of the new colonies in the Caribbean acquired by Britain in 1763. In 1764 Richard Burke was appointed Collector of Customs and Receiver of the Crown’s Revenue in the island, although he rarely resided there. These were contentious posts. The Collector of Customs had to curb trade outside the terms of the British Navigation Acts, while the Receiver was required to levy, without the consent of the elected assembly, old French taxes and a new British one, which was soon to be declared illegal by the British courts. Richard’s insistence that he handle all monies voted by the Assembly brought him into further conflicts with it. These conflicts between the prerogatives of the crown and claims to privileges by the assembly were similar to those being waged in North American colonies. While generally sympathetic to North American claims, Edmund staunchly supported his brother’s upholding the royal prerogatives. Richard also became mired in disputes with the customs authorities in Britain, who charged him with misappropriating public money. These issues were never fully resolved. Any gains that may have accrued from his offices are likely to have gone to his deputies; they certainly did not go to him. He ended his life in financial embarrassment.

The Setting

Although an era of prosperity lay ahead for it, the British Caribbean in the mid-eighteenth century seemed to be at a point of crisis. Its sugar was losing its export markets to more productive French colonies, while its smaller islands seemed to be worked out. More territory was urgently needed. This sense of crisis and the need for expansion are themes in the chapter on the West Indies in Edmund and William Burke’s Account of the European Settlements in America of 1757. The Seven Years War enabled the British to seize islands from the French. Conquests retained at the peace of 1763 were limited to the four Ceded Islands, but they set off a speculative scramble for potential new sugar land. Burke’s close friend William Burke and his brother Richard sought to profit from the new conquests in the West Indies by winning public offices in them. Although they failed to make their fortunes, they focused Edmund’s interest on the Caribbean.

Introduction

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

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.