Emancipation and the remaking of the British Imperial world 9781526103017

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UCL/NEALE SERIES ON BRITISH HISTORY editors Catherine Hall and Julian Hoppit

The essays in this collection explore fundamental issues including the economic impact of slavery and slave-ownership, the varied forms of labour deployed in the imperial world, including hired slaves and indentured labourers, the development of the nineteenth-century imperial state, slavery and public and family history, and contemporary debates about reparations. The contributors to this collection, drawn from Britain, the Caribbean and Mauritius, include some of the most distinguished writers in the field: Clare Anderson, Robin Blackburn, Heather Cateau, Mary Chamberlain, Chris Evans, Pat Hudson, Richard Huzzey, Zoë Laidlaw, Alison Light, Anita Rupprecht, Verene A. Shepherd, Andrea Stuart and Vijaya Teelock. The impact of slavery and slave-ownership is once again becoming a major area of historical and contemporary concern: this book makes a vital contribution to the subject.

Nicholas Draper and Keith McClelland are Research Associates in the Department of History, University College London

Front cover: From ‘Abolition of the slave trade’, Illustrated London News, 6 August 1842. Courtesy of the Mary Evans Picture Library

ISBN 978-0-7190-9183-4

9 780719 091834 www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

Emancipation and the remaking of the British imperial world

Hall, Draper & McClelland eds

Catherine Hall is Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History at University College London

Emancipation and the remaking of the British imperial world

Slavery and the slavery business have cast a long shadow over British history. In 1833, abolition was heralded as evidence of Britain’s claim to be the modern global power, its commitment to representative government in Britain, free labour, the rule of law, and a benevolent imperial mission all aspects of a national identity rooted in notions of freedom and liberty. Yet much is still unknown about the significance of the slavery business and emancipation in the formation of modern imperial Britain.

edited by

Catherine Hall, Nicholas Draper & Keith McClelland

Emancipation and the remaking of the British imperial world

UCL/Neale Series on British History editors Catherine Hall Julian Hoppit The prestigious Neale lecture in British history was instituted at UCL in 1970, in memory of Sir John Neale, the eminent historian of Elizabethan England. In recent years the lecture has often been discussed with related papers at a major colloquium. The volumes in this series print the lecture and papers from such occasions, making a significant contribution to major themes in British history. Already published Catherine Hall and Keith McClelland (eds) Race, nation and empire: Making histories, 1750 to the present Julian Hoppit (ed.) Parliaments, nations and identities in Britain and Ireland, 1660–1850 Sophie Page (ed.) The unorthodox imagination in late medieval Britain Nicholas Tyacke (ed.) The English Revolution c. 1590–1720: Politics, religions and communities

Emancipation and the remaking of the British imperial world edited by CATHERINE HALL, NICHOLAS DRAPER AND KEITH McCLELLAND

Manchester University Press Manchester and New York

distributed in the United States exclusively by P A L G R A V E M A C MIL L AN

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2014 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed in Canada exclusively by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

ISBN 978 0 7190 9183 4 hardback

First published 2014

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or thirdparty internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset in Minion by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

Contents

List of tables page vii A note on the front cover viii Notes on contributors ix Preface xiii Introduction 1 Catherine Hall, Nicholas Draper and Keith McClelland Part I  Formations of capital: beyond ‘merchants and planters’   1 The scope of accumulation and the reach of moral perception: slavery, market revolution and Atlantic capitalism 19 Robin Blackburn   2 Slavery, the slave trade and economic growth: a contribution to the debate 36 Pat Hudson   3 Slavery and Welsh industry before and after emancipation 60 Chris Evans Part II  From slavery to indenture   4   5   6

From slavery to indenture: scripts for slavery’s endings 77 Anita Rupprecht Re-examining the labour matrix in the British Caribbean 1750 to 1850 98 Heather Cateau After emancipation: empires and imperial formations 113 Clare Anderson

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contents

Part III  The imperial state   7 Imperial complicity: indigenous dispossession in British history and history writing Zoë Laidlaw   8 Concepts of liberty: freedom, laissez-faire and the state after Britain’s abolition of slavery Richard Huzzey

131 149

Part IV  Public histories, family histories   9 Family history: history’s poor relation? 175 Alison Light 10 Writing Sugar in the Blood 184 Andrea Stuart 11 Legacy and lineage: family histories in the Caribbean 193 Mary Chamberlain Part V  Reparations, restitution and the historian 12 The Mauritius Truth and Justice Commission: ‘eyewash’, ‘storm in a teacup’ or promise of a new future for Mauritians? Vijayalakshmi Teelock 13 Jamaica and the debate over reparation for slavery: an overview Verene A. Shepherd

207 223

Index 251

vi

Tables

  5.1   5.2 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 13.6

Hiring rates, 1750 to 1810 page 105 Hiring rates, 1836 105 Transatlantic departures by African region to the Americas, 1519–1867 225 Percentage distributions of Africans in the transatlantic trade, 1702–1807 226 Names of ships, embarkation and disembarkation, and mortality rates above 50% 227 Population of Jamaica by race, selected years 1660–1805 231 Jamaica’s enslaved imports and changes in population, selected years 1703–1807 234 Names of anti-slavery activists who participated in the 1831–32 war and punishments received 235

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A note on the front cover

The cover image for the book was originally published in 1842 in the Illustrated London News under the title ‘Hill Coolies Landing At The Mauritius’. The image purported to represent the arrival of indentured East Indian labourers into the colony. The text accompanying the image described the scene as ‘another of those forms of human grievance … approximate to the crimes that are perpetrated by the slave-trade itself’. Since its publication under this title the image has been used both commercially and within museums to represent indentured labour. However, the image has more recently been identified as having been adapted from an earlier, 1835, watercolour by the artist Johann Moritz Rugendas entitled Landing Slaves at a Brazilian Port, 1830s or Debarquement. The slippage between what the image actually depicted and the meaning which was later assigned to it speaks to the commonality of experience between different forms of unfree labour, raising difficult questions about the nature of freedom in the post-­ emancipation period.

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Notes on contributors

The editors Catherine Hall (Principal Investigator), Nicholas Draper (Research Associate) and Keith McClelland (Research Associate) were all part of the ESRC-funded project ‘Legacies of British Slave Ownership’ (LBS) in the Department of History, University College London. They are now working on the ESRC/AHRC-funded project at University College London (UCL) ‘The Structure and Significance of British Caribbean Slave-ownership 1763–1833’. Catherine Hall is Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History at UCL and has been a major figure in the ‘new imperial history’. She is the author of many works, including Civilising Subjects. Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830–1867 (2002) and Macaulay and Son: Architects of Imperial Britain (2012). Nicholas Draper worked in the City for 25 years before joining UCL as a doctoral student, teaching fellow and then LBS Research Associate. His book The Price of Emancipation: Slave-Ownership, Compensation and British Society at the End of Slavery (2009), which won the 2009 Royal Historical Society’s Whitfield Prize, is the foundational analysis which underpinned the LBS project. Keith McClelland has researched and published particularly on the history of gender, work and politics in 19th-century Britain. He co-edited, with Catherine Hall, Race, Nation and Empire: Making Histories 1750 to the Present (2010) and co-wrote, with Catherine Hall and Jane Rendall, Defining the Victorian Nation (2000). Contributors Clare Anderson is Professor of History at the University of Leicester. Her research centres on the Indian Ocean during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ix

notes on contributors

and she is especially interested in the history of confinement in prisons, penal colonies, plantations and migrant ships, and also in various forms of forced labour. She is the author of, most recently, Subaltern Lives: Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World, 1790–1920 (2012) and numerous articles and book chapters. She is currently the editor of the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History. Robin Blackburn is Leverhulme Research Fellow at the University of Essex and  was Visiting Distinguished Professor in Historical Studies at the New School  for Social Research, New York, 2001–10. He is the author of American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights (2012); The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern (1997); and The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848 (1988). Heather Cateau is head of the History Department at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. She specialises in the study of plantation systems and in comparative systems of enslavement. Her books include Capitalism and Slavery Fifty Years Later (2000) with Selwyn Carrington, and Beyond Tradition: Reinterpreting the Caribbean Historical Experience (2006) with Rita Pemberton. She is currently working on ‘New Perspectives on Management of Plantations in the British Caribbean’. Mary Chamberlain is Emeritus Professor of Caribbean History, Oxford Brookes University and an independent writer and historian. Since the 1970s she has worked with oral history and life story methods, and has published widely on these, on women’s history and, since 1991, on Caribbean history, notably on Caribbean migration and diasporic Caribbean families. She is the author of many works, including Empire and Nation-building in the Caribbean: Barbados, 1937–66 (2010), Family Love in the Diaspora: Migration and the Anglo-Caribbean Experience (2006) and Narratives of Exile and Return (2005). Chris Evans teaches History at the University of South Wales. His work c­ oncerns British industrialisation in international perspective and Atlantic slavery. He is the author of Slave Wales: The Welsh and Atlantic Slavery 1660–1850 (2010). Pat Hudson is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Cardiff and, currently, Honorary Research Professor at the London School of Economics. She has written widely on the economic and social history of industrialisation in Britain, including the role of the slave trade, on textile history, the family economy and on historical methodology. Her numerous books include The Industrial Revolution (1992). Richard Huzzey is a lecturer in History and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of International Slavery at the University of Liverpool. His Freedom Burning: Anti-Slavery and Empire in Victorian Britain (2012) examines British x

notes on contributors

foreign, imperial and economic policy and the political culture of anti-slavery in the period 1837–1901. He is now re-examining the campaigns for slave trade abolition and West Indian emancipation, c. 1776–1833. Zoë Laidlaw, Reader in British Imperial and Colonial History at Royal Holloway University of London, is the author of Colonial Connections 1815–45: Patronage, the Information Revolution and Colonial Government (2005). Her research has been on Britain’s nineteenth-century empire and, in particular, on imperial networks, governance and early histories of human rights and attitudes to aboriginal peoples and slavery. Alison Light is a writer and historian. She is currently Visiting Professor in Modern English Literature and Culture at Newcastle University and has written on a wide variety of topics, including popular culture, film, modernism and cultural politics, feminism and women’s writing, biography and life-writing, and Englishness and social class. She is the author of the award-winning Mrs Woolf and the Servants (2007) and of Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism between the Wars (1991). Her next book, provisionally entitled ‘Common People: An English Family History without Roots’, incorporates memoir and her own family history back to the 1750s to look at the history of the English labouring poor. Anita Rupprecht teaches at the University of Brighton. Her work cuts across history and literary studies, cultural and critical theory, colonial studies and postcolonial theory. Her current research projects are ‘Sympathy, Slavery, and Representation in the British Atlantic World, 1770–1840’, which concerns the representation of transatlantic slavery and abolition in relation to discourses of moral sentiment and political economy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and ‘Inherent Vice: Maritime Insurance and Transatlantic Slavery’, an exploration of maritime underwriting in the context of the slave trade. She has published numerous articles and chapters on these subjects. Verene A. Shepherd is Professor of Social History at the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies, Jamaica and Director of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies. She has published widely on the history of enslavement and on gender relations in the Caribbean, including co-editing Engendering Caribbean History: Cross-cultural Perspectives (2010). She has also written Livestock, Sugar and Slavery: Contested Terrain in Colonial Jamaica (2009) and I Want to Disturb My Neighbour: Lectures on Slavery, Emancipation and Post-colonial Jamaica (2007). She is Chair of the National Commission on Reparation in Jamaica. Andrea Stuart is an award-winning writer who was raised in the Caribbean, the US and the UK. She has worked in journalism, publishing and TV production. xi

notes on contributors

Her books include The Rose of Martinique: A Biography of Napoleon’s Josephine (2003) and Showgirls (1996). Sugar in the Blood: One Family’s Story of Slavery and Empire, which she discusses in this volume, was published in 2012. Vijayalakshmi Teelock is head of the Department of History and Political Science at the University of Mauritius. She was Vice-Chairperson of the Mauritius Truth and Justice Commission, which she discusses in this volume, and is also the author of numerous works on the history of Mauritius, including Bitter Sugar: Slavery and Emancipation in Nineteenth Century Mauritius (1998), and edited Maroonage and the Maroon Heritage in Mauritius (2005).

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Preface

The essays in this volume were first delivered as papers at a conference at University College London (UCL) on ‘Emancipation, Slave-ownership and the Re-making of the British Imperial World’ in March 2012, organised by the team working on the ESRC-funded project ‘Legacies of British Slave-ownership’. Both the conference and this volume benefited greatly from the co-operative spirit and collective work of many people. Julian Hoppit, Miles Taylor and Françoise Vergès were among those who delivered thoughtful and stimulating commentaries. The large and diverse audience raised many important issues. And, not least, there were those whose work made the conference possible. Ben Mechen was an ­enormous help and we thank too Rachel Lang and Kate Donington. We are also very grateful to those whose financial support for the conference was indispensable: the Amiel Melburn Trust, the Economic History Society, the Tristram family and the History Department at UCL.

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Introduction Catherine Hall, Nicholas Draper and Keith McClelland

The postcolonial moment, as Salman Rushdie argued in 1982, was a moment of crisis in British culture. ‘Racism’, he argued, was ‘not a side-issue in contemporary Britain, not a peripheral minority affair’. Britain was undergoing a critical phase of its postcolonial moment and this was not simply an economic or political crisis. ‘It’s a crisis of the whole culture’, he wrote, ‘of the society’s whole sense of itself’.1 ‘New Imperial History’, a naming that no one was ever very happy with but that nevertheless captured something, emerged in that moment. It was shaped in part by both the consciousness of the full implications of Britain’s increasingly diverse population, many of whom were drawn from the erstwhile empire, and the recognition that decolonisation had been a very partial process: formal empire might have ended but the culture of the coloniser/colonised relationship had not. This was the time, as Simon Gikandi suggested, that the foundational histories of both metropolitan and decolonised nations began to unravel, when imperial legacies came ‘to haunt English and postcolonial identities’.2 While anti-colonialism had focused on the expulsion of the colonial powers and the creation of new political nations, the postcolonial project was to decolonise the mind, to dismantle the racial hierarchies which were one of the most pernicious legacies of colonialism and, as Bob Marley put it, to ‘free ourselves from mental slavery’.3 The damage that had been done by colonialism was not only political and economic, it was also cultural, shaping minds and subjectivities. Marley’s powerful and evocative lyrics were intended for his own people, the oppressed and the exploited, whose sense of self had been damaged and deformed by colonial power. ‘Those English were the biggest obeah men out when you considered what they did to our minds’, as one of the characters in Paule Marshall’s magnificent novel, The Chosen Place, The Timeless People, puts it.4 But it was not only the colonised who needed to dismantle their minds, it was also the colonisers, those who had assumed power and superiority over subordinated subjects, whose culture was built on the disavowal of violence and conquest, whose ‘imperial dispositions’ were embedded in e­ veryday practices.5 New-style imperial history, critical colonial studies as it has come to be called, 1

emancipation and the remaking of the british imperial world

started from these premises. The histories of colonisers and colonised were inextricably linked: a proper understanding of both domestic and colonial histories depended on grasping the connections between the two. In the much-quoted terminology, metropole and colony must be analysed in the same frame.6 The feminist historians who had already challenged the gender blindness of history writing and were insisting on placing gender as central to historical analysis were the first to take up these questions in relation to British history. They were inspired to rethink British domestic history through the lens of empire, exploring the ways in which the British were ‘at home’ with that empire, how it had shaped both culture and politics. What were the grammars of difference and hierarchies of inequality? How were these inflected by gender and class as well as race? How was ‘home’ constituted as separate and different from ‘away’? Part of the imperative of this work was the focus on culture as a process and set of practices, culture as the production and exchange of meanings, culture as how people make sense of the world, not just in terms of idea but in the organisation and regulation of everyday lives. This turn to the cultural, a major shift across the humanities and social sciences, was associated with the recognition of the limitations of existing approaches, particularly those associated with economic determinism. A pivotal category for this form of analysis was class, the privileged domain of this reductionism. E. P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class (1963) was a landmark text, an explicit critique of economic reductionism and, with its emphasis on consciousness, experience and the collective practices of working people, an opening for what would become cultural history. Such a text became in its turn a point of critique for feminist and postcolonial scholars concerned with the social divisions of race and gender. By the 1970s theorists of culture were turning to Gramsci’s exploration of hegemony and the struggle over the winning of consent to disrupt traditional notions of base and superstructure. Foucault’s notion of discourse was critical in focusing not only on how language and representation produce meaning but on how the knowledge which specific discourses produce connects with power, creating identities, defining the ways certain things are and are not represented, insisting on the historical specificity not of language in general but of particular languages in their specific historical moments. Historians concerned with understanding colonialism as a culture have made discursive analysis a central tool, and questions of culture and representation, family and household, identity and belonging, memory and forgetting, intimacy, emotional and psychic life have all figured in work over the last decades. In this preoccupation with culture, identity and representation larger social and political questions were never abandoned but now ideology was given determining weight alongside the economic. Empire linked the lives of people in the Empire to global circuits of production, distribution and exchange, to the exploitation and oppression of millions of other imperial subjects. National and local histories were imbricated in a world system fashioned by the racial hierarchies of colonialism and imperialism. We need, as Mrinalini Sinha argued, 2

introduction

an ­understanding of the ‘imperial social formation’, a ‘mode of analysis that is simultaneously global in its reach and conjunctural in its focus’. Here she was drawing on Gramsci’s notion of conjuncture, mediated by Althusser’s notion of ‘overdetermination’. Economic, social, cultural and political dimensions of a social formation are always articulated with one another. Each has relative autonomy and each has determining weight within the complex whole. Few historians, however, in a time when the discipline has increasingly subdivided into specialisms, were able to respond effectively to the call for a mode of analysis that was both global and conjunctural.7 If ‘new imperial history’ was set in motion by the postcolonial moment, the moment we are now living in is very different. Economic questions dominate the news and dominate our collective lives – the banking crisis, the effects of globalisation, Britain’s dependence on financial services, the decline of manufacturing, the industrial wastelands, weak growth, the deficit, austerity, the cuts in welfare services and benefits, unemployment, especially severe amongst young people, food banks and increased poverty, these are some of the myriad ways in which economic issues have taken centre stage since 2007 and have direct effects on all our lives. Yet economic history has declined significantly as a subject in the last twenty years. The compartmentalisation of history into its sub-disciplines and areas of expertise has had the effect of rendering those of us primarily concerned with social and cultural questions ill-equipped to grasp the significance of the economic, and many economic historians marginalise cultural questions. By the economic we do not mean economic relations as they would have been conceptualised before gender history or the discursive turn – for we now have an expanded conception of the significance of social relations of production and of the ways in which the reproduction of the relations of production and of the symbolic forms of life are critical to the circuit of capital. A society based on choice and the market needs analysing in terms of consumption – an area in which cultural historians have made decisive interventions – but not because of their training in classical economics. Production, reproduction, material life, wealth and labour all need greater salience in our explanatory vocabularies, alongside – not portioned off from – questions of culture. It is perhaps only now, Partha Chatterjee argues, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, that ‘all three entities – capitalism, the nation-state, and empire – can be subjected to systematic historical critique’.8 And, one might add to this trinity, the family, that key institution of modern life. The essays in this volume reflect some of these issues. They were first delivered as papers at the conference at University College London on ‘Emancipation, Slave-ownership and the Re-making of the British Imperial World’ in March 2012. The conference was organised by the team working on the ESRC-funded project ‘Legacies of British Slave-ownership’ (LBS) and was an attempt to begin to look at British emancipation in the context of the wider imperial world. We wanted to think particularly about whether the abolition of slavery in 1833 marked a historic break in the Empire. The team brought together economic, political, social and cultural historians in a deliberate effort to think more holistically and 3

emancipation and the remaking of the british imperial world

to put the development of industrial capitalism, analysed in its metropolitan and colonial dimensions, back into centre stage.9 The LBS project was concerned with the slave-owners who received compensation when slavery was abolished in the British West Indies, Mauritius and the Cape in 1833. The West India interest still had a powerful voice in Parliament and the City and was able to negotiate a sum of £20 million (over £16 billion in today’s money) in compensation for the loss of ‘their property’ – enslaved men and women. The £20 million represented just over 40% of the valuation attributed to the 800,000 enslaved people in the colonies affected by the Abolition Act. In addition, the slave-owners received interest on the compensation for the period between 1 August 1834 and the payment date, which varied between 1835 and 1845, with the vast bulk of payments made by 1838. Furthermore, they received the value of the further period of forced labour known as ‘Apprenticeship’, originally intended to be between four and six years but truncated in 1838, which Fogel and Engerman calculated as a further 47% and Draper estimated as a further 33% of the value of the enslaved.10 The enslaved people themselves received nothing. The agreement over compensation reflected a common sense among the state, the abolitionists, the slave-owners and the unaligned political nation that when property was confiscated by the government there should be recompense, for the basis of the contract between the individual and the state was protection of person and property. This defence of property rights was maintained, even though the moral case against slavery was that no one should be the property of another. A few radical voices challenged the agreement on compensation – but very few. The money was divided amongst slave-owners across metropole and colonies, and in the web-based encyclopaedia (http://www. ucl.ac.uk/lbs) created by the LBS team all the individual claims have been documented. In addition, research has been done to track the legacies of the absentees, those living in Britain but owning property in people. Nearly half the £20 million can be traced directly to individuals in Britain, though the absentees represented a small minority of claimants, around 6%: such absentees in Britain owned a disproportionate share of the Caribbean estates, with large numbers of enslaved people attached to a single production unit; whereas in the colonies thousands of resident slave-owners held smaller groups of enslaved people (often only one or two) employed as domestic servants, and lived alongside those members of the plantocracy still resident in the slave colonies. We have been concerned to trace the legacies of the British absentee slave-owners at a number of different levels: from the financial and commercial, to the political, cultural, historical, imperial and physical. It was clear to us that the scale of the legacies we were uncovering was very significant and challenged the assumption, initially made by Ragatz, associated most closely with Eric Williams, but taken up for the period after 1807 even by the critics of the ‘decline’ thesis of Ragatz and Williams, that the West India interest was only an archaic fragment by the time of abolition.11 Nearly £9 million was a huge sum to be distributed in liquid form into the hands of the slave-owners, and the men and women who received this money were as a group neither 4

introduction

economically nor politically bankrupt, despite their own cries of distress and some spectacular failures. The crisis of the West India economy came not with emancipation, but with the equalisation of the sugar duties after 1846. We have tracked the compensation money going into a range of financial sectors from marine insurance and merchant banking to railways, investigated the continued political influence of a group of West Indian merchants and planters, especially in relation to the sugar duties and indenture, and analysed the volume of writings from a range of former slave-owners and their descendants concerned with reconfiguring race after slavery. We have also explored the philanthropic, physical and imperial legacies of these men and women that can be traced in key national and local institutions, country and town houses and colonial government. Slaveowners, we have concluded, far from disappearing at the time of emancipation, remained influential at a variety of different levels.12 ‘Decline’, therefore, must at most be a relative term (the sense in which we believe Williams himself thought), relative not only to the growth of British industrial capability but relative also to the economic culture that both reflected and anticipated Britain’s development as the world’s leading manufacturing nation. At the same time, our work confirms the continued movement of wealth from slavery into the reshaping of the economy which would ultimately leave slavery behind. As Julian Hoppit stressed in his intervention in the second session of the conference, devoted specifically to the economy, however, each such claim for the role of slave-wealth, both in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, has to be analysed scrupulously: coincidence does not equal causation, and the contribution of slavery needs to be placed consistently in the framework of domestic and European sources of growth and change. We knew that the abolition of slavery was part of a wider programme of reform both of nation and empire and it was these connections that we wanted to explore. What wider reorganisations of industrial, mercantile and financial capital, of labour and of the imperial state were taking place? These were very big questions but it might be possible to begin to sketch out some initial answers by bringing together a range of scholars. What was this wider programme of reform? In the period between 1829 and 1836 a number of key pieces of legislation were passed which reconfigured both nation and empire. The repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, which removed some aspects of the discrimination against dissenters, closely followed by Catholic Emancipation in 1829, which opened Parliament and official positions to Catholics, were critical steps in recognising that non-Anglicans could nevertheless be loyal to the British state. Catholics could be Englishmen, as Thomas Babington Macaulay put it; religious affiliation was superseded by national belonging.13 This was only the beginning of the assault upon the ‘Protestant Constitution’, as Miles Taylor pointed out in our discussions. The abolition of Irish church tithes and the later payment of compensation to tithe holders, together with the lack of any attempt to impose the established church in the new colonies of white settlement, marked the beginning of the end of the colonial church establishment. This disempowerment of the Church meant 5

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an increased differentiation between political and civil society: religion was a private matter.14 At the same time there was a redefinition of the political nation. The reform of the House of Commons in 1832, after an extended period of sustained political agitation, increased the electorate by approximately 45%, to men of moderate property, and gave representation to the new industrial towns and cities. It was widely understood as a triumph for middle-class men and a defeat for working-class reformers, opening the way for Chartism. Three years later the new legislation on municipal government ushered in a significant increase in middle-class dominance in urban areas. The new, somewhat more inclusive idea of the nation was at odds with the institution of slavery, increasingly defined as a stain upon the nation. A significant number of the MPs elected to the reformed House of Commons had been under great pressure from their anti-slavery constituents to support immediate abolition and, despite the Whig government’s lack of enthusiasm for the measure, the sustained campaigning from ‘outside’ and a determined body of abolitionists within Parliament secured a majority. But abolition went alongside not just compensation (marking not only the sanctity of property rights but also the effective growth of the bureaucratic state) but also ‘apprenticeship’, the system designed to teach the newly freed to labour, and to keep them unfree for a period. This underlined the differentiated ways of viewing black and white labour: Africans were seen to require a particular kind of labour discipline, designed to fit them for freedom. If colonised subjects were conceptualised differently from British subjects, the Irish occupied an ambivalent position in the racial hierarchy. The Coercion Bill for Ireland was passed in 1833, suspending habeas corpus and substituting courtsmartial for ordinary courts in disturbed districts. This was designed to end serious agrarian unrest but made it clear that Ireland was not governed in the same way as England. In the same months the new Charter Act for India articulated, as Jon Wilson argues, ‘a strong sense of the difference between British and colonial political culture’.15 Representative government was for Britain, autocratic government for India – a benighted land that needed to be wrenched out of its darkness and stagnation. The appointment of Macaulay as the Law Member of the Governor General’s new Council was one of the signs of the unleashing of a programme of Anglicisation. The Act also removed the East India Company’s monopoly on the China trade – one of the significant moves towards free trade that were to multiply in the years to come. That same year a factory act put the first limitations on the hours of women and children, another kind of state intervention in the regulation of labour, while the following year the Poor Law Amendment Act drew a line between England’s ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor. Soon after, indenture was to be legitimated as a way to resolve the needs of the plantocracy by voluntary or forced migration across the Empire. Three years later the Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines in British settlements could be seen as marking the end of a period of humanitarian influence associated with anti-slavery.16 ‘Others’, whether African, Indian or Aboriginal, were not the same as ‘us’. Taken together these measures were manifestations of new thinking in relation to the governance 6

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of both nation and empire. But, as Joanna Innes reminded us in our discussions, we need to exercise great care in thinking about the specificity of the interconnections. Attention to the local and perhaps to the disconnections is as vital as attention to the connections. How, then, might slave-ownership and emancipation fit into this picture? Our intention was to draw on scholars to present their work, and to ensure that we would have ample time for discussion – the talk was vital to our common project. We were fortunate in having a remarkable group of paper-givers and commentators, together with an engaged audience of academics, teachers, curators, writers, family and local historians. The first three sets of discussions were on formations of capital, the imperial state and the reorganisation of labour. But we also wanted to recognise the centrality of the family to the social formations of both nation and empire, and think about the ways in which that has been taken up in fictional and other forms of writing which tend to occupy a different space from academic writing. Constructing family histories, as we know, has become a major occupation, and for many in the UK what appears to start out as an English or Scottish or Welsh or Irish story turns out to have ramifications stretching far beyond. The local often becomes the global, migration both in and out a key, and under-recognised, aspect of Britain’s history. The LBS investigation of the legacies of slave-ownership has brought us back time and again to the centrality of the family as an imperial institution, operating across different sites, both metropolitan and colonial, with different generations and extended kin acting as networks, one form of cement of empire. Similarly those working on the legacies of slavery itself, and indeed the slavery business more widely, have recognised the centrality of family, and the different definitions of family, which need to be thought about. It seemed important to bring these issues into our discussion, to challenge the bifurcations between the academic and the popular, fiction and history, to be open to different voices. Andrea Levy’s reading from her novel of Jamaican slavery and rebellion, The Long Song (2010), was a highpoint of the two days, a moving and evocative experience, bringing the voices of the enslaved right into our midst. The final set of issues that we were determined to address was the vexed question of reparations. How can the destruction of the slave trade and slavery ever be repaired? What responsibility does Britain have and what are the implications of this? From the beginning of our work on the compensation records it was clear that the research had implications for these debates. Critics challenged our focus on the individuals who were compensated, arguing that this took attention away from the state. In providing a solid empirical account of who got the money, we argue that we are contributing to a better-informed discussion of the issues. In an attempt to encourage this kind of engagement our final session focused on the public understandings of the legacies of slavery and the case for reparations and restitution in Mauritius and Jamaica. In her comment Françoise Vergés reminded us, in the words of Edouard Glissant, that the slave of slavery is the one who does not want to know.17 7

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The essays We were fortunate in having Robin Blackburn open the conference and give the Neale lecture. His essay, ‘The scope of accumulation and the reach of moral perception: slavery, market revolution and Atlantic capitalism’, opens the first part of the book, which re-examines the arguments about the relationship between slavery and industrial capitalism. Widening the focus of Eric Williams’ classic text, Capitalism and Slavery, Blackburn considers the relationship between the rise of industrial capitalism in Britain and the United States and the emergence of a very intense regime of plantation slavery in the Americas. Drawing on his wide-ranging knowledge and a discussion of Williams, Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, and the more recent work of Pomeranz and historians of the USA, he argues that the continuing importance of the slave economy was a significant factor in the development of a range of financial and industrial sectors. Illegal slave trading continued apace in the mid-nineteenth century and plantations boomed both in the Southern states, Brazil and Cuba. This ‘second slavery’, in Tomich’s term, or slaveholder capitalism, was doomed in the US, he suggests, not because of its economic failure or the moral outcry against it, but because of its successes which resulted in the building of a broad alliance against it. While analysing these developments he also points to the alternative and more humane routes that could have been taken. Blackburn’s emphasis on the continuing objective importance of slavery but its relative repositioning within a new, dominant political and economic culture hostile to the institution represents an important modification of the economic determinism often detected in the classic Williams ‘decline’ thesis. Blackburn’s essay provides the framework for considering two further important contributions which represent different approaches but which together consolidate the acceptance of Williams’ argument that slavery was central to the take-off of Britain’s industrialisation. Pat Hudson was among the few economic historians to give Joseph Inikori’s Africans and the Industrial Revolution serious attention on its publication a decade ago, and her chapter here marks the incorporation of the Williams/Inikori thesis into the mainstream of histories of the Industrial Revolution. It is driven in part by her reading of what Williams wrote about slavery and the Industrial Revolution, rather than the received caricature that is too often the version refuted by Williams’ critics. Not only does Hudson support the concept of slavery as a necessary but not sufficient condition of the Industrial Revolution, she also embraces Williams’ dialectical argument that, as she puts it, the very ‘structure and institutions that the slave/plantation nexus had created made it relatively easy for [British merchants and financiers] to adapt’ to the end of slavery. In her endorsement of Williams, and of Inikori’s emphasis on the regional nature of the Industrial Revolution, Hudson argues for the ‘unique’ role of the slave trade in promoting (through its deployment of bills of exchange) the integration of the London and provincial money markets, which she sees as a central precondition of the development of the major manufacturing 8

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regions of south Lancashire and Yorkshire: ‘the industrial revolution was entirely dependent’ on the bill of exchange as a means of payment, rather than on the underdeveloped banking system. In a narrative arc reminiscent of Capitalism and Slavery but consciously extending the scope (geographic and chronological) even of that wide-ranging work, Hudson extends her analysis to the continued involvement of British capital in the Atlantic slave economy after the end of Britain’s own colonial slave system and the birth of the system of indentured labour from south Asia to replace or compete with the labour of the formerly enslaved people in parts of the British Caribbean. Chris Evans’s chapter provides further support for the Williams/Inikori position in the form of an exemplary regional study that both recognises the very modest scale of slave-ownership in Wales and demonstrates the profound intertwining of colonial slavery more broadly with critical sectors of the industrial transformation of south Wales. The example of the slave-owning Pennants of Penrhyn in north Wales, and their major investment in slate quarrying, has stood as an archetypal case-study for the centrality of slave-derived capital in the extractive sector (and by sleight of hand, often in the manufacturing sector as a whole) since Capitalism and Slavery’s publication in 1944, but Evans shows that the family was completely unrepresentative of any wider pattern and that the expansion of the south Wales coal industry in the 1840s, for example, was unrelated to slave-ownership or slave compensation. Instead, Evans highlights the importance of Welsh copper and Welsh woollens in the slave economy, and the importance in turn of the slave economy in the development of these sectors, one strategic and the other more transitory in the context of the economic history of Wales. African demand, mediated through Bristol, drove the growth of Welsh copper smelting in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries until, as Evans demonstrates, other markets outgrew Africa in importance in the second half of the eighteenth century. Again, demand from the slave colonies of the Caribbean was material as a market not only for fabricated copper equipment, but also for the ‘Negro cloth’ that drove the commercialisation of the woollen industry. Families connected with slave compensation were prominent in the Welsh copper industry in the nineteenth century and moved into slave-produced copper elsewhere in the Americas after emancipation, but Evans is scrupulous in the claims he makes for the significance or otherwise of such linkages. His careful analysis is a model for future sector and regional studies that have already, in the case of Ireland and Scotland, begun to accumulate evidence for the extent and limits of the ­importance of slavery to the Industrial Revolution.18 The three essays in the second part of the book challenge the widespread belief that the abolition of chattel slavery in the Caribbean, Mauritius and the Cape of Good Hope in 1833 and the ending of the apprenticeship system by 1838 led to a regime of ‘free labour’. Such a view of slavery is also typically bound in to a perspective which essentially derives from Enlightenment stadial theory, namely that humanity progresses through a series of stages, each of which is superior to the last. Thus, social formations which depend on forms of unfree labour, such as 9

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f­eudalism or slavery, will be surpassed by ‘commercial society’ or modern capitalism, in which free wage labour becomes the overwhelmingly dominant form. Clare Anderson’s chapter was originally written as a commentary on the papers by Heather Cateau and Anita Rupprecht and is both a dialogue with their work and a powerful argument against seeing slavery separately from other forms of coerced and unfree labour. It is in no way to under-estimate the brutality and violence of the system, nor the experiences of the enslaved, to argue, as Anderson does, that slavery belonged to what she calls the ‘continuum’ of unfree forms of labour which underpinned the various formations, in different places at different times, of the British Empire, or indeed, a wider global economy and society. Reflecting on diverse forms of labour extraction, including indenture and the use of convict labour as well as enslavement, she shows that these forms, which existed alongside each other, were of critical importance to the structures of economy, society and politics throughout the Empire. As Anderson suggests, an understanding of the ‘continuum of labour forms’ has important implications for an understanding of the forms and practices of the states – both metropolitan and colonial – in the British Empire. The search for and mobilisation of different kinds of labour forces were not, and could not be, a simple market response to shortages of labour and other ‘problems of labour supply’, ones which were ‘solved’ by the operation of market mechanisms. They required the active construction of new forms of public labour management, the engagement of states in, for instance, the development of schemes of indentured labour, and the reforming of hierarchies built on race as much as, and perhaps more than, categories of labour. Although Anderson’s discussion of these issues is brief, the implications of her arguments are considerable. Her approach requires thinking across not only different sites of empire and the distinguishing characteristics of labour regimes in any one place but also that we need to think across different sub-disciplines of history, since the processes are social, cultural and political as well as economic. Moreover, they were globalising processes: just as capital moved between different zones across the Empire so too did labour, whether forced or voluntary. Anita Rupprecht’s essay also unpicks any notion of a simple transition from slavery to free labour. She takes off from a critique of Seymour Drescher’s influential views on the nature of thinking within classical political economy about the relative profitability of slavery and free labour systems. Drescher argues that the central reason for the demise of slavery lay in moral humanitarianism and politics rather than in any economic logic. But, as Rupprecht demonstrates, a narrow focus on the relative costs and profitability of slavery does not do justice to the range of classical political economy and, especially, the thinking of its most important advocate, Adam Smith. Reflecting the re-evaluations of Smith which have occurred in recent decades, Rupprecht argues that his views on whether or not free labour was cheaper need to be situated within the whole framework of his moral and social philosophy as well as the particular propositions of The Wealth of Nations. While the operations and ‘logic’ of the market economy might overcome the moral 10

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problem of slavery they could do so only in conjunction with political interventions to either outlaw or dismantle slavery. Furthermore, contemporary views of both enslaved labour and associated forms of coerced labour, and the acculturation of black labour to changing disciplinary regimes, presupposed a hierarchy of race in which the African and the enslaved must be treated as capable only of being firmly directed. Drawing on a relatively neglected archive, that of the Royal Commission of Inquiry established from 1821 which investigated ‘captured negroes’ seized in the wake of the abolition of the slave trade, she demonstrates that forms of indentured labour both coexisted and meshed in with systems of enslavement. What forms of labour were deployed within the plantation system is central to Heather Cateau’s account of the ‘labour matrix’ in the Caribbean. She too argues against the notion that there was a simple transition from slavery to indenture or wage labour, demonstrating how the hiring of the enslaved in exchange for wages was an increasingly important dimension of the economy of slavery in the Caribbean. Moreover, the conditions of labour under the hiring system prefigured some of the features of the use of Indian indentured labour after 1845. As she writes, it was the hiring system which was ‘the real training ground for indentureship’. Her account chimes with other work19 in showing that that there were respects in which the conditions of indentured labour after the 1830s were less ‘free’ than could be the case under enslavement. Like Anderson and Rupprecht, Cateau is also in no doubt of the imperatives lying behind the use of different forms of labour. The owners or employers utilised diverse forms according to the dictates of their own labour needs and they sought to organise, acculturate and discipline labour in ways shaped by not only ‘economic’ requirements but also cultural assumptions about the capacities – ‘raced’, ‘classed’ and gendered – of labourers to undertake the work. And necessarily, that entailed the articulation of political and legal regimes – of forms of ‘governmentality’ – which supported them. The third part of the book considers the role of the imperial state in the period after emancipation. Victorian Britain was awash with beliefs that one of the distinguishing characteristics of the era and the country was the necessary and desirable unfolding of liberty or freedom – for freed slaves, of trade and markets, of the relations between individuals and the state. In his essay Richard Huzzey examines political arguments over how the ‘anti-slavery state’ could or should best protect ‘the true enjoyment of liberties’. He focuses first on the connection between policies on free trade in sugar and emigration in relation to the encouragement of African migration and Indian indentured labour to the Caribbean. The notion of ‘freedom’, he suggests, cannot be disassociated from the subjugation of and indifference to the needs of black and subaltern peoples. Second, he addresses the question of the use, by the state, of violence and the military to suppress the international slave trade in the name of liberty and freedom. The meanings of ‘freedom’, as Huzzey shows, were always bound up with hierarchies of power and difference. Like Richard Huzzey’s, Zoë Laidlaw’s chapter provides important insights into the ways in which British state policy and formation were bound into an 11

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i­ mperial formation: while there were distinctive zones of political debate and policy there were significant strands of connection. Laidlaw draws attention to the silences about the dispossession of indigenous peoples across the Empire. British imperial policy, especially during the tenure of the 3rd Earl Grey as Secretary of State for the Colonies between 1846 and 1852, increasingly treated the so-called ‘settler colonies’ as distinct and capable of self-government. But, as Laidlaw puts it, such policies were predicated upon and contributed to the dispossession of Aboriginal peoples. She demonstrates how the policy of the Colonial Office and Grey’s account of it in his Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell’s Administration effectively marginalised issues of indigenous land use and possession and the rights of native peoples. Meanwhile the violence done to Aboriginal peoples has frequently been displaced onto the agency of settler colonialists. The result, it is suggested, is to effectively distance the history of settler colonies from the whole complex of imperial history. Grey’s silences about both Aborigines and imperial responsibility have been echoed in those of recent historians of empire. It is time, Laidlaw suggests, to reintegrate settler colonialism with the wider history of empire, to situate the histories of forms of enslavement and forced labour with the histories of those whose lands were stolen and to develop a common framework of understanding of the British imperial formation. In the fourth part of the book we turn to the question of history writing, addressing particularly the family and the place of family histories. It was important to us to engage with writers and family historians in our thinking about the legacies of slavery and the reformation of the imperial state, for fictional writers have made vital contributions to historical understanding and family history is of major interest to many people of both British and African-Caribbean descent. Professional history writing can deal with only some issues and accesses small audiences. Popular forms of history reach much larger constituencies and speak to powerful emotional needs in the present. Alison Light, in her essay, ‘Family history: history’s poor relation?’, reflects on family history in the light of the one that she is herself engaged in writing. This is not about slavery, but about the English labouring poor. Hers is a history of generations of servants, sailors, dockers and casualised labourers, migrants in search of work, ‘an English family history without roots, a family history for a floating world’. Family history, she argues, is everywhere, an immensely popular activity, privatised and commodified, an individualised kind of history, the focus on finding your own past. Professional historians have largely been dismissive of it. Yet it has great strengths, with its longitudinal reach, its ways of connecting the local to a wider world, the parochial to the national, the national to the international. It can dissolve oppositions, resist the idea of urban and rural life as separate compartments, challenge public/private divides. At the same time it can be articulated to the left or the right and has no necessary political belonging. Family history, she suggests, is best thought of as a scavenger, a trespasser which provokes us to see things differently. As such, it deserves scrutiny. Andrea Stuart’s Sugar in the Blood (2012) tells the story of her transatlantic 12

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family across eight generations. In her essay she reflects on the experience of writing that personal history, a chronicle that documents the evolution of the plantation complex in microcosm. Her ancestors, seventeenth-century settlers, first used white indentured labour and then, as they became increasingly enmeshed in the burgeoning sugar industry, converted to the exploitation of enslaved African labour. Her family, like so many, came to be an entangled mixture of black, white and brown, of enslaved and free. For centuries the lives of the family centred on the plantation and the production of sugar. She aimed to demonstrate in fictional form how colonial settlement, the rise of the sugar industry, the slave trade and emancipation shaped the lives of this family over generations. Individual lives, of folks both rich and poor, she shows, were enmeshed not just in the local but in global forces. In considering the relation between fiction and other forms of history writing she argues for the importance of the fictional imagination in remembering slavery. In ‘Legacy and lineage: family histories in the Caribbean’, Mary Chamberlain turns her attention to the work of family history and asks what is the edge, if any, that a family history gives that other forms of historical enquiry lack? Family history is about the narratives we construct for ourselves which position us in liveable ways, which guarantee us a place in a national history in which we played no named part. But how is the family defined; who constitutes family? In a modern world defined by migration for so many, geographic mobility complicated forms of belonging, and both the English labouring poor and displaced Africans were potentially stripped of history. Family stories can work as engines of inclusion, not exclusion, emphasising global connections and shared communities; diasporic memories can celebrate family and affirm survival – these are tools of remembrance for a post-emancipation world. The final part of the book turns to the vexed question of reparations. Can the damage and destruction wrought by the slave trade and slavery ever be recompensed, and if so, in what ways? Discussion of reparations has been muted in Britain, despite efforts around 2007 to put the question on the political and intellectual agendas. In former slave-societies themselves, however, where the legacies of slavery are perhaps more immediate and urgent, and are certainly more visible, the question of reparations is a current and salient issue. We were privileged to have contributions from speakers from two nations – Mauritius and Jamaica – in which the reparations debate has had different histories and different modalities but from which the experiences of our speakers as practitioners together allowed them to illuminate a whole range of challenges and approaches relevant to slavery reparations movements globally. Both reflected specifically on the central role and the responsibility of historians in the work and thinking of reparations movements. Vijayalakshmi Teelock served as Vice Chairperson of the Mauritius Truth and Justice Commission, which conducted its work between 2009 and 2012, and she was subsequently appointed in 2013 as a member of the Coordination Committee established to accelerate implementation of the recommendations of the original 13

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Commission. In her chapter, Teelock does not minimise the obstacles produced by the ambition of the Commission, but what comes through most strongly is the extraordinary scope of its work, given that it was charged with addressing not only the legacies of slavery but the legacies of indentured labour in Mauritius. In addition, it was asked to investigate historical dispossession of land in the post-emancipation period. The Commission was truly a pioneering institution, working with no established precedents for objectives or process and with relatively few resources. Teelock describes the pragmatism of the Commission in defining specific areas in which it could initiate new historical research (notably in establishing the basis for a new slave-trade database and in recovering material from the French National Archives) while drawing on extant work elsewhere, but also stresses the sense of the Commission as part of a wider process of historical enquiry which would continue long after the Commission had ended its formal term of appointment. The Commission wrestled with and found resolution for some of the truly difficult notions of reparation: who is a ‘descendant’, and how far does ‘victimhood’ hinder rather than help conceptualisation of the legacies of oppression? Its work also emphasised the continuities of power and powerlessness, of wealth and poverty, which transcended the legal termination of slavery. At the same time as undertaking the intellectual and historical work on slavery and indenture, the Commission arbitrated the 230 claims for restitution of land submitted to it. Remarkably, at the end of its work, the Commission brought forward 290 recommendations in every area of civil society, from the provision of school lunches for children in need, to the capping of the proportion of specific ethnic groups in corporate and institutional governing bodies. The Mauritius experience is a unique experiment in a historically informed search for social justice and, as such, should command attention from all of us. The Mauritius Truth and Justice Commission, strikingly, sought both to define the problems of the legacies of slavery and indenture and to develop solutions within the boundaries of the modern Mauritian nation-state. The Caribbean reparations movements in general focus more on the development of solutions in the context of the relationships between former metropole and colony, conceiving intra-governmental exchanges between the Caribbean nations and the former European colonial powers as the central locus in the search for reparation. Verene Shepherd was one of the prime movers in the early Jamaica Reparations Movement and was recently appointed as Chairperson of the reconvened National Commission on Reparation in Jamaica. Her chapter is the only piece in this volume which deals with ‘the thing itself’, with slavery as a historical reality, as she grounds the call for reparations in the empirical facts of the slave-trade and slavery. The chapter is, among other things, a powerful reminder of the social and human suffering underpinning the call for reparations. Drawing on the TransAtlantic Slave Trade Database, Shepherd re-analyses the movement of enslaved Africans to the Americas over three and a half centuries, situating the major flows within the overall trade and at the same time reminding us all of the cost of this traffic to the enslaved people and of the benefits to the enslavers. After outlining 14

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the demographic revolution that the trade in Africans brought to Jamaica in the 150 years between 1660 and 1810, she explores the simultaneous demographic catastrophe among the Africans in Jamaica under slavery, arising from the deadly combination of low birth rates and high mortality rates, themselves each driven by the implacable demands on the enslaved people of slave-owners and attorneys seeking to maximise output and profit. From this basis of reiteration of the history, she moves to the consequences for the Caribbean, and for Jamaica in particular, of such remarkable and violent disturbances of societies and cultures on three continents by nations of a fourth, Europe, to the long continuities of inequity and to the underdevelopment of the Caribbean across long centuries of slavery and then colonial rule. Against this background, the challenges for the National Commission on Reparations include the building of consensus within Jamaica and coordination with other national reparations movements, both as preludes to engaging with Britain as the former colonial power, a counter-party that has been determinedly resistant to any engagement in discussion of reparations either domestically or in relation to the nations of the Caribbean. No reader of this chapter is likely to underestimate either the impetus towards, or the obstacles to, the placing of reparations on the international agenda as a serious matter of discussion and negotiation. From slave-ownership and its legacies to emancipation and its meanings in the wider frame of nation and empire, from reform at home to reform in the Empire, from slavery to reparations – these are entangled histories that require rewriting the narratives of both nation and empire. The essays in this volume address some of the possible lines of investigation. We hope this is a discussion that will continue. Notes  1 Salman Rushdie, ‘The New Empire within Britain’, in Imaginary Homelands. Essays and Criticism 1981–1991 (London, 1991), p. 129.  2 Simon Gikandi, Maps of Englishness. Writing Identity in the Culture of Colonialism (New York, 1996), p. 17.  3 Bob Marley and the Wailers, ‘Redemption Song’, on Uprising (Island Records, 1980).  4 Paule Marshall, The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (New York, 1969).  5 ‘Imperial dispositions’ is Ann Laura Stoler’s term. See Along the Archival Grain. Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton, 2009).  6 The classic statement was in Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler’s ‘Between ­metropole and colony: rethinking a research agenda’, the introduction to their edited collection, Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley, 1997), p. 4.  7 Mrinalini Sinha, ‘Mapping the imperial social formation: a modest proposal for feminist history’, Signs, 25:4 (2000), 1077–82. See also her ‘Teaching imperialism as a social formation’, Radical History Review, 67 (1997), 175–86; Louis Althusser, ‘Contradiction and overdetermination’, in For Marx, trans. Ben Brewster (London, 1969).  8 Partha Chatterjee, The Black Hole of Empire. History of a Global Practice of Power (Princeton, 2012), p. 33.

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 9 Interestingly, a number of new books are being published by US historians on the history of capitalism, reflecting the same imperatives. See the New York Times, 7 April 2013. 10 Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, ‘Philanthropy at bargain prices: notes on the economics of gradual emancipation’, Journal of Legal Studies, 3:2 (1974), 377–401; Nicholas Draper, The Price of Emancipation: Slave-ownership, Compensation and British Society at the End of Slavery (Cambridge, 2010), p. 106. 11 Lowell Ragatz, The Fall of the Planter Class in the British Caribbean 1763–1833: A Study in Social and Economic History (New York and London, 1928); Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (1944, repr. London, 1964); Seymour Drescher, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Pittsburgh, 1977). 12 For a full discussion of our findings see Catherine Hall, Nicholas Draper, Keith McClelland, Kate Donington and Rachel Lang, The Legacies of British Slave-ownership (forthcoming, Cambridge, 2014). 13 Catherine Hall, Macaulay and Son. Architects of Imperial Britain (London and New Haven, 2012). 14 Gauri Viswanathan, Outside the Fold. Conversion, Modernity and Belief (Princeton, 1998). 15 Jon E. Wilson, The Domination of Strangers. Modern Governance in Eastern India, 1780–1835 (Cambridge, 2008), p. 157. 16 Parliamentary Papers 1837 (425) VII. 17 See E. Glissant, Le Discours antillais (Paris, 1981), p. 129. 18 T. M. Devine, ‘Did Slavery Help to Make Scotland Great?’ in his To the Ends of the Earth. Scotland’s Global Diaspora 1750–2010 (London, 2011), ch. 2; Nini Rodgers, Ireland, Slavery and Anti-Slavery: 1612–1865 (Basingstoke, 2007). 19 Such as Mary Turner, ‘The British Caribbean, 1823–1838: the transition from slave to free legal status’, in Douglas Hay and Paul Craven (eds), Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562–1955 (Chapel Hill and London, 2004), ch. 8.

16

Part I

Formations of capital: beyond ‘merchants and planters’

1

The scope of accumulation and the reach of moral perception: slavery, market revolution and Atlantic capitalism Robin Blackburn

In this essay I reconsider the relationship between the rise of capitalism in Britain and the United States and the emergence of a very intense regime of plantation slavery in the Americas. This interlinked process is seen as prompting countervailing movements that seek to limit or challenge slavery in the name of ‘free air’, ‘free labour’ or the cause of humanity. Slavery seemed a distant memory in Elizabethan England and yet was to acquire great significance in Britain’s plantation colonies. Protector Somerset, it is true, attempted to revive a species of slavery as a punishment for vagrancy in 1547. But this penalty proved impossible to enforce, because so generally unpopular.1 Thomas Smith asserted in De Republica Anglorum (1575) that slavery had died out because English landlords had no need of slaves. The condition had been ‘little by little extinguished’ because landlords had found ‘more civil and gentle means’ of inducing labourers to work for them.2 He was referring to the economic ­pressure on landless labourers to work for wages. The ‘free air’ doctrine and the paradox of colonial slavery A popular claim that England’s ‘free air’ was incompatible with slavery helped employers to discover the advantages of wage labour. In late medieval times many municipalities had claimed that all their inhabitants were free, and that any bondsman who found refuge within the city limits for a year and a day could also claim their freedom. By the late sixteenth century wider, incipiently national, claims for free air were being made. Jean Bodin cites such a declaration in his Six Books of the Republic, and William Blackstone in the 1760s, echoing a sixteenth-century case, makes a similar claim for England. As you may imagine there was considerable doubt as to the exact scope of such declarations. The case cited by Bodin covered those subject to the Guyène parlement, while that cited by Blackstone referred to those subject to English courts but, in both cases, overseas dependencies were implicitly excluded. However, captured royalists in the English Civil War – condemned to forced labour in Barbados – invoked the ‘free air’ principle 19

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in their defence. The eighteenth-century parlements of Guyenne and Paris freed scores of those held in slavery in metropolitan France.3 As these core European states expanded and acquired more colonies, the ‘free air’ doctrine was generally confined to the metropolis. Indeed I will be exploring the strange logic whereby the expansion of wage labour in the metropolitan regions directly prompted the rise of large-scale slavery in the plantation zone of the Americas. This is a story which begins in the seventeenth century but does not reach its climax until 1860. I will briefly revisit Eric Williams’ famous ideas on the subject of capitalism and slavery, but widen the optic to take account of the ‘slaveholder capitalism’ of the nineteenth-century United States. The re-emergence of slavery in England’s seventeenth-century New World colonies, notably Barbados, Virginia, Jamaica and South Carolina, responded to conditions very different from those in metropolitan regions. The colonists could seize land from the natives but not persuade them to work for wages. Those who sponsored plantations, men catering to a new mass market for tobacco, sugar and indigo, had two solutions. For a time they could persuade destitute English youths to bind themselves to labour for a few years in the colonies, if their passage was paid and if they were promised land. However, few wished to work for wages once their time was up, and the stream of indentures dried up as word of plantation conditions spread. So the merchants opted for a more expensive, but also more long-term, solution, the purchase of African captives. The merchants’ ability to pay good money to purchase and transport slaves reflected the strength of money demand in regions of Europe in which capitalism was spreading. The larger numbers now in receipt of rent, fees, salaries or wages in these regions dramatically widened the market. The fact that their purchasing power could command exotic commodities and even turn them into items of everyday consumption added something special.4 In his book on Economic Growth and the Ending of the Atlantic Slave Trade (1987) David Eltis wrote that a willingness to substitute goods for leisure was a defining attribute of modernisation.5 The ‘industrious revolution’ described by Jan de Vries also dwells on this moment. As markets widened, the bargain came to seem more tempting to some, with plantation produce alleviating the lot of those in receipt of wages, even where they had sacrificed a margin of independence. The plantation products were soon part of a new way of life involving such consumer treats as tobacco, sugar, cacao, coffee, cotton fabric and bright dyestuffs. The colonial option for slavery also reflected and intensified a racialised conception of African captives and their descendants as a convenient and legitimate source of coerced labour. The slaves were aliens, of African, supposedly heathen, origin and hence not covered by the ‘free air’ doctrine. The situation of the slave was sometimes acknowledged to be an unhappy one but nevertheless necessary, and ultimately beneficial to all, even the slaves supposedly gaining useful occupation and a hope of salvation. The slave status was both infantilised and feminised by patriarchal slavery. It was also more intensely commercialised as it was ­harnessed to Atlantic trade. Slavery ceased to be a temporary or transitional 20

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i­nstitution and became the permanent fate of an uprooted and racially defined group. There were occasional doubts as to the legitimacy of the enslavement of Africans and their descendants, but such qualms were smothered by the pressing need to find hands to cultivate tobacco, sugar, cotton and indigo. The nature of the links between Africa, the New World and the Old involved huge distances and unfamiliar commercial practices. The precise nature of the local customs, and of the European impact on them, was hard to decipher. On the one hand, exchange tended to focus on a series of dyadic relations rather than on the wider context or what sociologists have called the ‘extra-contractual element in contract’.6 At least for a while the colonial element in colonial slavery did imply some attempt to embed the institution in a framework of law, even if the nature of the slave plantation embodied a patriarchal planter sovereignty within the household which diminished or resisted regulation. In the epoch of colonial mercantilism the metropolitan authorities imposed far-reaching commercial laws governing colonial trade but the Atlantic slave trade nevertheless acquired an independent momentum. Free enterprise turned out to be more adept than state corporations at the complex undertaking of trafficking tens of thousands – eventually over a hundred thousand – of captives across the Atlantic each year. Independent traders had the specialist knowledge and the flexibility to haggle with both the African merchants and the New World planters, and to monitor their employees and agents. This early triumph of free trade – making the Atlantic a competitive slave-trafficking zone – is one rarely cited by proponents of laissez-faire. Yet the latter term was coined by Thomas Legendre, a French colonial trader. And, as so often with free enterprise, its protagonists expected public protection and even subsidies, such as the tariff exemption (acquits de guinée) received by French slave traders who brought their captives to French colonies. In the colonial epoch the imperial regulation of trade strove to channel the plantation-related trades to home ports and to keep contraband in check. But in the half-century following the American Revolution the various colonial systems – British, French, Spanish and Portuguese – were successively destroyed, with American planters and merchants often taking the lead. This too was a complex process, since many of the new patriots in the former colonies were slave-holders. In the course of the struggle for independence the planter elite backed a widening of the geographical scope of the free air doctrine while continuing to practise slave-owning on an even larger scale, albeit that some planter leaders were prepared to accept an end to the Atlantic slave trade. The contribution of slavery to industrialisation This brings me to another aspect of the relationship between capitalism and slavery. For over half a century historians have debated whether exchanges between Britain, Africa and the New World slave plantations furnished a decisive stimulus to Britain’s Industrial Revolution in the last decades of the eighteenth 21

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century and the first decades of the nineteenth. The argument was powerfully made in Eric Williams’ famous study, Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944. It still has something essential to teach us nearly seventy years later. In American Crucible I conclude that the ‘Williams thesis’, broadly construed, and with certain amendments, is in good shape.7 The broader construction of the argument looks not just at profits, or the slave trade, but at the way that slavery in the Americas and the Atlantic slave trade furnished markets, capital or credit and raw materials for the industrialising economy. Early cotton manufacturers needed extended credit if they were to reach the Atlantic markets that would reward industrial production. The colonial merchants of Liverpool, London and Bristol were able to supply this credit, as bills of exchange drawn on the plantation trades helped to finance canals, docks, wharves, manufactures and agricultural improvement. Recent discussion has focused on how the Americas furnished a providential escape from the constraint of geography and resources on a small island. In The Great Divergence (2002) Kenneth Pomeranz has urged that the famous ‘ghost acreage’ acquired by British manufacturers in their exchanges with the plantation zone enabled them to overtake China.8 While this notion of ‘ghost acres’ is helpful, it is necessary to stress that it was slave labour and the relentless pace of coerced slave gangs that brought those acres into production. And while Williams’ argument focused on the Caribbean sugar economy, Pomeranz stresses the huge growth of slave-grown cotton in the US South, the latter rapidly overtaking Brazil as a supplier of slave-produced cotton after 1815. With or without colonial rule, New World slavery in the greater Caribbean, from the Mississippi to the Paulista West in Brazil, added millions of acres of fertile soil supplying vital ingredients at a constant or even declining price for the industrialising economy. If forced to rely on its own agricultural resources, 1820s Britain would have needed to devote the whole of its arable and pastoral land to supply enough woollen yarn or flax to make up for the loss of raw cotton imports from North America. If slavery had been unavailable, then more costly alternatives would have been needed to supply the needed inputs. In Power and Plenty (2008) Kevin Findlay and Ronald O’Rourke further develop the case that Britain would have grown more slowly or not at all in a closed or purely European economy.9 Cotton yarn lent itself easily to manufacturing processes, and consumers loved the new cotton garments. Cuban sugar and Brazilian coffee likewise added allure to new modes of consumption built around indigo-dyed cotton (‘jeans’), coffee and sugar. While the authors I have mentioned can be seen as renewing the ‘Williams thesis’ we should be careful not to imply that the path taken was in every way the best and most productive. If British governments had never permitted the slave trade or had freed the slaves much earlier, they could have constructed a more humane model, based on voluntary migration and cooperative or individual landownership, with generous credit and commodity price-stabilisation boards; then supplies of sugar, cotton and coffee would have been forthcoming. Or if, following 22

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an earlier emancipation, compensation had gone to the direct producers and to road-building and education, this would have helped to give a post-emancipation free labour regime a flying start. Likewise, recognition of indigenous land claims would have made waged employment more attractive, a consideration central to the argument of the New Zealand promoter Edward Gibbon Wakefield. Unfortunately the settlers, with official connivance, trampled on native rights, flouting the Treaty of Waitangi. But this does not invalidate the argument that a better course was available. Plantation products commanded good prices, enabling their producers, if they wished, to offer good wages both before and after slavery. Thus the first plantations in the English colonies were staffed by indentured labourers, whose condition is sometimes wrongly equated to that of a slave. The lot of the indentured was indeed an unhappy one, but they had to be freed and given land after three years, and enjoyed some minimal legal protection, with many thousands taking their masters to court. If the captives offered for sale on the African coast had been offered such a contract many might have accepted it. As it was, racial exclusion rather than economic necessity made them ineligible for such a status. The option for colonial slavery reflected market forces and the retreat of the state, allowing the planters and their civil society greater freedom. To begin with, the cost of devising alternatives to slavery or plantations might have been a bit higher, but this would have widened the domestic market in the former plantation zone. The labour regimes that developed after emancipation were typically far from ideal ,but in several colonies tenant farming and wage labour were compatible with producing sugar, cotton and coffee. And the areas which avoided the most onerous forms of debt peonage or ‘share cropping’ did better than those where the freed people were terrorised and intimidated.10 After insisting that alternatives were possible, I return to what was rather than what might have been. Dale Tomich has argued that nineteenth-century slave regimes in the Americas constituted what he calls the ‘second slavery’ – an analogy which returns us to the classic debates over the transition to capitalism and the crisis of the seventeenth century and compares nineteenth-century plantation slavery to the revival of serfdom in Eastern Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.11 Tomich sees this ‘second slavery’ as having an intrinsically capitalist character. In American Crucible I stress its adoption of steam power, the chronometer and other iconic features of modernity.12 We need to consider which was the new driving force – slavery or capitalism? Were they complementary or antagonistic? Were they perhaps a single system – ‘slaveholder capitalism’? Another framework useful for capturing socio-economic developments in the Atlantic world in the early and mid nineteenth century is that of the ‘social structure of accumulation’ in both metropolis and plantation zone in the epoch of what Karl Polanyi termed The Great Transformation, the title of a book also first published in 1944 and one which illuminated the ways in which market expansion posed a threat to three resources – land, labour and money. In Polanyi’s view the market treated these vital resources as infinitely replaceable commodities when 23

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they were not created by or for the market. Polanyi warned that market expansion was highly destructive unless embedded in social institutions and contained by regulation. The initial advance of industrialism boosted both wage labour and plantation slavery in ways that stimulated anxiety and unrest, one expression of which was to be the growth of organised abolitionism in Britain between the 1780s and 1830s and in the US from the 1830s to the 1860s. The call to end the slave trade and then slavery sought to halt slavery’s advance and to deprive the wealthy and powerful of ominous extra facility of slave-holding. Abolitionism and slave resistance in different but not entirely separate ways sought to contest a social regime dominated by a sometimes uneasy alliance of planters, merchants, bankers and manufacturers, and the commodifying consequences of the ‘market revolution’ analysed by Charles Sellers and other US historians.13 But first, a word or two about plantation trade and slave-holding capitalism. Steam power greatly speeded processing and transportation in the new areas of plantation development but was too cumbersome for planting or harvesting. On the plantation, slaves and draught animals were still needed to haul the sugar cane to the mill, or cotton bolls to the gin, or the coffee beans to be hulled. While there were a few thousand steam engines in the plantation zone there were also several hundred thousand oxen and a few million mules, donkeys and horses. While there was some deskilling of the processing work, care and attention were still needed in planting, weeding, cane cutting, coffee or cotton harvesting and animal husbandry. The fact that force was applied to raise the pace of work via the gang and task systems does not mean that this toil was unskilled – still less easy to mechanise. Thus, at the dawn of the industrial epoch slaves were mobilised in unprecedented numbers to furnish this new type of capitalism with exotic products which industrialised markets required but could not themselves produce. The advances of industrial capitalism were uneven and incomplete; a species of para-industrial slavery helped to bridge the gaps and enable the accumulation process to proceed. From the beginning, the American slave plantations anticipated some of the features of the new factories. These were intensified as they sustained a vibrant bilateral relationship with industrial capital as both supplier and market. Those who spoke of industrial ‘plants’ – short for plantations – were well aware of this fact. Slavery might be an essentially pre-capitalist social relation but it was now locked within the orbit of industrial capital. The British and French Caribbean plantations played a part in this but proved vulnerable to slave revolt and metropolitan abolition. The overthrow of these systems was brought about by slave insurgence and a complex class struggle, rather than by economic exhaustion, and resulted from their greater vulnerability, especially where slaves comprised nine-tenths of the population, rather than a half or less, as in the new centres of plantation production, notably the US South, Cuba and Brazil. The nineteenth-century slave systems and slave-based Atlantic trades had already withstood the Age of Revolution and of the first major emancipations. The 24

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slaves were a large minority, not a majority, as they had been in Saint Domingue or Jamaica prior to the crisis of the slave order. And the slave-holders of the United States and Brazil were not colonies but proudly independent states. Cuba was still a colony, but one of such great wealth that its impoverished mother country was a reliable ally in the struggle against abolitionism. The second slavery arose and developed in the aftermath of two great c­ hallenges – the Haitian Revolution of 1804 and British abolitionist breakthroughs in 1807 and after. Indeed the pax Britannica was defined as much by its global crusade against the international slave trade as by the doctrine of free trade. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815 the British government persuaded the other great powers to adopt a declaration against the Atlantic slave traffic. The British followed up the Vienna declaration with a series of bilateral treaties with France, Spain and Portugal, among other states. For the first time since 1648 morality had become entwined with international affairs. To begin with this might simply be a matter of inconsequential rhetoric, but it threw the slave-holders onto the defensive. The United States, which had banned the Atlantic slave traffic in 1808, the same year as Britain, refused to permit a mutual right of search, thus leaving a gaping hole in the Anglo-American treaty on the topic. The US authorities reduced US slave imports to a clandestine trickle, but the stars and stripes became a flag of convenience for the slave traffickers. Sometimes US papers were acquired by fraud, involving the corruption or complicity of US port authorities and captains. The fact that Spanish, Portuguese and Brazilian officials themselves brazenly permitted slave trading, in contravention of treaties signed with the British, furnished useful cover to slave-traders of all nations. The British established a sizeable squadron on the West coast of Africa, whose commanders boarded and searched hundreds of vessels. The US government eventually agreed to send its own small naval force to the African coast, but it was far less effective and anyway found it difficult to convict even flagrant traffickers in US courts. The British slave trade ban seems to have been quite effective so far as its own nationals were concerned, thanks to stiff penalties and the long arm of the Royal Navy, but the result was a massive surviving clandestine trade and a continuing massive involvement of British merchants and manufacturers in that traffic as well as in the still growing trade in slave produce.14 Notwithstanding the efforts of the British, with occasional help from the United States and France, some two million slaves were carried from Africa to the Americas in the whole period 1815 to 1867, with Cuba and Brazil being the main destinations. British and US merchants, even when zealous to observe the slave trade treaties, nevertheless contributed to slave-based commerce in two different ways. First, they sold large quantities of so-called ‘trade goods’ to the slave ­traffickers. The traders on the African coast were quite conservative in their tastes and liked English and North American metal manufactures, textiles, firearms and other speciality goods. The merchants and manufacturers of Birmingham and Liverpool, Salem and Boston dispatched quantities of these goods to Havana, 25

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Rio de Janeiro and the African coast. Hugh Thomas writes of the consequences of the British role in 1808 – when the French marched on Lisbon – obliging the Portuguese royal court to sail for Brazil: ‘For the time being, too, the increased quantity of British manufactured goods being brought into Brazil, legally, could continue to be used in the trade to Angola, and in exchange for slaves, a weakness in the schemes devised in London which the Foreign Office had overlooked.’15 However, the weakness of which Thomas speaks could also be seen as blind spot when it came to the evaluation of commercial practices and of exchange itself, with a narrow focus on the immediate swap of cash for commodities, with no attention to antecedents or consequences. The international arms trade has often exhibited similar compartmentalised behaviour. Selling arms and selling slaves can be seen as ‘nothing personal, just business’. The British shipbuilders who constructed warships for the Confederacy might have entered such a plea, as might the British officials who were so slack and ineffective at seizing these vessels.16 However, the British and French finance houses – Erlanger’s and Schroeder’s being among the most prominent – which floated Confederate war bonds to pay for the warship Alabama and huge qualities of munitions made no secret of the fact that, for them, this was a cause as well as business. The first offering raised $8.5 million and there were several further flotations to follow, all supposedly backed by cotton.17 A second uncomfortable fact was the willingness of North Atlantic traders to make their own contribution to the surge in plantation slavery between 1815 and 1860, with the combined slave population of the US South, Cuba and Brazil roughly doubling from 3 to 6 million between these two dates. The steady growth of the US slave population owed little to direct slave imports, but the prodigious growth in cotton output was made possible by a domestic slave trade that supplied around a million new pairs of hands to the planters of the greater Mississippi region. In Cuba and Brazil there was also a strong interregional traffic. The slaveholders supplying the domestic traffic must have been aware that slaves in transit, especially females, were particularly vulnerable to abuse. The new plantations were now the Atlantic world’s chief suppliers of raw cotton, sugar and coffee – and Britain and the US North purchased this slave produce on a vast scale. In an influential article on ‘The origins of humanitarianism’, published in the American Historical Review, Thomas Haskell argued that the rise of the international market served to stimulate new perspectives in which individuals began to be aware of their involvement with quite distant arrangements.18 He also claimed that market involvement would prompt a search for ‘recipe’ knowledge, as people realised that institutions could be changed to bring them into line with their ideals. In the past I have criticised this argument, while not denying its interest. The arrangements which I have very crudely sketched once again seem to belie the idea of the market as a reliable prompt for morality or action at a distance. British or US legislators felt responsibility for practices taking place in their jurisdiction, or which they were directly sponsoring, but not for the behaviour of business partners, suppliers or customers. A new, or at least 26

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more intense, faith in the sanctity of contract and in the principles of free trade helped to narrow and limit the sense of responsibility for indirect or mediated relationships. Britain and the US both felt the need to establish commercial relations on sound principles. On the one hand, they had renounced the Atlantic slave trade, but, on the other, they were committed to free trade. There were dissident voices on both topics but also a desire to reduce what one might call moral dissonance, the awkwardness of contradictory impulses and the indignity of being caught flouting one’s own rules. After wrestling with the moral dilemmas of Atlantic commerce Thomas Macaulay advised his fellow peers in 1845 that they should take a narrow view of their responsibilities. He insisted that British obligations ‘in respect to negro slavery had ceased when slavery itself had ceased in that part of the world for the welfare of which I, as a member of this House, am accountable’.19 In this view British legislators were only responsible for the labour regime in their own colonies. Having freed its own slaves, Britain should allow its merchants to trade freely with any territory or nation willing to engage in mutually advantageous commerce. The free-traders particularly targeted the tariff protection enjoyed by British West Indian producers in British markets, protection which had the inevitable result of raising the cost of living in the United Kingdom. Macaulay stressed the absurdity of arrangements which allowed slave-grown sugar to be imported so long as it was then sold overseas: We import the accursed thing; we bond it; we employ our skill and ingenuity to render it more alluring to the eye and to the palate; we export it to Leghorn and Hamburg; we send it to all the coffee houses of Italy and Germany; we pocket a profit on all this; and then we put on a pharisaical air, and thank God that we are not like those sinful Italians and Germans who have no scruple about swallowing slave-grown sugar.20

Macaulay believed that the best way to resolve the inconsistency was to abandon the tariff protection enjoyed by the free-labour producers of the British West Indies. In truth the much preferable solution would have been to retain the protection of the newly emancipated and instead to withdraw the privilege given to re-exports of slave produce. (Radical thinking about justice prefers the ‘allaffected’ rule to the Macaulayesque ‘all subjected’ principle.21) Opposition Conservative MPs voted with abolitionists in 1841to give the West Indian producers a few more year of protection. But in 1846 Parliament voted to reduce the duties to zero in a few years. Brazilian and Cuban supplies flooded into the British market. While some liberals believed this necessary and beneficial, a majority of abolitionists opposed the entry of slave-grown produce. In an effort to cling on to their abolitionist credentials at least with domestic opinion, British governments maintained and even stepped up the efforts of the Atlantic patrols and dispatched gunboats to Brazilian waters.22 As the Brazilian and Cuban authorities gave ground to British pressure, US consular officials reported that the slave traders were now buying the fastest clippers from the Baltimore naval yards 27

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and flying the stars and stripes even more brazenly than before. British observers drew attention to the prominence of Americans in a slave traffic that was still having a devastating effect on Africa. Planters could be drawn to support effective bans on the clandestine Atlantic slave trade because they feared or resented British interference. In 1851 the Empire of Brazil adopted effective measures to stop a traffic that had long been illegal partly for this reason. A contributor to the leading Southern magazine, De Bow’s Review, reported the British perception that US merchants and financiers were deeply implicated in the clandestine slave traffic: ‘Without exception’, he wrote, ‘every diplomatist, every speaker in Parliament, every declaimer at the hustings, every contributor to the numerous journals, concurs in attributing the present lamentable condition of the African slave trade to the inadequacy of our law, the negligence or imbecility of the American government and its officials, or the persevering activity of our people in opposition to and despite the professed wishes of that government.’23 In the 1840s the US ambassador to the imperial government in Rio de Janeiro himself estimated that US businessmen were responsible for about half of the import of some 40,000 slaves each year.24 Plantation finance: a two-way traffic? So far I have focused on commerce and have neglected the dimension of finance; yet, in the conditions of the nineteenth-century Atlantic, the two were intertwined. Merchants who sought to buy plantation produce, whether from the planters themselves or from intermediaries, soon found themselves involved in something that was far from an arm’s-length relationship. The planters often needed supplies on credit if they were to produce their staple. Seeds, hoes, machinery, provisions, packing cases, construction materials, whips, leg-irons and so forth had to be furnished to the planters or factors to enable them to prepare for planting and harvesting. Planters needed to carry reserves from one season to the next to cover all or part of such expenses. Merchants also themselves held cash balances, enabling them to take swift advantage of good prices. In the US in the 1790s banks were chartered which offered credit on reasonable terms, and after the return of peace in 1815 their number grew, from 122 in 1813 to 329 in 1831. Crothers observes that ‘banks furnished large amounts of capital to ­agriculture, transportation enterprises, and industrial ventures’.25 The main capital outlay for the planter was the plantation’s slave complement. While some planters had enough hands, those facing a ready market for their staple, with good prices, wished to buy more slaves. Plantation growth counted on internal slave traffics, transferring labour from lagging to advancing sectors, in Cuba and Brazil as well as the United States. Smaller traders seem to have dominated the domestic slave trade, while the illegal Atlantic traffic was the domain of big capital, partnerships wealthy enough to finance the construction of fast clippers capable of eluding the patrols and transporting five or six hundred slaves. While we know that the clandestine Atlantic 28

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slave traffic was huge, the fact that it was indeed illegal means an absence of the detailed and relatively reliable information which is abundant for the prior legal traffic. Historians who have tried to pin down the precise scope of the clandestine trade – for example David Eltis, Hugh Thomas, Marika Sherwood and Gerald Horne – leave us in no doubt as to the general size and scope of the trade. But they cannot supply the precision to be found in, for example, Roger Anstey’s study of the legal British slave trade between 1760 and 1808.26 The trade in the main slave-produced commodities became easier to establish as free trade reduced the motive for smuggling. There remains the problem that US domestic slave trade, or that between the different parts of Brazil, was not so closely ­monitored as the movement of slave produce across international boundaries. Planters, like farmers or shopkeepers, borrowed from family members for capital items, as well as obtaining credit from factors and merchants. Some of the factors or merchant houses to whom they went for financial help were locally based, with a number clustered in New Orleans, but many factors were agents of merchants based in New York or Boston, Liverpool or Paris. Stuart Bruchey writes: ‘The special role of New York requires more than passing mention. We have already noted the likelihood that manufactured goods, whether domestic or foreign, were apt to be sent to Southern coastal cities by way of New York merchants, and that substantial quantities of cotton were sent from southern ports to New York for trans-shipment. We may now add that cotton sent direct from the south to Europe was likely to be shipped in a vessel owned by a New Yorker and insured by a New York firm. Indeed since numerous New York mercantile houses had partners from that city in residence in the Southern coastal parts, all the arrangements for the shipment were often made by New Yorkers.’27 (Among the leading New York merchants were two Quakers, Jeremiah Thompson and Benjamin Marshall, who shunned slave-holding or slave trading but relied on the distancing effect of market transactions and finance to square their principles with their practice.) London and Liverpool, as the destination of so much of the cotton crop, promoted and facilitated the advance of cotton cultivation and completed the Atlantic cotton triangle. When cotton boomed, planters and their agents had more money than they could usefully employ and their positive balances became sources of credit for canal or railway promoters and for manufacturers. In this way the forced labour of the slaves gave extra impetus to US growth. Yet the slave-holders themselves were ambivalent. De Bow’s Review published an article bemoaning the fate of the surplus held on account by planters and factors: ‘Our merchants cannot convert the notes of their customers into money, except to a limited extent. Their notes remain untouched in their portfolios until they mature. It requires a merchant of wide scope to engage in such a business.’28 The banks in the Southern states invested little in the local economy. As a recent study concludes: ‘Out of state banks increasingly kept large deposits in New York City banks to facilitate their customers’ business needs in New York, as the city came to dominate the Southern cotton trade …’29 29

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Howard Bodenhorn has argued that the United States developed an integrated national financial system earlier than was previously thought. He urges that such a national system of financial flows was already evident in the period 1820 to 1860 and that it made a substantial contribution to US economic growth. He stresses that the banks were active entrepreneurs, not just passive receptacles of Southern surpluses.30 Harold Woodman allotted an active role to the Southern factor, but as an importer of capital and credit from the banks, merchants or manufacturers of the metropolitan regions. In phases of plantation construction capital was indeed drawn into the plantation zone but, once the new plantations were operational, the flow could be reversed. The factor’s lien on the cotton crop was the critical credit-worthy asset because it could be cashed within months. As the value of these crops, grew so did the capacity of the factor first to attract credit from Europe or the North and then to cash in their bet on the cotton crop. For this reason the factor’s role did not diminish as the plantation system expanded, but persisted into the boom decade of the 1850s. Woodman summarises the factor’s role thus: ‘The factor played an important part in the organisation of the marketing process for the South’s chief crop. As the proprietor of a relatively stable enterprise with known and liquid assets, he was able to draw capital into the South, capital which was needed to finance and move the crop. Furthermore, his knowledge of price and market conditions and his skill in preparing cotton for sale served as an important aid to the planter who, often far from the market and busy with the affairs of the plantation, was ill-equipped to direct the sale of his produce.’31 Those wishing to invest in the sources of Atlantic wealth had other options, though these also had pitfalls for the unwary. British investors poured money into railroad and mining companies in the slave zones of the Americas, and these concerns generally used slaves. In the 1840s Britain’s chief source of copper was a company in Eastern Cuba that owned hundreds of slaves. Investors also poured money into public bonds that promised a handsome return. Investors could see the purchase of such bonds as a way of investing in the prosperity of the plantations without owning slaves. They needed to have good relations with the political authorities, or they would find themselves saddled with a non-performing bond. Spain, Brazil and a number of the Southern US states took on large amounts of public debt but, for the most part, failed to deliver the promised return. In the 1870s the London-based Council of Foreign Bondholders came up with the idea that the Madrid government could convert investors’ holdings into a share in a new company that would own and operate the Rio Tinto mine in Spain and the now partly exhausted Cuban mines. The government of the first Spanish Republic rejected this proposal. The Council then mounted a wellfinanced diplomatic and press offensive against the republic and in favour of a restoration of the monarchy. Sections of the army responded to these calls and the restored royal authorities duly awarded the foreign bondholders generous stakes in the Rio Tinto Company.32 The construction of canals and railroads attracted investors with large amounts 30

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of capital – the latter category included large merchants and banks. As one account explains: ‘The alacrity with which [Nicholas] Biddle and his associates acquired their formidable block of [canal] securities can in large part be explained by the cotton operations in which they were engaged in the period 1837 to 1840. Working through affiliated brokerage houses, Biddle and his associates on three occasions cornered substantial shares of the cotton crop and held out for a price rise.’33 The size of these operations was staggering, amounting to $32 million at one point, according to some. The super-exploitation of nearly four million slaves by some forty thousand planters in the US South created a huge balloon of surplus profit. The planters appropriated a substantial share, but so did financial and commercial intermediaries. While the planters competed with one another, the commodity speculators could often reap monopoly profits. Hugely gainful for particular individuals, these speculations introduced great instability in the system of exchanges as a whole. In Cotton and Race in the Making of America (2011) Gene Dattel shows how the crises of 1837 and 1839 disrupted cotton finance and cast a shadow over most of the subsequent decade, to be succeeded by a new cycle of boom and bust in the 1850s.34 Planters and local, Southern-based merchants and entrepreneurs became more aware of the ‘degrading shackles of commercial dependence’. One result was the convening of Southern conventions in 1837, 1838 and 1839 aimed at asserting the need for the Southern states to set up financial institutions which would foster local development. The supporters of such schemes came from the Eastern seaboard rather than the New South, but John McCardell sees the ideas of the convention movement as feeding into a growth of Southern nationalism. A Southern commercial convention in Vicksburg in 1859 supplied a platform for the advocates of secession.35 The slave plantations might be embodiments of great wealth but the planter could still be plagued by shortages of cash. The slave plantation greatly expanded staple production, while remaining a poor customer. Planters organised self-­ provision of most foodstuffs and slaves had no spending power. Plantation growth did not sustain wider exchanges. A large share of the burgeoning surplus yielded by the staple commodity was siphoned out of the plantation zone. The US Census of 1860 was to show that the slave-holding South was the wealthiest region but that 40% of that wealth was tied up in slaves. The slave economy itself was narrowly based on cotton and sugar. And, as Gavin Wright shows, the Census data also show that the value of equipment and improved land in the North was greatly superior to that in the South.36 When trading conditions were difficult many planters would be in hock to Northern merchants and bankers. But in most years cotton and sugar planting was profitable, sometimes very profitable, and those organising the cotton economy built up positive balances in Boston and New York. Lehman Brothers began as a cotton brokerage in Georgia before becoming a bank in New York. Planters could reinvest some of their earnings into their estates, but self-provision meant that 31

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their income was much greater than their outgoings – and these outgoings were anyway a source of income for factors and merchants. Morton Rothstein’s study of the so-called ‘nabobs of Natchez’, observes: They did not all plow their earnings back into land and slaves … Duncan and Minor [two of the ‘nabobs’] accumulated large cash reserves in New York from the proceeds of their cotton and sugar sales, a sharp contrast to the picture of chronic indebtedness sometimes ascribed to Southern planters. In 1861 Marshall and Mercer [two more ‘nabobs’] both had access to funds they had invested in England and New York. Duncan like several other leading Southern planters held investments in Northern land and during the 1850s was constantly changing his portfolio of securities in Northern and Southern state and municipal bonds and in railroad stocks, a portfolio with a value of $500,000 in 1860.37

The New York dealers in slave-produced sugar and coffee from Cuba and Brazil also made impressive fortunes and held positive balances on behalf of their overseas clients or suppliers, who can be seen as the oil sheiks of the mid-nineteenth century. Some of the New York finance houses would hold foreign currency, others would buy state bonds, but in the 1840s and 1850s there was also the option to invest in a new type of asset – railroad company shares. Cotton textiles aside, the major industrial undertaking in the ante-bellum United States was the construction and operation of railroads. Canal projects were smaller and mainly financed by state bonds, supplemented by direct investment from those with a direct stake in the area served by the canal. Wall Street took the lead, with the financing of the hugely successful Erie canal, but canal building came to a halt in 1842. The railroad projects which supplanted them required their promoters to raise huge sums, allowing Wall Street to consolidate its pre-eminence. Railroad securities worth a grand total of $700 million were purchased in the period 1850–60. Where did this extraordinary sum come from? A full explanation must await further research, but the considerations I have mentioned suggest the slave economy surplus played a significant role. New York’s large importers and exporters were major contributors, and it is very probable that client money enabled credit to be extended in this way too. Alfred Chandler argues that railroad construction and operation were decisive for the breakthrough to US industrialisation, pioneering a new type of business administration as well as widening and quickening the domestic market in a multitude of ways. Planters, merchants and factors surely played their part in the transformation wrought by the railroads – with 15,000 miles of track in the South and 30,000 miles in the North and North West by 1860.38 The vulnerability of the ‘slave power’ By 1850 slave-holder capitalism was at the height of its power, supplying threequarters of US exports. Notwithstanding huge efforts to suppress the now illegal 32

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Atlantic slave traffic, the number of slaves in the Americas was still growing. The slave-holders had important clients in the US North and for most of the antebellum era they had more friends in the Northern commercial districts than did the abolitionists. Boston ‘society’ was viscerally hostile to abolitionism. But all was not as it seemed. While the planters boasted of the power of ‘King Cotton’ or ‘His Majesty Sugar’, these regimes of accumulation were actually becoming more vulnerable. They needed a supportive state power, yet found their grip on Washington DC challenged. The aggressive stance of pro-slavery politicians alarmed those who were not slave-holders.39 Slave-holder capitalism was vulnerable to ‘free labour’ agitation because of the conflict over Western lands. The planters’ possession of slaves seemed an unfair advantage in opening up new territories. Leading Republicans, rather than conceding to Southern slave-holders their fair share of Federal territories, insisted that slave-holders should be barred from them outright. The civic logic of the ‘free air’ tradition, denying vast areas to slavery expansion, thus entered into conflict with further growth of plantation slavery. Southerners also alienated Northern support by insisting on more stringent measures against fugitives, requiring every citizen to collaborate with the catchers of runaways. While Republicans denounced the ‘Slave Power’, radical abolitionists went further and attacked the alliance which between slave-holders and Northerner manufacturers and merchants, which they dubbed a pact between the ‘Lords of the Lash’ and the ‘Lords of the Loom’. Slavery was not economically obsolete, but an explosive mix of fear and truculence helped to set the scene for the war. Southern slave-holders were alarmed that Washington could no longer be relied on to defend slavery, while Northerners saw the ‘Slave Power’ making ever greater demands on them. Southerners believed that any war would be short. However, in any protracted conflict they had two great sources of weakness. Firstly, the South lagged far behind the North in industrial development. Secondly, as the war dragged on the slaves were at last given ways of weakening the South and strengthening the North. The Emancipation Proclamation was weakly implemented at first, but by the end of the war 200,000 African American soldiers and sailors fought in the Union ranks, with 80% of them being former slaves. It was these factors that undid the ‘second slavery’, not economic failure or the new perceptions of market actors. Slave-holder capitalism was doomed by its threatening successes, since they helped to assemble a broad alliance against it. The ability of the Confederacy to arm, clothe and feed its soldiers, and retain the support of many whites who owned no slaves, lengthened the war, but the long war radicalised Congress, president and many in the Union army. Notes  1 C. S. L. Davies, ‘Slavery and Protector Somerset’, Economic History Review, 19:3 (1966). I wish to thank the Leverhulme Trust for supporting the research upon which I draw in this essay.

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 2 Sir Thomas Smith, De Republica Anglorum, ed. and trans. Mary Dewar (Cambridge 1982), pp. 135–6.  3 Sue Peabody, ‘There are No Slaves in France’: The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime (Oxford, 1996).  4 The role of both agrarian capitalism and the ‘New Merchants’ is greatly illuminated by Robert Brenner: see his contributions to T. H. Aston and C. Philpin (eds), The Brenner Debate (London, 1986) and his Merchants and Revolution (2nd edn, London 2006). See also E. A. Wrigley, ‘The transition to an advanced organic economy’, Economic History Review, 59:2 (2006), esp. 471–4.  5 David Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Oxford, 1987).  6 T. Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (Cambridge, MA, 1934).  7 Robin Blackburn, The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights (London, 2011).  8 Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, 2000).  9 Ronald Findlay and Kevin O’Rourke, Power and Plenty: Trade, War and the World Economy in the Second Millennium (Princeton, 2008). 10 I explore variant post-slavery outcomes in American Crucible, pp. 462–9. 11 Dale Tomich, Through the Prism of Slavery: Labor, Capital and the World Economy (New York, 2004). 12 Blackburn, American Crucible, pp. 285–398. 13 Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America 1815–1846 (New York and Oxford, 1991). 14 David Eltis, ‘The British contribution to the nineteenth-century transatlantic slave trade’, Economic History Review, 32:2 (1979), 211–27. 15 Hugh Thomas, The Atlantic Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870 (London, 1997), p. 574. 16 Amanda Foreman, A World on Fire (London, 2009). 17 Gene Dattel, Cotton and Race in the Making of America (New York, 2011), pp. 187–91. 18 Thomas Haskell, ‘Capitalism and the origins of humanitarianism’, American Historical Review, 90:2 (1985), 339–61 and 90:3 (1985), 547–66. 19 Quoted in Thomas, Atlantic Slave Trade, p. 734. 20 Quoted in ibid. 21 Nancy Fraser, Scales of Justice (London, 2010). 22 Howard Temperley, British Anti-slavery, 1833–70 (London, 1974), pp. 137–67. 23 Gerald Horne, The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil and the African Slave Trade (New York, 2007), p. 138. 24 Horne, Deepest South, pp. 33–51. 25 Glenn Crothers, ‘Banks and economic development in post-revolutionary northern Virginia, 1790–1812’, Business History Review, 73 (1999), 4. 26 Marika Sherwood, After Abolition: Britain and the Slave Trade since 1807 (London 2007); Thomas, Atlantic Slave Trade, pp. 558 et seq.; Horne, Deepest South; Roger Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition (London, 1975). 27 Stuart Bruchey, The Roots of American Economic Growth (London, 1965), p. 43. 28 Quoted in Harold Woodman, King Cotton and His Retainers (Lexington, 1968), pp. 165–6.

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29 John Steele Gordon, An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power (New York, 2004), p. 185. 30 Howard Bodenhorn, A History of Banking in the Antebellum United States: Financial Markets and Economic Development in an Era of Nation Building (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 165–212. 31 Woodman, King Cotton and His Retainers, p. 175. 32 Robin Blackburn, ‘La esclavidtud y derrota de la Primera República’, in José Piqueros (ed.), Azúcar y esclavitud (Madrid, 2002), pp. 331–72. 33 Henry Balthazar Meyer, The History of Transportation in the United States before 1860 (Washington, 1944), p. 195. 34 Dattel, Cotton and Race in the Making of America, pp. 67–70. 35 John McCardell, The Idea of a Southern Nation (New York, 1978), pp. 227–76. 36 Gavin Wright, Slavery and American Economic Development (Baton Rouge, FL, 2006), pp. 57–9. 37 Morton Rothstein, ‘The Antebellum South as a dual economy: a tentative hypothesis’, Agricultural History, 41:4 (1967), 380. 38 Alfred Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge 1977). 39 See Charles Post, The American Road to Capitalism (London, 2012).

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2

Slavery, the slave trade and economic growth: a contribution to the debate Pat Hudson

In April 1831 Alexander Baring, of Baring Brothers, claimed that slave emancipation threatened to destroy ‘all the capital now employed in that branch of commerce’.1 At that time Barings had £250,000 invested in mortgages on West Indian estates, which amounted to half of its capital.2 In 1833 Baring Brothers lodged claims to several thousand pounds of emancipation compensation. The Bank also invested in slave-produced American cotton, which in that year represented a quarter of its revenues.3 In 1803 the firm had earned around $1million for arranging the Louisiana Purchase. This led to a major intensification of slave-based sugar production, attracting some 280,000 slaves from the internal slave trade between 1810 and 1860.4 Before that Alexander’s father, Francis Baring, had been a member of the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa and a leading figure in Lloyds marine insurance, whose largest strand of business was the slave-based West Indies trades.5 In 1817 Alexander Baring acquired Northington Grange in Hampshire for £136,000 and invested in extending, altering and embellishing its Greek revival architecture and interiors. By 1825 he owned a million pounds’ worth of land in the southern counties of England and had bought Bath House in Piccadilly, which he rebuilt in Italianate style.6 Like Barings, many British and Anglo-American merchants and financiers benefited from slavery via a variety of routes over many decades; and despite Alexander Baring’s fears, neither the British abolition of the trade in 1807 nor the emancipation of slaves in British territories in the 1830s was a calamity for British business. Once they had become established in a variety of international markets and financial projects during the era of British slavery, and using the springboard, the networks and the profits thus created, most British manufacturing, trading and financial firms benefited rather than lost by the end of slavery and the associated dismantling of protectionism, because the structure and institutions that the slave/plantation nexus had created made it relatively easy for them to adapt.7 Some, including Barings, also continued to invest in and benefit from slavery, slave production and various forms of peonage in the Indian Ocean as well as in the Caribbean and Central and South America throughout the nineteenth century. 36

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The debate about capitalism and slavery may be long running, but there is distance yet to be covered. The eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century evidence for the dynamic role of slavery in metropolitan economic growth and industrialisation, having received a strong fillip from Joseph Inikori’s Africans and the Industrial Revolution in 2003, is once again the focus of new work. Our previous neglect of the impact of slavery after 1807, and even greater neglect of the decades after 1833, are also starting to be remedied. This chapter will outline our knowledge of the extent and investment of slavery proceeds and slave-trade profits in the British economy during the century or so before emancipation. It will also consider associated flows of raw materials, knowledge and the demand for British manufactures that were both the direct and indirect results of slavery. In understanding the flows of capital and credit, the supply of raw materials, the demand for manufactures and the impetus to innovate that can be related to the trade in and use of African labour, a regional and sectoral focus is important. The growth of the British economy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is a story of distinctive regional ‘take-offs’ alongside stasis or industrial decline in other parts of the country.8 Placing this fact at centre stage in debates about the process of British industrialisation makes it easier to comprehend an array of dynamics that are otherwise elusive. The role of slavery and the slave trade is one of them.9 Similarly, if we focus upon specific sectors of the economy, especially textiles, iron, shipping and finance, including credit, it becomes easier to see how the impulse of the slave trade was vital: it stimulated process, product and financial innovations and generated institutional provisions that spilled over into other areas of the economy. Whilst such linkages were addressed first by Eric Williams in 1944, and later by Inikori, neither stressed the full impact of the slave trade and Atlantic commerce upon the British national and international financial and credit systems in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, especially the implications for the major industrial areas – a particular focus in this chapter.10 Finally, in an effort to encourage further study of the impact of slavery post 1833, we briefly consider the continuing role of slavery, slave systems and a variety of forms of peonage in the British economy in the mid-nineteenth century and beyond. We thus hope to extend the debate chronologically and to take it beyond Atlantic merchants and planters; beyond the question of whether slavery was progressive or regressive: like most things it was both.11 Capitalism and slavery It is now undisputed that at least 12.5 million captive Africans were transported to the Americas, almost 11 million of whom survived to be sold into slavery.12 As early as 1718 the slave trade was being recognised as a pivot upon which many other British trades, raw material supplies and manufacturing depended. William Wood’s Survey of Trade, written in that year, suggested that it was ‘the spring and parent whence the others flow’,13 whilst Malachy Postlethwayt (another staunch 37

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mercantilist, from the 1730s working for the Royal Africa Company) argued that the slave trade was ‘the first principle and foundation of all the rest, the mainspring of the machine which sets every wheel in motion’. The British Empire was ‘a magnificent superstructure of American commerce and Naval Power on an African foundation’.14 The classic outline of the dynamic relationship between capitalism and slavery was drawn by Williams in his landmark thesis: The Triangular trade gave a triple stimulus to British industry. The Negroes were purchased with British manufactures; transported to the plantations they produced sugar, cotton, indigo, molasses and other tropical products, the processing of which created new industries in England; while the maintenance of Negroes and their owners on the plantations provided another market for British industry, New England Agriculture and Newfoundland fisheries. By 1750 there was hardly a trading or manufacturing town in England which was not in some way connected with the triangular or direct colonial trade. The profits obtained provided one of the main streams of that accumulation of capital in England which financed the industrial revolution.15

Williams looks at the impact upon British manufacturing of goods traded in the triangular trades: raw cotton, textiles of all kinds, rum, pacotille, metal wares. He includes an influential chapter on the impact of West Indian demand for foodstuffs on the economic growth of the American mainland colonies. This suited Britain because it enabled the northern colonies to buy British manufactures and did not encourage them to develop their own competitive manufacturing base. Williams also details flows of direct investment of profits from the slave trade and plantation fortunes into British industry: in textile manufacture (cotton and wool), sugar refining, shipbuilding, slate quarrying, coal mining, metal wares, heavy industry, canals, and in banking and insurance. His examples, subsequently much quoted, include the Heywood and Leyland banking dynasties and the Gregson and Ingram banks in Liverpool, derived directly from slave trading; Jonas Bold, the sugar refiner who became a partner in Ingram’s bank; Baker and Dawson, and John Gorril, leading Liverpool shipbuilders whose money had been made in the slave trade; the cotton manufacturers Sir William Fazackerly and Samuel Touchet, who were members of the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa; a leading Manchester cotton firm, the Hibberts, which owned sugar plantations in Jamaica and supplied checks and prints to the Africa Company; Barclay’s bank in London and the Ship Bank in Glasgow, which were both founded on slave and plantation profits; James Watt’s use of capital from the West India trade to finance development of the steam engine; Anthony Bacon, founder of iron-works at Merthyr and Cyfartha, who had accumulated capital in the African trade and in government contracts in the West Indies; the role of sugar interests and planters in the rise of Lloyds and the Phoenix insurance.16 The list is long. But Williams’ discussion is also broader. He details the effects of slavery and the slave trade on shipping and shipbuilding, on ancillary trades in the port cities and on services such as banking and insurance. He emphasises the spread of 38

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profits and proceeds from transatlantic shipping by considering the diffusion of capitalisation of voyages in 64ths, making such investments feasible for ‘attorneys, drapers, grocers, barbers, and tailors’.17 He focuses his account on Liverpool in particular. In 1790, 138 ships departing from Liverpool to Africa were quoted as worth over £1 million, and Liverpool’s potential loss from the abolition of the slave trade was calculated as over £7.5 million.18 At its peak between 1795 and 1804, Liverpool sent 1,099 vessels to Africa, London sent 155, Bristol 29.19 By 1795 Liverpool was responsible for five-eighths of the British slave trade and threesevenths of the whole European slave trade.20 The influence and political power of the West Indian interests and their many positions in central and local government and in civic society are also a constant theme of the book. Williams highlights the ostentatious spending of slave-based dynasties like the Gladstones, the Codringtons and the Beckfords on carriages, clothing, socialising, charities and fine country houses.21 Williams’ main argument is well known: that ‘the rise and fall of mercantilism is the rise and fall of slavery’22 and that British industrial development, stimulated by mercantilism, later outgrew that system and destroyed it. The turning point was American Independence, which opened the trade between the US and the sugar colonies of France, which were much more efficient than the British, largely because of superior fertility. The unsuccessful struggle to wrest the sugar island of St Domingue from the French removed a major reason for continuing the slave trade and was indeed a good reason for abolition. At this point British slave shipments had come to benefit Britain’s rivals more than the home economy. Already by the late 1780s two-thirds of slaves transported in British ships were sold to foreigners.23 The abolition of the slave trade (1807), the emancipation of slaves throughout British territories (1833–35) and the end of preferential sugar duties (1846), the latter long held up because of the power of the planters in British politics, were three key markers of the ending of mercantilism and protectionism in favour of free trade. Many West Indies planters in the end supported the abolition of the slave trade in the dire circumstances of sugar surpluses during the Napoleonic blockade. Only the ending of the slave trade would prevent the growth of rival sugar colonies, especially in Mauritius, Brazil and Cuba. The plight of the West Indies was aggravated by the fact that production exceeded home consumption. The surplus of around 25% had to be sold in Europe, in competition with cheaper Brazilian and Cuban sugar. It could thus be maintained only by subsidies and bounties. Once Britain, aided by protectionism, had become the workshop of the world, success in exports depended upon imports of the most efficiently produced raw materials from all parts of the globe. Williams documents the interrelated support for the ending of slavery and the ending of protectionism amongst the cotton manufacturers, the iron masters, the woollen industry, the sugar refiners, the shipping industry and the commercial elites of Liverpool and Glasgow. Despite some critics, Williams’ chronology and argument about free trade and the ending of slavery is one that has fitted well with a range of later historiography.24 39

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Much more debate has attended Williams’ thesis on the role that slavery, the plantation economies of the West Indies and the slave trade played in promoting British industrialisation. Given the wide-ranging nature of the case made by Williams, covering both direct and indirect links between slavery, the wider Atlantic economy in which slavery was pivotal and the growth of the British economy, it is surprising that critics of Williams for many years concentrated almost entirely upon quantitative examination of the size and profits of the slave trade, narrowly defined, and upon the profitability of slave labour on plantations.25 It is the case that Williams looks at profits made on several specific voyages, varying from 16 to 30%. The risks were great, but he estimates that only one ship in five miscarried.26 Subsequent research has concluded that average returns on capital invested in the slave trade were somewhat lower than Williams had posited: perhaps between 8 and 10% per annum. But this was a rate high enough to attract new entrants right up to the time of abolition.27 It should also be remembered that returns were often hugely inflated in war time, especially during the Napoleonic Wars, by the capture of Prizes.28 Prizes were big business in Liverpool and were sought out deliberately, not just in the course of trade. In 1781 the Hawke seized the Jeune Emilia and netted a profit of 147%; in 1793 Thomas Leyland’s ship Christopher took Le Convention, worth £23,800; and in 1805 Thomas Lumley & Co., West India merchants of London, together with Jno Brocklebank, slave traders of Liverpool, successfully captured Das Amigas with the slave ship Eliza, fitted out as a privateer.29 Estimating the net flow of funds between the metropole and the West Indian plantations is also complex. There were many cases of planter indebtedness and bankruptcy, especially in the crisis years for the West Indies between 1799 and 1807.30 But West Indian returns were generally higher than for domestic investments (around 7% on average, compared with 4%) and it is likely that many of the long-term loans to planters in the eighteenth century were secured by mortgages.31 We thus need to ask not just about the fortunes of planters themselves and what they did with their gains, but also who were the creditors of the planters and what they did with the returns on their relatively secure investments. As we know from the 1833–35 compensation claims, there was a plethora of creditors owning slaves, often as security for loans or by default, including financiers, industrialists and MPs, but also clergymen, widows and annuitants.32 The problem is aggravated by the insistence of some historians in deducting the public costs of colonial administration, the military protection of trade and the regulation of shipping from the private gains of the slave-plantation system even though such costs would have had to be borne under any other system of peonage or, indeed, free labour within a colonial mercantilist environment.33 Such historians are generally silent on the public gain of the triangular trades that came from customs and excise duties and other taxes. Largely on the basis of the slave trade, customs receipts in Liverpool soared from just over £50,000 per annum in the 1750s to £648,000 in 1785.34 And the debate often misses the point about the stimulus to growth and innovation created by the fiscal military state in redistributing wealth 40

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from taxpayers and government creditors to the interests of merchants and manufacturers in the industrial regions.35 It is likely that controversy surrounding the direct role of profits from the slave trade and the direct role of plantation profits in British industrialisation will always be contentious. Given the problems of identifying all parties who benefited, and lost, from the slave trade and slavery and of agreeing what to include in cost-benefit analyses, it is difficult systematically to estimate the level and direction of net flows of investments. But the direct gains to the British economy from slavery are not the foundation of Williams’ case. His examples suggest that ‘more Fonthills than factories’ were built with slave proceeds.36 Indeed he is at pains to emphasise the risky nature of both plantations and the slave trade: the substantial losses, as well as profits, often sustained.37 Africans and the industrial revolution Many of the wider themes originally explored by Williams, but largely ignored by his critics, were taken up and extended by Inikori in 2003. Like Williams, but more so, he emphasises that it is not the slave trade itself nor even the slave trade plus the impulse created by the plantation economies that should concern us, but the whole Atlantic and connected world trading system of the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in which the slave trade and plantation system played the foundational role. Inikori casts the net wide, but also deep: his volume contains hard-won quantitative estimates of many elements of the direct and indirect links between African labour, the plantation system and the development of the British economy. The first step in Inikori’s approach is to challenge the dominant interpretations of the causes of the Industrial Revolution, based on cultural or supply-side factors, in favour of a trade-based explanation.38 Industrialisation occurred in South Lancashire, West Yorkshire and the West Midlands, away from the main centres of Enlightenment and bourgeois values.39 He emphasises the impact of Atlantic trade on the trading and manufacturing economies and the technological development of Lancashire and Yorkshire in particular.40 They were amongst the poorest and least-developed in the sixteenth century, but their direct and indirect connections with the slave trade made them amongst the wealthiest, most populous and most industrialised counties by the later eighteenth century. In the late 1760s Lancashire and Yorkshire were among the eleven counties with the lowest wages in England. By 1794–95 they were among the eleven counties at the top of the ranking, and the West Riding had some of the highest wages in England.41 For much of the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Atlantic markets (including Portugal, Spain and Africa as well as the Americas) absorbed about two-thirds of the cloth output of Lancashire and Yorkshire.42 Inikori reinforces the link between regionally concentrated trade stimulus and inventive activity by considering the location of factories and technological change.43 By 1850 West Yorkshire had 65% of England’s factory employment, 41

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Lancashire had much of the rest and 70% of Britain’s power looms.44 In patenting, ‘Lancashire, Yorkshire and Warwickshire were prominent in the first half of the eighteenth century and they remained so’; ‘East Anglia’s pattern … [was] closer to that of the low-patenting arable counties of the East Midlands and the South.’45 Inikori argues that the formerly dominant wool textile manufacturing area of East Anglia bears some comparability to the Yangzi Delta in losing the dynamic of distant markets to sustain technological change at a critical point.46 Griffiths, Hunt and O’Brien concur: in the case of the cotton industry, inventive activity became concentrated in the new and rising regions of cloth production in the Midlands and North, especially after 1800.47 A significant technological breakthrough occurred in cotton in the 1790s, driven by export markets, principally in the Atlantic.48 Patents of the period 1790 to 1830 exhibit a growing emphasis upon producer goods, reflecting inventiveness in manufacturing processes.49 Import substitution, industrialisation and re-export substitution A pillar of Inikori’s argument is that England was the first successful case of import substitution industrialisation and re-export substitution industrialisation.50 Import substitution refers to a system of protective tariffs against imports that compete with domestic manufactures and the conscious encouragement of home industries that make the same sorts of goods. Import substitution industrialisation occurs when protected home industries begin to compete strongly enough with imports that they capture from their rivals not only the domestic market but also other markets overseas, making protectionism no longer necessary. Re-export substitution industrialisation similarly occurs when, with the initial assistance of protective tariffs, home manufacturing is able to capture external markets formerly supplied by re-exports.51 In textiles, Inikori’s argument about import and re-export substitution is particularly forceful. The bulk of incremental textile output during the classic Industrial Revolution occurred in the switch from European to Atlantic demand, which was for lighter and more varied cloths. Indian calicoes had awoken transatlantic tastes, indeed re-exported Indian calicoes were the first pillars of the textile trade to West Africa and the Americas. Under legislation that increasingly restricted Indian production and imports of Indian cloths to Britain (first patterned and then plain), rapid reexport substitution was vital. The rise of domestically produced printed cottons and mixed worsteds catering for trades formerly fed by Indian products cannot be over-estimated. Between 1700 and 1774 West Africa and the Americas took between 80 and 94% of total British cotton textile exports.52 In the peak year of 1792 Africa alone took nearly a quarter, with demand for cotton checks dominating.53 Transatlantic colonial demand was generally for goods that were potentially mass produced: agrarian necessities such as farm implements, buckets, nails, firearms, ropes, and planter requirements such as slave chains, slave blankets, coarse linens. This transatlantic ‘empire of goods’ also included luxuries and 42

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semi-luxuries for elite consumption: fancy and printed textiles, ribbons, buttons, buckles, snuff boxes, pottery, china, cutlery.54 The specialised nature of demands in different regions, both on the African coast and in North, Central and, later, South America, and the way in which attention to specific markets dictated manufacturing success, makes it difficult to sustain Say’s Law with respect to the British industrial revolution: that supply created its own demand. The agency of varied markets was important in stimulating both product and process innovation. A major reason for the success of Liverpool merchants in the slave trade over their rivals in Bristol, London or overseas was their ability to assemble the specialised and mixed cargoes of manufactured goods and re-exports for different markets, including the African markets for slaves. Lancashire and Yorkshire textiles, Midlands metalwares and American re-exports such as rum and tobacco were easily obtainable for Liverpool merchants. But they also proved efficient at assembling European products such as Swedish bar iron, Italian beads, German linens and firearms and Asian items, particularly Indian cottons, as well as spices and cowrie shells. West African demand varied by region and over time, as English traders moved east and southwards on the West African coast to exploit new sources of slave supply and to avoid competition. Beads were favoured in the Cameroons, together with brass pans, iron bars and basins; in Old Calabar, cottons and copper rods were more important. African trading partners were by no means fickle or passive in their acceptance of goods.55 Similar attention to regional tastes was exercised in trades with different ports of the Caribbean and North American coasts. The extent to which product innovation was linked to addressing the needs of specific Atlantic markets for woollens and cottons is now well documented. In West Yorkshire the third quarter of the eighteenth century saw a shift from the extension of traditional production to much greater attention being paid to markets and their specific demands. This was associated with innovations which did not just represent efficiencies in production but also involved shifts in product design. What guaranteed greater success for West Yorkshire and South Lancashire producers in this period was closer integration of the manufacture of varied designs with marketing expertise. This often involved developing forms of direct marketing through partners on the Atlantic seaboard and through close connections with specific Caribbean traders out of Liverpool.56 A similar story can be told about the closer integration of production and Atlantic marketing amongst Birmingham firearms manufacturers and West Midlands and other metalwares producers.57 Evans’ recent study of hoes links variety of design and innovation with the varied needs of cultivation and cultures in localised export markets across the Atlantic world.58 In addition, Asia’s connection with the slave trade as a vital source of supply of cowrie shells, dyestuffs, spices, as well as of printed textiles and porcelain, was important in bringing new design ideas and techniques to Britain. The taste for Indian and oriental designs and patterns on textiles and pottery, leading to emulation by domestic manufacturers and to import substitution innovation, initially reached Britain via the multilateral exchanges that fed the slave trade.59 43

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In addressing the importance of the Atlantic economy as a supplier of raw materials for industry, Inikori convincingly argues that without the elasticity of labour supply that the slave trade provided, production of Caribbean and North American primary products, principally cotton and sugar but also tobacco, molasses, coffee, rum, indigo, could not have expanded quickly enough to support the rate of growth of demand and of British manufacturing that occurred. He also draws attention to strategically important inputs such as gum and dyestuffs from West Africa, without which cotton printing would not have been so successful. African labour in one form or another thus bolstered a simultaneous extension of the possibility frontiers of both production and consumption. And because a large proportion of primary product imports into Britain were re-exported to Europe, British–European trade expanded, with Britain benefiting from the multiplier effects of this as well. Sugar refineries, rum distilleries, cotton factories all required heavy fixed capital and technological applications. Furthermore, cotton and sugar, with other colonial comestibles (tobacco, rum, tea, coffee), stimulated an army of ancillary industries to complement and embellish their consumption: china, pottery, crockery and cutlery of all kinds used in the rituals of drinking hot, sugared beverages and the eating of sweet desserts; snuff boxes, pipes and apparel for smoking; buttons, buckles, lace and ribbons for garment trimmings. Inikori’s research on shipbuilding and shipping embodies new estimates of the tonnages involved and the costs and multiplier effects. The share of English tonnage in the West African and American trades rose from around 30% in the 1680s to 40% by the 1770s and 57% in 1836.60 Inikori places emphasis upon the peculiar hazards of the transatlantic passage, which resulted in high replacement, repair and refitting costs. The demand which shipbuilding and repair created for timber, iron, cordage, sail cloth, pitch, tar and hemp provided a major stimulus to the Baltic trades. In the 1770s copper sheathing was adopted to protect hulls in the warm sea conditions of the Caribbean trades in particular (stimulating copper mining and processing). From the 1780s, regulations concerning basic conditions for slave transports led to innovations and heavy investment in the remodelling and refitting of ships.61 Inikori also emphasises that the distance and risks involved in Atlantic commerce made it central in the development of marine insurance – more so than the Indian Ocean trades. This was also the case because the East India Company shouldered its own risks.62 Premiums on marine insurance were around £175,000 in 1660, around £4 million in the 1790s and over £10 million by 1810.63 Inikori’s estimates that the slave/plantation trade was responsible for around 63% of the marine insurance market at the end of the century may well be too high, but this was clearly the most important cluster of insurance activity.64 Before Inikori’s contribution the marine insurance sector, along with other linkages between the slave trade and the financial sector, had escaped serious estimation regarding its importance to the British economy of the eighteenth century.65

44

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Capital, credit and bills of exchange It is the capital/credit aspect of Inikori’s thesis that I wish to take further by emphasising the unique importance of the slave trade and associated bills of exchange in bringing about the integration of London and provincial money markets, without which the major manufacturing regions of the industrial revolution might well have floundered. For most manufacturers before the 1830s or so, circulating capital needs were much more important than fixed capital requirements by a factor of three or four, increasing to eight or nine in the Napoleonic War period.66 The supply of circulating capital and credit should therefore be viewed as more important to British industrialisation than the availability of long-term funds, although the two are not entirely distinct because the supply of credit to manufacturers and traders left other funds free for reinvestment. What is rarely recognised is that it was the slave trade that made the bill of exchange, with its inherent credit element, by far the most important means of payment in commercial transactions in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century South Lancashire and West Yorkshire. The region’s banks emerged primarily to serve the discount trade, and the credit from bills underpinned and facilitated exchanges in the major manufacturing areas. Bill transactions compensated for the absence of sufficient bank-notes and coin and at the same time extended and institutionalised credit. Bills of exchange were increasingly seen as more secure than private bank-notes, and they were not subject to stamp duty, which gave them a substantial edge over banker’s drafts. But a vital if underplayed factor in the rise of the bill of exchange in the northern industrial heartlands is that South Lancashire and Yorkshire merchants were so used to bills in external trade, especially the slave trade, that they naturally turned to these in internal trade as well.67 The institution, once established, lingered long after 1807. As late as the 1820s it is estimated that nine-tenths of the trade of Manchester remained in bills.68 Only after the 1830s, with changes in the regional and national banking systems, did this means of payment gradually decline. The Industrial Revolution was entirely dependent upon it. Bills were negotiable instruments that were often endorsed and exchanged many times in the manufacturing hinterlands of Liverpool before becoming due and being presented in London. This had the effect of enlarging the money supply of Lancashire and industrial Yorkshire and creating credit for a dense regional network of traders. Perhaps more than anything else this gave the northern textile areas a great edge over their rivals. It made it easier and more immediately affordable for manufacturers to source their raw materials, often via the early development of specialist brokers, and for Lancashire merchants to buy manufactured goods on much longer credits than those of their Bristol or French rivals, for both West African and transatlantic markets.69 The Atlantic trade in general and the slave trade in particular were peculiarly bill dominated. Traders sold goods in a multiplicity of markets on two or even three continents, often dealing with imports as well as exports.70 The diverse and 45

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often indirect multilateral settlements of this trade favoured bills and stimulated the development of a clearing system. Delays in the Africa trade and in awaiting return cargoes from the West Indies were long in the eighteenth century. Planters also demanded credit in payment for slaves in what was often a buyers’ market.71 It was frequently eighteenth months, two years or longer before merchants saw the proceeds of each voyage, hence the need for long credits.72 The long credit element embodied in slave-trade bills by the late eighteenth century required the existence of acceptance and discounting specialists, not just in Liverpool and South Lancashire but also in London. A small number of well-established West India Houses in London, with secure reputations, some closely tied to sugar importing and processing, came to accept final responsibility for the payment of slave-trade bills. The West India Houses gained from commission charges, discount rates and usance on the period of credit. The bill system in the slave/ plantation trades thus evolved to combine the resources of the provinces with those of the London money market.73 In the middle decades of the eighteenth century direct sales of slaves to planters, especially in the West Indies, declined in favour of selling through slave factors on commission. This resulted in a sharp rise in the number of slave cargoes sold for bills instead of deals involving produce. The latter were already on the wane because of the risks of deterioration of consumables and losses of goods at sea, the costs of insurance, price fluctuations and delays. In sixty-eight slave voyages of William Davenport, 1754–87, around 90% of remittances were secured in bills embodying a mix of three, six, nine and twelve months’ usance.74 Bill payments suited slavetrade merchants, whose profitability depended on quick turnaround times and avoiding long waits for return cargoes. In Liverpool the change was associated with  the emergence of a relatively small number of large and successful slaving entrepreneurs who benefited from the increased speed and lower transaction costs of the new system. Their slave ships generally returned from the Caribbean in ballast, carrying bills ‘in the bottom’ for at least four-fifths of the proceeds of slave sales. The credit terms of bills generally varied at three- or four-monthly intervals up to sixteen months or more in order to stagger payments: this was favoured by both factors and merchant principals because it tended to even out their income flows, making colonial factors (and planters) less dependent upon the seasonal liquidity of the sugar harvest for their slave purchases. The bills were issued by the factors, not by planters; but factors often required bonds from planters so that payment for slaves could be enforced. Factors selling the slaves had to name a guarantor (for very long credits, and to attract the trade from ships’ captains, they offered two sureties) who would deal with their letters of credit in England and who would agree to accept their bills. The guarantor was relatively secure because he generally received payments before the long-dated bills came due, as well as receiving a commission for his services. The payments came from other bills sent to London by the factors. These originated from British traders buying produce in colonial ports.75 This ‘guarantee system’ helped to stabilise an otherwise very volatile credit network. In the new system, instead of British merchants supplying 46

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credit to planters, the colonial factors and their London backers now supplied the credit in an arrangement that involved enforceable guarantees. No other slavetrading power had such efficient, institutionally based credit arrangements. This gave British slavers an edge not only in dominating the Atlantic slave trade but also in reaping greater rewards from slavery in the home economy, in the development of its broader financial institutions and payments systems. The banks of South Lancashire and Yorkshire, in particular, became increasingly involved in discounting slave-trade bills. Deposit banking was slow to develop in these regions. It was not needed as much as elsewhere because not many banks issued notes or drafts and thus they did not have to carry large fiduciary amounts. This kept the capital of the industrial areas circulating and available to create a pyramid of credit built on bills. But the expanding credit needs of the slave/plantation trade in the later century meant that bills were also increasingly sent to London for discount. Slave-trade bills flowing south from Lancashire and Yorkshire for discount, and especially for final payment, in London not only boosted the London discount market but also contributed to an inter-regional flow of funds which brought much-needed cash and credit from the South to the manufacturing areas.76 The bill system created relatively easy credit and the conditions for rapid, long-distance trade expansion. But despite the guarantee system, arrangements remained volatile. Credit extended to planters was responsible for many large long-term debts of merchants in American ports.77 Credit in transatlantic remittances was the cause of waves of bankruptcies in a crisis, such as in 1809–11, and of spreading crises from the provinces to London and vice versa. Everything depended upon confidence, and sometimes rumour was enough to precipitate a domino pattern of failures, with huge sums and many firms involved. The Bank of England had only very loose control over credit, and all banks found it difficult to distinguish real from so called ‘fictitious bills’ (created not through trade but for speculation or accommodation).78 That bills were frequently returned protested was a major risk of the trade. The Liverpool slave trader John Leigh, for example, reported £800 lost in West Indies bills and over £6,000 in protested bills from Demerara in 1805.79 In the difficult trading conditions of the mid-1790s and through to 1815, London commission agents began to specialise more in pure finance, and especially in the provision of credit for manufacturers and merchants in the Atlantic trades. At this time credit periods on bills were lengthening up to two or three years.80 By the 1830s, as the system matured further, merchant banks were supplying 80% of the finance required for British exports to the United States.81 A nationwide and international commercial intelligence industry developed, largely from the need to assess the credit-worthiness of signatories to bills and for banks to decide on discount limits. The shaky but expansive pyramids of credit built up in the industrial regions can be illustrated by a snapshot picture of the trader John Leigh at the time of his bankruptcy in 1811, which was precipitated by the failure of his London bank, Brickwood and Co., and his Brazilian correspondent, but was part of an 47

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i­ nterrelated wave of bankruptcies resulting from the trade crisis of 1809–11.82 Leigh owed over £139,000 to some sixty-five creditors; 63% of the debts were to banking houses on bills of exchange. These included Parr, Lyon and Hurst of Warrington (£6,440), Leyland and Bullins of Liverpool (£3,192), John Irving (banker) of London (£11,740) and Alexander Anderson of Lombard Street (£4,300).83 Emancipation and emancipation monies Emancipation money paid out to slave-owners at abolition amounted to £20 million. In terms of worth today (2010 figures are the most recent available) this would be £1.45 billion in purchasing power parity and over £6 billion using share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the deflator: a substantial sum.84 Nathan Rothschild raised £15 million for the government throughout Europe and this represented a significant injection of capital into the British economy. Draper has estimated that around half of the £20 million compensation money may have stayed in Britain.85 The 1830s and 1840s were decades involving trading crises during which the narrow and unstable foundation of British industrial success based on the textile sector gradually widened, with the expansion of heavy industries and producer goods sectors increasing their share of GDP and export markets. These sectors were capital hungry, but did compensation money make a significant difference to the economy? Draper found that railway subscription lists of the 1840s, especially those drawing upon networks in the North West, included a high proportion of ex-slave-owners, including John Gladstone and John Moss.86 The Bristol West India interest was prominent in the construction of the Great Western Railway.87 Concentrations of emancipation compensation are also found within the financial sector and in the City, contributing to the nationally and internationally oriented insurance, banking and payments system. Slave-owners, especially in the newer slave colonies, actively reinvested compensation in their plantations, which assisted the transfer to supplies of Indian indentured labour, especially in British Guiana and Mauritius.88 Continued British involvement in slave trade and slavery Williams took care to emphasise that British involvement with slave trades and slave systems did not end in 1807 or the 1830s, respectively. In 1815, eight years after abolition, it was found necessary to present a bill in Parliament to proscribe the slave trade as an investment for British capital. Alexander Baring warned that every commercial organisation in Britain would petition against it, and the Lords threw it out.89 After various high-level bribes had failed to end Spanish and Portuguese slave trading, the Duke of Wellington attended a conference in Verona in 1822 to propose that Prussia, Austria-Hungary and Russia should boycott Spanish and Portuguese goods. He was asked if Britain would then reject sugar imported from 48

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Spanish plantations for re-export, and why British merchants consented to be the dominant carriers of slave-produced goods from Brazil, Cuba and elsewhere.90 Two decades later, in 1843, British firms handled three-eighths of the sugar, half of the coffee and five-eighths of the cotton exported from Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro and Bahia.91 The South American market for British exports was opening up to British merchants and investors in the middle decades of the nineteenth century and its prosperity was based on slave labour. ‘Lucrative humanity’ (that is, anti-slavery where it suited economic interests) was prominent in debates about Brazilian independence in the 1820s and was central to the foundation of the West Africa Squadron of the Royal Navy. The West Africa Squadron was set up in 1808 to prevent slave trading (by all nations) after abolition. At the height of its operations it employed a sixth of the Royal Navy fleet and marines. Between 1808 and 1860 the Squadron captured 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 slaves.92 Even after 1833, British merchants and financiers were often closely involved in the slave trade and in slave labour. In 1845 Peel publicly refused to deny that British subjects were engaged in the slave trade.93 There certainly continued to be much indirect participation. As Lord Brougham pointed out in Parliament in 1841, British manufacturers from Manchester and Liverpool traded cottons, fancy goods and metalwares, including fetters and shackles, direct to the coast of Africa or indirectly via Rio de Janeiro and Havana, where they were used by their Brazilian and Cuban consignees to purchase slaves. It was said that seven-tenths of the goods used by Brazil for slave purchases were British manufactures, and British banking firms in Brazil financed slave traders and insured their cargoes.94 In 1857 The Times declared ‘we are partners with the Southern planter; we hold a bill of sale over his goods and chattels, his live and dead stock, and take a lion’s share in the profits of slavery’.95 Neither did the ending of slavery in British territories in the 1830s end Britain’s direct involvement with slave labour and slave-like systems of peonage. Baring Brothers, for example, owned plantations employing some five hundred slaves in the Danish Caribbean colony of St Croix from the mid-1820s. These slaves were not freed until 1848, after which a legally coercive system of apprenticeship restricted former slaves to labouring in the plantations for a further fifteen years.96 British investors and entrepreneurs continued to be associated with mining and manufacturing industries, as well as plantations, outside the formal British Empire, that employed slave labour. These included gold mining in Brazil and copper mining in Cuba up to the 1860s.97 In addition, British colonial labour in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was dominated by peonage. Forms of unfree labour characterised large parts of the Caribbean colonies post slavery, where, because of land shortages, freed slaves had nowhere else to go and where the plantation structure provided a magnet for the indentured servant trade. It also dominated in large tracts of British Asia because of the structure and needs of plantation systems, aided by established merchant trading networks, institutions and practices that enabled the relatively easy shift from African slavery to its Asian counterpart. When 49

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slavery ended in the West Indies, John Gladstone sold most of his property there and invested in Bengal sugar; he also invested in Ogilvy and Gillanders, which became one of the chief agency firms in Calcutta.98 The firm organised the import of eastern commodities into Britain and Europe, including sugar from Mauritius, and the re-export of coffee and indigo.99 From the slave trade to indentured labour As already mentioned, the emancipation of slavery in British territories gave an impetus to the business of, and trade in, indentured labour. Indentured servitude had been a major feature of labour supply to the Americas both before the rise of the African slave trade and during its height in the eighteenth century, particularly where the plantation system prevailed. Indeed if one broadens the role of slavery in British industrialisation to include servitude and other forms of peonage, the impact becomes overwhelming from the late sixteenth century until well into the twentieth century. After 1833, although slavery was abolished, the plantation system was not and it remained labour hungry. Plantation owners turned to indentured servitude as an alternative source of cheap labour from all over the globe but overwhelmingly from India. Between 1846 and 1932 an estimated 28 million Indians left India on ships as indentured servants. Many went to the Caribbean, especially to Guiana, Trinidad and Tobago and Surinam, but also to Jamaica, Grenada and Barbados. Between 1833 and 1917 Trinidad imported 145,000 East Indians, and British Guiana 238,000.100 Large numbers, mostly ‘blackbirded’ from Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Melanesia and Micronesia, were taken in British ships in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to work on plantations in Fiji, New Caledonia, the Samoan islands and Australia. The trade became highly organised and regulated.101 Given some of the more obvious continuities between slavery and servitude, it is not surprising that British ship owners and merchants were prime movers in the indentured labour trades, nor that Caribbean planters and emancipation monies found their way into the trade and use of indentured labour. ‘Prime movers of the early shipments of indentured people are … easily identified as formerly large slave owners…’. For example, Andrew Colvile, West India merchant and planter, a beneficiary of compensation, became a major figure in the Hill Coolie importations into British Guiana from the late 1830s.102 More significantly in the longer term, one of the biggest shipping firms in the indentured servant trade right through to the 1920s was Liverpool based: Sandbach Tinne. This firm was the second-largest mercantile beneficiary of the emancipation compensation scheme, receiving £150, 452.103 Founded in 1782 in Demerara, Sandbach, Tinne & Co., were ship owners, produce brokers, general merchants and plantation owners, exporting sugar, coffee, molasses, rum from the West Indies to Liverpool and Glasgow. From the 1830s they also specialised in Indian Ocean trades with the Atlantic, principally the transportation of labour.104 The other giant was the Nourse Line of Glasgow, founded in 1861 by James Nourse and specialising in 50

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shipping Indian labour from Calcutta to the West Indies, principally Guiana, and Mauritius in specially designed ships.105 Hugh Tinker’s 1974 study highlights the similarities between the conditions of indentured labourers and their forerunners the slaves, demonstrating that plantation economies and societies created the conditions for the continuation of slavery in a new guise.106 Neither was the trade itself that different from the slave trade. Men and women were segregated and confined below decks for most of the voyage. Despite closer formal regulation and the employment of ships’ medical officers (who, like those in the British slave trade, were paid a bounty for each live landing), mortality and disease rates remained comparable with that in the slave trade.107 One reason was that the voyage to the Caribbean from Calcutta was more than twice as long as Africans had had to suffer (three or four months, compared with four to six weeks).108 Another was that indentured labour ships, especially to Mauritius and other parts of the Indian Ocean, generally carried cargo as well.109 Steam ships (which would have reduced the journey time by half) were not in general use in this trade until the very end of the nineteenth century.110 Conclusion Alongside Williams and Inikori, we should conclude that slave-enhanced profits, together with the multiplier effects of slave-related activities and the capital and credit that they generated, formed a very significant impetus in the expansion of the British economy, in technological change and in the rise of the tertiary sector, which is at last being given the prominence it deserves in accounts of modern economic growth. Slave-related profits underpinned the expansion of credit, trade and innovation in the foremost industrial regions. The bill system of the northern industrial heartlands owed its dynamism to the peculiar credit requirements of the slave trade and strengthened in its influence upon inter-regional banking and financial institutions in the decades following 1807, tying the industrial provinces to the resources of the London money market in a web of credit. In addition, slave-related and peonage profits, together with compensation pay-outs, ensured that ‘old mischief’ also comprised a significant component of mid-Victorian expansion.111 Our picture of the relationship between capitalism and slavery can be completed only by research which casts the net wider, and longer chronologically, than did Williams or Inikori, to incorporate income streams and economic stimuli accruing to the British economy, and to other industrialising economies, from continued investment in slave systems well beyond 1833 and in the trade in, and labour of, indentured servants, which ended only in the 1920s. Notes 1 Report of the Debate in the House of Commons, 15 April 1831, p. 97. 2 Ralph W. Hidy, The House of Baring in American Trade and Finance: English Merchant Bankers at Work 1763–1861 (Cambridge, MA, 1949), p. 129.

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3 Peter E. Austin, Baring Brothers and the Birth of Modern France (London, 2007), p. 63. 4 Michael Tadman, ‘The inter-regional slave trade in the history and myth making of the U.S. South’, in Walter Johnson (ed.), The Chattle Principle: Internal Slave Trades in the Americas (New Haven, 2004), p. 120. 5 Joseph Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in International Trade and Economic Development (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 356–7, 360. 6 Between 1816 and 1823 Baring was receiving an income of around £30,000: John Orbell, ‘Alexander Baring’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online: www. oxforddnb.com; Laurence Brown, ‘Atlantic slavery and classical culture at Marble Hill and Northington Grange’, in Madge Dresser and Andrew Hann (eds), Slavery and the English Country House (London, 2013). 7 The importance of Asian networks in this process is explored by Anthony Webster, ‘Liverpool and the Asian trade, 1800–50: some insights into a provincial British commercial network’, in Sheryllyne Haggerty, Anthony Webster and Nicholas White (eds), The Empire in One City: Liverpool’s Inconvenient Imperial Past (Manchester, 2008), pp. 35–54. 8 Pat Hudson, Regions and Industries: A Perspective on the Industrial Revolution in Britain (Cambridge, 1989). Indeed this process had started before the mid-eighteenth century because already by then the share of non-agricultural male occupations in both Lancashire and Yorkshire exceeded 60%. See results of recent study of occupational change by the Cambridge Group for the History of Population: http://www. hpss.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/occupations/introduction/summary.pdf. 9 Inikori makes this a pillar of his argument both in Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England and in ‘The Industrial Revolution in Atlantic perspective: county history and national history’, presented at the Oxford Conference on Eric Williams, 23–26 September 2011. 10 Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery ([1944], Chapel Hill, NC, 1994), pp. 51–84, 98–125; Inikori, ‘The Industrial Revolution in Atlantic perspective’; I first addressed this subject in The Industrial Revolution (1992). Subsequent research has done little to  further the topic, with the exception of Mina Ishizu, ‘Commercial finance during the Industrial Revolution: a study of local, national and international credit, 1800–1844’, (PhD, Cardiff University, 2008), which concentrates on the later part of the period. 11 Genovese and Genovese analysed merchant capital (centrally the slave plantation system), as ‘Janus-faced’: Elizabeth Fox Genovese and Eugene Genovese, The Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism (Oxford and New York, 1983). The role of slaves in the ending of slavery can be viewed in this light. See James M. McPherson, ‘Who freed the slaves?’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 139:1 (1995), 1–10. 12 David Eltis and David Richardson (eds), The New Transatlantic Slave Trade Database: www.slavevoyages.org, which covers 35,000 voyages between 1514 and 1866 and Extending the Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (New Haven and London, 2008). Their total of 12,521,334 for slave embarkations contrasts with Curtain’s earlier and much lower estimates, which had already been undermined by Inikori in particular. See his review of Extending the Frontiers, Journal of Economic History, 1:3 (2011), 249–51. 13 W. Wood, A Survey of Trade (London, 1718), Part 3, p. 193.

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14 Malachy Postlethwayt, The Africa Trade the Great Pillar and Support of the British Plantation Trade in America (London, 1745), pp. 4, 6. 15 Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, p. 52. 16 Ibid., pp. 87–107. 17 Ibid., p. 37. 18 Holt and Gregson papers vol. X, 367–73, Liverpool City Library, quoted by Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, p. 63. 19 Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, p. 220. 20 Hyde later estimated that 3,700 seamen were employed on Liverpool slave vessels by 1790 and that capital investment in the slave trade in that year amounted to £1.04 million. F. E. Hyde, Liverpool and the Mersey: An Economic History of a Port 1700–1970 (London 1971), p. 34. 21 Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, pp. 85–97. 22 Ibid., p. 136. 23 Report of the Lords of the Privy Council appointed for the consideration of all matters relating to Trade and Foreign Plantations, 1788, Part VI. See also Part IV, quoted in Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, p. 219. 24 Most recently see William Ashworth, Customs and Excise. Trade, Protection and Consumption in England 1640–1845 (Oxford, 2003); Martin Daunton, Trusting Leviathan. The Politics of Taxation in Britain, 1799–1914 (Cambridge, 2001). 25 On plantation profits see J. R. Ward, ‘The profitability of sugar planting in the British West Indies, 1650–1834’, Economic History Review, 31 (1978); R. P. Coelho, ‘The profitability of imperialism: the British experience in the West Indies, 1768–72’, Explorations in Economic History, 10 (1973); R. P. Thomas, ‘The sugar colonies of the old empire: profit or loss for Great Britain?’, Economic History Review, 21 (1968). For a more positive interpretation see R. B. Sheridan, ‘The wealth of Jamaica in the eighteenth century’, Economic History Review, 18 (1965), though much of the debate depends upon assumptions about the level of employment in the Jamaican economy and the opportunity costs of slave employment. 26 Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, pp. 36–7. 27 Contributions to the early debate on slave trade profits are considered in Kenneth Morgan, Slavery, Atlantic Trade and the British Economy 1660–1800 (Cambridge 2000), pp. 36–44 and examined by Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution, pp. 116–18, 382–3; David Hancock’s detailed discussion of how such profit and loss accounts should be derived indicates the variability of methods used by historians. He suggests returns for his mid-eighteenth century sample of around 6%, although Alexander Grant made 44% on voyages, 1766–71, and 29% on his plantations per annum in the same period. The hallmark of slave-trading profits was extreme variability: between 222% and minus 97% in Hancock’s sample. David Hancock, Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735–1785 (Cambridge 1995), pp. 419–24. 28 D. Richardson, ‘Profits of the Liverpool slave trade: the accounts of William Davenport 1757–1784’, in R. Anstey and P. E. H. Hair, Liverpool, the African Slave Trade and Abolition: Essays to Illustrate Current Knowledge and Research (Liverpool, 1976); Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution, p. 346. 29 National Archives (hereafter TNA), C114/1 Letters to Lumley from Jno Brocklebank 21 January, 1 May, 24 June, 3 August 1805.

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30 According to Williams, during this period in Jamaica alone, 65 plantations were abandoned, 32 sold for debts and 115 others had suits pending against them: Capitalism and Slavery, p. 149. 31 S. D. Smith, ‘Merchants and planters revisited’, Economic History Review, 55:3 (2002), 434–65, 441. 32 Nicholas Draper, The Price of Emancipation. Slave Ownership, Compensation and British Society at the End of Slavery (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 138–65. 33 See notes 25 and 27. 34 Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, pp. 62–3. 35 Ashworth, Customs and Excise, passim. 36 The quote is from Richard Pares, ‘The economic factors in the history of the empire’, Economic History Review, (1936–37), 130. Williams’ detail of country house constructions, charitable, educational and religious investments suggests this: Capitalism and Slavery, pp. 85–97. 37 It could be highly profitable but it was also very risky. Of thirty leading houses that dominated the trade from 1773, twelve had by 1788 gone bankrupt and others had had big losses. Between 1772 and 1778 Liverpool merchants in slave trade were said to have lost £700,000. On the other hand, the slave trade as a whole was estimated to bring Liverpool in the 1780s a clear profit of £300,000 a year. ‘If one ship in three came in a man was no loser and if two came in he was a good gainer.’ Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, pp. 36–7. 38 In this he is following Patrick K. O’Brien and Stanley L. Engerman (1991), ‘Exports and the growth of the British Economy from the Glorious Revolution to the Peace of Amiens’, in Barbara L. Solow (ed.), Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System (Cambridge, 1991). 39 Two recent works reinvigorating, in different ways, the notion that British primacy was sparked by a culture favouring innovation and accumulation are Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy. An Economic History of Britain 1700–1850 (New Haven, 2009), and Deirdre McCloskey, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World (Chicago, 2010). 40 This fits with Allen’s emphasis of the importance of relative factor prices in promoting the substitution of capital for labour, but only from the end of the eighteenth century: R. A. C. Allen, The British Industrial Revolution: A Global Perspective (Cambridge, 2010); Lancashire’s rapidly rising wages are seen as a reason for the technological breakthroughs in Lancashire cotton in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, compared with India: Stephen Broadberry and Bishnupriya Gupta, ‘Lancashire, India and shifting competitive advantage in cotton textiles,1700–1850: the neglected role of factor prices’, Economic History Review, 62:2 (2009), 279–305. 41 E. H. Hunt, ‘Industrialisation and regional inequality: wages in Britain, 1760–1914’, Journal of Economic History, 46:4 (1986), 965–6. 42 Phyllis Deane, ‘The output of the British woollen industry in the eighteenth century’, Journal of Economic History, 17 (1957), 215, 220; R. G. Wilson, ‘The supremacy of the  Yorkshire cloth industry in the eighteenth century’, in N. B. Harte and K. G. Ponting (eds), Textile History and Economic History (Manchester 1973), p. 228; Peter Maw, ‘Anglo-American trade during the Industrial Revolution: a study of the Lancashire and Yorkshire textile industries, 1750–1825’ (PhD, University of Manchester, 2006).

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43 Inikori, ‘The Industrial Revolution in Atlantic perspective’. The geographical origins of patents are difficult to ascertain because the prevalence of London addresses reflects the location of agents, financial backers and temporary residences, but Inikori relies on MacLeod’s estimates here: Christine McLeod, Inventing the Industrial Revolution: The English Patent system 1660–1800 (Cambridge, 2002). See also Inikori ‘Slavery and the revolution in cotton textile production’, Social Science History, 13:4 (1989). 44 Geoff Timmins, The Last Shift: The Decline of Handloom Weaving in Nineteenth Century Lancashire (Manchester, 1993), p. 20. 45 McLeod, Inventing the Industrial Revolution, p. 124. 46 Kenneth Pomeranz first suggested the appropriateness of comparing contemporaneous economic developments in the heartlands of the British Industrial Revolution and in the Yangzi Delta. In the latter, commercial cloth manufacturing stagnated in the nineteenth century, partly because of the absence of coal supplies but particularly because of a lack of external markets such as Britain had across the Atlantic: The Great Divergence. China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, 2000). 47 Patrick O’Brien, Trevor Griffiths and Philip A. Hunt, ‘Technological change during the first Industrial Revolution: the paradigm case of textiles, 1688–1851’, in Robert Fox (ed.), Technological Change: Methods and Themes in the History of Technology (Amsterdam, 1996), p. 167. 48 Trevor Griffiths, Philip A. Hunt and Patrick O’Brien, ‘Inventive activity in the British textile industry, 1700–1800’, Journal of Economic History, 52:4 (1992), 896. 49 MacLeod, Inventing the Industrial Revolution, pp. 148–9, 153–4; Richard J. Sullivan, ‘England’s “Age of Invention”: the acceleration of patents and patentable invention during the Industrial Revolution’, Explorations in Economic History, 26:4 (1989), 424–52. 50 This fits rather well with the case made by Robert Allen in Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2011). 51 For a fuller explanation of these processes see Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution, pp. 150–5, 406–11, 432–3, 482–5, 477–8. 52 Ibid., Table 9.9, p. 448. 53 Ibid., pp. 437–51. 54 T. Breen, ‘An empire of goods: the anglicization of colonial America, 1690–1776’, Journal of British Studies, 25 (1986), 467–99. 55 D. Richardson, ‘West African consumption patterns and their influence on the eighteenth century English slave trade’, in H. A. Gemery and J. S. Hogendorn (eds), The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York, 1979); B. K. Drake, ‘The Liverpool–African voyage c. 1790–1807: commercial problems’, in Anstey and Hair, Liverpool, the African Slave Trade and Abolition; Richardson, ‘Profits of the Liverpool slave trade’. 56 John Smail, Merchants, Markets and Manufacture: The English Wool Textile Industry in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1999); Pat Hudson, The Genesis of Industrial Capital (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 155–81; Maw, ‘Anglo-American trade during the Industrial Revolution’. 57 Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution, ch. 9, especially the cases of Samuel Galton and John Whatley.

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58 Chris Evans, ‘The plantation hoe: the rise and fall of an Atlantic commodity’, The William and Mary Quarterly, 6:1 (2012), 71–100. 59 Maxine Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth Century England (Oxford, 2005); ‘In pursuit of luxury: global history and British consumer goods in the eighteenth century’, Past & Present, 182 (2004), 85–142. 60 Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution, p. 280. 61 Ibid., pp. 265–313. 62 Ibid., p. 357. 63 Ibid., pp. 341–2, 349, 359. The 1810 figure is likely to be inflated by insurance of prizes at higher rates than the norm. 64 Ibid., p. 356; J. J. Angerstein gives a figure of £10.5m for total marine insurance  ­ premiums in 1809 but mentions that this was three times the average annual level for 1793–1807: quoted by A. H. John, ‘The London Assurance Company and the maritime insurance market of the eighteenth century’, Economica, 25 (1958), 127. 65 Inikori particularly emphasises that public borrowing for trade and colonial wars, especially in the Atlantic, stimulated the growth of financial institutions, including the national debt, which was fundamental to the growth of the London money market. Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution, pp.321 ff . 66 Hudson, The Genesis of Industrial Capital, Table 2.5, p. 51; S. D. Chapman, ‘Financial constraints on the growth of firms in the cotton industry, 1790–1850’, Economic History Review, 32:1 (1979), 52, 66. 67 L. S. Presnell suggested that bills from overseas trade dominated in Lancashire in the 1760s: Country Banking in the Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 1956), p. 435. 68 T. S. Ashton quoting Clapham in ‘The bill of exchange and private banks in Lancashire, 1790–1830’, in T. S. Ashton and R. S. Sayers (eds), Papers in English Monetary History (Oxford, 1954). The Bank of England branch letter books for Liverpool in the 1820s reflect this in allowing large discount limits on average between £5,000 and £20, 000 to credit-worthy Lancashire firms. Ishizu, ‘Commercial finance during the Industrial Revolution’, ch. 2. 69 M. M. Edwards, The Growth of the British Cotton Trade, 1780–1815 (Manchester, 1967), pp. 111–13, 119–22; Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution, p. 333; K. Morgan, ‘Liverpool’s dominance of the British slave trade, 1740–1807’, in D. Richardson, S. Schwarz and A. Tibbles (eds), Liverpool and Transatlantic Slavery (Liverpool, 2007), pp. 14–42. 70 For the early nineteenth century the evidence from parliamentary committees is well surveyed in N. S. Buck, The Development of the Organisation of Anglo-American Trade, 1800–1850 (New Haven, 1925). For examples from the textile trades see Hudson, The Genesis of Industrial Capital, ch. 7; Maw, ‘Anglo-American trade during the Industrial Revolution’. 71 R. B. Sheridan, ‘The commercial and financial organisation of the British slave trade, 1750–1807’, Economic History Review, 11:2 (1958); Jacob M. Price, ‘Credit in the slave trade and plantation economies’, in Barbara Solow (ed.), Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 293–339; S. D. Behrendt, ‘Markets, transaction cycles and profits: merchant decision making in the British slave trade’, The William and Mary Quarterly, 58:1 (2001), 171–204; K. Morgan, ‘Remittance

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procedures in the eighteenth century British slave trade’, Business History Review, 79:4 (2005), 1–35; Sheryllynne Haggerty, ‘Risk and risk management in the Liverpool slave trade’, Business History, 51:6 (2009), 817–34. 72 Hudson, The Genesis of Industrial Capital, pp. 182–98; Maw, ‘Anglo-American trade during the Industrial Revolution’; Thomas Lumley & Co voyage records, TNA, C114/1, 2, 3 1800–11. 73 Sheridan, ‘Commercial and financial organisation’, 262; Ishizu, ‘Commercial finance during the Industrial Revolution’, pp. 123ff. 74 Richardson, ‘Profits of the Liverpool slave trade’, 73. 75 K. Morgan, ‘Remittance procedures’, 731; Price, ‘Credit in the slave trade’, 311–15; S. G. Checkland, ‘Finance for the West Indies, 1780–1815’, Economic History Review, 10 (1957–8), 446; Ishizu, ‘Commercial finance during the Industrial Revolution’, pp. 145–6. 76 Pat Hudson, The Industrial Revolution, pp. 194–9; K. Morgan, ‘Remittance procedures’; B. L. Anderson, ‘The Lancashire bill system and its Liverpool practitioners: the case of a slave merchant’, in W. H. Chaloner (ed.), Trade and Transport: Essays in Economic History in Honour of T. S. Willan (Manchester, 1977); T. S. Ashton, ‘The bill of exchange and private banks in Lancashire’; Ishizu, ‘Commercial finance in the Industrial Revolution’, ch.3. 77 See, for example, R. C. Nash, ‘The organisation of trade and finance in the Atlantic Economy: Britain and South Carolina, 1670–1775’, in J. P. Greene, R. Brana-Shute and R. J. Sparks (eds), Money, Trade and Power: The Evolution of South Carolina’s Plantation Society (Columbia, SC, 2001), pp. 84–5. 78 The bill of exchange was an unfortunate if effective channel for the communication of bankruptcy from one trader to another and across geographical regions: Ian Duffy, Bankruptcy and Insolvency in London during the Industrial Revolution (New York, 1985), chs 8 and 9. The classic examination of bankruptcies in England in the eighteenth century and their link to trade and credit crises is Julian Hoppit, Risk and Failure in English Business, 1700–1800 (Cambridge, 1987). 79 TNA, C108/212 Letter to Messrs. Walcott and Fournier, Demerara, 19 November 1805. 80 Morgan, ‘Remittance procedures’, 736–7. 81 S. D. Chapman, Merchant Enterprise in Britain from the Industrial Revolution to World War One (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 68–70. 82 Duffy, Bankruptcy and Insolvency in London, pp. 283ff. 83 Mina Ishizu, ‘Boom and crisis in financing the British transatlantic trade: a case study of the bankruptcy of John Leigh & Company in 1811’, in Thomas Safley (ed.), The History of Bankruptcy: Economic, Social and Cultural Implications in Early Modern Europe (London, 2013). 84 www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/: Lawrence H. Officer and Samuel H. Williamston, ‘Five ways to compute the relative value of a UK pound amount, 1830 to the present’, accessed July, 2011. The compensation loan was ‘the largest single financial operation undertaken by the British state to date’: Draper, Price of Emancipation, p. 270. 85 Draper, Price of Emancipation, p. 272. 86 Ibid., p. 253. 87 Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, p. 105.

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88 Draper, Price of Emancipation, p. 242; Hugh Tinker, A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas 1830–1920 (London, 1974), pp. 17–19, 61–115 passim. 89 Hansard, XXX, 657–8, 18 April 1815; XXXI, 174, 5 May 1815; 557–8, 1 June 1815; 606–8, 5 June 1815; 848–51, 16 June 1815; 912–13, 21 June 1815; 1062–4, 30 June 1815; Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, p. 171. 90 Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, pp. 169–70. 91 A. K. Manchester, British Pre-eminence in Brazil, Its Rise and Decline (Chapel Hill, NC, 1933), p. 315 quoted by Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, p. 172. 92 wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Africa_Squadron. After the capture of Freetown in 1819 captured slaves were disembarked there to avoid their being re-enslaved. Until 1835 the Squadron was allowed to capture or arrest slavers only with slaves on board, which created an incentive for captains to throw them overboard if approached. 93 Hansard, XCVI, 1095, 22 February 1848 (William Hutt); Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, p. 172. 94 Hansard, LIX, 609, 20 September 1841 (Lord Brougham); XCVI, 1101–2, 22 February 1848 (Sir William Jackson); Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, p. 172. 95 The Times, 30 January 1857, quoted by Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, p. 176. 96 Brown, ‘Atlantic slavery and classical culture’, p. 9. 97 Chris Evans, ‘Brazilian gold, Cuban copper and the final frontier of British antislavery’, Slavery and Abolition, 34:1 (2013), 118–34. 98 H. C.nG. Matthew, ‘Sir John Gladstone 1764–51’, ODNB online: http://www. oxforddnb.com. 99 Anthony Webster, ‘Liverpool and the Asian trade, 1800–50’, p. 38. 100 Williams, Capitalism and Slavery p. 28. 101 Tinker, New System of Slavery. The high costs of regulation were not paid by planters or shippers but from British taxes, with attendant redistributional effects. 102 Draper, Price of Emancipation, p. 242. 103 This went to seven different partners, one of whom, George Rainy, benefited further as a result of several small claims outside the context of the partnership. Draper, Price of Emancipation, pp. 235, 237, 252. 104 The company was formed by George Robertson, Charles Parker and Samuel Sandbach and became known as McInroy, Sandbach & Co. From 1813, the same year that Demerara became a British possession, the company’s headquarters were in Liverpool and Samuel Sandbach (Mayor of Liverpool in 1831) appointed P. F. Tinne, who had been Government Secretary in Demerara under Dutch rule, as his partner in England. nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra/onlinelists/GB 0136; http://www.victorianweb. org/history/letters/sandfin.html, accessed 13 March 2012. 105 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nourse_Line, accessed 13 March 2012. 106 Tinker, New System of Slavery. 107 By the end of the eighteenth century, slave trade mortality rates were on average around 5.7%: H. S. Klein and S. L. Engerman ‘Slave mortality on British ships 1791–97’, in Anstey and Hair, Liverpool, the African Slave Trade and Abolition. These rates were skewed and the median was much lower, at around 3%. Tinker estimates similar rates in indentured servant shipments: Tinker, New System of Slavery, ch. 5. Dolben’s Act of 1788 regulated the density of slave shipments and made compulsory the employment of ship’s surgeons on slave transports.

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108 Tinker, New System of Slavery, pp. 154–5. 109 For this and other details of the voyage conditions see Tinker, New System of Slavery, ch. 5. 110 In fact the Nourse line did not employ steam until 1904. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Nourse_Line, accessed 13 March 2012. 111 ‘Old Mischief’ is a term used by Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, p. 211.

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3

Slavery and Welsh industry before and after emancipation Chris Evans

What did slavery and slave-generated wealth contribute to Welsh industrialisation? And to what extent can the compensation records of the 1830s assist us in answering that question? These two questions beg a third: what exactly was the Industrial Revolution in Wales? That is not easily determined. For one thing, the historiography of Welsh industrialisation is strikingly thin. For those wanting an overview, A. H. John’s The Industrial Development of South Wales, 1750–1850, first published in 1950 and never revised, remains as good a starting point as any. Yet this was a provisional statement, as its tentative subtitle (An Essay) made clear; and it was, of course, a study of the South.1 Those interested in the North have to rely on the even more venerable Industrial Revolution in North Wales by A. H. Dodd, which first appeared in 1933.2 Surveys of key industrial sectors, some of them of world significance, are absent – astonishingly, there is no definitive study of the coal industry3 – or, where they do exist, are delivered in a clotted empirical form that makes them difficult to construe within a broader theoretical literature.4 Indeed, it is remarkable how, decade after decade, major initiatives and divisive debates in social and economic history have failed to penetrate Wales. Historical demography on the Cambridge model has no equivalent west of Offa’s Dyke, largely because of deficiencies in the written record. Protoindustrialisation theory agitated a great many in the 1970s and 1980s, but not in Wales. Likewise, debates about the pace and trajectory of economic growth in the Industrial Revolution did not intrude into Wales, perhaps because the growth of key sectors seemed so undeniably convulsive. No one, it seems, was going to call into question the revolutionary quality of the Welsh Industrial Revolution. On the other hand, a sequence of ‘revolutionary’ models (the consumer revolution, the industrious revolution) has made little impression on Welsh historical scholarship, perhaps because they focused on household structure and women’s agency – not congenial territory for a profession that, locally, had sympathies that were masculine and interests that were production orientated, not reproduction orientated. It may be the paucity of literature that allows for diametrically opposed views 60

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on the character of Welsh economic history. Was Wales – not Britain as a whole – the ‘first industrial nation’? The proportion of the male population that had shifted into non-agricultural employment by 1851 would suggest so. On the other hand, the late L. J. Williams could, with only a touch of mischief, ask ‘Was Wales industrialised?’5 The nineteenth-century Welsh economy, so Williams argued, relied to an extraordinary degree on the primary sector: the extractive industries (coal, slate and lead) and a still significant agricultural component. Manufacturing was conspicuously under-developed, so too services. The diversity associated with a mature industrial economy was absent. If there is a good argument to be made in favour of the Welsh industrial experience being one dimensional, no one could say it was compressed. It is best thought of as a sequence of phases extending across two centuries. Copper smelting in the Swansea-Neath district, which would remain the industry’s global epicentre for nearly two centuries, began in the 1690s. In iron smelting, a surge of investment between 1760 and 1800 gave South Wales the status of Britain’s premier ironmaking region, a status it retained until the 1840s. (The 1760–1800 period also saw the tin-plate industry in Wales attain an international eminence that would last until the 1890s.6) Then came coal. The export of coal from south-west Wales dated back to the sixteenth century but it was not until the 1840s that the laying down of a rail network opened up the central portions of the South Wales coalfield for exploitation. Steam locomotion didn’t just provide access to markets; rail locomotives and steam navigation were core users of the renowned steam coal of the Cynon and Rhondda valleys. Welsh coal and the key transport innovations of the nineteenth century were locked together in a mutually r­ einforcing growth spiral. Integrating Atlantic slavery into such a drawn-out and idiosyncratic development path is challenging. Yet there is merit in doing so. After all, the industries that flourished in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Wales were notable for requiring prodigious amounts of capital and requiring it from an external source. Dowlais, an ironworks of the new coke-smelting variety, drew upon an initial capital of £4,000 when it was established in 1759; a generation later the great ironmaster Richard Crawshay thought that £8,000 was needed for a works with a single blast furnace, and as larger integrated smelting and refining works became more common in the last years of the eighteenth century the capital requirements of iron making escalated into the tens of thousands.7 The entry costs to the copper industry were even higher. At the start of the nineteenth century an outlay of £40,000 was needed. A lot of plant was required, needless to say, but the copper trade was especially demanding because of the huge stocks of ore that a large smelting company was expected to carry.8 Such sums were not likely to come from within Wales. Welsh agrarian society was too threadbare to generate large investable surpluses and Wales was notorious for not having major urban centres where surpluses could be concentrated or dispensed. An infusion of outside wealth was essential for Welsh industrialisation, and where better to look for that than the Caribbean? 61

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There are some high-profile examples of West Indian riches nourishing Welsh industry. The Pennant family, Jamaican planters, stand out in this connection. Gifford Pennant (d.1676) of Holywell, Fintshire, had emigrated to the island in the first years of English settlement. His descendants were amongst the richest slave-owners in British Atlantic world, owning five plantations (one of them called Denbigh in a patriotic flourish) and more than a thousand human beings by the 1770s.9 Richard Pennant, who inherited the Jamaican estates in 1782, acquired (by a mixture of marriage and purchase) land at Penrhyn in Snowdonia, where small, seasonally worked slate quarries dotted the mountainside. Pennant had a vision of something far more ambitious. The mountains of North Wales must have appeared unprepossessing to an improving eighteenth-century landlord: bleak, drizzle bound and with soils that were either too thin or too waterlogged. But those same mountains, if shattered into a million flakes of slate, could realise a fortune. Richard Pennant set about the task, using one fortune, that provided by his plantations, to unlock another. The patchwork of little excavations was to be obliterated by a monumental new quarry. Hundreds of quarrymen were employed to eat into the mountainside. As they did so, huge sums were expended in creating a transport infrastructure that could convey the slates to market. In the 1790s an entirely new harbour, Port Penrhyn, was built at the mouth of the River Cegin and a new road was laid down to connect the harbour to the quarry. By 1801 a horse-drawn railroad ran parallel. Richard Pennant’s business career was a resounding success. The Penrhyn quarry revolutionised the local economy and laid down the technological and organisational norms that other quarry-capitalists would follow as they swept into North Wales in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Pennant kick-started the process that made north-west Wales into the world centre of slate quarrying. What the Pennants began at Penrhyn was repeated at Dinorwic, Nantlle and elsewhere in Caernarvonshire and Merionethshire. The slates, split and trimmed into shape, were shipped off by the million to roof the new industrial world of the nineteenth century. But to what extent was the inward investment made by the Pennants replicated in other areas of Wales? Eric Williams cited the example of Antony Bacon, slave trader, government contractor and sometime partner of George Washington in a land speculation on the Virginia–North Carolina border.10 Bacon repatriated the wealth he made in shipping slaves or leasing slaves out for government service and he invested much of it at Merthyr Tydfil, the new frontier of the coke-fuelled iron industry. Bacon lavished money on a huge blast furnace, together with a forge and cannon foundry that were at the technological cutting edge.11 This was certainly an eye-catching initiative, but was it in any way representative? The compensation records of the 1830s cannot answer that question directly. They disclose the presence in Wales of slave-owners at the moment of emancipation, nothing more. The Pennants, who remained major slave-holders down to the 1830s, therefore feature; Anthony Bacon’s heirs do not. Bacon, who died in 1786, seems to have cut his ties with the West Indies in his last years.12 His heirs enjoyed 62

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an industrial inheritance (ironworks in Wales and collieries in Cumberland) with little to indicate the Atlantic sphere in which that Bacon had first accumulated his fortune (dealing in tobacco in the Chesapeake, victualling garrisons at Gorée and delivering slaves to the sugar islands). The compensation commissioners had therefore nothing to say about Bacon or his legacy. The compensation records can hint at the possibility of slave wealth being pooled in Wales in the decades before 1834 and the potential for slave wealth to be deployed locally, but much further research is needed if the snapshot of the 1830s is to be broadened out into an understanding of slave-ownership as a historical process. That said, the 5,782 claims made to the compensation commissioners by absentee slave-owners are stark when it comes to Wales. Just sixty-nine had a Welsh dimension.13 (A comparable search for ‘Scotland’ yields 582 results; the equivalent for ‘Ireland’ gives 121.) This is a pitifully insignificant return. We are dealing here, surely, with a non-problem. Perhaps the problem is best characterised as modest rather than non-existent. There are, after all, some obvious evidential problems. Slave-owners are more likely to be very wealthy than not, and more likely to have multiple residences than not. Wealthy people, moreover, tend to enjoy the company of other wealthy people and therefore cluster in places where those of a similar ilk are to be found (high-status residential districts, spas and fashionable resorts). Such places were few and far between in Wales, where barren upland landscapes predominated and where urban development was driven by noxious, ‘bad neighbour’ industries. Full-time residence in Wales would be for many an eccentric choice, but that is not to say individuals associated with more agreeable English locations did not also have Welsh coordinates. John Foster Barham (1800–38), who claimed on 636 slaves, split between two Jamaican plantations, is described as being of Stockbridge, the Hampshire borough he represented in Parliament. He could equally well have been described as of Trecŵn, the Pembrokeshire estate he ­inherited from his father and at which the family usually resided.14 So, there are alternative geographies we need to be conscious of. The imprint of slave-holding on the Welsh landscape was not profound but it may have been deeper than at first appears to be the case. When it comes to the distribution of slave-owners who did have overt Welsh associations we are on firmer ground. Claimants, few though they were, were concentrated in a handful of areas. Monmouthshire was one. The county was conveniently close to the major urban centre of Bristol, a city whose historic connections with slavery hardly need underlining. Over the course of the eighteenth century Bristol’s ‘West Indian’ elite used their wealth to acquire country seats on the downs that ringed the city.15 Towards the end of the century, however, the vogue for the picturesque, of which the Wye valley was the great archetype, made adjacent areas of Monmouthshire increasingly attractive. The Piercefield estate, overlooking the Wye, was of special significance, being where landscaping in the new sublime manner was pioneered.16 It was bankrolled by Valentine Morris (1727–89), Antiguan sugar planter and the governor of St Vincent in the 1770s. Piercefield was to retain its West Indian 63

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connections, for in 1802 the estate was bought by Nathaniel Wells (1779–1852), the son of a Cardiff-born planter on St Kitts and an enslaved woman. Wells still owned eighty-six slaves on St Kitts in 1834, for whom he received £1,400.17 Monmouthshire – or those parts of the county in which slave-owners were settled – had a tractable, rolling landscape. This was a characteristic shared with the other pocket of slave-ownership in the south of Wales: a stretch of coastal Carmarthenshire and south Pembrokeshire running from the Loughor estuary to Milford Haven.18 Much the same could be said of the scatter of slave-ownership in North Wales. There was something of a tradition of settlement along the Flintshire–Cheshire border by Liverpool merchants, with all that that implied for the seepage of slave-based wealth into north-east Wales.19 This would explain the presence of John Kewlay, who died in August 1834, sixteen days after abolition, at Hansby Lodge, near Wrexham. Kewlay, the claimant to estates on St Lucia with 224 slaves, was presumably connected with the Liverpool family of that name that had traded slaves, mostly to Jamaica and Grenada, in the twenty years after the American Revolution.20 Some brave souls ventured further into North Wales, like Samuel Sandbach (1769–1851), who bought the Hafodunos estate in Denbighshire in 1830. Sandbach, a partner in the Liverpool merchant house Sandbach Tinne, had worked in Grenada and Demerara in his youth. He claimed for 407 slaves on the Coffee Grove and Caledonia estates in Guyana, valued at a princely £21,480.21 These examples are few in number. The flow of slave-generated wealth into Wales was on a very modest scale, and there is nothing to suggest that it made a decisive contribution to Welsh industrialisation. For every instance of Caribbean loot being used to finance industrial investment – that of the Pennants and their slate business is the classic example – there are several of plantation profits (not to mention compensation money) being directed into conspicuous consumption.22 The coincidence between the payment of compensation in the late 1830s and the quickening development of the South Wales coalfield in the 1840s is very likely just that – a coincidence. Certainly, the opening up of the Cynon and Rhondda valleys was the work of mine professionals (like John Nixon, colliery overseer) and local shopocrats (like Merthyr grocer Samuel Thomas) rather than compensation-rich plutocrats.23 The compensation records of the 1830s are scant with respect to Wales – so scant that the value of ‘Wales’ as a unit of analysis must be in question. Even though there were ‘hidden’ Welsh slave-owners like John Foster Barham of Stockbridge/ Trecŵn, whose metropolitan business addresses or ‘town’ residences enable them to elude easy detection, there were simply very few compensation claimants resident in Wales, a few dozen only. Prolonged analysis is otiose: meaningful patterns cannot be extracted from so small a sample. The return on a search of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership database for ‘Ireland’ is a little larger (121), while the 582 results for ‘Scotland’ are comparatively bountiful, so bundling Wales into a ‘Four Nations’ analysis may have merit. What residential patterns 64

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would emerge in Ireland, which had a recognised political centre while Wales did not? And what effect did the presence of Glasgow, a leading Atlantic port of the sort Wales lacked, have on the distribution of slave-based wealth in Scotland? The results would be worth noting. Even so the disparity between the aggregated Scottish, Irish and Welsh data in the archive of the Slave Compensation Commission and the data from England is daunting. A ‘Four Nations’ approach that does not go on to disaggregate England into a set of sub-regions would be too blunt an approach. There may be more value in supplementing the Welsh compensation data with other sources that bear upon the distribution of colonial wealth. The scatter of Welsh slave-ownership disclosed in the 1830s can be usefully compared with the patterning of wealth derived from the other major theatre of British imperial endeavour: India. Work by Huw Bowen on servants of the East India Company with Welsh connections brings some interesting parallels and differences to light.24 The Welsh were under-represented as Company writers, soldiers and naval personnel, just as they were under-represented in the Caribbean. But those who served in the East tended to have particular regional affinities. Company recruits and retirees were thick on the ground in Breconshire, Radnorshire and Montgomeryshire (the modern county of Powys) in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, precisely where ‘West Indians’ were scarce.25 We can only conjecture as to why this was the case, but proximity to Shropshire, home county of Robert Clive and where the great nabob built a political base after his return from the East, was surely significant. In a small place like Wales where the empirical base is narrow, comparisons of this sort may be the only way to appreciate the texture of wealth and power. As should be clear, the Slave Compensation Commission files in the National Archives reveal the destination of slave-generated wealth at the moment of abolition. The compensation records are a proxy for the final remittances in a sequence that stretched back for two centuries. They speak of wealth extraction, but if wealth extraction is considered alone, then the impact of Britain’s Atlantic slave system on the metropolitan economy will be muffled. Parts of the Hiberno-British archipelago made very significant contributions to the wider slave system, but those parts seldom coincided with the points of wealth extraction. For example, Munster was of strategic importance for the provisioning of the Caribbean sugar islands. Cattle were reared in the far westerly and northerly reaches of Kerry and Cork, fattened on grazing lands in the hinterland of Cork city and then driven into the city for butchering. Tens of thousands were slaughtered every year in Shandon, the meat-packing suburb on the north bank of the Lee. The beef, salted and barrelled, added protein to the slaves’ diet and was a mainstay of the Caribbean plantation complex.26 That was Munster’s role in the sustenance of Atlantic slavery. Wales had roles of its own. Two are worth examining in detail: copper and woollens. Copper was one of the great success stories of Hanoverian Britain. In the midseventeenth century domestic smelting scarcely existed; the British economy 65

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relied upon imports from Scandinavia and Central Europe. The use of coal in copper smelting – a British innovation of the late seventeenth century – changed that. Britain became the most dynamic centre of European copper production. At first, the coal-fired smelters were concentrated in the Bristol region, but in the early eighteenth century production began to slip westward into Wales. The locational logic was simple enough. It made sense to transport copper ore from Cornwall to the nearest available coal reserves. These were in the lower Neath and Swansea valleys, where the South Wales coal measures outcropped near the sea, hence the beginnings of modern copper smelting at Neath in the 1690s and the building of a smelter at Llangyfelach, the first in the Swansea valley, in 1717. Capital and entrepreneurial direction for these ventures usually came from Bristol, then Britain’s premier slave port. Indeed, there was an eerie symmetry between the smelting of copper in South Wales and Bristol slaving.27 The city’s ‘golden’ age as a slave port extended from the 1710s to the 1740s. It was within just this time-frame that Swansea emerged as the foremost centre of copper smelting in Europe. It was no accident that the two should rise in tandem. Metals, and especially copper, had played a significant role in the Guinea trade since its inception by the Portuguese in the fifteenth century.28 The intensification of the British slave trade in the early eighteenth century, however, in which Bristol merchants were prominent, heightened the demand for cuprous items. The penetration of the Bight of Biafra, well to the east of the trading areas that had been exploited by the London-based Royal African Company in the late seventeenth century, was especially auspicious. As slavers well knew, different parts of the coast served different hinterlands, and each of these had particular demands to make.29 If Europeans were to procure slaves they had to attend closely to the shifting contours of African consumption and it so happened that consumers in the Bight of Biafra were unusually interested in metals and metalwares: manillas cast in brass or a copper-lead alloy, battery-worked vessels in copper or brass (‘neptunes’ or ‘Guinea kettles’) and lengths of copper known as ‘Guinea rods’. There were quite clear organisational links between Welsh copper and Atlantic slavery; the Coster family exemplified them. Family members had been pioneers of copper smelting in the Bristol region in the 1680s and built up extensive mining interests in Cornwall and north Devon. Like many Bristolians, the Costers shifted their smelting operations from Bristol to South Wales in the eighteenth century. The Costers took over premises at Melincryddan in the Neath valley c.1730, then a huge, purpose-built works at White Rock in the Swansea valley in the late 1730s.30 Thomas Coster (1684–1739), the head of the family in the 1720s and 1730s, was also an enthusiastic slaver. He was part-owner of the Amoretta, purpose-built in New England in 1726 to carry captive Africans from the Bight of Biafra. Coster was no casual member of Bristol’s slaving community. On the contrary, his partners in the Amoretta included Joseph Iles and Isaac Hobhouse, two of the city’s most eminent slave merchants. And the Amoretta was no isolated experiment. In the mid-1730s, as the Costers prepared to launch the White Rock smelting works, they also ploughed capital into slaving expeditions. Thomas Coster was part66

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owner of the Mary, launched at Bristol in 1735 and promptly set to work running slaves to Jamaica. And in 1737 he joined once more with Iles and Hobhouse to fit out the Squirrel, which joined the Amoretta in carrying slaves to the Carolina Lowcountry, British North America’s most brutal slave society. The example of the Costers is particularly stark, but most Welsh smelters had slaving connections. The works at Llangyfelach in the Swansea valley made articles for the Guinea trade as a matter of course. It helped that one of the partners was a director of the Royal African Company and had access to up-to-date information on African tastes. ‘Guinea rods’ were manufactured in the dimensions and with the finish that would satisfy customers in West Africa. If ‘Negroes like the bars [better] for the print of the hammer’, the works manager wrote, then so be it: the bars would be formed under a trip-hammer rather than drawn out in the manner of wire.31 It must also have helped that the Llangyfelach Company’s agent in Bristol was James Laroche, one of the city’s mightiest slave merchants in the 1730s and 1740s.32 The same concern for satisfying African consumers was shown in Flintshire, the other great centre of copper and brass manufacture in Wales. The orientation on African markets was quite explicit: when the lease on the Warrington Company’s Greenfield factory was renewed in 1755 it was specified that the premises would be ‘kept at work in plating and rolling copper and finishing all sorts of work in copper … to be exported fit for sale in foreign markets and for the making and finishing of copper rods such are usually sold to Guinea merchants’.33 Thomas Williams, the Anglesey copper magnate who monopolised British ore production in the 1780s, was to claim that the British copper sector (and a fortiori the Welsh) was wholly dependent on African demand. Petitioning the House of Lords in 1788, when the first moves to regulate the slave trade were afoot, the ‘Copper King’ claimed that it had been the demand for copper in Africa that had induced him and his Parys Mountain associates to lay out £70,000 on facilities at Holywell, Penclawdd and Temple Mills. The articles they manufactured were ‘entirely for the African market and not saleable for any other’.34 This was an exaggeration. The British (Welsh) copper industry was unusually export orientated, it is true, but exports did not outweigh domestic sales. Moreover, when Thomas Williams made his tendentious claim to Parliament, Africa was no longer the principal export market. From the 1760s the East India Company’s exports of copper to Asia assumed greater importance.35 Nevertheless, for the first twothirds of the eighteenth century the relationship between African enslavement and Welsh copper had been intimate and profound. Indeed, the connections between copper and Atlantic servitude become even closer if the place of copper in fitting out the plantation world is considered. The Caribbean sugar sector absorbed considerable quantities of copper. The giant vessels in which the sap from crushed cane was transformed into sugar were, after all, ‘coppers’.36 And copper was also indispensable in the distilling of rum. The plantation complex, in other words, absorbed considerable volumes of copper. The plantation world also absorbed substantial volumes of other goods: 67

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­ aterials for packaging (barrel staves), building materials (nails by the million), m foodstuffs (Irish beef is a prime example) and, not least, clothing for slaves. This last was another Welsh specialism. Slaves in the New World would not have known of Wales, but they knew the adjective Welsh, for ‘Welsh cotton’ or ‘Welsh plains’ made up the basic uniform of the enslaved. When Solomon, a nineteenyear-old slave, ran away from his master in Northumberland County, Virginia, in February 1767 he was wearing ‘a WELSH Cotton Jacket … [and] a Pair of Country Cloth Breeches’. That, at least, was the claim of his master when he issued a reward notice in the Maryland Gazette appealing for the capture and return of his property.37 As was usual in such advertisements, the clothing and distinguishing marks of the fugitive were described. It was assumed that the readers of the Maryland Gazette would know what ‘a WELSH Cotton Jacket’ looked like. The ‘cotton’ was, in fact, a woollen fabric, one whose nap had been teased upwards or ‘cottoned’. It was a product of midland Wales, of a band that stretched across Montgomeryshire and Merionethshire.38 Woollen textiles were, of course, a historic product of Wales. In the late Middle Ages their making had been centred upon urban nodes in the South. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, woollen manufacturing decamped to upland pastoral districts where impoverished peasant households sought a way of boosting their incomes. The production of low-quality textiles was a characteristic response. Spinning, weaving and fulling were carried out locally; high-value, high-skill processes such as shearing were carried out at Shrewsbury, where the powerful Drapers Company exerted a tight grip on the marketing of mid-Wales textiles. The final product was exported via London, where a ‘Welch Hall’ was maintained for factors’ convenience, usually to France. However, in the later seventeenth century there was a switch in the nature of the product and its destination. Welsh producers concentrated more on lighter flannels and plains rather than heavy broadcloth, and these were intended for Atlantic markets. ‘Welsh plains’ were to be consumed by the rocketing slave populations of the Caribbean and British North America. The whole purpose of Welsh woollens, one observer went so far as to state in the 1770s, was ‘covering the poor Negroes in the West Indies’.39 There were rival products, but Wales appears to have the major source of what contemporaries called Negro Cloth. ‘Good Welch cotton seems upon the whole to answer best’, the Virginia slave-holder William Lee announced; others were ‘light and insufficient’.40 Henry Laurens, the South Carolina planter and merchant, took it for granted that Wales was the ultimate source of supply when he visited London to procure Negro Cloth. If ‘Such parcels as are in the London Warehouses’ were insufficient there was no cause for alarm; fresh deliveries were never far off: ‘a large Supply by Sea from Wales’ was imminent, he told one of his partners.41 Likewise, when Elias Ball, an exiled American loyalist, investigated the source of the Negro Cloth in which the slaves of his native South Carolina were clad he discovered that ‘the great Markett for that article … is at Shroesberry [sic] the Capital of Shropshire’.42 Shrewsbury was merely the antechamber to production zones further to the 68

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west, in Wales. The changing organisation of the Welsh woollen industry in the eighteenth century is poorly understood, but what is beyond doubt is that increasing numbers of rural dwellers in Montgomeryshire and Merionethshire came to be harnessed to the Atlantic economy. The labouring poor resorted to industrial by-employments in response to their ‘growing dependence on the returns of day-labour and … the faltering cottage economy’. They were joined by small hill farmers who, faced by an ‘economic terrain [that] became increasingly unyielding as the various demands of rents, taxes, rates and tithes outpaced returns from agriculture … looked to resolve their material difficulties through participation in the woollen industry’.43 By mid-century, parishes in the mountainous hinterland of Dolgellau and Machynlleth, the woollen-producing heartland, swarmed with spinners and weavers. Some hamlets registered surges in population growth that can be accounted for only by the employment opportunities offered by the woollen industry. Certainly, it is highly unlikely that the threefold increase in the inhabitants of Trefeglwys in the course of the eighteenth century is to be explained by major improvements in agriculture in that isolated Montgomeryshire parish. The connections between Welsh industry and Atlantic slavery were real and substantial in the eighteenth century. Atlantic demand, whether expressed in the slave trade or through the provisioning of the plantation complex, was a direct stimulus to Welsh industrial growth. The extent to which the slave Atlantic steepened the trajectory of Welsh industrial development is moot. For copper, the conjuncture of coal and Atlantic markets was decisive for the take-off of the industry in the Swansea–Neath valleys in the first half of the eighteenth century. It set the ‘Swansea district’ on course for global hegemony in the nineteenth century. The outcome for Welsh woollens was less positive. In the nineteenth century the dispersed rural producers of mid-Wales were eclipsed by mechanised producers in New England and the English North and excluded from their traditional markets by tariff walls in the United States and by slackening demand in the newly emancipated West Indies. The mountain communities of Merionethshire and Montgomeryshire where domestic textile making was prevalent were plunged into misery as a result. By the time of Queen Victoria’s accession, the woollenproducing district that girdled mid-Wales recorded some of the highest levels of pauperism in Britain. Slave-related production most certainly impacted upon Wales. The impact on Wales of the compensation awards of the 1830s appears less profound. The wealth was funnelled elsewhere, not into Wales. The awards were very few in number and added up to very little in aggregate. The age of emancipation coincided, it is true, with the start of a phase of helter-skelter expansion on the South Wales coalfield that continued down to the First World War. But was there any link between the two? As indicated above, the known pioneers of steam coal did not include ‘West Indians’. Besides, a direct link is logically improbable. The disparity between the voracious capital needs of the burgeoning coalfield and the funds made available 69

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locally by the Compensation Commission is too vast. We cannot be sure of this, however. Fluid capital markets which operated nationally (if not internationally) and novel forms of corporate organisations in the early Victorian era could shift funds very rapidly from one sector to another. The £20 million that passed into the pockets of British slaveholders in the 1830s cannot have been entirely without effect on Welsh industry; it is just that the effects are uncertain and difficult to trace. By way of a coda that might illustrate the complexities and tragic ironies to which the disbursement of compensation gave rise, mention should be made of the banking firm of Sir James Esdaile, whose partners claimed compensation on the mortgaged slaves of the Hazelymph plantation in the parish of St James, Jamaica. Among those so compensated were Pascoe St Leger Grenfell and Rees Goring Thomas, whose comfortable London addresses obscured important links with industrial South Wales. Both had connections with the copper industry. Grenfell family members were major smelters in Swansea, where Pascoe Grenfell & Sons ran the Middle Bank and the Upper Bank works. Indeed, Pascoe St Leger Grenfell was to manage the affairs of Grenfell & Sons in the town in the 1840s. Rees Goring Thomas, notwithstanding his Lombard Street address, was a native of Llanelli, home of the Llanelly Copperworks, one of Britain’s largest. The Grenfell family and Rees Goring Thomas became involved in a new business venture in the mid-1830s: copper ore mining in Cuba. British capitalists reactivated the abandoned mines at El Cobre in the east of the island in the mid1830s. The rich local ores were to be shipped to Swansea and copper masters from the Swansea district were prominent in the promotion of joint-stock companies floated in 1835 and 1838: the Cobre Mining Association and the Royal Santiago Mining Company. Both companies adopted the same modus operandi. Both were run from offices in the City of London, both were directed by a mix of City financiers and South Walian industrialists, both relied on a cadre of Cornish hard-rock miners to take charge of on-site operations and both, this being Cuba, made use of slave labourers. Slaves, most likely illegally imported bozales, accounted for 64% of the Cobre Association’s workforce in 1841. Indeed, the Cobre Association, with its 479 slave miners, was in all likelihood the single largest slave enterprise in the western hemisphere at the start of the 1840s.44 The 1830s was a decade of emancipation in Britain’s Atlantic empire but it was also a decade in which slavery expanded headlong in Cuba, Brazil and the American South. Slave-worked enterprises represented a good investment opportunity and British investors did not always abstain. Those who invested in the Santiago and Cobre companies became Cuban slave-owners. The distribution of shares in the Cuban companies cannot be mapped – the archive has not ­survived – but Welsh industrialists were certainly prominent shareholders.45 Given the paucity of Welsh slave-owners compensated under the terms of the 1833 Abolition Act, and given the enthusiasm of Welsh entrepreneurs for investment in El Cobre, it is not out of the question that there were more slave-owners in Wales at the end of the 1830s than there were at the outset. 70

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Notes  1 A. H. John, The Industrial Development of South Wales, 1750–1850: An Essay (Cardiff, 1950).  2 A. H. Dodd, The Industrial Revolution in North Wales (Cardiff, 1933).  3 The study by J. H. Morris and L. J. Williams – The South Wales Coal Industry 1841–1875 (Cardiff, 1958) – was never extended to cover the industry’s late nineteenth-century heyday.  4 R. O. Roberts, ‘The development and decline of copper and other non-ferrous metal industries in South Wales’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, (1957 for 1956), 78–115; R. O. Roberts, ‘The smelting of non-ferrous metals since 1750’, in Glanmor Williams (ed.), Glamorgan County History, Vol. 5 (Cardiff, 1980), pp. 47–95.  5 John Williams, Was Wales Industrialised? Essays in Modern Welsh History (Llandysul, 1995), pp. 14–36, quote at p. 22.  6 Walter Minchinton, The British Tinplate Industry: A History (Oxford, 1957).  7 John Lloyd, The Early History of the Old South Wales Iron Works (1760 to 1840) (London, 1906), p. 24; Chris Evans (ed.), The Letterbook of Richard Crawshay 1788– 1797 (Cardiff, 1990), p. 115; Sidney Pollard and R. S. W. Davies, ‘The iron industry, 1750–1850’, in C. H. Feinstein and S. Pollard (eds), Studies in Capital Investment in the United Kingdom 1750–1920 (Oxford, 1988), pp. 73–104.  8 The ‘Welsh process’ practised in the Swansea district made a virtue of mixing ores of different sorts and varied metallic content. Heterogeneous ores had to be kept on hand in large volumes for the process to work effectively. Roberts, ‘The smelting of nonferrous metals’, p. 56.  9 Jean Lindsay, ‘The Pennants and Jamaica 1665–1808. Part I: The growth and organisation of the Pennant estates’, Transactions of the Caernarfonshire Historical Society, 43 (1982), 37–82; Jean Lindsay, ‘The Pennants and Jamaica 1665–1808. Part II: The economic and social development of the Pennant estates in Jamaica’, Transactions of the Caernarfonshire Historical Society, 44 (1983), 59–96; Trevor Burnard, ‘From periphery to periphery: the Pennants’s Jamaican plantations and industrialisation in North Wales, 1771–1812’, in Huw Bowen (ed.), Wales and the British Overseas Empire: Interactions and Influences, 1650–1830 (Manchester, 2011), pp. 114–42. 10 Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery ([1944] Chapel Hill, NC, 1994), pp. 103–4; L. B. Namier, ‘Anthony Bacon, MP, an eighteenth-century merchant’, Journal of Economic and Business History, 2 (1929–30), 20–70. 11 Chris Evans, The Labyrinth of Flames: Work and Social Conflict in Early Industrial Merthyr Tydfil (Cardiff, 1993), pp. 16–18; Joseph Gross (ed.), The Diary of Charles Wood of Cyfarthfa Ironworks, Merthyr Tydfil 1766–1767 (Cardiff, 2001), pp. 30–4. 12 Bacon’s will, which is reproduced in Lloyd, The Early History, pp. 48–55, makes mention of debts owed to him on Tobago but no other Caribbean assets. 13 Data supplied by Nick Draper, 17 November 2011, from the LBS dataset ‘Claim Notes’ using the search term ‘Wales’. Not all of these sixty-nine ‘hits’ are real. The list includes, for example, Temperance Sophia Udny, whose mother was under-governess to Princess Charlotte of Wales. 14 His father, Joseph Foster Barham (1759–1832), also MP for Stockbridge, is designated ‘of Trecŵn, in the History of Parliament: http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/ volume/1790-1820/member/foster-barham-joseph-1759-1832. See also the family’s entry in Welsh Biography Online at http://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s-BARH-TRE-1700.html.

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15 Madge Dresser, Slavery Obscured: The Social History of the Slave Trade in an English Provincial Port (Bristol, 2007), pp. 111–16. 16 Julian Mitchell, ‘Piercefield and the Wye tour, 1740–1800’, in Ralph A. Griffiths, Prys Morgan and Madeleine Gray (eds), Gwent County History: Volume III. The Making of Monmouthshire, 1536–1780 (Cardiff, 2009), pp. 381–91. See also Elisabeth Whittle, ‘ “All these inchanting scenes”: Piercefield in the Wye Valley’, Garden History, 24: 1 (1996), 148–61; Ivor Waters, The Unfortunate Valentine Morris (Chepstow, 1964). 17 The National Archives [hereafter TNA], T71/879 Slave Compensation Commission; J. A. H. Evans, ‘Wells, Nathaniel (1779–1852)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [hereafter ODNB], Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, January 2008, http:// www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/74450, accessed 1 March 2012. 18 This zone was home to Edward Rose Tunno of Llangennech Park and Anne Shickle of Laugharne (both in Carmarthenshire) and Henry Palmer of Gelliswick in Pembrokeshire, all of whom claimed on Jamaican estates; to William and Eleanor Amelia Tringham of Laugharne, who claimed on the Mount Pleasant plantation in Grenada; and to Charlotte Maria Picton of Iscoed, Carmarthenshire, who made a claim for the ninety-eight slaves at Aranjuez in Trinidad. 19 Examples include Sir Foster Cunliffe (1755–1834) of Acton Hall, near Wrexham, and William Ewart Gladstone, whose estate at Harwarden in Flintshire was developed with inherited wealth garnered (partially at least) from his father’s plantations in Jamaica and Demerara. 20 The Voyages database records more than sixty slaving expeditions fitted out at Liverpool by members of the Kewley family: http://slavevoyages.org/tast/database/search.faces?y earFrom=1514&yearTo=1866&anyowner=Kewley. 21 TNA T71/887. Sandbach followed fellow Liverpool slavers John Chambres Jones (1749/50–1833) of Bryneisteddfod and Richard Wilding (1743/44–1820) of Llanrhaiadr Hall in buying Denbighshire property: David Pope, ‘The wealth and social aspirations of Liverpool’s slave merchants of the second half of the eighteenth century’, in David Richardson, Suzanne Schwarz and Anthony Tibbles (eds), Liverpool and Transatlantic Slavery (Liverpool, 2007), pp. 221, 222. 22 Hafodunos Hall, for example, was rebuilt on extravagant Gothic lines by Henry Robertson Sandbach (the planter’s son) in the 1860s. Sir George Gilbert Scott’s design swallowed up £30,000; http://www.coflein.gov.uk/en/site/27268/details/ HAFODUNOS+HALL/. 23 L. J. Williams, ‘The coalowners’, in Dai Smith (ed.), A People and a Proletariat: Essays in the History of Wales 1780–1980 (London, 1980), pp. 94–113. 24 Huw Bowen, ‘Asiatic interactions: India, the East India Company and the Welsh economy, c.1750–1830’, in Bowen (ed.), Wales and the British Overseas Empire: Interactions and Influences, 1650–1830 (Manchester, 2011), pp. 168–92. 25 There were areas of overlap where both East and West Indians resided. Southern Carmarthenshire was one, and it should be noted that the East India Company soldier Mark Wood preceded Nathaniel Wells as owner of the Piercefield estate: Brendan Carnduff, ‘Wood, Sir Mark, first baronet (1750–1829)’, ODNB; online edn, October 2009, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/29887, accessed 24 May 2012. 26 David Dickson, Old World Colony: Cork and South Munster 1630–1830 (Cork, 2005), pp. 135–48; Bertie Mandelblatt, ‘A transatlantic commodity: Irish salt beef in the French Atlantic world’, History Workshop Journal, 63 (2007), 18–47; Chris Evans,

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‘Wales, Munster and the English South West: contrasting articulations with the Atlantic world’, in Huw Bowen (ed.), Wales and the British Overseas Empire: Interactions and Influences, 1650–1830 (Manchester, 2011), pp. 40–61. 27 Roberts, ‘The development and decline of copper’; David Richardson, ‘Slavery and Bristol’s “Golden Age” ’, Slavery and Abolition, 26:1 (2005), 35–54. 28 Eugenia W. Herbert, Red Gold of Africa: Copper in Precolonial History and Culture (Madison, WI, 2003). 29 David Richardson, ‘West African consumption patterns and their influence on ­eighteenth-century English slave trade’, in H. A. Gemery and J. S. Hogendorn (eds), The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York, 1979), pp. 303–30. 30 Joan Day, ‘The Costers: copper smelters and manufacturers’, Transactions of the Newcomen Society, (1977 for 1974–75 and 1975–76), 47–58. Stephen Hughes, Copperopolis: Landscapes of the Early Industrial Period in Swansea (Aberystwyth, 2000). 31 Louise Miskell (ed.), The Origins of an Industrial Region: Robert Morris and the First Swansea Copper Works, c.1727–1730 (Newport, 2010), p. 61. 32 Hughes, Copperopolis, p. 45. 33 Flintshire Record Office, MS D/MT/1016, quoted in Ken Davies, ‘The Greenfield valley and the slave trade’ (forthcoming in the Transactions of the Flintshire Historical Society). 34 Parliamentary Archives, 10/7/788, petition dated 9 July 1788. 35 H. V. Bowen, ‘Sinews of trade and empire: the supply of commodity exports to the East India Company during the late eighteenth century’, Economic History Review, 55:3 (2002), 466–86, at 479. 36 Sugar-boiling vessels could be manufactured of iron rather than copper. For a discussion of the topic, which gives the palm to copper boilers, albeit marginally, see Gordon Turnbull, Letters to a Young Planter: or, Observations on the Management of a Sugar-Plantation. To Which is Added, The Planter’s Kalendar. Written on the Island of Grenada, by an Old Planter (London, 1785), pp. 26–7. 37 Maryland Gazette, 26 November 1767. 38 Chris Evans, Slave Wales: The Welsh and Atlantic Slavery 1660–1850 (Cardiff, 2010), pp. 46–54. 39 Thomas Pennant, A Tour in Wales. MDCCLXX (2 vols, London, 1778–1783), II, p. 351. 40 ‘Some notes on Green Spring. Formerly the home of Sir William Berkeley, Ludwells and Lees’, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 37:4 (October 1929), 289–300. 41 George C. Rogers and David R. Chesnutt (eds), The Papers of Henry Laurens. Volume 9: April 19, 1773 – Dec. 12, 1774 (Columbia, 1981), pp. 330, 352–3. 42 South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Ball family papers, box1, folder 7, Elias Ball to Elias Ball junior, 21 April 1786. 43 Melvin Humphreys, The Crisis of Community: Montgomeryshire, 1680–1815 (Cardiff, 1996), p. 7. 44 Fuller details are available in Chris Evans, ‘El Cobre: Cuban ore and the globalisation of Swansea copper 1830–1870’, at http://glam.academia.edu/ChrisEvans/Papers/743474/ El_Cobre_Cuban_ore_and_the_globalisation_of_Swansea_copper_1830-1870. 45 Charles Pascoe Grenfell and his half-brother Riversdale William Grenfell were directors of the Cobre Mining Association and their father, Pascoe Grenfell, was a shareholder. Rees Goring Thomas was also a Cobre director.

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Part II

From slavery to indenture

4

From slavery to indenture: scripts for slavery’s endings Anita Rupprecht

Having arrived in Jamaica as one of the Special Magistrates sent from England to oversee the passing of the 1833 Emancipation Act, Richard Madden observed that, the late change which has taken place in the condition of the negro population of these islands, must necessarily lead to great alterations in the mode of managing plantations. It requires as little knowledge of human nature, as of political economy, to be assured that no man will labour without reward, who can avoid it. Hitherto, coercion was necessarily employed to obtain labour; but the new law, in making coercion the legal penalty of its infraction, instead of an arbitrary punishment, summarily inflicted, has deprived it of the character which chiefly constituted its terrors; for nothing, I apprehend, can be more productive of terror than the power of inflicting punishment in the heat of passion. That stimulus to labour is therefore in the hands of the special justice, not what it was in those of the overseer. In some cases in four years, in others in six years, it will not exist at all. In the intermediate time conciliation, to a great extent must be looked to, to effect what coercion formerly did.1

Madden’s reflections function as a vivid reminder of the ways in which instrumental economic imperative, imperial interest and colonial fantasies about appropriate colonial subjectivity framed official interpretations of slave emancipation. If ‘freedom’ was something to be bequeathed in such a way that labour productivity would continue uninterrupted, a key question concerned the relocation of the ‘stimulus to labour’. If the arbitrary forms of terror associated with a privately owned labour force had previously ensured steady work, now – and until such time as it was no longer required – it would be secured institutionally, through a penal framework administered by colonial agents. The ‘great change’ that would nevertheless ensure productive continuity was thus to be achieved by the imperial state taking over the direction of labour. During the period of state-administered labour discipline, or ‘apprenticeship’, Madden supposes that sentiment will play its part. The fact that he notes that a conciliation needs to be secured in order for the Caribbean plantations to survive and prosper maybe hints at a long-held colonial anxiety that perhaps things might not work out. 77

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Perhaps unexpectedly, Madden’s reflections about a possible conciliation between masters and workers leads him to eulogise about the success of Mathew Lewis’s so-called enlightened plantership in 1815 and 1817, instead of any earlier experiment in ‘freeing’ the enslaved. Lewis had (reluctantly) inherited two plantations, and when he arrived in Jamaica in 1815 he found his properties in disarray and his six hundred slaves on the verge of rebellion. According to his account of his experience, he spent his time, and definitely extremely nervously, attempting to re-establish his paternalistic sovereignty over his bondsmen and women. Like so many other colonial reformers, he cast the project of reinforcing labour hierarchies as an effort in ‘conciliation’ between himself and his workforce. He developed management techniques that were designed to restore productive order by eliciting the appropriately subordinating sentiments of his labourers: gratitude, contentment and dutiful loyalty. Lewis introduced a system of petty rewards, abolished the use of the whip in the field and the flogging of enslaved women, allowing Saturdays as free time, and instituted an annual ‘royal holiday’.2 The ameliorative measures seemed to have been successful, as Madden reports that Lewis’s heir, his nephew, has recently confirmed that the plantations are now flourishing amongst so many others that have gone to the wall. As a result, Madden enthusiastically pronounces, ‘By [Lewis’s] two visits he saved his properties!’ Thus, at the moment of emancipation, Madden looks back in order to look forward, rehabilitating Lewis (who had never countenanced freeing his slaves) as a canny proprietor, a sovereign protector and an exemplary authority on, or an innovator in, labour management. His exclamation – as an avowed anti-slavery supporter and committed (if albeit institutionalised) activist who was to become a fierce and effective critic of the apprenticeship arrangements – resonates across the history of the abolition campaigns for a variety of reasons that are central to this chapter. Firstly, it is a reminder that, for the elite abolitionists, the arguments for ending slavery were almost always framed with a goal of maintaining the colonial plantation complex. Secondly, it registers the importance of continuing labour discipline to both abolitionists and planters. Thirdly, it identifies the particular terms within which abolitionists took up the argument for ‘free labour’ as offered theoretically by political economy and which Madden takes for granted as a certain form of ‘common sense’.3 The nature, extent and wider impact of the analysis of slavery embedded in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century classical political-economic writings have been subjects of recent debate amongst critics and historians.4 The apparent dearth of sustained attention to the fact that a peculiarly modern form of slavery was flourishing in the very belly of commercial society has been explained as an effect of the vigorously progressive thrust of the political-economic narrative. As Walter Johnson notes, it is possible to generalise to the point at which one can say that bourgeois theories of political economy get off the ground through the foundational erasure of slavery because, within their enlightened terms, slavery is, or should be, in some senses no longer thinkable.5 78

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Seymour Drescher adopts this view to argue that the limited, and ambivalent, discussion of slavery within the ‘new science’ meant that British abolitionism, in its search for outside authority, had found little of substance, or indeed of comfort, when formulating its campaigning arguments.6 That the ‘free labour’ argument remained muted amongst abolitionists stands, if one tracks, as Drescher does, the fate of the most arresting axiom to do with the deployment of ‘labour’, articulated most famously by Adam Smith as ‘the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that performed by slaves’.7 Abolitionists were indeed vulnerable when the axiom was mobilised in contexts that were either too particular or too general. On the one hand, in the cut and thrust of heated debate, both sides often reverted to the reductive idea that theoretical statement could be proved or disproved by contingent empirical evidence, most often at the abolitionist’s cost. On the other hand, the axiom was prone to losing the vital (and temporally ambiguous) Smithian qualifier of ‘in the end’, becoming an indefensibly sweeping assertion about the relative cheapness of two, historically unnuanced, forms of labour. On this basis, a discrete focus on the debate about the relative cheapness of ‘free’ or enslaved labour, as it waxed and waned from the 1780s through to the Emancipation Act, risks suggesting that when abolitionists championed the ‘efficiency’ and cheapness of so-called ‘free labour’ they were often simply mistaken, or that they were somehow insincere because they knew that they could not refute the empirical evidence, or that the argument about ‘free labour’ was less important to them than it sometimes appears. In this respect, Drescher’s detailed analysis of a discrete set of economic ideas about the stubborn profitability of enslaved colonial labour, articulated at times by a limited number of abolitionists, readily supports his larger project of understanding abolition as a national ‘econocide’ committed in the name of moral humanitarianism. Drescher’s terms of the analysis obscure as much as they reveal, however, insofar as the focus on the role of Smith’s oft-repeated statement captures only one aspect of abolitionism’s shifting identification with political economy and its wider implications. Moreover, one of the consequences of the approach is to reduce the contingent historical processes by which the boundaries between different forms of labour could be drawn and redrawn, as well as the historical specificity of the ways in which the concepts of enslaved labour and ‘free labour’ were mobilised and understood, in particular, and different, contexts. Smith himself never doubted that the use of enslaved labour was profitable in the narrow sense of increasing the wealth of those who could arbitrarily exploit the weak with impunity. The reason why he was so interested in the issue was because it telegraphed the grander distinctions between self-interest and selfishness, liberty and license, and between natural markets and artificial ones. That is, it cut to the heart of his all-embracing theory of political economy founded on a theory of enlightened human nature. The problem with monopolies and slavery was that they contravened the natural link between freedom, self-interest and economic progress. Like Hume, Smith portrayed these abuses as harmful not simply because they were inefficient – indeed this problem did not seem to exist on the 79

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balance sheet of the slave-owner or the monopolist – but, more importantly, because they distorted the flow of goods and services in ways that hindered the long-term growth of the economy more generally. Smith noted that there was something ‘peculiar’ about the tropical nonessential goods of tobacco, and especially sugar, but his criticism of the West India planters reflects his more general attack, in The Wealth of Nations, on the propensities of merchants. Their monopolistic activities not only disrupt competitive price mechanisms, they also have deleterious effects on a merchant’s ‘character’, and hence, importantly, on the characters of labourers.8 For Smith, the most ‘fatal’ effect of vastly inflated mercantile profits is to destroy the (otherwise ‘natural’) ‘parsimony’ of the merchant who, as a necessary leader and ‘conductor of industry … has a much greater influence upon the manners of the whole industrious part’ of every nation.9 That is to say, Smith’s comments are set within his all-embracing attack on the mercantile system: political economy, the study of the appropriate stabilisation of labour hierarchies in a commercial society and moral sentiment, the philosophical reflection on the requisites of civility, are threaded through each other, and it is these issues, rather than an abstractly economic or discretely financial argument, that energised and emboldened the early anti-slavery activists. From the very beginning, the condemnation of slavery was accompanied by imagining alternative forms of labour. As Christopher Brown has detailed, well before the formalisation of an anti-slave-trade campaign, more elaborate plans had been developed that justified ending slavery, with an eye to ensuring the continuing viability of the industrial plantation complex.10 By the 1780s, the two most influential abolitionist writers, James Ramsey and Thomas Clarkson, drew heavily on Smith’s wide-ranging, anti-mercantilist agenda in order to propose not simply reforming Caribbean labour practices, but a reformation of the entire colonial system. Ramsey reflected Smith’s attention to the damage caused by unregulated labour relations when he attacked the political-economic foundation of the sugar industry. He argued that the ‘monopoly of the British market’ had created a particularly cruel group of planters because the high returns enabled absenteeism and luxurious life-styles in the metropole. Because English planters were unrestrained by legal regulation, they were blind to the fact that their ‘true interest was on the side of liberty, and of moral improvement, not in niggardly pinching, not in stripes, chains, and nakedness’.11 As Ryden notes, ‘in so many words Ramsey was putting forward a free-labour argument’ insofar as it would be cheaper and more efficient in a context free of government subsidy and planter protection.12 By ending the slave trade, and promoting civilisation in Africa, new advantageous trading opportunities would develop, while planters in the West Indies would be forced to reform themselves as a result of new market discipline. Ramsey’s Smithian arguments had a significant impact on the development of abolitionist rhetoric, especially on Thomas Clarkson, who adopted the vision for a reformed empire. Clarkson also highlighted the relationship between excessive mercantile wealth and d ­ eformations of 80

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character, arguing that planters should be compelled into more humane management. The efficiency of the slave trade meant that planters could work slaves to death, having no cause to nurture a natural population growth on their plantations. Not only was this utterly inhumane, but the chasing of short-term profits had long-term negative effects on planters’ wealth. Clarkson also had a grand vision for the colonial system that included highlighting the alternative benefits of redirecting British shipping, and the economic development of Africa.13 For both men, the questions of why slavery persisted out of sight across the Atlantic and of how it might be replaced successfully, i.e. profitably, by free labour, were to be answered by the long progressive arm of political economy as it embraced, at this stage at least, psychology, morality and geography. As Ramsey and Clarkson’s founding documents attest, that long progressive arm was spatial, but also temporal. The critique of slavery offered by the ‘science of man’ was embedded in a theory of historical development that saw slavery as a block to the economic logic of that development’s onward march. What was novel about the new approach, as Shilliam notes, was that slavery’s immorality was now conceived as a problem to be dealt with through the lexicon of commerce rather than common law. The shift changed the terms of the argument. Thus, for James Stuert, forced labour was a problem because it constrained wants.14 Similarly, Smith argued that human self-interest could not be activated under conditions of enslavement because workers derived no direct benefit from their own labour. As an inevitable result, they were less productive, and could only be governed by violence. These new, commercially oriented assumptions, based on an enlightened understanding of the contours of universal human nature, helped to lever the so-called efficiency of free labour into a progressive theory of history, but this did not necessarily mean that Scottish thinkers thought slavery’s endings would be the inevitable outcome of historical advance. Neither Smith, nor other writers of the Scottish Enlightenment, thought that slavery would disappear due to altered economic forces alone. On the basis of European exceptionality, slavery would continue to flourish unless political forces intervened directly to outlaw or dismantle it. Ramsey and Clarkson’s plans, however visionary, also paid close attention to the legal developments that would be necessary for a transformation of the terms of colonial production; the view remained central to the different and contingent scripts for how slavery could be ended, and the plantations secured, as Richard Madden’s view of emancipation in 1833 makes clear. If political intervention was required to steer the grand narrative of developmental history, the necessary refashioning of its various subjects was also at issue. Smith had famously grounded his entire system on the idea that humanity was universally possessed of an innate capacity to truck, barter and exchange. But the kind of ‘freedoms’ conceptualised by the founding assumption did not easily capture the requirements made of enslaved colonial workers, who were most often conceived as a particular category of ‘labour’ rather than as individual agents. The famous ‘invisible hand’ of the market might have informed early plans 81

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for reforming the empire, but that argument was conceived by Smith as part of his anti-colonial vision of the benefits of the freedom of commerce. It was to emerge again in the final emancipation debates, but political economy did not offer much comfort for elite abolitionists who were thinking and arguing within the frame of ‘actually existing empire’ at the beginning of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, the developmental narrative helped to open up a space within which economic considerations justified the construction of colonial, cultural or racial inadequacy, and through which the coercion that underlay the discourse of freedom and reform could be glossed. Thus Africans and their Caribbean descendants could be viewed as incapable, or at least not yet capable, of participating fully in the economic revolution that was happening around them. This intellectual space was exploited by elite abolitionists who did not often argue from biological flaw but almost always from matters of errant, or uneven, history. Habits, attitudes and social practices, understood to be antithetical to supporting a ‘free’ labour regime, were interpreted as the result of African ignorance and barbarity combined with generations of brutalising enslavement. Thus the commitment to the promise of cheaper labour was inextricably bound to the question of labour discipline.15 The problem of plantation management – the problem of producing self-dependence and loyal servitude – exercised proslavery supporters, anti-slavery advocates and the Colonial Office. How could a self-disciplined and self-reproducing labour force be created, one with the capacity to work willingly for someone else not simply as a matter of survival but in the belief that it was in their self-interest so to do? Abolitionists were thus deeply invested in the promise of political economy insofar as they took its universal humanism as their starting point. They were always interested in the internal dynamic, and character, of human motivation, the very basis of the Smithian argument, rather than simply being engaged with the nature of macroeconomic redistribution. To note that abolitionists tended to put their number crunching at the back of their campaigning pamphlets underplays its intimate relationship to what filled so many pages at the front.16 Here, they devoted endless attention to identifying the ‘stimulus to labour’ under different conditions and to ­providing ways of calibrating degrees of freedom and unfreedom so that colonial ­productivity could be preserved. It is perhaps ironic that, by taking up this aspect of political economy, ­abolitionism brought the question of slave agency to the forefront.17 By paying attention to the historical context within which the political-economic arguments about the necessary fate of slavery were elaborated, revised and repeated by abolitionists, manoeuvring as they were first against the slave trade and much later against the institution of slavery itself, we can begin to see the ways in which the resistance of the enslaved was a central concern for the abolitionists. They endlessly documented and catalogued and advertised such actions – the myriad of tactics and strategies such as slowing down, absconding, working in various forms outside the formal laws of enslavement, rebelling – in their efforts to prove that the institution was inefficient precisely because it made the enslaved recalcitrant. 82

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In The Mighty Experiment, Drescher notes the negative impact of the Haitian revolution and the anti-slave-trade debates on the abolitionists’ willingness to use arguments about the economic rationality of ‘free labour’.18 He points out that in 1802 James Stephen, ‘the “Saints ” most informed and authoritative expert on the Caribbean’, publically stated his ‘clear conviction, that such cheapness of labour is by no means to be expected from the voluntary industry, however great, of negroes in a state of freedom, as now excites the enterprise and splendidly rewards the success of the planter, in places where slavery is established’.19 Stephen made the statement in a lengthy pamphlet about the revolution in St Domingue in 1802, but in the context of a discussion of the future development of Britain’s recent imperial acquisition, Trinidad. Stephen’s ‘conviction’ needs to be seen in the wider context of these plans insofar as they illustrate the terms in which he envisions a reformed labour system, and various roles that forcibly acquired Africans might play in aid to the imperial war-time state. Stephen reflects on the benefits that will stem from banning the importation of enslaved Africans and introducing new forms of labour management in the colony. He acknowledges that the dip in profits would be the chief objection to implementing his vision but notes that ‘short-sighted avarice’ would be replaced by the establishment of ‘a firm and tranquil dominion’ where planters’ gains would be ‘more uniform and infinitely more secure’.20 If a ‘more liberal policy’ was adopted, he argued, speculation would make the settlement prosper. Moreover, the extensive availability of land for provisioning, and extremely fertile soils, with a particular amenity to new technology, would sustain a labour force that would become, via their wages, avid consumers of British goods, giving in turn a fillip to British shipping.21 Stephen’s plan is founded, however, on indenturing the first ‘free Negroes’ within a heavily legalistic, metropolitan-based set of structures that would require Special Magistrates, the maintenance of a formal punishment system, wages to be determined by law and a banning of the whip. This nascent ‘apprenticeship system’ was to be installed precisely because ‘that bane of moral character in the slave is utterly inconsistent with the happy formation of a new system, as well as with the effectual reformation of the old’.22 Enslaved Africans were ‘ricketty infants’ who must be ‘taught how to walk’.23 Africans who had not yet experienced work under slave conditions were understood to be suited to another sort of disciplinary regime. Stephen advocates the purchase of kidnapped Africans to replenish the military presence in the West Indies, arguing that their able-bodied nature, their ‘yet unbroken spirit’ and their attachment to the ‘government that had redeemed them from captivity’ would make them ‘excellent defenders against the hostile attempts of France’. Of the ‘fidelity’ of ‘armed negroes’, he assures his readers, there can be no ‘reasonable doubt; for the cause of Great Britain would be their own’.24 Stephen’s lengthy justification for the reallocating of African labour via state-managed indentureships and direct purchase was made in the specific context of Britain’s efforts against the French. It was rationalised in the name of a future economic prosperity, but also with an eye to eliciting imperial identification and stability. 83

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The ­combination of indentured servitude and military impressment as appropriate alternative roles for Africans who would be otherwise enslaved would become part of the Act to abolish the British Slave Trade in 1807, also authored, in great part, by Stephen. The 1807 Act legislated for the destiny of the Africans seized from illegally operating slave ships in the context of imperial war. They would be either enlisted into the British military forces or indentured, as ‘apprentices’, for a maximum of fourteen years.25 These measures, or indeed the Africans themselves, were not represented in the celebratory memorabilia marking the humanitarian triumph of 1807. Perceptions of their fate, however, helped to shape the ‘war of representation’ being fought over different forms of labour in ways that became increasingly difficult for the parliamentary abolitionists to counter.26 The fact that the antislave-trade legislation and the administrative structures and practices of slave trading and slavery were intimately related consistently embarrassed the African Institution in the early years of suppression, eliciting sustained controversy in the colonies on both sides of the Atlantic and in London.27 The pro-slavery lobby opportunistically appropriated the radical attacks on the evangelical conservatism associated with the development of Sierra Leone, to the point where parliamentary abolitionists had to admit the limitations of the Abolition Act. They stressed that the constraining terms of rescue had been devised as protective measures for the benefit of the Africans themselves. Their rationale had either to do with the African’s ‘ignorance’, meaning that it had been ‘necessary in respect of them to give for their own sakes the power of enlisting or apprenticing’ or to prevent the possibility of re-enslavement once disembarked in the sugar colonies.28 Abolitionists were strangely silent about the thousands of Africans appropriated for the military during the Napoleonic Wars, despite the fact that the policy had formed part of James Stephen’s 1802 plan.29 By 1823, however, in a long pamphlet championing various exemplary instances of colonial improvement, Thomas Clarkson was explaining that the African soldiers, since 1819, when the regiments had been disbanded, had ‘conducted themselves with great propriety’ both in Sierra Leone and in the West Indies. The army, he argued, needed to be seen, therefore, as an ideal ‘preparatory school’. Because the Africans were ‘never out of reach of discipline’, they had been ‘fitted … by degrees for making good use of their liberty’.30 Before 1815, the majority of captives returned to Sierra Leone or the West Indies were enlisted to fight for the imperial interest. Those deemed ‘unfit’ for military service were indentured, providing a new source of bound and disciplined labour for the colonies. This decision can also be traced to Stephen, and also Zacharay Macaulay. Macaulay had struggled with the original settlers of Sierra Leone as they refused to submit to the strict paternalist discipline required by company rule.31 The mobility of the settlers frustrated him more than anything else. He complained that it was ‘impossible to subject them to regular instruction’ unless some way of correcting their ‘migratory habits’ could be found.32 His 84

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experiences lent weight to the idea that some measure of ‘constraint’ should be written into the anti-slave-trade regulations. While Stephen, the other principal architect of the Bill, was concerned about the lack of detail and discrimination in the final document, Wilberforce defended the exploitative measures as ‘the least objectionable way of rescuing slaves’, a phrase that abolitionists would continue to use throughout the campaign when justifying the policy.33 Perhaps it is unsurprising that the legal terms of rescue written into the Slave Trade Act drew a thin veil between enslavement and freedom, but the language of the Act, and then the ways in which it was translated into action, provides a powerful example of the historical process by which those flimsy boundaries could be drawn and redrawn. The seizure of Africans trapped aboard privately owned slave ships became possible legally by defining them as contraband commodities rather than as kidnapped or trafficked peoples. Rescued Africans were taken as slaves. In this way, they could be confiscated to become property of the Crown. Once ‘condemned’ as Prize by the Vice-Admiralty Courts, however, in no circumstances were they to be ‘sold, disposed of, treated or dealt with as Slaves’. Thus, the act of condemnation explicitly negated the Africans’ status as illegally transported goods. Once they were impounded but not enslaved, officials were authorised to ‘enlist the same, or any of them, into His Majesty’s Land, or Sea Service, as Soldiers, Seamen, or Marines, or to bind the same or any of them, whether of full Age or not as Apprentices, for any Term not exceeding Fourteen Years’. The language of the Act paid careful attention to the way in which this recalibration of identity and condition was to be enacted. It demanded that the Africans enter into these new relationships ‘as if’ they had done so voluntarily. Equally, any African recruited into the military was to be treated ‘as if he had voluntarily so enlisted’, except that the associated provisions to limit the length of service, or to provide a pension on discharge, did not apply.34 The form in which the rescue process is dramatised as a procedural narrative tries to have it both ways, to the point that it is not freely given ‘consent’ but, rather, its performance that glosses the imperial instrumentalism that structured the activity in the first place. The 1808 Orders in Council added further practical guidance that drew boundaries in order to produce differentiated constituencies, and which further attempted to deal with the convergences between consent and coercion. Courts of Vice-Admiralty were to be established at Freetown in Sierra Leone and on several West Indian islands. Each colony’s Collector of Customs – dealers in contraband – was made responsible for administering the passage of the Africans into the armed forces or indentured servitude. If an African’s name was ‘unknown’ or not ‘sufficiently easy, clear, and distinctive’, the Collectors were instructed to find another, and then to use that name thereafter until the individual was ‘sufficiently instructed for baptism’, whereupon that name would become official.35 Collectors were instructed to do their utmost to reunite family members, ‘except where the employment of either shall make such separation indispensible’.36 They were also instructed to assemble new families by encouraging those men enlisted to take rescued women as wives. These women would, insofar as it was possible, be 85

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permitted to live with their husbands or to be indentured into domestic service nearby. When arrangements aimed at rationalising the process were made by establishing a ‘recruiting depot’ in Freetown in 1811, the popular metropolitan equation of military coercion with slavery, coupled with the Sierra Leone controversies, meant that it was ‘highly necessary to bring the Military Service into repute by the encouragement of Voluntary Enlistment’. The encouragement took the form of using captives who spoke ‘African languages’ to ‘explain the advantages attending the situation of a British soldier’. A form of contractual bargain was introduced insofar as a ‘Bounty of Eight Guineas’ was to be paid to those who were enlisted. This sum was just over half the standard amount of fifteen guineas given to white soldiers, ‘under the idea that such trifling articles of inducement more acceptable to the Negroes than Money, may be furnished.’37 Amongst the items requested for export to Sierra Leone for this purpose were two hundred small lookingglasses, two hundred pounds of Common Beads, thirty hundredweight of tobacco and one thousand ‘Snuff Boxes with a painted Portrait of a Black Soldier under Arms’.38 Africans deemed unfit for enlistment were to be indentured to ‘prudent and humane masters and mistresses’ who had a reputation for treating their slaves with ‘humanity’, to ‘learn such trades, handicrafts, or employments as they may seem most fit for’. Women were to be employed as domestic servants and not in ‘the labours of Agriculture’ (a euphemism for field-work). Bound servants were to be provided with food, clothing, instructed in the Christian religion with a view to baptism and permitted to attend church. Collectors were instructed to submit an annual report detailing all indentureships and their progress. If they were unable to produce an apprentice for inspection, they were liable for a fine: the amount payable would be equivalent to ‘double the sum at which an apprentice would be valued if to be sold as a slave’.39 There was little interest in the kidnapped Africans who were being indentured in the Caribbean until the controversies over the Registration Bills. In 1821, Wilberforce called for a Royal Commission of Inquiry to investigate the ‘state’ and ‘condition’ of these ‘Captured Negroes’, as the first indentures were reaching expiry and it was understood that rescued Africans were being ‘seduced away from their employment’ in order to be sold as slaves.40 Given that the Abolition Act had not legislated for the period after the expiry of the indentures, the Commission’s findings would help to determine the direction of colonial policy. More generally, the question underpinning the inquiry was whether the rescued Africans supported the abolitionists’ argument that Africans could, and indeed would, become civilised, colonial subjects willingly engaging in their labour. The Commission lasted for over five years and accounted for over three thousand kidnapped Africans in eight sugar colonies.41 While it is important to note that the findings do not relate directly to enslaved peoples in the colonies, the resulting mass of documents provide a vivid example of the ways in which 86

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­ olitical-economic considerations about labour discipline intensified and narp rowed during the final phase of the anti-slavery campaigns. In particular, they illuminate the ways in which African identity came into question as a function of the need to know how to control a huge, racially identified, soon to be free, labour force. Significantly, the archive is not simply expressive of the white control fantasy but constitutes evidence of the attempted enactment of it. In this sense, these documents do not simply provide a commentary on what happened, they need to be seen as part of the historical process. In the end, the assembled information was largely untranslatable into policy, despite its social-scientific veneer and its copious peripheral qualifications. In many ways, however, it is precisely the incoherent nature of the Commission that is most revealing, insofar as it illuminates the discrepancies between abolitionism’s idealised representations and their distorted material outcomes. As the sheer mass of accumulated documents attest, the investigative process was neither orderly nor consistent. In fact their most expressive quality lies in the ways in which they give the lie to the idea that the exertion of colonial surveillance functioned to immobilise and fix subjects. Multiple, minutely detailed and endlessly qualified instances in which the rescued Africans actively refused to recognise the terms of their rescue disrupt the tables, statistics and columns designed to organise and affirm authoritative information. Hundreds of indentured Africans explained to the Commissioners how they fashioned their own lives either through necessity or through the desire for independence. They repeatedly spoke back, arguing that they were treated like slaves even though they were not enslaved. They demanded to know why they received no wages for their work – a demand that was invariably recorded as insolence, or insubordination. In this sense, the Commission, despite itself, documents the Africans’ own contributions to metropolitan debates about colonial subjecthood, servitude, and self-ownership. Their stories, or ‘enforced narratives’, forced comparisons between slavery and servitude, and the legal consequences of inhabiting one or other condition well before emancipation was even likely.42 It is impossible to offer an extensive analysis here, so the purpose of the following is to note how the desire for labour discipline actively produced highly contested understandings of colonial agency and aptitude. The documents provided evidence of the wide variety of bonded labouring contexts that existed within and alongside enslavement, and the imbrication of the imperial state in many of them, including Africans working as Crown slaves, military labourers or pioneers hired out for gang labour by colonial Collectors, and indentured servants. Kidnapped Africans had been indentured amongst all strata of the free population and were working in a wide variety of conditions both inside and outside of the plantations. Many had been put to fieldwork by planters accessing a new, and comparatively cheap, source of labour. For example, while on Nevis the Commissioners found that George Forbes, one of the wealthiest planters, had taken twenty-nine apprenticed Africans, the majority of whom he had employed in ‘cane-holing’. The imminent arrival of the Commissioners prompted him quickly to remove 87

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them from the field, with later assurances that he would now be employing them as tradesmen and domestics. Planters justified their actions by suggesting that being put to fieldwork functioned as a punishment for unruly behaviour. For example, Forbes’s indentured servant, John, was subjected to gang labour in the field because he had ‘quarreled and fought’ with staff in the house.43 Meanwhile, Wharton, employed as a cook in Antigua, whose ‘honesty and sobriety’ had been called into question, was ‘sent into the country for improvement’.44 Indentured Africans also worked on plantations as house servants, or in maintenance work. Others worked small provision grounds, growing food for themselves as well as for their employers. Most servants lived in urban or semiurban situations, working in menial service or domestic situations. The division of labour was explicitly gendered: all female apprentices were employed as house servants, cooks, washerwomen or seamstresses, while the men tended to work as porters, gardeners or cleaners. Some were bound to coopers, carpenters, builders, cobblers or tailors, and others were employed as boatmen, fishermen and mariners. The records show that when the indenture contract was with a tradesperson, often it did not include the training associated with an apprenticeship. Many Africans were engaged in a variety of occupations both within and outside their contracts, such that it was impossible to define their employment. Wealthy colonials employed large numbers of the apprentices in their households, or hired them out, which could be very lucrative.45 Merchants employed them to work on the docks and in transportation. Others were apprenticed to the free black, petty-trading population. For example, Myrtilla was indentured to George Dix, a merchant, but on his death was transferred to Joseph Harrington, a ‘free coloured shoemaker’.46 Joan, also first indentured to Dix, was transferred to Penelope Demming, ‘free coloured woman, laundress and baker’.47 Ascertaining the ‘Actual Condition’ of the Africans was inextricably linked to the Commissioners’ judgement of character and attitude, and they had very different interpretations of what they heard and saw. Overall, however, the reports reveal the disciplinary atmosphere of the Commission process, while also exposing the contingent, and coercive, social contexts within which indentured servants existed. The attribution of ‘idleness’ was given to forms of conduct and behaviour that denoted an active refusal to submit to bonded service. Sustained attention to the mobility of the servants, many of whom absented themselves in search of temporary work, signalled a deep unease about a population unattached to employers and seemingly immune to time discipline. Whether it was by necessity or through the desire for independence, picking up casual work was invariably understood as disloyalty and as a failure to accept rank. The Africans had a variety of perceptions of the Commission. Some thought they were to be freed, and even those who had broken the terms of their indenture voluntarily appeared before the Commissioners. Others knew that if they complained their allegations would, or at least should, be investigated. For example, Forbes’s Antigua-based servants knew they were not supposed to be working in 88

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the field, and used the inquiry to voice their complaints. Mingo stated that he did ‘not like such work’ and Goodluck took the opportunity to say that ‘he would not work in the field with the hoe among the gang anymore’.48 As a result, colonials resented the arrival of the Commission, blaming it for their servants’ bad behaviour. Elizabeth Graham believed that it had caused her servant, Charlotte’s, recent ‘impertinence’, which she thought had come from ‘bad advice’. The record states that Charlotte was a tolerable good character, till latterly, when she told her mistress, that if she chastised her, she would come and complain to the commissioners. She infers, from what she had heard in the chapel-yard, from three African apprentices who were there, that the gentlemen had come out to take them away, on their complaint against their owners …49

Thomas, domestic to J. P. Doan, a merchant, came back from St Thomas to see the Commissioners in Tortola. Doan said that Thomas had stated that he had returned ‘to be made free’, which Thomas later denied. Thomas told the examiners that many of his countrymen had run away to St Thomas again after their examination. The Commission records that Thomas had been imprisoned for vagrancy on his return, and was brought straight from jail to the Commission. He appeared to be a ‘violent and insubordinate character disposed to be insolent during his examination’.50 In many ways, the aims of the Commission were contradictory from the beginning. The officers were asked to report on the ‘state’ and ‘condition’ of the kidnapped Africans, and also on whether they could support themselves after their indenture had expired. The evidence that might have confirmed that possibility, for example if some Africans were indeed working for themselves, was also a violation of the contract of indenture. Signs of self-interested and acquisitive agency, so desired by abolitionists and the Colonial Office alike, were nearly always recorded as signifying disobedience, insubordination, unreliability, vagrancy or idleness; the enactment of willing labour ‘elsewhere’ and for personal gain was read as the rejection of dutiful servility, and ingratitude. The final assessment of Major Thomas Moody, one of the first two Commissioners, stands out starkly from those of the other officers. Despite, or perhaps because of, his extreme position, his views had a significant impact in the metropole. As well as riling the abolitionists, Moody kept up a continuous dialogue with the Colonial Office, vigorously contesting the other reports verbally, by private correspondence and in the papers.51 He refused to submit a joint report with his colleague, and relative by marriage, John Dougan. Dougan, a West Indian who had close connections to the Clapham Sect, was determined to view the indentured Africans through the lens of redemptive abolitionism that combined economic advance, moral uplift and imperial identification. He determinedly portrayed the Africans as malleable colonial subjects, reporting that ‘a desire to possess property of their own ha[d] been generally excited among them’. He expressed confidence that they would not rise up after they were released from 89

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their bonds because they would have a particular loyalty to the British greater even than manumitted slaves. He wrote optimistically that ‘knowing the great ransom that has been paid for them, they must feel a greater obligation than those who have purchased their own freedom’.52 The second two Commissioners, Gannon and Bowles, had also disagreed, to the point of violence between them.53 Gannon submitted his own report in which he took a more utilitarian approach to the issue of voluntary labour. He viewed the Africans as ‘persons who could acquire their livelihood … by their own industry and good conduct if no obstacles were to be placed in the way of their exertions’. Referencing his experience in Antigua, he criticised the institutional arrangements for housing unplaced or unbonded Africans. The ‘Hospital Establishments’ hindered the ‘moral progress’ of the Africans because they were hired out in ‘irregular gangs’, which prevented the development of ‘habits of regular or useful industry’.54 Gannon also observed that it was remarkable that ‘all those Africans whose apprenticeships had terminated, preferred the privileges of being allowed to seek their own subsistence, to remaining any longer in the service of their masters and mistresses’. He glossed the observation, however, by assuming that they would not do so for long if ‘freedom’ was accompanied with a ‘precarious mode of living’.55 The third set of Commissioners examined a small group of indentured servants in Demerara, the majority of whom were Barbadians who had been illegally imported into the colony. Like all the other Commissioners, Burdett and Kinchella acknowledged that the servants would not work voluntarily in agriculture, ‘the most laborious of all occupations’. In their view the creoles were much improved by their ‘constant intercourse with Europeans’. For the servants themselves, their terms of service or employment were far less important than their ‘strong desire’ to be returned to Barbados in order to be reunited with their families.56 Major Moody submitted two reports, each of which ran to hundreds of pages.57 He had a ‘philosophy of labour’ through which he saw himself as a ‘practical philanthropist’.58 Deploying his knowledge of engineering and colonial surveying, indebted historically to the vicious, and colonially applied, ‘political arithmetic’ of William Petty, Moody took the opportunity not only to attack the abolitionists’ naïveté over the future of the plantations but to offer his own remedies. Moody was well versed in abolitionist literature, noting that Stephen’s recommendation of a period of indenture in 1802 had been reworked for the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and for the Orders in Council.59 He believed that the scheme had been irredeemably flawed in dictating that rescued Africans, who were ‘in a backward state of knowledge’, be exempt from plantation labour.60 He argued from the basis of the ‘physical fact’ that only blacks were suited to hard agricultural labour in the ‘torrid zone’, and that the pressing issue was how ‘capitalists’ would be able to extract ‘steady’ and ‘continuous labour’ if not under conditions of enslavement.61 Moody endlessly reiterated the fundamental necessity of ‘some degree of coercion’ to ensure ‘steadiness’.62 He argued that many of the problems in Tortola (where he had been a Commissioner) stemmed from the 90

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fact that the island was too poor to afford a police force, or a treadmill. Moody’s solution to the problem of West Indian labour combined eighteenth-century climatological theory, Scottish Enlightenment theories of history and the scientific theories of modern physics. He was enamoured with Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, who, in his early career, had been a military engineer in Martinique, in charge of thousands of African slaves who were employed in building the island’s fortifications.63 Today, Coulomb is remembered for lending his name to a measure of electric charge. It is less noted that he also used his colonial experience to develop a scientific theory of human labour power, defining ‘work’ as ‘the product of thrust multiplied by the speed and length of the effort exerted’.64 Moody had studied a wide variety of projects that utilised coerced labour. He was fascinated by post-revolutionary Haiti’s labour codes set out by Toussaint and Christophe, and in President Boyer’s 1818 invitation to freed African Americans to emigrate to Haiti under certain stipulations.65 He thought Johannes van den Bosch’s Dutch agricultural colonies for the criminalised poor might provide a model for the West Indies, although he was troubled by Bosch’s inattention to religious instruction, as it ‘was necessary to have some strong moral power over [the labourer’s] mind’.66 Moody’s plans reflected the understanding of the valuation of people understood only in terms of their labour power, first developed as early modern political arithmetic, and that understanding could also be extracted, and abstracted, from the general thrust of contemporary political economy. If human value was calibrated in this way, then people were eminently portable, thus signalling the relations between contemporary emigration and indenture schemes, convict transportation and colonial production, as Clare Anderson argues in Chapter 6. Moody advised that the indentured Africans be extracted from the colonies and taken back to West Africa, suggesting that an island off the coast would be the most appropriate setting. He reasoned that an island, ‘and particularly a small one, renders it more difficult for any of the inhabitants clandestinely to withdraw themselves in the first stage of their cultivation’.67 The plan was a way to ensure that the rescued African would be ‘forced to experience the advantages resulting from the enjoyment of wealth to be created by his own labour’.68 Moody’s crude theorising was bizarrely constructed by layering random scholarly reference upon reference, as if this method would somehow secure his argument. Nevertheless, his yoking together of racial hatred, instrumental reasoning and the assumed authority of long years of military experience in the West Indies meant that his thinking did not fall on deaf ears. Bathurst was interested in Moody’s ideas but knew that they were incendiary. Bathurst’s under-secretary, Wilmot Horton, had sympathy with the racial basis of Moody’s plans, as is clear in their extensive private correspondence about the indentured Africans. Moody was not a member of the intellectual elite but he was able to move between factions of the establishment, due to his military standing and colonial experience. He was a member of London’s new Political Economy Club, arguing his cause with Mill, disagreeing with McCulloch and impressed by Jean-Baptiste Say’s ­commitment 91

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to facts.69 Moody insisted that one had to argue from local experience, and the problem with political economy was its focus on production rather than on the specificities of labour. As he complained to Horton, ‘All have followed Adam Smith’s assumption that the desire to better their condition has been the sole stimulus to labour’, arguing that the ‘principle of necessity’ acts universally on all men but the ‘desire of bettering one’s own condition’ requires much more careful consideration that required an attention to ‘local, physical, and moral nature’.70 Moody’s ideas about the necessity of coercion if labour was to be ‘steady’, ‘regular’ and ordered were not, of course, novel, although his method of reaching them was bizarre. The problem of producing the self-discipline required by a free wage-labour economy was a key issue for early nineteenth-century reformist governance both at home as well as in the colonies.71 The ability of theoretical political economy to accomplish its scientific ends always required an attention to the specificities of cultural reproduction, despite its claims to universalism. That the failure to conform to the requirements of free labour should elicit new ‘scientific’ narratives of racial as well as cultural inadequacy is well established but most often attributed to the post-emancipation period in the Caribbean, and to Ireland. Horton, who was deeply interested in political economy, listened carefully to Moody. In 1824, he sent one of Moody’s papers to Canning, writing, it is not to be forgotten that the nature of the African is to be indolent inasmuch as his wants are few and those almost spontaneously satisfied in the climate under which he lives – No adage can be more trite in political economy than that which points out the connection of Exertion with Climate & which would enable a person ‘a priori’ to pronounce in the probable industry of a nation from the mere knowledge of that physical circumstance. This condition would necessarily be modified by density of population, circumstances of civilization but still the principle is true and valuable.72

Moody’s plan to expropriate the Africans once again, and to return them to a remote island off the west coast of Africa, was not enacted. In October 1828, colonial governors were directed to issue certificates of freedom to all Africans no longer, or not, indentured. These certificates still contained the stick of coercion and the threat of criminal prosecution if labour expectations were not met. For a further seven years the right to remain in place was secure as long as the bearer’s ‘Conduct merits this Indulgence’. If found to have engaged in criminal activity, or simply become dependent on poor relief, ‘free’ Africans were liable to be transported, and to be ‘constrained to labour for [their] Subsistence’.73 The Commission records are not an archive that commemorates the enslaved, but it is one that documents something of the experience of unenslaved ‘captives’ forced to inhabit a slave society. Ironically, their significance might lie precisely in the fact that they have been almost entirely ignored. Royal Commissions traditionally take privileged positions in shaping received historical chronologies, in crystallising the significance of certain events or conjunctures and in monumentalising the imperial past, but this one has no place in the scholarship to date. It is not simply the constraints of narrative form that ensure that historical 92

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outcomes, and only certain outcomes, are deemed to be more important than an ­examination of the historical processes through which they are produced. Assimilating the kidnapped Africans stranded in the Caribbean in the late 1820s, neither enslaved nor free, into the powerful story that insists that all history is written as a prelude to freedom might ensure that they become, at least, footnotes or, at best, intermediaries. Yet, they also disrupt that story by drawing attention to a deeper set of historical continuities and convergences in a wider imperial reallocation of colonial labour within which Caribbean emancipation was implicated but which it did not completely define. As David Lloyd argues in another context, ‘for the materialist cultural historian, the actual outcome of multiple social vectors is less important than the swirling eddies of possibility out of which that outcome emerged’.74 The 1821 Commission registers a significant moment in slavery’s undoing, illuminating the continuing and uneven imbrication of the extraordinarily powerful discourses of moral sentiment and political economy in the effort to configure alternatives to colonial enslavement. The fact that the abolitionists kept the ideal of ‘free labour’ in view needs to be acknowledged at the same time as subjecting the concept to critical historical analyses that highlight its ideological interests and political investments. The Commission records discussed here offer an insight into the construction of a modern racialised division of labour, of which slavery was a momentous part, that shaped, and continues to shape, the on-going violence associated with imperial power today. Despite all the evidence elicited by this Commission, the 1807 Act to Abolish the Slave Trade resurrected an ancient form of bonded labour contract (that had preceded Caribbean enslavement) that came to pass for the ‘emancipation’ of all the enslaved in 1833 and which would be extended to capture other colonial constituencies thereafter. Tens of thousands of ‘Liberated Africans’ continued to be shipped across the Atlantic as indentured servants to replenish the plantations until the 1860s. Both of these episodes allude to the ruptures and continuities that render this history incomplete. Finally, however important it is to acknowledge the centrality of political economy to the shaping of the 1833 emancipation – Richard Madden insisted, by this time, that its terms could be understood as a form of ‘common sense’ – the intensity of interest in labour management, ­discipline and efficiency formulas is a reminder of the extent to which the categories that emerged from the economic imperative could develop only due to an enormous blind spot in metropolitan thought. That the ideas, desires and motives of Africans and their descendants were themselves elements in the historical process was unconscionable for both slave-holders and their critics. It is precisely because these elements were repressed that those with power were able to invent extraordinarily durable ideas about the sovereign power of the market, the waged character of free labour and about how one calibrates racial or cultural inadequacy, all of which have taken on an even harder veneer in the contemporary neoliberal order. The issue of such silence, of what is not there, has functioned as a powerful postcolonial anchor around which to engage the problems of excavating an archive shaped by the developers of political economy. But perhaps we should be 93

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wary of giving it too much space, given the bureaucratic assiduousness of Britain’s imperial machine. To reiterate a point made earlier, the Commission records addressed here do not commemorate slavery, and they came into being only through imperial efforts to find a script for the end of slavery. They bear witness, however, to the fact that forcibly transported Africans arriving in the Caribbean prior to 1833, under the auspices of the British Navy rather than of the slave traders, represented their own lives and figured freedom in ways that pointed beyond, beside and outside the confines of those incarcerating narratives. Notes  1 Richard Robert Madden, A Twelvemonth Residence in the West Indies during the Transition from Slavery to Apprenticeship, Vol. II (Philadelphia, 1835), pp. 23–4.  2 Mathew Gregory Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor kept during a residence in the island of Jamaica (London, 1834).  3 For the role of political economy in formulating the terms of the Emancipation Act see Thomas C. Holt, The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labour and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832–1838 (Baltimore and London, 1992), pp. 33–53.  4 Michael Guenther, ‘A peculiar silence: The Scottish Enlightenment, political economy, and the early American debates over slavery’, Atlantic Studies, 8:4 (2011), 447–83; Robbie Shilliam, ‘Forget English freedom, remember Atlantic slavery: common law, commercial law and the significance of slavery for political economy’, New Political Economy, 17:5 (2012), 591–609.  5 Walter Johnson, ‘The pedestal and the veil: rethinking the capitalism/slavery question’, Journal of the Early Republic, 24 (Summer 2004), 299–308, p. 300.  6 Seymour Drescher, The Mighty Experiment: Free Labour versus Slavery in British Emancipation (Oxford, 2002).  7 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (London, 1991), p. 72.  8 David Kazanjian discusses Smith’s strident critique of the sentimentally unstable ‘nonnational’ merchant in the Wealth of Nations in The Colonising Trick: National Culture and Imperial Citizenship in Early America (Minneapolis, 2003), pp. 76–7.  9 Smith, Wealth of Nations, p. 548. 10 Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006), pp. 209–58. 11 James Ramsey, An Inquiry into the Effects of Putting a Stop to the African Slave Trade (London, 1784), p. 6. Cited in David Beck Ryden, West Indian Slavery and British Abolition, 1783–1807 (Cambridge, 2009), p. 168. 12 Ryden, West Indian Slavery, p. 168. 13 Thomas Clarkson, An Essay on the Impolicy of the African Slave Trade (London, 1788). 14 Shilliam, ‘Forget English freedom’, 601. 15 See Adam Smith’s discussion of the relations between slave labour, ‘good management’ and political order in The Wealth of Nations, pp. 523–4. 16 Drescher, Mighty Experiment, p. 46. 17 Walter Johnson, ‘Commentary’, in Winthrop D. Jordan (ed.), Slavery and the American South (Jackson, 2003), p. 54. 18 Drescher, Mighty Experiment, p. 109. 19 James Stephen, The Crisis of the Sugar Colonies (London, 1802), p. 191.

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20 Ibid., p. 185. 21 Ibid., pp. 192–3. 22 Ibid., p. 188. 23 Ibid., p. 56. 24 Ibid., pp. 196–7. 25 Johnson U. J. Asiegbu, Slavery and the Politics of Liberation, 1787–1861: A Study of Liberated African Emigration and British Anti-Slavery Policy, (London, 1969), pp. 1–33; Howard Johnson, ‘The liberated Africans in the Bahamas’, Immigrants and Minorities, 7:1 (1988), 16–40; Alvin O. Thompson, ‘African “recaptives” under apprenticeship in the British West Indies, 1807–1828, Immigrants and Minorities, 9:2 (1990), 123–44; Rosanne Adderley, ‘New Negroes from Africa’: Slave Trade Abolition and Free African Settlement in the Nineteenth Century Caribbean (Indianapolis, 2006). 26 Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830–1867 (London, 2002), pp. 107–14. 27 Michael J. Turner, ‘The limits of abolition: government, saints and the “African question”, c. 1780–1820’, The English Historical Review, 112:446 (1997), 319–57; Tara Helfman, ‘The Court of Vice Admiralty at Sierra Leone and the abolition of the West African slave trade’ The Yale Law Journal, 115 (2006), 1122–56. 28 For the former see James Stephen to Earl of Liverpool, 11 July, 1811. The National Archives [hereafter TNA], CO 23/85. For the latter see Anon., An Exposure of Some  of  the Numerous Misstatements and Misrepresentations contained in a pamphlet commonly known by the name of Mr. Marryatt’s Pamphlet …, (London, 1816), pp. 8–10. 29 Buckley estimates that some 13,400 Africans, or 7% of all Africans arriving in the West Indies, were purchased by the British armed forces between 1795 and 1808, with the rate of purchase intensifying in 1806 as abolition became inevitable. Roger Norman Buckley, Slaves in Red Coats: The British West India Regiments, 1795–1815 (New Haven and London, 1979), 130–9. 30 Thomas Clarkson, Thoughts on the Necessity of Improving the Condition of the Slaves in the British Colonies, with a View to their Ultimate Emancipation; and on the Practicality, Safety and the Advantages of the Latter Measure (London, 1823), p. 17. 31 Cassandra Pybus, ‘ “A less favourable specimen”: the abolitionist response to selfemancipated slaves in Sierra Leone, 1793–1808’, Parliamentary History (2007), 100–14. 32 Zachary Macaulay, A Letter to His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester, President of the African Institution, occasioned by a Pamphlet Lately Published by Dr. Thorpe, Late Judge of Sierra Leone, entitled ‘A Letter to William Wilberforce, Esq.’ (London, 1815), p. 69. 33 James Stephen to Earl of Liverpool, 11 July 1811. TNA, CO 23/85; Wilberforce to Thompson, 19 October 1808, cited in Pybus, ‘Less favourable specimen’, 110. 34 47 Geo III Sess.2, c. 44. 35 ‘Abstract of the Acts of Parliament for Abolishing the Slave Trade, and of the Orders in Council Founded on Them’ (London, African Institution, 1810), p. 35. 36 ‘Abstract’, p. 34. 37 H. Torrens to W. Merry, 1 November 1811 in Parliamentary Papers [hereafter PP] 1813–14 (356) XII, Further papers relating to captured negroes enlisted, and to the recruiting of negro soldiers in Africa, for the West India regiments, p. 9. 38 PP 1813–14 (356) XII, p. 6.

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39 ‘Abstract’, p. 40. 40 ‘A Review of the Colonial Slave Registration Acts, in a Report of a Committee of the Board of Directors of the African Institution made on 22nd February, 1820’ (London, 1820), p. 63. James Stephen, ‘Reasons for Establishing a Registry of Slaves in the British Colonies’ (1815), p. 62. 41 TNA, CO 320/5. The first Commissioners were John Dougan and Major Thomas Moody, who travelled to Barbados and Tortola. In 1824, Commissioners Bowles and  Gannon  were appointed to go to Nevis, St Kitts and Antigua, and Wyndham, Burdett and Kinchela were appointed to Demerara and to investigate the Winkel Establishment of Crown Slaves at Berbice. See Alvin O. Thompson, Profitable Servants: Crown Slaves in Berbice, Guyana 1803–1831 (Barbados, 2002), pp. 113–14. For the primary documents for the entire Commission see TNA, CO 318/82–3; CO318/85–93. 42 Carolyn Steedman, Dust (Manchester, 2001), p. 54. Steedman uses the phrase in a discussion of the ways in which magistrates demanded Poor Law claimants to tell their stories. 43 T. H. Bowles and J. P. Gannon, ‘Report concerning African Apprentices residing in the Island of Nevis, February 13 1824’, PP 1826–27 (463) XXII, p. 36. 44 ‘Mr. Gannon’s Report on the State and Condition of the Apprenticed Africans at Antigua’, PP 1826–27 (355) XXII, p. 17. 45 TNA CO 318/82. 46 PP 1825 (114) XXV, No. 1, ‘Schedules’, pp. 168–9. 47 Ibid., p. 164. 48 PP 1826–27 (355) XXII, No. 1, ‘Schedules’, p. 33. 49 PP 1825 (114) XXV, No. 1, ‘Schedules’, p. 298. 50 Ibid., p. 140. 51 See The Antislavery Monthly Reporter, No. 15, pp. 216–19, No. 18, pp. 262–4, No. 19, pp. 271–7, No. 24, pp. 386–7, in The Anti-Slavery Reporter (London, 1827); Morning Chronicle, 7, 15 and 20 September 1826. 52 PP 1825 (114) XXV, No. 2, ‘John Dougan’s Separate Report’, p. 20. 53 John Wesley, ‘The Neglected Period of Emancipation in Great Britain’ 1807–1823’, The Journal of Negro History 17:2 (1932), 156–79, p. 175. 54 ‘Second Separate report of Mr. Gannon’, PP 1826–27 (463) XXII, p. 59. 55 ‘Mr. Gannon’s Report’ (Antigua), PP 1826–27 (355) XXII, p. 39. 56 PP 1826–27 (464), XXII, ‘Report of Sir C. W. Burdett and Mr. Kinchella on the Captured Negroes at Demerara’, p. 4 57 PP 1825 (114) XXV, No. 3, ‘Major Thomas Moody’s Separate Report’ and Reports by Commissioners of Inquiry into State of Africans apprenticed in West Indies: Part II. of Major Moody’s Report on Captured Negroes, 1826 (81) XXVII. 58 PP 1826 (81) XXVII, p. 19. 59 Moody to Horton, 23 July 1822, Derbyshire County Records [hereafter DCR], D3155/ WH2835. 60 PP 1826 (81) XXVII, p. 14. 61 Ibid., p. 66. 62 Ibid., p. 46. 63 For Moody on Montesquieu see PP 1826 (81) XXVII, p. 13; for Robertson see pp. 60, 75; for Coulomb see PP 1825 (114) XXV, No. 3, pp. 120–1.

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64 For Coulomb’s experiments in the mechanics of human labour see Antoine Picon, ‘The engineer as judge: engineering analysis and political economy in eighteenth century France’, Engineering Studies, 1:1 (2009), 19–34. 65 PP 1826 (81) XXVII, pp. 28–56. 66 Ibid., p. 86. For further analysis of how van den Bosch developed penal settlements in order to cultivate appropriate free wage labour attitudes, and then exported them to the colonies, see Albert Schrawers, ‘The “benevolent” colonies of Johannes van den Bosch: continuities in the administration of poverty in the Netherlands and Indonesia’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 43:2 (2001), 298–328. 67 PP 1826 (81) XXVII, p. 84. 68 Ibid., p. 85. 69 Moody to Horton, 22 May 1825; Moody to Horton, 18 August 1825, Moody to Horton, undated. DCR, D3155/WH 2835. 70 Moody to Horton, 18 August 1825. DCR, D3155/WH 2835. 71 For a discussion of the relationship between slavery and the discourse of labour management in early industrial England, see David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (Ithaca, NY, 1975), pp. 455–68. 72 Horton to Canning, 26 January 1824. DCR, D3155/WH2940. 73 Thompson, Profitable Servants, p. 150. 74 David Lloyd, ‘The political economy of the potato’, Nineteenth Century Contexts, 29:2 and 3 (2007), 314.

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5

Re-examining the labour matrix in the British Caribbean 1750 to 1850 Heather Cateau

The two major labour systems which dominated the British Caribbean between the middle of the eighteenth century and the middle of the nineteenth century were the systems of West African enslavement and Indian indentureship. These were the most dominant modes of securing labour, but playing a secondary role during this period were also systems which involved the use of paid labour to varying degrees. This period was also characterised by the use of the hiring system, metayage (sharecropping) and the apprenticeship system. The latter was in operation in most territories from 1834 to 1838, the other systems persisted both before 1750 and after 1850. It has, however, become customary for emphasis to be placed on comparing the two major systems of enslavement and indentureship, which have also received most attention in terms of research. My contention is that this comparison, though valuable to some extent, misplaces where historical and analytical emphasis should rest in terms of comparative analysis. I posit that there is greater value to be had, in exploring the transition from enslavement to indentureship, by placing more emphasis on other labour systems which operated in the British Caribbean during the same time period. Indentureship is often presented as simply the system which replaced enslavement; however, it was really a system which evolved over time and the one which proved to be the most successful, in the planters’ eyes, of all the alternatives sought. I further contend that the indentureship system is really more comparable to the hiring system. Examination of the hiring system will show that this is the mode of labour which introduced and developed the use of the long-term labour contract even though the enslavement system was still firmly entrenched at the time. Thus, to compare indentureship to enslavement is really to ignore the increasing use of paid labour that had begun long before the introduction of indentureship, and in this sense such comparison can obscure our understanding of the labour matrix which characterised the British Caribbean between 1750 and 1850.

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Enslavement and Indian indentureship compared: a traditional approach The 1871 Commission on the treatment of immigrants in British Guiana defined the difference between enslavement and indentureship as follows: The status of an indentured labourer … differs from slavery principally … in that … his proper civil rights … if any, are the exceptions while in the case of an indentured labourer the exceptions are those of which he is deprived … Moreover, practically, the obligations of the slave are enforced by violence and of his rights, such as they are,  the law is an inadequate protector; while the obligations of the indentured labourer, like those of the free labourer, are only to be enforced by law, and his rights he is invited and encouraged to defend.1

While it must be admitted that the Commission had a vested interest in presenting the systems in a certain light, it must be acknowledged that the comparison was essentially accurate and really spoke to what was at the core of what was officially the difference between the two systems. On the other hand, Hugh Tinker described indentureship as a new form of slavery.2 I would argue that this description was also accurate, if taken in a context which placed more emphasis on certain aspects of the operational context of the two systems. Both were systems of labour organisation designed to meet the needs of the plantation system. They both involved the immigration from one side of the world to the other, under sub-human conditions, of thousands of workers who were racially and ethnically different. There were also important similarities in the ways that the systems were structured, as well as how they functioned. Enslavement and indentureship can both be described as total economic systems. The systems tied labour to the plantation and restricted the free movement of labourers. In both cases the workers also lived and worked on the plantation and were dependent on this institution for social amenities like housing, medical care and food. However, enslavement was clearly a qualitatively different system, and though both were coercive labour systems, enslavement was clearly the more extreme along the continuum. Basic comparisons of the two systems make this clear. The labour environment was not the same when the two systems were introduced. Enslavement was introduced in a situation of scarce labour in the region. Indentureship was introduced after a large labour force had been imported into the region over hundreds of years. The context of the nineteenth century was also very different from that of the seventeenth and this is reflected in the nature of the two systems. Enslavement was conceived of as permanent, but indentureship was for a specific contractual period. Indentured servants were also entitled to payment, land and property. Enslaved persons were regarded as chattel. In the changed context of the nineteenth century there was also a greater attempt to oversee the system. These qualitative differences are important and are at the heart of the differences between the two systems. However, the situation is further complicated by three factors which made the operational context even more complex. First, in both systems there was much disparity between theoretical or official structures and what existed in practice, 99

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or in the way the systems unofficially functioned. Second, both systems changed over time, thus the period of comparison used for either of the systems will influence the results of a comparative analysis. Third, though there are broad and basic similarities, both systems varied somewhat in intensity and application from island to island. While this brief comparison may not have solved the conundrum, the intention is to add greater insight into the challenges of such comparisons. This brings me to my second change in the mode of analysis, which involves placing less emphasis on the formal systems, which looked very different on paper from what was practised, and concentrating more on how they actually operated. Enslavement did not operate as the slave laws would have us believe. If we do as Hilary Beckles suggests and attempt to get ‘Inside Slavery’3 we see much modification according to the time period, the country and what was being produced. There was really no one exact model of enslavement which every country complied with. I want to suggest that it was much the same with indentureship. One of the modifications of the enslavement system, hiring, is of central importance to this discussion. The hiring system The use of a payment system not just alongside, but also intimately intertwined with, enslaved labour emerged as part and parcel of the enslavement system as it evolved in the British Caribbean. I have argued elsewhere that if enslavement was the ‘negro business’, hiring (also called jobbing) was indeed the ‘new negro business’.4 Hiring involved the payment of enslaved labourers for work performed. It could take the form of either of two distinctive arrangements. ‘Hiring-out’ involved owners hiring out one or a group of enslaved workers and receiving payment for the work done by those workers. ‘Self-hire’, the other form, involved enslaved persons who hired themselves out for jobs and who themselves received the payment. In such cases they were expected to give a proportion of such earnings to their owners. The practices of the hiring of enslaved persons and of masters owning enslaved persons and ‘jobbing them out’ became commonplace in the British Caribbean and were frequently used on plantations.5 As William Beckford put it, ‘Almost every man in Jamaica, let his means be ever so many, his strength of negroes ever so great, or his situation ever so dependent, is still anxious to call in the aid of hired labour …’6 It was seen as a means of adding extra numbers, strength or skill to the labour force when needed.7 It also was increasingly used because purchasing became more difficult as enslaved labour became increasingly expensive and credit sources were reduced.8 Hiring was even used by failing plantations, which used it as a means of maintaining their labour force and even deriving an income from their labour force even though their plantations had failed.9 One plantation attorney related the story of a Mr Inniss who, because of illness, could not go on cultivating his land and was, as a result ‘obliged … to hire out his negroes in day labour on the neighbouring estate, from which he drew a sufficiency to support himself’.10 100

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These hiring agreements were actually contractual arrangements and workers or their owners were paid on fulfilment of these contracts. Contracts could be based on work by the day or ‘per diem’, a task to be performed or longer-term arrangements which were sometimes referred to as leases and extended for a month, a year or even longer periods. Indeed leases could extend for as much as five years. Simon Taylor, the manager for Golden Grove plantation, was willing to lease a gang of ‘23 negroes 17 of them … prime people and workers … for five years’.11 Indeed, on some plantations planters and/or attorneys lost track of which enslaved workers were theirs and which were hired or leased. In 1792 Cargan Dumfries on the Dundee plantation ‘could not recollect who Betsy [was] hired to’.12 It also seems that periods for hiring large groups of enslaved persons increased as the nineteenth century ensued. On the Tharp plantation in Jamaica between 1814 and 1819 extremely long periods were listed in accounts which recorded hiring payments. In 1814 there were 78 days; in 1815, 698 days; in 1817, 1535½ days; and in 1818, it was 1607¼ days which later increased to 2735¼ days. The longest period listed was for 2773½ days in 1819.13 Thus, some of these contacts were longer than the five-year period that would become the norm during the indentureship period. Planters were in fact expending very large sums for hired labour. By the early nineteenth century figures were recorded which ranged from £500 to £1,000 annually.14 Interestingly, the planters also paid for maintenance, and this included food, clothing and medical care.15 One estimate puts the cost of maintenance at £3 10d for one year.16 Thus the parallels to indentureship are striking. One must note the long-term contract, the responsibility for payment, the expense of the system and the fact that maintenance costs were borne by the planter. There were also attempts to regulate the system as it became more widespread. Concerns were expressed that it was extremely difficult to identify enslaved persons who were engaged in illegitimate activities and those who had been allowed to engage in self-hire or were hired out by their owners. In the late nineteenth century some colonial legislatures attempted to control hiring. However, it is informative that rather than really prohibiting hiring such laws concentrated on identifying enslaved persons who were legitimately hired under such contracts. Apart from the introduction of fines for infringements, they called for badges, tickets, licences or some form of registration to be introduced. This is also reminiscent of the indentureship system which would be introduced later in the century.17 Clearly, hiring was not merely an aberration, but instead must be conceptualised as an important part of the labour system in the British Caribbean. Indeed, by the early nineteenth century it was as important as the enslavement system itself. The institutionalisation of the use of contracted labour, which was paid for and not owned, was evolving right within the bowels of the African enslavement system. This development was pervasive and took place throughout the region. It is to this system that we must look for the roots of the indentureship system which was to follow. When this system took form in 1845 it was not a just a reaction to the end of 101

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enslavement as commonly purposed. It was also the continuation of an alternative means of accessing and extracting labour which had begun in the region. In a real sense the labour market had already begun to advance beyond enslavement. Hiring is a very important part of the transition from enslaved labour to free labour in the British Caribbean. Howard Johnson’s statement about the Bahamas can be applied to the entire region. He stressed that: Slave hire … indicates that the slave labour system was in a state of transition … the direct exploitation of slavery had been replaced with forms of labour extraction in which slave-owners were appropriating labour by rent or money payments … the slave owner commuted the service of his slaves into cash payments.18

J. H. Bennett also noted that the hiring system ‘anticipated the disadvantages of a free labour regime: expenditures without increase of capital, insecurity of labour supply and limited managerial security’.19 On close examination, other features which we associate more with free labour than with enslavement can be identified as emerging as the hiring system took root. These include payment for work on Sunday. Plantation accounts show cases where hired workers were paid special, higher wages for work done on Sundays.20 There were also what appear to be early variations of what was to become the metayage21 system, but using hired labourers. It is also noteworthy that such examples were not limited to agricultural workers. The following case from an attorney in Barbados as early as 1714, which refers to the sharing of produce with an enslaved worker who in turn brought not only his skill but additional labourers to the unit in which he worked, is illustrative. The attorney outlined the arrangement made: ‘In hopes to improve it I let it out in 1714 for ½ the Produce to a person who had been employed in a Pothouse who brought on a certain number of Negroes …’22 Another planter in Jamaica voiced his objection to ‘ having canes planted by Jobbers upon shares …’23 These examples suggest that some form of sharecropping was in use. I have been unable to find any evidence of written contracts even for those on long-term lease. Reading accounts in plantation records also makes it clear that in many cases arrangements were verbal and the owners of enslaved persons sometimes lost track of arrangements that had been made. However, this does not mean that there were not written agreements, especially in cases of long-term contracts. Some of the arrangements for long-term leases are so detailed that one can only surmise that they must have been written and signed by both parties. In fact, by 1817 the law attempted to formalise contractual arrangements. An ordinance was passed which extended the term for which contracts of service could be made. The second clause made simulating or altering any written contract a misdemeanour punishable by fine.24 Indeed this ordinance is also reminiscent of the labour ordinances which would be passed after 1838 and the ordinances which regulated Indian immigration. The evidence collected so far suggests that the hiring system continued even during the apprenticeship system. Thus it spanned the enslavement period and the onset of the free labour period. Many enslaved persons must have got their 102

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ideas about how paid labour would work – for example, estimates of what the size a task should be and the amount they should be paid – from experiences with the self-hire and hiring-out systems. These would have also been early sources of their experience with bargaining for wages. With the onset of apprenticeship, when enslaved persons worked for previous owners for three-quarters of the week and were free to sell their labour for the other quarter, hiring must have been reduced. The systems of apprenticeship and hiring did not complement each other as much as had the systems of enslavement and hiring. Thus William Riviere noted, with respect to digging cane holes, that during apprenticeship ‘jobbing gangs who had commonly done this during slavery were left largely unemployed’.25 He quotes the stipendiary magistrate’s remark ‘[t]hat the jobbers are thrown out of work; in one instance as much as seventy-five percent’.26 Thus the system was beginning to ebb, but this was only because of the new tide which involved new ways of extending the labour systems to include more visible and socially acceptable forms of free labour. With free labour gaining the ascendency in the Caribbean, hiring-out and self-hire were no longer needed to give the system the flexibility it needed to survive. Hiring was now extended to the whole working population, even if on a part-time basis. The newly freed population, however, negotiated this ‘new’ period with tools and experience they had from the hiring systems used during the enslavement period. The final death toll would come with emancipation in 1838. A changed operational context: free labour after 1838 Many planters complained about the loss of labourers from the plantations after emancipation. However, Douglas Hall has reconsidered this view and has reassessed the true causes, as well as the extent of, what has been termed the ‘flight from the estates’. Hall shows that several factors contributed to a changed operational context, but the estates were not abandoned from a sudden loss of labourers seeking to get as far away from the plantations as possible.27 Their bargaining power was boosted even further in some territories because of the inadequate size of the labouring population or the amount of land that was available for independent cultivation. These factors combined so that the enslaved population had more bargaining power in territories with a low population density like Trinidad and Guiana, and less power to negotiate in areas with a high population density like Barbados and Antigua. The planters, on the other hand, were constrained by the norms and values of the old system of enslavement, which made industrial bargaining even in such a context an alien concept. They were further hampered by the inability to force the newly freed population to work, by the need to be competitive so as to ensure a supply of workers from the available pool and by the  lack of money which would enable payment of wages and give them more power to negotiate.28 An added factor was that, with the experience of self-hire and the hiring-out systems, the formerly enslaved population was well prepared for the post-1838 labour context. 103

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In some islands like Tobago and St Lucia metayage or sharecropping provided a temporary solution. This allowed the enslaved population the independence and flexibility they desired and solved the problem of immediate payment of wages. However, in territories like Trinidad, Guiana and Jamaica the workers, perhaps for the first time, had the upper hand. Wages in these territories were consistently high between 1838 and 1842. James Millette estimates that wages rose in Trinidad by 58%, from 15d to 2s 2d. In fact William Burnley reported to the Select Committee on the West Indian Colonies in 1842 that: In November last a meeting of the agricultural committee took place, and they determined to reduce wages to 1s 3d a task; but the labourers having more power than the employers, would not accede to those terms, a struggle ensued, and I find by my last accounts, that on 4th February, a task was precisely the same as before 2s 2d, through the island, and in the district of Tacarigua 2s 6d.29

Workers also avoided long-term, written contracts and would only commit to loose, flexible arrangements like task work or day work.30 Many planters had to resort to inducements such as food allowances, rent-free houses, access to ­provision grounds and even medical care.31 A Trinidadian planter complained that ‘if I were to make myself a marked man by taking active steps to eject them, I  should inevitably be ruined. They do not depend upon me for employment; they can find it any day they please, on any other estate in the Island: but I am entirely dependent upon them for labor, and cannot risk rendering myself unpopular.’32 Thus up to the 1840s the newly freed population seems to have dominated the changed operational context created by emancipation. However, it soon became apparent that this was more than both the colonial and the metropolitan governments had anticipated or were willing to tolerate.33 In fact Lord Harris, the governor of Trinidad in the 1840s, captured the sentiment of the authorities when he stated that ‘the proprietors of European race should be enabled to maintain their present place in the society of the colony, which can only be done by giving them greater command of labour’.34 Thus, by the 1840s the planters, the colonial government and the metropolitan government were of one mind. This new context is reflected in the series of legal measures that were successfully introduced between 1838 and the 1840s.35 The changed mind-set is also mirrored in the concessions made by the planters with respect to Indian indentureship. In fact, the 1842 Select Committee of the House of Commons which examined the post-emancipation context in the British West Indies connected the issues of the economic condition of the formerly enslaved population and the need for immigrant workers.36 As a result, by 1845 the planters were able to establish a five-year contract with regulations which ensured the quality of control that they desired. Nowhere is this changed operational context more clearly reflected than in a review of the changes in the cost of labour from the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century (Tables 5.1 and 5.2).

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Table 5.1  Hiring rates, 1750 to 1810 Country

Daily rates

Yearly rates

Grenada Dominica Jamaica St Vincent Antigua Monserrat St Kitts/Nevis Barbados

3s 2s–3s 1s 10d 3s 1s 1d 1s 6d–2s n/a 10d–1s 1d

£10–£15 £12–£15 £12–£15 £12–£16 £10–£16 n/a £12–£14 n/a

Long-term rates (%)* 10–12 8–10 10–12

Task per acre £8–£9 £6.10s–£10 £6–£7 £7 £6–£8 £5 £4.10s £3–£3.10s

Note: *Long-term rates are the percentage values paid per annum on the appraised value of the particular slaves. Sources: Sheila Lambert (ed.), House of Commons Sessional Papers of the Eighteenth Century, Vol. 69 (Delaware, 1975), pp. 210, 290, 322, 357, 368, 406–7, 427; see also William Dickson, Mitigation of Slavery (London, 1814), Part II, p. 262. Table 5.2  Hiring rates, 1836 Country

Field labour

Bahamas St Vincent St Lucia Dominica Jamaica Grenada Tobago Trinidad Guiana

1s 6d per day £1 1s 1d per month 2s per day 1s per day 2s 6d–3s 4d per day £1 5s per month 1s 4d per day 2s 1d–4s 2d per task 3s–4s 6d per task

Sources: Robert Montgomery Martin, Statistics of the Colonies of the British Empire (London, 1839); see also W. E. Riviere, Labour Relations during the Apprenticeship System in the British West Indies 1834–1838. A Comparative Analysis (Mona, 1969), p. 7.

An examination of Tables 5.1 and 5.2 reflects the relatively high cost of hired labour in the British Caribbean before the 1840s. Direct comparison is complicated by several factors. Figures collected ranged from day rates, to task rates, to monthly rates. They are also sometimes in local currency and sometimes in sterling, and at other times no specific weighting is given. Further, it is often not clear in the documents what kind of work, be it day work or task work, was being done, and the rate of pay could vary according to the kind of work or task. However, the averages quoted are usually for field-work unless stated as otherwise. Further, the task-work rate can be compared to the day-work rate because it was based on how much an able-bodied man could do in a day. If anything, it was about one and a half to two hours less than a regular day, which was usually averaged at nine hours of work. On this basis we can make general comparisons from the highlighted 105

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column in Table 5.1 and Table 5.2. Comparisons of the tables also show that the cost of such labour was increasing. The only exception is Dominica, where in any case the plantation system was already on the decline. This is in keeping with data from studies of hiring at earlier periods which show that between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries hiring rates increased significantly.37 Lack of data for a range of territories makes it more difficult to following the trends into the 1838 to 1845 period. However, this can be done using qualitative information from Trinidad which suggests what the pattern may look like. It must be kept in mind, however, that wages in Trinidad were higher than in the other territories, with the exception of Guiana. Millette notes that in Trinidad wages were high for the seven years between 1838 and 1845.38 This is also supported by the figures quoted in documents and by assessments of the standard of living of the newly freed population.39 Thus both quantitative and qualitative information support the contention that free labour or paid labour was on the ascendancy in the British Caribbean from the middle of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century. Moreover, as it took root and expanded in usage through the region it became increasingly expensive. The contexts from which the system evolved contributed to the high costs associated with the system. This is the challenge that planters faced in the nineteenth century. The number of labourers and control of the labourers were two dimensions of the problem, but at the heart of the problem was also the cost of labour. Indian indentureship By 1845 the system of Indian indentureship was established in the region. The system was regulated by a series of ordinances which set out and periodically revised the terms and conditions to which all parties involved had to adhere. Under this system Indian immigrants were contracted to work on plantations for a period of five years. The standard wage rate was 25 cents a day. The working week was from Monday to Saturday and the working day was established as nine hours. Employers were also to provide accommodation, medical care and food (at least for a period of time, the cost of this was usually deducted from wages). After ten years in the colonies labourers were entitled to their return passage to India.40 It is interesting to note that under the terms outlined ‘No immigrant who … worked 45 hours can be compelled to work again during the week except in crop time …’41 This is very reminiscent of the apprenticeship system, when apprentices were mandated to work 45½ hours per week on plantations. Such ordinances also put in place a series of sanctions to regulate the system. Absence from work was punished by fines and/or periods of imprisonment. Fines could range from 10 dollars to 24 dollars and periods of imprisonment from one week to three months.42 Indian immigrants who had permission to be away from the plantation were given a pass, which they had to keep on their person. The system came to be characterised by the prosecutions under these ordinances. The Committee on 106

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Emigration reported that in Guiana there were 3,835 complaints from employers in the period 1907 to 1908.43 Thus the indentureship system as it came to be instituted was really a very strict system of labour control. In fact there were far more restrictions than in the contract system that had prevailed when the old hiring system was in place. It is also often noted that, just as during enslavement, more attention was paid to the police clauses than the protective clauses. The cost of labour was also substantially reduced from the rates which had existed previously. This system was still an expensive one, but it now was financed from several sources. These included an indenture fee paid by employers, an immigration tax, the general revenue of the colony and sums collected for various reasons in the course of administration of the system.44 Thus the whole country financed the system and the planter paid only a proportion of the cost. The one direct cost paid by planters who contracted for immigrants was the indenture free of £5 per adult male.45 In all, they may have contributed approximately two-thirds of the cost of immigration. Perhaps, however, the most important factors were that a system had been re-established which brought large numbers of workers to the region directly for the service of the plantation and the planters’ control over industrial relations had been reinstituted. If we consider the context which we have established of a long history with paid labour and, more specifically, a contract system, one may well ask: Why was its natural evolution truncated and a new system imposed which, though bearing some resemblance to the old hiring system, was far more favourable to the planter? The rationale advanced for the system is an important piece of the puzzle. The official explanation advanced by the Committee on Emigration was as follows: It seems an undeniable fact that in tropical climates, where the needs of the indigenous population are few and simple, and where there is an abundance of fertile land open to the use of that population for the satisfaction of those needs, it is impossible to obtain from local sources, except by compulsion, a sufficient supply of labour for the development of industries dependent on steady and continuous work. Wherever these climatic and economical conditions prevail, recourse must be had for the prosecution of such industries of some alien race whose previous traditions and methods of life had inculcated habits of steady and regular work.46

It is interesting that the first part of this statement almost echoes the reason advanced by Eric Williams in Capitalism and Slavery for the introduction of African enslavement hundreds of years before.47 At the very least one must accept that the Committee over-simplified the situation. No account was taken of the fact that there were thousands of formerly enslaved persons now resident in the islands. There was also no representation of the different population densities, which caused colonies to have widely differing labour needs in 1845. This argument could not be applied to areas like Barbados, Antigua and Jamaica. In addition, it would have to be refined so as to reflect the changed context from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century if it were to be applied to 107

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Trinidad and Guiana. It does show, however, that the changed labour context of the region was neither accepted nor appreciated. The very last statement in the above quotation may be the central piece of the puzzle. One may well understand the need for habits of steady and regular industry, but why is this associated with an alien race? A later statement from the same Committee adds further insight. It pointed out that the immigrants ‘if properly treated’ were ‘perfectly docile and easily managed’, were also ‘orderly and law abiding’ and, last but not least, were not ‘troubling themselves to take part in political incitements or agitations’.48 This begs the further question: What does this say about the industrial climate that the planter and administration seemed to be trying to establish? The Committee’s assessment of the impact of the system was very positive and it stressed that the sugar industry had been faced with ruin because of the aversion of the newly freed population to work.49 The data and perspectives presented in the earlier part of this discussion strongly contradict such views. The Committee also concluded that productivity had returned and there was revival of industry. Close inspection of the new labour context reveals additional features which the Committee did not place emphasis on. Importation of immigrants from 1845 to 1917 in some cases must have altered the industrial relations climate considerably. We left our assessment of the 1838 to 1845 period with the working population having grasped the upper hand, but by the 1870s the situation had been reversed. A new contract system had been introduced, with more stringent regulations and penalties. In fact one can argue that by the middle of the nineteenth century the planters had eliminated the aspects of the old hiring contract system which they took issue with through the introduction of a new contract system – indentureship. The major changes were easily identifiable: the flexibility for workers in the system had been removed and, most importantly, the costs to the planter of a long-term labour contract had been substantially reduced and the price paid for labour was at an all-time low. The Committee on Emigration was very sceptical about such conclusions,50 but an examination of both primary and secondary sources suggests otherwise. K. O. Laurence dates the impact of indentureship on wages to the 1870s.51 Millette has estimated that wages were reduced by 60% between the 1880s and 1890s.52 Even the Committee on Emigration noted that by 1891 task work was 1s 2d to 2s 1d in Trinidad.53 If we compare this to the estimate for Trinidad in Table 5.2, this suggests an approximate reduction of 50%. Eventually the low level of wages paid to immigrants was extended to the entire population. We can once again cite the Committee on Emigration, which noted that ‘during the last 50 years the price of the ordinary task has been 25 cents’.54 If that was the case with the free labourers, we can well imagine that in many instances, in spite of legislation, indentured immigrants earned even less. Millette estimated that in 1894 and 1895 ‘only three and six estates, respectfully, out of sixty-nine paid more than an average of six pence per day to adult male immigrants’.55 Further, by 1910 some indentured immigrants received as little as 72 cents per week.56 Wages were clearly no longer high. Unemployment and underemployment were also on the rise. In spite of the 108

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fact that the operational context had really changed by the twentieth century there was no real attempt to end the immigration of additional workers. The system would continue until 1917. The labour matrix revisited If we go back to the original mandate for comparison of both systems, we can say that the same factors were at the core of both the systems of enslavement and of indentureship, in that they were both based on the same principles of economic, political and social subjugation. The changes in the labour matrix occurred not because of an enlightened frame of reference, but according to what was needed to maintain the subjugation of the majority of workers yet ensure the necessary output, both qualitatively and quantitatively, to keep the system going. Before 1838 enslavement was needed for the quantitative output and hiring (contracted labour) was necessary for the qualitative output which gave the system the flexibility it needed. Planters were willing to pay large sums for this flexibility. In the period after 1838, as more and more people engaged in free labour, the society sought to devalue the labour supplied by the working population under such contractual arrangements. However, while comparisons of enslavement and indentureship are understandable, such comparisons ignore that the transition was not directly from an enslavement system to an indentureship system, though these were the two modes of labour in which the majority of the population engaged for the longest periods between 1750 and 1850. Contract labour was prevalent in the region long before 1845. It is therefore the hiring system which we must reconceptualise as the real training ground for indentureship. In fact, one wonders if the Immigration Ordinances were partly designed to deal with the problems which the planters had experienced during long-term hiring before 1838. In the end, however, the labour context in the twentieth century was created by the experiences of enslavement, hiring, apprenticeship, emancipation and indentureship. Thus it is not sufficient to compare two extremes; we must understand the nature of the transition, the changes and the continuities. In a very real sense, ironically for the black working class, free labour was ‘freer’ under enslavement, though it was not an entitlement. Such labour opportunities, if they could be grasped under self-hire, were more highly valued, were better remunerated and created greater opportunities. After 1838 the newly freed population tried to expand on the opportunities they had learnt to expect from such a system. However, as free labour became more widely used by the black working class it was necessary to ensure that it was no longer the source of so much opportunity. It was extended to the new Indian working class in a form which ensured that privileges associated with its usage were no longer available. To put it simply, as free labour evolved among the working classes it was increasingly devalued as it became more widespread. To stress the continuities as well as the changes in the labour systems I have elsewhere dubbed hiring ‘the new negro business’.57 I 109

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suspect that Tinker was trying to do the same when he dubbed indentureship the ‘new form of slavery’. Similar comparisons have been made with the apprenticeship system and indeed with the period 1838 to 1845. In a sense it is true of all forms of free labour as they gained ascendance in the region. Thus it is no surprise that free labour did not bring the promises which were anticipated to the labouring populations of the British Caribbean even after the end of indentureship in 1917. Notes  1 Parliamentary Papers 1871 [C.393] [C.393-I] [C.393-II] XX. Report of the commissioners appointed to enquire into the treatment of immigrants in British Guiana, p. 63.  2 Hugh Tinker, A New Form of Slavery, The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 1830–1920 (London, 1993).  3 Hilary Beckles, Inside Slavery. Process and Legacy in the Caribbean Experience (Kingston, Jamaica, 1996).  4 Heather Cateau, ‘The new “negro” business: hiring in the British West Indies 1750 to 1810’, in Alvin O. Thompson (ed.), In the Shadow of the Plantation, Caribbean History and Legacy (Kingston, Jamaica, 2003).  5 Ibid.  6 William Beckford, Remarks Upon the Situation of Negroes in Jamaica (London, 1788), p. 95.  7 J. H. Bennett, Bondsmen and Bishops: Slavery and Apprenticeship on the Codrington Plantations of Barbados 1710–1835 (Los Angeles, 1952), p. 63.  8 Edward Long, The History of Jamaica (3 vols, London, 1774), I, Book II, ch. 1, pp. 399–400.  9 National Library of Scotland, Add MS, Acc 7284, Charles Bryan to Robert Scollay and Thomas Bolt, 17 April 1799. 10 Ibid. 11 Cambridge University Library [hereafter CUL], Vanneck-Arc /3A/1787/11, 2 July 1787, Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne. 12 The National Archives of Scotland, Dundee MS, GD 24/189/1, to David Hood from Cargan Dumfries, 26 November 1792. 13 Cambridgeshire County Records Office [hereafter CCRO], Tharp MS. R. 55.7.122.9.5, Jobbing paid abstract of 1812 to 1819. 14 See Bennett, Bondsmen and Bishops, p. 68 for figure of Codrington estates; see also  CUL,  Vanneck Arc/3A/1782/18, 8 May 1782, Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne. 15 Bennett, Bondsmen and Bishops, pp. 42, 64, 66; See also Cateau, ‘New “negro” business’, pp. 102–3. 16 Bennett, Bondsmen and Bishops, p. 42. 17 B. W. Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean 1807–1834 (Baltimore 1984), pp. 244–5; See also Howard Johnson, ‘A slow and extended abolition – the Bahamas 1800–1838’, in Mary Turner (ed.), From Chattel Slaves to Wage Slaves (Kingston, Jamaica, 1995). 18 Johnson, ‘A slow and extended abolition’. 19 Bennett, Bondsmen and Bishops, p. 64.

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20 CCRO, Tharp MS, John Tharp Dr. to Sundry for the following Accounts paid since his departure from Jamaica to 1st August 1796, R55/7/125/1. 21 The metayage system allowed the newly free population to cultivate land owned by the planters in return for a proportion of what was produced. 22 Bennett, Bondsmen and Bishops, p. 19; see also Chisholme Papers (National Library of Scotland), MS 5476 fo. 80, 5 December 1800, James Chisholme to James Crag; see also Johnson, ‘A slow and extended abolition’. 23 Chisholme Papers, MS 5476, fo. 80, James Chisholme to James Crag, 5 December 1800. 24 An Ordinance for extending the term for which contracts of service may be made, Trinidad No. 8. 1817. 25 W. E. Riviere, Labour Relations during the Apprenticeship System in the British West Indies 1834–1838. A Comparative Analysis (Mona, 1969), p. 15. 26 Ibid. 27 Douglas Hall, ‘The flight from the estates reconsidered: the British West Indies, 1838– 1842’, in Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd (eds), Caribbean Freedom (Kingston, Jamaica, 1993), pp. 55–65. 28 James Millette, ‘The wage problem in Trinidad and Tobago 1838–1938’, in Bridget Brereton and Kevin Yelvington (eds), The Colonial Caribbean in Transition (Barbados, 1999), p. 59. 29 Ibid., p. 58. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., p. 59. 32 Minutes of Evidence Taken by the Sub-Committee of the Agricultural and Immigration Society, Wednesday 14 July 1841, Lewis Pantin Esq., Clause 461. 33 Ibid., p. 60. 34 Ibid., cited in in Millette, ‘Wage problem in Trinidad and Tobago’, n. 19. 35 Acts passed by Colonial Legislatures or Councils – Trinidad, 38; An Ordinance for regulating the relative Rights and Duties of Masters and Servants, 1846. 36 Hall, ‘Flight from the estates reconsidered’, p. 55. 37 Heather Cateau, ‘Management and the sugar industry in the British West Indies, 1750–1810’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, 1994), pp. 197–8. 38 Millette, ‘Wage problem in Trinidad and Tobago’, p. 58. 39 William Burnley, Observations on the Present Condition of the Island of Trinidad and the Actual State of the Experiment of Negro Emancipation (London, 1842). 40 Immigration Ordinance, Trinidad 1870. 41 Parliamentary Papers, 1910 [Cd. 5192] XXVII. Report of the Committee on Emigration from India to the Crown colonies and protectorates, para. 264, p. 65. 42 Ibid., para. 226, pp. 54–5, para. 265, p. 65. 43 Ibid., para. 232, p. 56. 44 Ibid, para. 227, p. 55 and para. 263, p. 65. 45 Immigration Ordinance 1870, Part III, Application for Immigrants, clause 13, p. 277. 46 Committee on Emigration from India, para. 85, p. 21. 47 Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (repr., Chapel Hill, NC, 1994), pp. 4–7. 48 Committee on Emigration from India, para. 88, p. 22. 49 Ibid., para. 86, pp. 21–2. 50 Ibid., paras 270–5, pp. 66–7.

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51 L. O. Laurence, A Question of Labour, Indentured Immigration into Trinidad and British Guiana 1875–1917 (Kingston, Jamaica, 1994), pp. 4–7. 52 Millette, ‘Wage problem in Trinidad and Tobago’, p. 63. 53 Committee on Emigration from India, para. 251, p. 63. 54 Ibid., para. 273, p. 67. 55 Millette, ‘Wage problem in Trinidad and Tobago’, p. 61. 56 Ibid. 57 Cateau, ‘The new “negro” business’, p. 100.

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6

After emancipation: empires and imperial formations Clare Anderson1

This chapter will explore the relationship between enslavement, emancipation and the larger labour history of the British imperial world. Drawing on my area of specialism – convict transportation in the Indian Ocean world – I will suggest that slavery was part of a continuum of unfree work practices that spanned empire, and that empire’s variously staggered emancipations were moments that laid the ground for the production of new coerced labour forms. Enslavement, emancipation, coercion and work: each was connected to the other, and together they underpinned the making and remaking of the British Empire and its associated imperial formations. Slavery and other forms of colonial labour came together through practices and understandings that connected work with the search for imperial dominance and profit, as well as understandings about the relationship between race, ethnicity, class and labour. Over time, as I will show, the articulations and re-articulations of colonial ideas about difference and distinction produced new forms of geographic and social dislocation and exploitation, as well as a host of imaginative connections between people, work and political economy. Following the enslaved into the sugar plantations of the British Empire were indentured labourers from Asia: mainly from up-country India and the Indian coast, but also from parts of China. Historians and, more especially, sociologists have explored the meaning of their migration in discussions of the relationship between imperialism, capitalism and free/unfree labour, in debates about the agency of colonial workers and in tracing the historical roots of creolisation and diaspora in places like Mauritius, Trinidad and Fiji. The historiographical and sociological focus on indenture probably stems from the great interest it attracted in metropolitan Britain during the nineteenth century, as well as from the existence and visibility of Indian communities in former British colonies of the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific oceans. For, famously, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies Lord John Russell spoke in Parliament in 1840 of his fears that indentured migration might become ‘a new system of slavery’, a rhetoric that framed campaigns against it and, since the middle of the twentieth century, has been the central framing device for its study.2 Russell might have said the same (though he 113

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did not) about the many other forms of labour that preceded, coexisted with or succeeded enslavement and the transition to apprenticeship and emancipation. Remember: slavery never entirely replaced other kinds of labour, nor did it come to an abrupt end. European indentured labour, kidnapped Africans (illegally shipped slaves captured and forced into labour contracts), transported convicts, incarcerated prisoners, relocated and settled hunter-gatherer peoples, delinquent and juvenile colonists, military conscripts: each became bound up in a colonial repertoire that identified the impoverished, the marginalised and the otherwise inferior as ideally suited for the purpose of imperial expansion and the supply of labour. If imperial labour forms including enslavement and apprenticeship are best conceptualised as part of a continuum of human exploitation, also significant for their incorporation in a more expansive global narrative is the way in which the associations and transitions between them and other kinds of work were bound up in larger shifts in colonial governmentality, notably the shift from the private to public management of work. If the first theme of my chapter is the labour continuum, this will be the second. I am interested especially in the implications of this change for the way in which we write about labour history, most especially in our seeming reluctance to include the direction of labour by the colonial state into a framework that springs out of our understanding of enslavement as a form of labour that was bought, sold, inherited and above all owned. I am also concerned to explore the relationship between this shift and the production of colonial archives; and with the way a critical interrogation of their form enables us to think about the British Empire as an imperial formation, with respect both to its inner and outer geographical life or, rather, its inter- and trans-coloniality. Within the historiography of enslavement, for reasons of scale, form and effect, the Atlantic triangle has perhaps naturally – rightly – dominated, with brilliant and nuanced discussions of, inter alia, African devastation, the middle passage and economy, society and culture in the Black Atlantic. However, in this chapter I would like to suggest that we decentre – in Dipesh Chakrabarty’s memorable phrase, ‘provincialize’ – the Atlantic world.3 This enables us to draw together a discussion of its variegated local specificities with those of a larger global context. To be sure, this includes slavery, emancipation and its aftermath in the Caribbean, but it also brings into view slavery, emancipation and its aftermath in other parts of empire. We know that the Caribbean was embedded in the imperial economy; that it was central to imperial careering as well as to the globalised production of ideas about race; but what is less well understood beyond its importation of indentured labour is how it fitted with larger, imperial labour practices and understandings of labour and labour management. In this we must not forget the entanglements of metropole and colony; the raced productions of the poor, the criminal, the sexually deviant and the itinerant. But as we shall also see, they were themselves caught up in global webs of enslavement, servitude, confinement and forced migration, which worked within and beyond the geographical confines of the British Empire. 114

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Finally, before I begin, some clarity of purpose is required. In attempting to disentangle the various elements of these themes, my purpose here is not to enter into the debate whether capitalist expansion was necessarily underpinned by and dependent on the expansion of free or unfree labour. Nor is it to provide an overview of global labour practices and systems. A detailed and innovative historiography on these and related matters already exists.4 But what I do want to do is to explore elements of their connected and entangled histories and some of the ways in which labour demands, race and coercion come together at particular conjunctural moments to produce particular labour forms. And so, first, I come to the idea of the colonial labour continuum. The labour continuum Enslavement was preceded by, coexisted with and succeeded by diverse forms of labour extraction. In the Americas, from the seventeenth century, European convicts were sold into indenture, alongside those ‘voluntarily’ entering contracts, and in many places, like Barbados, both kinds of worker established the plantations that were later worked by African slaves.5 In a ground-breaking recent paper, historian of convict Australia Hamish Maxwell-Stewart has suggested that the lengths of sentences of transportation (usually either seven or fourteen years) were fixed not for penal reasons but ‘in order to position convicts competitively within the trans-Atlantic market in unfree labour’. Simply put, convicts had to be perceived as better value than other indentured Europeans, and for this reason they were typically transported for a longer period of time than free labour was indentured, but put out to employment at the same price.6 These layers of intersection between convictism, indenture and enslavement continued in the aftermath of the abolition of penal transportation to the Americas during the American Revolution. As the lines of race distinction and hierarchy hardened, many ex-convicts and indentured servants from Europe became slave overseers, and so enslavement became intertwined with other forms of labour, including the hiring-out system as well as Indian indenture (Heather Cateau’s Chapter 5 in this volume). It was not just that enslavement in important ways anticipated the introduction of indenture in the Caribbean in 1845, but that it had always coexisted with other forms of labour, a point that is often missed in frequently teleological interpretations of a smooth transition from enslavement to emancipation and ultimately ‘freedom’. This perspective might be applied to slave colonies beyond the Caribbean, including for instance Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. For in many locations, the abolition of slavery did not provoke a search for alternative forms of labour, it simply widened the extant colonial repertoire of modes of exploitation.7 But, more than that, it is the labour anticipation that is important, the coalescence between apparently distinct labour forms. There are many examples that suggest the relevance of this point to other contexts, and here, I shall mention briefly four of them. One. In 1875 a Commission of Enquiry in Mauritius reported 115

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that the prior existence of Indian convict transportation to the island (there was a penal settlement there during the period 1815–53) had had a positive longterm effect, for the convicts had laid the cultural ground for later indentured migration. They built temples, set up small holdings and, after their liberation, they constructed huts and opened shops. The indentured migrant was not, the Commission reported, ‘the entire stranger he was in the West Indies and Demerara’, where Indian convicts had never been sent.8 Two. As we see in Anita Rupprecht’s Chapter 4 of this volume, illegally trafficked slaves who were captured and supposedly liberated in the years after 1807 (‘Prize Negroes’) were not freed, but under the terms of their ‘rescue’ they were enlisted into service as indentured servants and soldiers in the Caribbean, Mauritius or Sierra Leone, for terms of up to fourteen years. They were supposed to be instructed in Christianity, and the men to learn trades or undertake other kinds of employment (e.g. working on boats or at docks), and the women to enter into domestic service. Abolitionists were strangely silent on this practice. William Wilberforce stated that it was, perhaps, ‘the least objectionable’ answer to what to do with contraband slaves. Thomas Clarkson later wrote that this apprenticeship was a sort of internship for freedom, with Africans ‘fitted … for making good use of their liberty’. Indeed, as Rupprecht shows in Chapter 4, it was only when the abolitionists became concerned that these Africans were being sold into slavery that government enquiries into their plight began.9 The archives of British colonial Mauritius show that these kidnapped Africans were routinely allocated to military officers and government servants, that they lived side by side with enslaved men and women, that they engaged in resistance against their condition by going on the run (going maroon) and that in some cases they accompanied their new ‘masters’ to postings elsewhere in empire, including New South Wales in Australia.10 In effect, then, whatever the thrust of abolitionist discourse, their conditions resembled those of enslavement and apprenticeship more than they did ‘freedom’. Three. Beginning during slavery, accelerating in the 1830s and 1840s as the state no longer enjoyed the obligations of owner-allocated slave corvée, and in sharp contrast to metropolitan practice, British colonies were still employing outdoor prison work-gangs on roads and other public works into the 1860s. Though Britain and western Europe by then worked their prisoners at indoor labour, administrators in the Caribbean and in Mauritius – as well as in the colonies of Australia, Africa and Canada – were united in their reluctance to abolish outdoor labour, for they held that prisoners constituted an expendable workforce that could assist in the building of colonial infrastructure, yield easy profits in various types of employment and even encourage penal self-sufficiency.11 In this way, prison work was an important component of the labour continuum of the enslaved, the apprenticed, the indentured and the incarcerated. Moreover, prisons were colonial spaces that brought together in the same place all kinds of workers. Over time, work-gangs incorporated: slaves, ex-slaves, apprentices, ex-apprentices, kidnapped Africans, indentured labourers and even transported Indian convicts. They were segregated 116

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from plebeian European soldiers and sailors, who were not expected to do the same kind of work. Four. Finally, the history of imperial expansion – effected through enslavement and forced migration or not – was often closely associated with the exploitation of indigenous or colonised peoples and populations. There are countless ­examples of the devastation of indigenous peoples, from the seventeenth century on, in the Americas, Australia and beyond, each closely entwined with the history of slavery, indenture and penal transportation.12 The British colonised permanently the Andaman Islands, an archipelago in the Bay of Bengal, for instance, in 1858, the previous plan to settle the islands and to ‘pacify’ their apparently savage tribal peoples catalysed by the desire to transport overseas mutineers and rebels convicted in the wake of the Indian Revolt of 1857. As I have shown in previous work, British treatment of the islands’ indigenous peoples mirrored their treatment of Indian convicts. They kidnapped them, forced them into orphanages or reservations and put them to productive labour.13 Of relevance here is Zoë Laidlaw’s account of the Aboriginal Protection Society and its keen awareness of the relationship between enslavement and indigenous decimation (Chapter 7 in this volume.) Through these brief examples I suggest that there is a need to disrupt teleological interpretations of the history of unfree labour and empire that assume (to put it crudely) that unfreedom/repression eventually gave way to slightly less repressive coercion and then to eventual freedom. Far distant geographically from the Caribbean, we find a similar intellectual call for colonial South Asia. Sugata Bose’s sweeping survey of Bengal during the period from 1770 (Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital) cautions against Global North-centred interpretations that assume that ‘freedom’ and ‘unfreedom’ meant the same thing to all peoples.14 His point is well taken, for the history of work in South Asia is remarkably complex, and the history of the European trade in slaves and indentured labour in the region cannot and should not be extracted from Global South labour histories. Without denying the misery of, for example, labour bondage, it is clear that caste, kinship, debt, hereditary peasant–landlord ties and obligations of servitude came together to produce relations to the means of production that did not map neatly onto colonial understandings of ‘freedom’ and ‘unfreedom’.15 It is of equal importance to note that the chronology of abolition was not the same across empire. Under East India Company pressure, Parliament excluded the Indian Empire from the 1833 Emancipation Act. Slavery was not abolished in the region until 1843, and slave-owning not until 1862, incidentally the same year that the Burmese penal settlements were closed to new convict shipments. Historian Andrea Major has speculated that this was partly to do with the existence of an imaginative association between enslavement and plantation economies, partly to do with a serious under-estimation of the prevalence of agricultural slavery and other kinds of bondage and partly to do with a convergence of abolitionist and Company interests, invested in the idea of India ‘as an alternative site of imperial production based on free labour’.16 117

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And, perhaps, of greatest significance of all in thinking of enslavement as part of a labour continuum is the fact of the existence of forced labour, slave trafficking and debt bondage all over the world today, including in former British colonies. Emma Christopher, Cassandra Pybus and Marcus Rediker’s collection of essays, Many Middle Passages, is a distressing account of the misery of the sea journeys endured by many millions of men, women and children in past centuries. It is also careful to remind us of the contemporary relevance of historical research on slavery and forced migration vis-à-vis enslavement and people trafficking in the world today. Simply, yet powerfully, Kevin Bales and Zoe Trodd invoke the brilliance of the writer Toni Morrison in their afterword, which notes: ‘all of it is now.’17 Mind your language: some thoughts on archives and empire So far in this chapter, I have written about the British Empire; the abolition of the slave trade, emancipation, apprenticeship, transportation, prison work, indigenous exploitation and the recruitment and employment of indentured migrants. I have noted some of the variegations of empire, including the distinctiveness of abolition in the Atlantic and Indian ocean worlds, the problem of Global Northcentric definitions of free and unfree labour and some of the coalescences – or anticipations – across labour forms. Slavery and emancipation in the British Empire were part of a much larger labour history, but their associations have often been clouded by the imperial formations of postcolonial archives. There are important points to be elaborated here about what Ann Laura Stoler has called the ‘along the archival grain’, the need for us to rethink how archives have been made, the effects of nation/archive making in what global/transnational histories are available to us and the elisions that each has produced in the writing of colonial history(ies).18 In this respect, it is important to look outward from slavery in the British Empire, not in order to claim any kind of moral or other equivalence for it in what was happening in other imperial contexts, or with other labour systems, but in order to better understand how it was embedded within other global forms of colonial coercion. Such an approach is potentially hugely interesting because there is no dearth of archival material available to us and, once we situate enslavement in a much larger global and labour-history intellectual framework, the interpretive politics of the possible become wide ranging and far reaching. As Elizabeth Kolsky has noted in her book on white violence in British India, she has found no need to read against the grain of colonial papers; for the records are there, easily accessible, if we choose to look at them.19 This so-very-simple and yet oh-so-complex claim is, I hope, reflected in my own work on Subaltern Lives, which has tried to foreground the more or less previously unwritten history of transported Indian convict labour in histories of colonial labour – including enslavement, indenture and prison work – all over the Indian Ocean. The state regulation of those convicts has produced a voluminous archive, scattered across 118

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local and national archives, from the Cape and Mauritius to India, South-East Asia and Australia. Yet because of that spread (that along the grain) and perhaps also because Indian convicts did not attract the attention of metropolitan elites (like Wilberforce and Clarkson), global historians have paid little attention to them. It is at least partly for this reason, I would like to speculate, that they have been almost totally excluded from academic histories of labour or labour migration.20 Well-known TV presenter and journalist Jeremy Paxman’s description of the building of Singapore in the BBC series Empire is typical of contemporary metropolitan aphasia about so much of the history of empire. His narrative peppered with a lack of precision so frequent in public representations of colonialism, Paxman spoke of how Thomas Stamford Raffles had seen the island of Singapore’s potential; ‘had established free trade and the rule of law’; and how the island ‘drew in’ Indians, Malay and Chinese. The truth of the matter is that in 1818 Raffles first ‘abolished’ slavery in the neighbouring province of Bencoolen (this was not mentioned by Paxman, but he is famous for that). He then turned to India for an alternative labour supply and, exploiting the metropolitan networks of which he was a part, he requested and then started to import shiploads of Indian convicts: first to Bencoolen and later on Singapore, as well as to the associated ports of Penang and Malacca. They worked in chain gangs, clearing land, building bunds, roads and bridges, establishing basic infrastructure. It was they, not Raffles or Paxman’s ‘the British’ who – in Paxman’s words – ‘turned a pestilential island into a commercial metropolis’.21 I would like to challenge him – and many others who do the work of forgetting the poor, the marginal and the displaced of empire – to ‘mind their language’. And I do this not simply as an act of remembering, of ‘peopling’ History from the bottom up, but because enslavement, emancipation and their aftermath have had enduring cultural, social and economic effects. As academic historians, we are familiar with arguments that link the history of enslavement to global inequality in the world today. These include the continuing effects of the forced removal of millions of enslaved men, women and children from what are now the independent nations of Africa; the impoverishment and violence that endure amongst Atlantic communities with prior histories of enslavement; and the imaginative association of people of African descent with enslavement and its raced, cultural stereotyping. And we find such associations in the aftermath of enslavement too. In the early twentieth century the great scholar of colonial Burma, J. S. Furnivall, writing long after the abolition of its penal settlements in 1862, claimed that convict labour had driven out free labour; and moreover free labourers would not do the kind of infrastructural work associated with convicts. Therefore, in the long term, convicts had raised wage rates. This, Furnivall claimed, created an immense barrier between British and Burmese, which lasted right up to the Second World War.22 Architectural historian Anoma Peiris has shown in her important work on Indian convicts in South-East Asia that the continuing importation of Indian workers into Singapore, almost completely lacking in citizenship and other rights, is a direct legacy of the island’s history of penal transportation.23 119

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Going back to the possibilities of the archives more broadly, once we approach them with larger questions in mind we can give voice to the marginal poor of empire: European, African, Asian or ‘Other’. An unfortunate by-product of postcolonial complaints about the disciplinary intent of the archive is that it is often assumed that such records do not exist. But that is the deep paradox of the disciplinary archive; it creates quantities of records on subjects of public (rather than private) concern: apprenticed ex-slaves, kidnapped Africans, indentured migrants, juvenile delinquents, convicts. Their perspectives were of course mediated through the intended purpose of the documents that are available to us. But nevertheless their names and provenance were listed and their bodies were measured and described; they sent petitions, gave statements to colonial inquiries and spoke testimonies as defendants or witnesses in courts of law. In this, we can find suggestive evidence of how ordinary people viewed enslavement, confinement, migration and/or work; and the kinds of connections they made with each other, across colonial categories of rule and imperial spaces of geography. The transition from private to public labour management One of the great ironies of the colonial surveillance of populations, and in particular the state management of convict labour, then, is that it produced archives with profound subaltern depth. In this respect, the form and content of archives across the nations which were born out of the imperial world reflect a fundamental shift in one aspect of colonial governmentality: the transition from the private to public management of labouring people who were enslaved, impressed, contracted or criminally sentenced, and a workforce which was both racially and ethnically diverse. It is often held in the popular understanding of abolition that emancipated slaves refused to work, deserting en masse their masters, households, huts and fields as they celebrated the end of their chattel status. It was for this reason, this narrative continues, that slave-owners had little choice but to secure a replacement supply of labour, which it sourced largely from India and China. In reality, the situation was more complex. First, slave-owners of the Atlantic and Indian oceans had been experimenting with other forms of labour since the abolition of the slave trade in 1807: ‘free’ populations were forced to give over working days to the state as corvée, and often used to construct military fortifications; transported convicts were assigned as domestic servants or plantation workers; locally convicted prisoners made sails for government ships, or shoes, mats and buckets for sale; vagrants were sent out to break stones or work on the road gangs. The imperial turn to the East, the search for labour in the port cities, littorals and interiors of South Asia and China, was no simple response to labour shortages after emancipation, or to the refusal of apprentices or ex-slaves to work. It was part of a continuity of accessing and extracting labour from a relatively controllable workforce that had few other economic or social options. Indeed, indentured contracts sometimes actually removed some of the flexibilities enjoyed by the enslaved 120

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under the hiring-out system, as Cateau’s Chapter 5 in this volume shows. In the Caribbean, as a result, there was a massive drop in wages. Across the imperial world, the relationship between labour, race and ethnicity was reset; re-articulated through colonial claims about the docility and easy management of castes, tribes and populations – which themselves flowed out of or succeeded previous ideas about the malleability or otherwise of newly imported or locally born slaves, which were dependent on where they were born, which language they spoke and their religious and other cultural practices. One defining feature of this period is that whilst in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the poor or criminalised British and Irish and enslaved Africans and Asians often faced coterminous exploitation, in the same colonial locations, increasingly the workforce was stratified, and different populations and communities were associated with different kinds of work. The lines of racial distinction thus hardened. Thus, it was race rather than labour categories that started to cut across work regimes. The few African and Asian convicts who were transported to the penal colonies of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) during the 1830s and 1840s, for example, were largely employed in public houses and hotels (bars), or as domestic servants and cooks. In this way, they took with them cultures of colonial service and replicated the ‘big house’ of slavery. Similarly, Anglo-Indian (Eurasian) prisoners were recruited as overseers of Indian convicts in the Andaman Islands in the late 1850s and 1860s.24 Towards a colonial politics of comparison In this chapter, I have written that slavery might be positioned on a continuum of  labour exploitation. It was one outcome (however variegated) of the global articulations and re-articulations of race and class that produced a range of exploitative labour regimes. They included indenture, apprenticeship, transported convict labour and prison work, all of which cut across categories of rule to put to work poor Europeans as well as Africans, Asians, Aborigines and others, often through forced relocation, confinement or other restrictions on movement. In making this claim, I do not wish to deny the horrors of the slave trade, to downplay the sufferings of the enslaved or to dismiss the importance of their resistance in securing abolition. But I do wish to add further weight to the view that abolition and emancipation should not be celebrated as acts expressive of imperial benevolence or a commitment to freedom. For not only were the enslaved central to abolitionism, but it was forced upon often-unwilling slaveowners, who already had access to alternative sources of coerced labour and, unwilling to negotiate terms with free workers, went on to secure new supplies. As I have shown, at the various moments of emancipation across the British imperial world, enslavement was succeeded by – was made possible through – the drawing of new lines of difference and distinction, through which new forms of coerced labour became integrated into the workforce that underpinned colonisation, expansion and resource extraction. 121

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The challenge in presenting such a broad view of the history of labour and Empire is to present a rigorous comparative method which remains attentive to locality without losing sight of the larger imperial framework. I could dwell on many, many examples of local distinction here, each of interest and importance to the interconnected histories of nation, colony and empire, as well as the fuller understanding of the labour continuum that I am proposing. I will suggest just two, both drawn from contributions to this volume, one from the colonial and the other from the metropolitan context. Heather Cateau’s important chapter (Chapter 5) shows the extent to which enslavement and indenture varied from island to island in the Caribbean. She also reveals how, during the period immediately prior to abolition, there were important continuities between the contiguous practices of enslavement and ‘hiring out’, as well as the introduction of indentured labourers from Asia. In attempting to add nuance to nineteenth-century understandings of Indian indenture as ‘a new system of slavery’, she writes: ‘It is therefore the hiring system which we must reconceptualise as the real training ground for indentureship.’ As for my second example, Anita Rupprecht (Chapter 4) reminds us also of the challenge that enslavement represented for classical theories of the intimate relationship between capitalism and free labour. Rupprecht uses Seymour Drescher’s influential work to underpin the importance of understanding contemporary perspectives on political economy, particularly the prevailing view that enslavement was ‘efficient and profitable’. It was only when political economy was joined with ‘moral sentiment’, as in the work of Adam Smith, she argues, that abolitionists were able to make significant inroads in presenting enslavement as economically inefficient – and offering economically preferable alternatives to it, including economic development in Africa, which would in turn enhance colonial trading opportunities (hence Adam Smith’s anti-colonial, free trade perspective). But Rupprecht departs from Drescher’s work by showing that abolitionists looked to the insights of political economy in generating free labour alternatives to enslavement, particularly with respect to the question of motivation, or the creation of a willing, self-interested and self-reproducing workforce. It was for this reason that slave resistance and rebellion became important to abolitionist debates. There are, then, important comparative work to be done and important comparative points to be made across the British (and, it must be said, other) Empire(s). Further, the history of enslavement and its aftermath in the British imperial world opens up to us rich possibilities for the understanding of labour and labour mobility within a much larger global framework. One way of addressing this more expansive view, I would like to put forward, is through a consideration of how people at the time – elites and workers – who were engaged in the processes and representations associated with the creation of colonial labour were themselves imbricated in its opportunities and foreclosures; and how they were self-consciously and critically engaged in what, following Ann Laura Stoler and Carole McGranahan’s idea of the ‘imperial formation’, I would like to call the politics of colonial comparison.25 There were layers of circulation and overlap 122

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across labour regimes, between the cane fields of the Caribbean and Mascarene islands; the mines, indigo factories, tea estates and spice plantations of the Indian Empire; the convict chain gangs of the Americas, Australia, Burma and Singapore; and the jails, reformatories and agricultural colonies of the British metropole. The imperial connections between abolition, emancipation and other unfree labour regimes across the geographies of empire urge us to think of the British imperial world as a political space. In the early nineteenth century, slave-ship captains exchanged the voyage of the Atlantic triangle for the convict journey from Britain and Ireland to New South Wales; and later on, in the 1850s and 1860s, for the indentured journey from Calcutta to Mauritius and the Caribbean. Magistrates, convict overseers and policemen experienced in the management of the enslaved in the West Indies and Mascarene islands became imbricated in the operation and development of the convict system of New South Wales.26 In his 1823 investigations into the conditions of kidnapped Africans in Tortola (British Virgin Islands), royal commissioner Thomas Moody paid close attention to a range of global experiments in coerced labour, and gave attention to islands in particular as ideal physical spaces for the management of potentially recalcitrant labour. He displayed a geographically expansive awareness of various modes of forced migration and confinement. In his report to Parliament he discussed an African-American Haitian emigration scheme; Dutch colonial agricultural colonies for the ‘criminal poor’; the Bengal peasantry and, briefly, slavery in India; the impressment of plebeian white women to work as prostitutes in Sierra Leone; the emancipation of slaves in the northern USA; the American Colonization Society (for African-American settlement in west Africa); and ex-slave incarceration. As I read and reflected on Moody’s report, I thought of an argument I have previously made about punishment in colonial Mauritius, where I drew parallels between the treatment of maroon (runaway) slaves, the construction of jails and the construction of a vagrant depot for Indian labourers who had deserted the plantations, itself built on the site of a penal ­settlement for Indian convicts which had existed in the island between 1815 and 1853.27 Slavery, indenture, delinquency, convictism, incarceration, poverty; each connected to the other in the practices associated with the shifting and m ­ anagement of colonial forms of labour. I would also like to note here French physicist CharlesAugustin de Coulomb’s theory of human labour power, as cited by Rupprecht: ‘the product of thrust multiplied by the speed and length of the effort exerted’.28 This model for the measurement of labour discipline reminds me of Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian whipping contraption, and of course the treadmill – both of which attempted to calibrate precisely physical punishments. The measurement of labour and the measurement of coercion had much in common, it would seem. And, finally, let us not forget the suggestive nature of contemporary etymology, through which the metropolitan terminology and understandings of what apprenticeship and indenture meant was transformed across colonial contexts. Empire was, then, a political space of imperial circulation and connection: forged by officials and the associations that they made between labour and 123

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c­ onfinement. I would next like to take a moment to inject labourers into the narrative, to stress the importance of subaltern information networks and the linkages that they enabled between enslavement, servitude, transportation and indenture. Rupprecht shows, for instance, how kidnapped Africans who had fled their forced apprenticeship in the Caribbean returned of their own volition to meet the royal commissioners, for they believed that they would be freed. Maxwell-Stewart has shown us that in the penal colonies of Australia, British and Irish convicts called themselves slaves, in a rhetorical appeal to their friends in the metropolitan antitransportation lobby.29 Indian convicts in the penal settlements of Mauritius and Singapore called themselves sipahis (soldiers), or East India Company servants, casting the cultural unfamiliarity of penal transportation within more familiar conditions of bondage and servitude.30 In previous work I have argued that potential migrants in North India in the 1880s viewed their prospects in indenture in the sugar plantations of Trinidad, Guiana and Mauritius through the prism of what they knew about penal transportation. This was partly because of striking similarities in recruitment/­conviction and shipment – in both cases it involved an appearance before a magistrate; marching in gangs to port; embarkation through depots; and, of course, the sea voyage. It was also to do with knowledge that those who were convicted or recruited for overseas service – as convicts or indentured labourers – never came back, and so they were associated with disappearance and permanent absence. In Mauritius and the Caribbean today, kala pani (‘black water’) is commonly understood as a point of reference to Indian migrant views of their journey across the cultural abyss of the ocean into indentured servitude. It is associated with the multiple social dislocations (‘caste pollution’) implied by ship voyages as men and women from all communities were forced to share berths, decks, water pumps, vessels, eating bowls and latrines. But the contemporary weight of the concept in these postcolonial island spaces belies the true origins of kala pani in Indian convicts’ views of transportation to penal settlements and colonies. Indeed, rather less well known amongst historians of slavery and the Atlantic world is that today the phrase is also common currency in the Andaman Islands, which was the largest extra-Australian penal colony in the Empire (1858–1945). In the 1880s British recruiters used the expression when trying to sign up migrants for indenture. Critical observers warned against it at the time, one man reporting: ‘Says the coolie to himself, when he hears a Magistrate Saheb talking to him of kala pani – “Kya! Ham ne kya kasur, kiya ke ham ko kala pani sunate hain?” (“What! What wrong have we done, that [he] speaks to us of kala pani?”).’ The association of migration with local practices and understandings of discipline, confinement and labour overseas provides a way of thinking about indenture that moves us beyond the nineteenth-century rhetoric that it was ‘a new system of slavery’. As far as potential migrants were concerned, it was, rather, ‘a new system of penal transportation’. And so, subaltern perspective brings me back to the central thread of my chapter – labour continuum, global framework, comparison and circulation. It is of considerable interest in this respect that the first British governor of 124

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New South Wales, Arthur Phillip, had formerly worked on ships transporting Portuguese convicts from Lisbon to Brazil.31 Another, perhaps obvious, example is the Royal Navy’s capture of ships carrying slaves for work in the Portuguese and Spanish plantations of Latin America after 1807; cargo that was rapidly ‘apprenticed’ in British colonies. Another is the way in which the French recruited indentured labourers from India for work in Martinique, Guadaloupe and the gold mines of French Guiana. They worked under French officials, but they remained British subjects.32 Later on, in French Guiana, as Miranda Spieler’s important new work shows, there were perverse intersections between enslavement and its aftermath, the independence of maroon communities and the establishment of a penal colony in 1852 for the transportation of convicts from France and its empire, notably Algeria and Indochina. The introduction of Indian indentured labour into French Guiana after 1861 – notoriously brutal though little researched by historians – must surely also be understood as part of this larger labour history. And, as perhaps as you will gather from these brief thoughts, in foregrounding this, I would like to suggest that it is important to bring the history of the British imperial world into dialogue with a much larger history of European empires. Conclusion It is not theoretically adequate or productive to view labour as ‘free’ or ‘unfree’ in character. Neither is it satisfactory to take official views of the distinctions between coercive work regimes in isolation from the understandings of the ordinary people caught up in imperial webs of (labour) power: slaves, convicts and other workers. Enslavement, indenture, apprenticeship, convictism, prison and other kinds of work were not stages in a progressive, teleological move to ‘abolition’ or ‘freedom’. This chapter has instead argued for a fresh approach to labour and empire, in which we position the specificities of locality within a larger, general imperial framework in order to bring into view the porousness of apparently distinct colonial regimes. The ‘before’ and ‘after’ of slavery and emancipation worked through and across each other in colonial discourse, practice and the popular imagination. In this respect, there are important linkages to be made within and across the British imperial world, and the metropoles and colonies of other European empires too. This is a call to those of us who seek to push the histories of enslavement, emancipation and associated forms of coerced labour into global history, to take seriously the rich possibilities of such a framework in exploring the global connections and networks that underpinned labour ­migration – both within as well as beyond enslavement. Notes  1 I would like to thank Joanna de Groot, Catherine Hall, Zoë Laidlaw, Keith McClelland and Anita Rupprecht for their comments on and engagement with the ideas worked out in this chapter.

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 2 From a large literature, see for their global approach: Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction (London, 2008); Robert Miles, Capitalism and Unfree Labour: Anomaly or Necessity? (London, 1987); David Northrup, Indentured Labor in the Age of Imperialism, 1834–1922 (Cambridge, 1995); Hugh Tinker, A New System of Slavery (Oxford, 1974).  3 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe (Princeton, 2000).  4 Two models of scholarship from a very large historiography are: Ulbe Bosma, ‘European colonial soldiers in the nineteenth century: their role in white global migration and patterns of colonial settlement’, Journal of Global History, 4:2 (2009), 317–36; Prabhu Mohapatra, ‘Eurocentrism, forced labour, and global migration: a critical assessment’, International Review of Social History, 52 (2007), 110–15.  5 Hilary McD. Beckles, White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados, 1627–1715 (Knoxville, TN, 1989).  6 Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, ‘Convict transportation from Britain and Ireland 1615– 1870’, History Compass, 8:11 (2010), 1224.  7 Richard B. Allen, Slaves, Freedmen and Indentured Labourers in Colonial Mauritius (Cambridge, 1999); Gwyn Campbell (ed.), Abolition and its Aftermath in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia (London, 2005).  8 Parliamentary Papers 1875 XXIV Mauritius (Treatment of Immigrants): Report of the Royal Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Treatment of Immigrants in Mauritius, p. 27.  9 See also M. Carter, V. Govinden and S. Peerthum, The Last Slaves: Liberated Africans in Nineteenth-century Mauritius (Port Louis, 2003). 10 National Archives of Mauritius ID2: Return of the Number of Negroes who have been Apprenticed at the Mauritius and its Dependencies, 31 December 1826; IB 6/9: Return of Slaves and Prize Negroes Declared Maroons (January 1820–15 December 1826). 11 Prison Discipline in the Colonies: digest and summary of information respecting prisons in the colonies (London, 1867); Further Correspondence respecting the discipline and management of prisons in Her Majesty’s colonial possessions (London, 1868). 12 Martin Daunton and Rick Halpern (eds), Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1650–1800 (London, 1999); Kristyn Harman, Aboriginal Convicts: Australian, Khoisan and Maori Exiles (Sydney, 2012). 13 Clare Anderson, ‘Colonization, kidnap and confinement in the Andamans penal colony, 1771–1864’, Journal of Historical Geography, 37:1 (2011), 68–81. 14 Sugata Bose, Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital: rural Bengal since 1770 (Cambridge, 2007). 15 Indrani Chatterjee and Richard Eaton (eds), Slavery and South Asian History (Bloomington, IN, 2006); Peter Robb, ‘Introduction: meanings of labour in Indian social context’, in Peter Robb (ed.), Dalit Movements and the Meanings of Labour in India (Delhi, 1993), pp. 1–67; Tanika Sarkar, ‘Bondage in the colonial context’, in Utsa Patnaik and Manjary Dingwaney (eds), Chains of Servitude: Bondage and Slavery in India (Madras, 1985), pp. 97–127. 16 Andrea Major, ‘ “The slavery of East and West”: abolitionists and “unfree” labour in India, 1820–1833’, Slavery and Abolition, 31:4 (2010), 501–6 (quote at 503). 17 Kevin Bales and Zoe Trodd, ‘Afterword: “All of it is now” ’, in Emma Christopher, Cassandra Pybus and Marcus Rediker (eds), Many Middle Passages: Forced Migration in the Making of the Modern World (Berkeley, CA, 2007), pp. 222–34.

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18 Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton, NJ, 2009). 19 Elizabeth Kolsky, Colonial Justice in British India; White Violence and the Rule of Law (Cambridge, 2010). 20 Clare Anderson, Subaltern Lives: Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World, 1790–1920 (Cambridge, 2012). 21 Empire was a five-part TV series, first broadcast in the UK in 2012. See http://www.bbc. co.uk/programmes/p00p1388, accessed 7 September 2012. 22 John Furnivall, ‘The fashioning of Leviathan’, Journal of the Burma Research Society, 29:1 (1939), 43. 23 Anoma Pieris, Hidden Hands and Divided Landscapes: A Penal History of Singapore’s Plural Society (Honolulu, 2009). 24 Anderson, Subaltern Lives, ch. 3. 25 Ann Laura Stoler and Carole McGranahan, ‘Refiguring imperial terrains’, Ab Imperio, 2 (2006), 17–56. 26 Anderson, Subaltern Lives, ch. 2. Note also that the officer commissioned to investigate the efficacy of transportation to New South Wales in 1822, Commissioner John Bigge (1780–1843), had previously served as a judge in the slave island of Trinidad; http:// adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bigge-john-thomas-1779, accessed 10 September 2012. 27 Clare Anderson, ‘The politics of punishment in colonial Mauritius, 1766–1887’, Cultural and Social History, 5:4 (2008), 411–22. 28 Anita Rupprecht, ‘ “When he gets among his Countrymen, they tell him that he is free”: slave trade abolition, indentured Africans and a Royal Commission’, Slavery and Abolition, 33:3 (2012), 448. I thank Anita Rupprecht for bringing Thomas Moody’s report to my attention. 29 Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, ‘ “Like poor galley slaves …”: slavery and convict transportation’, in Maria Suzette Fernandes Dias (ed.), Legacies of Slavery: Comparative Perspectives (Newcastle, 2008), pp. 48–61. 30 Clare Anderson, ‘Sepoys, Servants and Settlers: convict transportation in the Indian Ocean, 1787–1945’. in F. Dikötter and I. Brown (eds), Cultures of Confinement: A history of the prison in Africa, Asia and Latin America (London, 2007), p. 204. 31 Arthur Phillip (1738–1814), Australian Dictionary of National Biography: http://adb. anu.edu.au/biography/phillip-arthur-2549, accessed 10 September 2012. 32 Kate Marsh, ‘ “Rights of the individual” ’, indentured labour and Indian workers: the French Antilles and the rhetoric of slavery post 1848’, Slavery and Abolition, 33:2 (2012), 221–31.

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Part III

The imperial state

7

Imperial complicity: indigenous dispossession in British history and history writing Zoë Laidlaw

In the wake of the anti-slavery successes of the 1830s, a disjuncture appeared in Britain’s empire – between, on the one hand, the nation’s demonstrated commitment to abolition and emancipation and, on the other, its lacklustre and meagre attempts to protect the Empire’s indigenous peoples. This cleavage affected both what happened across the Empire and the ways that historians have written about it. Although historians have paid its consequences insufficient attention, the divergence did not go unnoticed by contemporaries, as demonstrated by this December 1847 article: It cannot be too frequently repeated, nor too earnestly, that our system of Colonization is one of aggravated injustice towards the aboriginal races amongst whom we send our surplus – often our refuse – population; [it] is a crying evil to our national character; [and] a permanent reproach upon it. Great Britain has expended in vain millions for the suppression of the Slave Trade, and the effort is noble – the attempt a duty; yet she grudges hundreds for the amelioration … [and] the preservation of the Aborigines in her Colonies, on the selfish plea that the task is hopeless … Thus the same hand which raises the supplicant African, and frees him from his chains, strikes a deadly blow at the liberty of the Natives of another soil, and, by neglect and encroachment, consigns them to a state, abject as the worst condition of Negro bondage.1

The Emancipation Act, and particularly the £20 million compensation it awarded to slave-owners, represented a sacrifice which signalled that Britain was an ‘anti-slavery nation’. Such a claim of course necessitated acknowledging Britain’s earlier involvement in slavery, even if it implied only a limited and diminishing responsibility for the condition of post-emancipation colonies. By contrast, there was nothing glorious – for the British nation, the metropolitan public or colonial settlers – about the on-going dispossession of indigenous peoples that took place elsewhere in the Empire. Rather, this process constituted a national shame, which could at best be construed as unfortunate but unavoidable collateral in the march of ‘progress’. A series of silences about this dispossession developed in Britain and its settler colonies. In metropolitan writing about empire, these silences took different forms, depending on each colony’s particular 131

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circumstances. But all implied disavowal, whilst distracting attention from the erasure – literal and metaphorical – of colonised peoples. This chapter explores the nature of these silences or occlusions, connecting them particularly to the advent of self-government in Britain’s settler colonies during the 1840s and 1850s. As such, it seeks to place settler colonialism in its broader imperial context, rather than directly comparing the experiences of indigenous peoples and emancipated slaves in Britain’s empire. It focuses on the tenure of the 3rd Earl Grey as Secretary of State for the Colonies between 1846 and 1852 and the defence of his policy that Grey mounted on leaving office. While Grey recognised Britain’s responsibility to its imperial subjects, and was confronted by the negative consequences of settler–indigenous interactions throughout his tenure, he side-stepped or ignored the implications of this in his subsequent assessment of Britain’s imperial policy. While this study confines itself to a short, if crucial, period in the mid-century, Grey’s sentiments regarding Britain’s indigenous subjects were by no means unusual among his political peers. Moreover, they had, and continue to have, implications for the ways in which historians understand Britain’s post-emancipation empire. The chapter concludes by arguing that breaching this historiographical divide would improve our understanding of both settler and ‘non-settler’ colonialism. Categorising empire In the mid-nineteenth century, Britons began to think about their colonial empire in different ways, and to divide it into new categories. India formed a dominant and anomalous component of the Empire, ruled indirectly via the East India Company until 1858, and then directly from the India Office. The rest of the Empire was administered from the Colonial Office, with a governor based in each territory acting as the Crown’s representative. The Empire rapidly expanded and diversified during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars; battling to govern it, in an age of post-war retrenchment, imperial ministers and officials sought parallels and precedents according to each colony’s existing arrangements. This allowed, for example, Jamaica and Canada to be bracketed together, as both possessed legislative assemblies; while, on the other hand, the more recently acquired Ceylon, New South Wales, Trinidad, Sierra Leone and the Cape Colony were all ‘Crown Colonies’, ruled by more autocratic officials.2 Legal systems inherited from previous European imperial powers, as well as each colony’s predominant economic activity, formed other significant dividing lines. From the 1840s, however, the Colonial Office began more systematically to divide out so-called ‘settler colonies’ from other colonial territories, both conceiving of them and treating them as ever more distinct from the rest of the Empire. This classification was also reflected across government and society more widely. The settler colonies did share certain characteristics, although their particular circumstances and trajectories also diverged. For the British government, however, their commonalities as a group came to be of greater importance than 132

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their (acknowledged) differences: they were destinations for growing numbers of British and Irish migrants, and they promised economic growth based on easy access to copious ‘waste lands’. As expatriate communities grew, settlers began to contemplate their limited political autonomy. Mindful of the American precedent and keen to limit imperial expenditure, Britain conceded, or bestowed, new levels of self-government to settler colonies from the 1840s onwards. By contrast, Britain’s direct control of the rest of its colonial empire – whether in the Caribbean, across the Pacific and Indian oceans, or later through South-East Asia and Africa – remained high through the second half of the nineteenth century, and from the 1860s even increased as a series of West Indian legislative colonies reverted to Crown Colony status.3 The tendency to separate the settler colonies out from the rest of the Empire had both immediate and longer-term consequences. In particular, this chapter will argue that such treatment was both predicated upon and contributed to the dispossession of aboriginal peoples. Over time, obfuscation about indigenous populations and their treatment in settler colonies made it possible for historians to overlook important connections between colonised peoples’ experiences of empire across different ‘types’ of colonies,4 and to stress the exploitation of colonised labour and bodies over and above indigenous dispossession from land. It has also allowed contemporary settler nations – still colonial societies – to perpetuate indigenous dispossession into the present day, while enabling Britain to side-step questions about metropolitan responsibility for imperial crimes in settler colonies. Settler self-government and the post-emancipation context The 3rd Earl Grey (earlier Viscount Howick) was greatly concerned with colonial affairs in both the Caribbean and the settler colonies. Parliamentary undersecretary at the Colonial Office during the debates over the Emancipation Act in the early 1830s, Grey was Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1846 to 1852 in Lord John Russell’s administration. It was during his tenure that the British North American colonies attained ‘responsible’ self-government, while much of the imperial legislation that would transfer greater autonomy to settlers in Australia, South Africa and New Zealand was drafted and debated.5 But, as well as decisions about devolution, Grey’s period at the Colonial Office encompassed violent conflicts in southern Africa, New Zealand and Ceylon; thorny questions of convict transportation; and upheaval and economic crisis in the post-emancipation Caribbean. Colonial affairs are often characterised as of low interest and relevance to British politics in the mid-nineteenth century.6 The mass public engagement of the abolition campaign dissipated; in the mid-Victorian era it was rebellions against imperial rule – particularly in India in 1857–58 and Jamaica in 1865 – which captured the imagination of public and press (and fuelled metropolitan racism).7 Commons’ debates on colonial issues were thinly attended; colonial ministers 133

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were regarded as less capable than their counterparts in the other offices of state. Most parliamentarians, like the majority of the public, had a doubtful knowledge of the extent, let alone the nature and demands, of the Empire.8 But to emphasise this ignorance and apparent indifference is somewhat misleading. Important politicians – Lord John Russell, William Gladstone and Lord Derby among them – served as Secretary of State for the Colonies. The Colonial Office, operating on a shoestring budget, developed approaches to governance and public service that also influenced domestic government. Moreover, metropolitan ignorance meant that the concept of empire could be manipulated and harnessed by the critics of successive governments.9 Empire was portrayed as expensive, protectionist and warlike. It became an arena in which political economists, liberal philosophers, advocates of free trade and supporters and opponents of democracy could contest domestic as well as imperial policy.10 During Grey’s tenure the Colonial Reformers, or ‘systematic colonisers’, persistently challenged the imperial government’s rule of settler colonies, while free traders fretted about economic policy towards the West Indies and British North America.11 Russell, whose government had been long fractured and fragile, finally resigned in February 1852 to avoid an imminent Commons’ motion on South Africa.12 Grey disagreed with Russell’s decision to resign, and resented losing his opportunity to defend the government’s colonial policy in Parliament.13 Once out of office, he compiled a two-volume, 900-page vindication of his tenure at the Colonial Office.14 The Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell’s Administration was published in 1853, both as justification of Grey’s policies and as a prospectus for the Empire’s future.15 In terms of colonial self-government, Grey harboured paternalistic doubts about the settlers’ suitability for autonomy and was so fervent a supporter of free trade that he thought it should be imposed upon all colonies – settler or not. But these reservations were balanced by his recognition that the Colonial Reformers, vociferous settlers and considerations of imperial economy demanded some transfer of power.16 The introduction to Grey’s work acknowledged that the Empire represented ‘a responsibility of the highest kind’, which Britain was ‘not at liberty to throw off’. Grey saw the ‘authority of the British Crown’ as ‘the most powerful instrument, under Providence, of maintaining peace and order’ across much of the globe. As such, it helped to diffuse ‘amongst millions of the human race, the blessings of Christianity and civilisation’.17 Such sentiments have allowed imperial historians to portray Grey as an imperial visionary and humanitarian, if an impractical and divisive politician.18 Colonial Policy surveyed the Empire, except India, and divided Britain’s possessions into two categories. For each, Grey argued for continuing imperial control, even while they edged towards greater political autonomy. The first category consisted of those colonies where whites formed a minority of the population. If Britain was to withdraw from the West Indies or Ceylon, for example, Grey predicted the ‘most fearful war of colour’.19 He thought nonEuropean subjects entirely unready for a role in their own government, but the 134

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European colonists who would therefore constitute any representative legislatures were also deemed unreliable. Such colonists – in Grey’s view tainted variously by their slave-holding pasts, by non-British backgrounds or simply by avarice – did not possess the ‘enlightened regard for the welfare of all classes’ that characterised the imperial government.20 For colonies in this category, Grey explicitly opposed self-government. Even in New Zealand, where the settler population was rapidly growing but still outnumbered by the native, Grey worried that British withdrawal would precipitate ‘a series of contests’ between colonisers and colonised in which, ultimately, the Maori ‘would … be destroyed’.21 Grey’s second category comprised colonies where white settlers predominated. Here, he conceded the ‘obvious duty and interest’ of Britain ‘to extend representative institutions’.22 But this concession was qualified: an on-going imperial presence was necessary, even if it would gradually diminish. Again, this resulted from Grey’s doubts about settler colonists’ willingness to live up to their responsibilities as imperial Britons. The imperial government held the colonies – Britain’s ‘vast estate’ – in trust, ‘for the benefit of all its subjects, not merely of the few thousands who may at this moment inhabit a particular Colony, but of the whole British people, whether resident at home or in the Colonies’. Preventing the ‘improper and premature alienation of Colonial lands’ was an imperial duty necessitating a check on self-government. Speaking particularly of Australia, to which he devoted nearly a quarter of Colonial Policy, Grey noted that the imperial government could not trust the current generation of settlers: they were liable either to improvidently waste, or to selfishly reserve for themselves, the colonies’ great bounty.23 When Grey spoke of the ‘whole British people’ he did not include Britain’s indigenous subjects. Defending himself before a metropolitan audience, Grey entirely ignored Australia’s Aborigines, who received no mention at all in his two volumes. Likewise, Canada’s First Nations were the subject of one passing sentence. It is notable that Grey barely discussed how Great Britain had acquired its colonial lands, those that he and other Britons designated simultaneously as ‘waste’ and a ‘magnificent property’. This applied especially to Australia and British North America, but also to New Zealand and the Cape Colony, where British occupation was violently contested at the time. Grey wrote of those regions’ current significance and future importance. So far were the indigenous owners of the land from his mind that he could write, without even the most metaphorical of blushes, of protecting the colonial estate from ‘rapacious speculators’ who might merely pretend to promote ‘the interest of their fellow-colonists’.24 Thus, Grey effectively erased indigenous populations in North America and Australia. For South Africa and New Zealand, where conflicts between settlers and natives dominated colonial policy, his analysis marginalised evidence of indigenous land use and dispossession. Britain’s weighty imperial r­ esponsibilities – made so much of in the introduction of Colonial Policy – did not extend to the protection of indigenous land. This approach was typical not only of Grey, but also of his elite political contemporaries.25 As will be discussed later, it is also one 135

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that has been carried forward by historians of settler societies and those who have relied on their work to consider colonial government elsewhere in the Empire. Yet, despite this silence, settler–indigenous relations vexed Grey throughout his tenure. As mentioned, New Zealand and the Cape Colony were hugely troublesome in this period, and settler–aboriginal relations in both colonies were discussed in Grey’s book. Similarly, during Grey’s tenure the Colonial Office received a series of representations from those who described themselves as ‘natives’ of the Red River Settlement in British North America and sought imperial intervention against the governing Hudson’s Bay Company. The latter’s complaints were not discussed at all in Grey’s book, although they would contribute to the appointment of a major select committee in 1857 and a rebellion in 1869. Grey’s relationship with New Zealand and Red River will be outlined below, demonstrating that, despite his practical indifference to indigenous land rights, he was not ignorant of claims to them. Rather, we should see Colonial Policy as representative of a shift in British pronouncements on empire and on settler colonialism: these would increasingly downplay the presence, priority or future prospects of indigenous peoples in order to invalidate their rights to land. New Zealand and the Red River Settlement: complicated colonial realities In 1846, the Colonial Office sent revised gubernatorial instructions and a new Charter to New Zealand. Together, these interventions were intended to give the colony’s settlers the opportunity to elect representatives to two legislative assemblies, and to accelerate sales of land.26 The new arrangements undermined Maori rights by contravening the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, which had established the British colony. The Treaty had, as the Aborigines Protection Society (APS) pointed out to Lord Grey, guaranteed native New Zealanders the ‘full, exclusive and undisturbed possession of their lands and estates, forests, fisheries, and other properties which they may collectively and individually possess’. To avoid honouring its obligations the imperial government relied upon the old argument, recently reiterated by Thomas Arnold, that it was not possible to possess land which had not been mixed with labour and thus ‘improved’.27 On this basis, much of New Zealand was designated ‘waste’, and accordingly ‘crown’, land. No matter that, as the APS observed, such an approach might render large tracts of Scotland and England ‘waste’; nor, as it also emphasised, that the Maori both used the land – for foraging, hunting and fuel – and felt themselves, through collective inheritance, to possess it. ‘Waste lands’, claimed the APS, could not really be said to exist at all in New Zealand, while it would be ‘extremely difficult’ to convince the Maori that the colonial state had indigenous rights or welfare in mind when it was intent on selling their lands ‘at a prodigious advance, for the express purpose of creating a revenue’.28 The proposed New Zealand Charter also raised the question of indigenous representation, or rather exclusion from representation. Under the new arrangements, Maori who lived outside the boundaries of the colony’s provincial districts would 136

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be entirely unrepresented, while the entitlement to vote of those living alongside the settlers, in the designated provinces, would depend on their ability to both read and write in English. No such provision applied in the British Isles. Invoking the Maoris’ rights as British ‘citizens’, critics like the APS advocated dropping the language requirements and appointing the ‘full quota of [Maori] Headmen’ from the ‘native districts’. In advocating this approach the Society urged Britain to live up to its civilised and civilising status. New Zealand, it claimed, provided the opportunity to offer a ‘practical example of a Colony founded amongst aboriginal tribes without the sacrifice of their existence, their rights, or their property’.29 Yet, despite his promise to protect the Empire’s ‘uncivilised’ subjects, and his sense of the great imperial responsibility that lay on Britain, Lord Grey was reluctant to concede either of these points. He did, however, respond to the New Zealand governor’s strong warning that the legislatures would certainly provoke Maori violence; the Charter’s electoral provisions were suspended temporarily.30 When writing of New Zealand in his Colonial Policy, Grey characterised conflict between settlers and Maoris in New Zealand in terms of ‘disaffection and insubordination’. Chiefs who had led attacks on the settlers, including Te Rauperaha, were portrayed as duplicitous and treacherous, in contrast to the courageous British officials who had upheld colonial ‘justice’, even at the expense of their own immediate safety. Throughout, Grey located the origins of particular conflicts in Maori assaults on Europeans – for instance, the murder by Maoris of a settler’s family at Wanganui in April 1847. In this way, no acknowledgement was made of any deeper-rooted causes of conflict, whether earlier European attacks or disputes over territory.31 Land was a central focus of his discussion of the colony, but it was resolving disputes between imperial and colonial governments, disaffected settlers and Wakefield’s New Zealand Company, which dominated his thoughts. More than a third of Colonial Policy’s chapter on New Zealand simply reproduced a despatch written by (the confusingly named) Governor George Grey in July 1849.32 In it, the governor stressed that the Maori held the upper hand in military terms, because of their superior numbers and their ‘characteristics’ as a people.33 But he also held out great hope for the eventual assimilation of the Maori into British colonial society.34 The governor alluded to disputes between settlers and Maori over ‘rights to certain lands’ and argued that the Crown’s inconsistent application of its policy of pre-emption had favoured certain powerful settlers, created hostility towards the government and hindered the restoration of the colonial revenue and the creation of a harmonious society.35 Lest this cause undue anxiety back in London, the governor was able to stress that he had ‘already resolved every land question’ in the South Island and most of those in the North. Both Governor Grey and Lord Grey treated pre-emption as a question that related purely to settlers’ claims and frustrations: Maori land rights and possession were barely, if at all, mentioned.36 Thus, only nine years after New Zealand became a British colony, in a dispatch that prioritised avoiding violence between settlers and colonised, the territorial dispossession of Maori people was side-lined. Commenting on the despatch, the Secretary of State commended the 137

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improvement in New Zealand’s fortunes during the early 1850s. The Maori, he wrote, had shown ‘increasing confidence in the Government and in British law’, and were ‘rapidly acquiring the habits of civilised life’. Importantly, this included ‘becoming possessed of property’, although the types of property listed in Colonial Policy included ‘water-mills’ and ‘coasting vessels’, but not land. In this view, the Maori had not ‘possessed’ property before British colonisation.37 In contrast to New Zealand’s Maori, the ‘natives’ and ‘half-breeds’ of the Red River settlement were completely absent from Colonial Policy. Their claims in the 1840s related less explicitly to land ownership, being more focused on the right to hunt and trade freely over their traditional lands and to have a greater say in their government. As the Red River settlement was ruled only indirectly by Britain – via a monopolistic charter granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company – Grey’s exclusion of the territory might thus be explained. Nevertheless, during Grey’s tenure, settlers from the Red River made a series of representations to the Colonial Office, urging intervention against the governing company, which kept them ‘in a state of degradation, in which their energies are depressed, and all their sources of prosperity are precluded from development’.38 It was the settlement’s low profile (in Britain, but also in Canada) and inaccessibility that enabled the imperial authorities largely to ignore the questions which its inhabitants and their supporters raised about colonialism. The Hudson’s Bay Company had exercised a trading monopoly across much of western British North America since the early 1700s; after 1821 its territory extended from Hudson’s Bay northwards to the Arctic Ocean and west to the Pacific. The Company governed not only its own employees, but also European and mixed-race settler communities and Native Americans. While the children of Company servants and their ‘country’ wives proved indispensable as Company employees, by the 1820s and 1830s men of mixed ancestry faced considerable discrimination. The Company systematically excluded them from desirable positions, while their pay was half that of the Europeans.39 The Company’s efforts to restrict trade across the border with the United States, and the despotic style of senior officials, further agitated dissent.40 The problems of Red River were complicated by divisions of religion, language and ethnic background: communities of mixed European and Aboriginal heritage, for example, were sub-divided into Anglophone and Francophone (the Métis), each with distinct priorities; similarly, there was no automatic coincidence of sympathy or aims between the mixed-race communities and the different Indian tribes.41 Two petitions were presented to the Colonial Office from the settlers of Red River during Grey’s tenure at the Colonial Office. These were accompanied by a series of deputations, and a protracted three-way correspondence between the Colonial Office, the Hudson’s Bay Company and Alexander Kennedy Isbister, the acknowledged representative (and himself an Anglophone of mixed race) of the Red River settlers.42 Isbister, who in one letter signed himself A. Koonaubay Isbister, to emphasise his ‘native’ status,43 was aggrieved by the Company’s policies on trade and governance. He opposed the British government’s grant of 138

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Vancouver’s Island to the Company, and also argued that the Company’s Charter was illegal.44 John Henry Pelly, governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, denied the specific charges and denigrated the settlers, using their opposition to call for British military reinforcements lest Americans, aided by a mixed-race fifth column, overrun the territories. The Colonial Office’s response to Pelly and Isbister reveals a growing practical indifference to the claims and plight of those disadvantaged by British colonialism. Given Grey’s commitment to free trade, the Hudson’s Bay Company was – along with the ailing East India Company – an anachronistic and monopolistic anomaly in Britain’s Empire. Moreover, Grey, like Gladstone before him, was (rightly) sceptical about the legitimacy of the Company’s claims for imperial support and the degree to which it was meeting its (vaguely specified) obligations to ‘civilise’ indigenous peoples and advance colonisation in its territories.45 Nevertheless, during his tenure, Grey would not only take the part of the Company against the settlers – settlers who, effectively, were demanding the rights being given to other (white) settlers across the Empire – but also grant the Company exclusive rights to colonise Vancouver’s Island on the Pacific coast.46 Various factors influenced these decisions, including the threat of American annexation and a desire to limit imperial expenditure while opening up ‘new’ lands for settler colonisation, but the fact remains that the Colonial Office was not ignorant of the displacement and claims of indigenous and mixed-race communities in British North America; rather, it was actively dismissive.47 Worthy of remark is the manner in which the Colonial Office and the Company treated the claims of people of mixed European and Aboriginal ancestry. As noted, the Red River Settlement encompassed a complex ethnic mélange. Isbister, by virtue of one Cree grandmother, was deemed an Anglophone ‘half-breed’. He had been well educated – first at Red River, and then in Aberdeen and Edinburgh – and worked for two seasons for the Company in the remote far-northern reaches of its territory. In Britain he became a headmaster, editor of the Educational Times and Dean of the College of Preceptors. Clearly, Isbister was well integrated into British society.48 Yet he and other ‘half-breeds’ from Red River were unsuccessful in claiming the rights routinely awarded to white Britons.49 They asked for representative government, just as greater political autonomy was being awarded to their settler counterparts in Canada and the Maritimes. Claims for greater self-government were couched in terms of the Red River settlers’ desire for, right to and preparedness for the trappings and protection of British ‘civilisation’. In effect, the petitioners urged Britain to live up to the kind of statements that Grey would make about imperial responsibilities and Britain’s civilising mission in his Colonial Policy. At the same time, the Red River settlers argued for other rights on the basis that they were ‘natives’: this was the substance of their claim to trade freely and to be compensated for their dispossession from traditional lands.50 And these demands were equally unsuccessful. Neither Colonial Office nor Company chose, during this period, to see the mixed-race settlers as truly British or possessing British ‘birthrights’, but nor were they ‘Indian’. Indeed, a distinction was 139

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drawn between ‘natives’ (meaning Rupert’s Land-born, but of any parentage) and ‘Indians’, meaning ‘without any known European ancestors’. Governor Pelly argued that the use of ‘the term “natives” ’ by those of mixed heritage was ‘an ambiguity calculated to deceive’.51 Thus, the mixed-race communities effectively slipped between two stools, allowing the Company to denigrate them and the Colonial Office to ignore them. Imperial disavowal and historical complicity New Zealand and the Red River Settlement are just two imperial sites that demonstrate the mismatch between Grey’s public deflections about indigenous affairs and the nitty-gritty of imperial government. Writing for a British audience, Grey could ignore the possibility of indigenous land rights and seek means of granting self-government to settlers – on the proviso that the long-term interests of white Britons and the imperial government could be protected. As an imperial minister, however, he was constantly coping with conflict between the colonies’ settlers and indigenous inhabitants. Grey’s metropolitan peers and successors reinforced this tendency, as did colonial settlers. It suited both imperial Britons and their expatriate colonial counterparts to ‘whiten’ settler colonial spaces, underplaying the presence, persistence and rights of their indigenous inhabitants. Humanitarian groups like the APS who contested this representation were poorly supported, while each petition or representation made to the imperial government by indigenous peoples themselves represented a tacit acknowledgement of their ‘meagre negotiating position’.52 Grey’s denial that imperial responsibilities extended to the same degree to all Britain’s subjects reflects something more widespread in metropolitan Britain in the post-emancipation era. Even as metropolitan feelings of sympathy, concern and responsibility for the Empire’s emancipated slaves declined, Britain’s triumph and sacrifice as a leader of international abolition were frequently, if vaguely, evoked, providing proof of Britain’s civilised status and civilising mission.53 But the denial of responsibility for the dispossession of indigenous peoples and the denigration of ‘half-breeds’ was even more complete, perhaps because there was no triumphant moment on which to reflect, just a series of apparently unmet promises of improvement and ‘civilisation’, made by missionaries and humanitarians. In turn, the erasure of the indigenous presence – on paper or in practice – also served to demarcate ‘white’ settler colonies from ‘black’ non-settler colonies. Until the later twentieth century, histories of ‘colonial policy’ routinely omitted any mention of the indigenous peoples of Australia or Canada, a practice even more deeply embedded when the focus was on the granting of settler self-­ government.54 In this way these histories were ‘whitened’. Given the violent conflicts that characterised nineteenth-century New Zealand and South Africa, it proved more difficult for imperial historians completely to ignore ‘native policy’ in these regions. Instead, the imperial government’s humanitarian concern for indigenous peoples was stressed, while their dispossession and land rights were 140

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disregarded.55 Apart from the ‘aboriginal’ Khoisan, for instance, South Africa’s native peoples were recast as immigrant conquerors, in turn inevitably (and justifiably) displaced by European settlers.56 Maoris, Zulus and ‘Kaffirs’ were depicted as warlike and uncivilised, encouraged to embark on ultimately suicidal wars by interfering missionaries and philanthropists.57 Grey’s imperial mission for the settler colonies was recast in terms of white tutelage: Britain encouraged settlers to take on increasing political autonomy and financial responsibility. Along the way, and as intended consequences, settlers ‘learnt’ to handle ‘their natives’ and were dissuaded from provoking colonial conflict.58 The imperial cult of the ‘man-onthe-spot’ – Sir George Grey, governor of both New Zealand and the Cape Colony, was posited as the Empire’s ‘first proconsul’ – further underlined the ‘common sense’ of allowing settlers to manage all aspects of their domestic affairs.59 Such an approach became more difficult to sustain in the wake of decolonisation, as historians became more self-conscious about imperial power and its abuses. The preface to John W. Cell’s influential 1970 study of British colonial administration (across the Empire) commented explicitly on the book’s complete omission of indigenous policy and government. Clearly conscious of the wealth of interdisciplinary approaches to colonialism emerging at the time, Cell wrote that to incorporate ‘native policy’ within ‘colonial policy’ would merely cement an ‘ethnocentric emphasis upon British humanitarianism’. Understanding the responses of non-European societies to colonialism, he argued, was better left to anthropologists and sociologists, and studied ‘from below’.60 However, divorcing ‘colonial policy’ from ‘native policy’ diminished Cell’s understanding of the former and, when pursued as a strategy for telling the histories of individual settler colonies, reinforced the suppression of the history of indigenous dispossession.61 In 1979, by contrast, Cell’s thoughtful ‘The imperial conscience’ addressed British justifications for relinquishing control over native affairs to settlers during the transition to responsible government.62 Only more recently has a concerted attempt to reintegrate the story of settler societies’ political and economic growth with indigenous dispossession begun.63 Just as the myths and occlusions about indigenous dispossession cultivated by Victorian governments have reverberated in historical scholarship, so the divergent treatment of slavery and indigenous dispossession has contributed to a continuing disjuncture in the historical literature. There are some notable exceptions to this pattern. For example, both Catherine Hall and Julie Evans place colonialism in the Caribbean, Australia and New Zealand in the same frame when examining the transnational career of the notorious Governor Edward Eyre.64 Similarly, a vibrant scholarship connects slavery, indentured labour and indigenous dispossession in southern Africa, where all three existed side by side.65 But, on the whole, historians writing anything other than an overview treat the histories of the Empire’s emancipated and indigenous peoples separately. This chapter concludes by outlining the reverberations of these nineteenth-century practices in historical writing about post-emancipation societies, settler colonies and imperial Britain. 141

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In his magisterial The Problem of Freedom, for example, Thomas Holt examines the 1848–49 political crisis in Jamaica alongside the simultaneous transition to responsible government in Canada.66 He demonstrates that the idea of ‘race’ in the British North American context was used in the 1830s to differentiate between Francophone and Anglophone settlers.67 By the late 1840s, however, these ‘racial’ divisions were seen as having been overcome in Canada, allowing Britain to concede responsible government, if grudgingly. In Jamaica, by contrast, when Governor Charles Grey suggested ‘instituting responsible government’ in 1849, the Colonial Office thought him nothing short of ‘reckless’.68 Holt’s analysis is astute, but it is noteworthy that Canada’s indigenous inhabitants are entirely absent from his, and the imperial government’s, discussions. Indeed, Holt adopts without question the nineteenth-century characterisation of British North America that writes out indigenous peoples. ‘By 1850’, writes Holt, ‘key British policymakers had begun to make distinctions between the future of their white colonies, such as Canada, and the black ones, such as Jamaica’.69 Holt relies heavily on Philip Buckner’s The Transition to Responsible Government for his discussion of Canada, but the focus on the conflict between Francophone and Anglophone settlers was common to almost all twentieth-century works on the emergence of self-government in British North America.70 In such ways, the legacy of Grey’s division of the colonial empire into two – the ‘white’ colonies, where British settler interests were paramount, and the ‘black’ colonies, where the non-European presence could not be ignored – has been perpetuated and circulated in historical scholarship. Historians of empire who write from an imperial British perspective have also reproduced the nineteenth-century tendency to distance metropolitan Britain, and Britons, from settler colonialism. It has become increasingly difficult to underplay Britain’s involvement in the slave trade and slavery (although the popular emphasis on abolition and emancipation persists); it is settlers and their descendants who must bear responsibility for the crimes of settler colonialism. In a particularly stark example, Bernard Porter argued in 2004 that: ‘Strictly speaking … the exploitation and extermination that are often attributed to British imperialism could be said rather to be the result of a lack of imperial control.’71 But, whilst not denying that settlers were usually the direct authors of violence against indigenous peoples, important questions remain about the imperial government’s motivations for retreating from taking responsibility for the Empire’s indigenous subjects and the protection of their rights. The APS undoubtedly perceived the imperial government’s increasing reluctance to interfere in settler–indigenous relations as a shaming refusal. At the heart of imperial government, Herman Merivale, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Colonial Office, mused on the ­benefits of responsible government in 1861: Still, when all allowances are made, it cannot be doubted that a consistent and regulated system of management of the natives by the home executive would be better, as regards justice towards the natives, than the arbitrary will of the settlers. Unfortunately no such system has ever been established by us, or seriously attempted.72

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Hence, to separate out, as Porter insists, ‘the imperial power’ from its ‘so-called settler “subjects” ’, or to contrast the miserable lives of the downtrodden metropolitan poor with the rosy prospects of emigrants,73 unduly exculpates Britain from failing to meet its acknowledged responsibilities. Integrating empire As indicated, echoes of Grey’s wilful silences – about aborigines, about their dispossession and about imperial responsibility – permeate divergent branches of current historical scholarship. What, then, might be the positive outcomes of more forcefully reintegrating the history of settler colonies with that of the rest of the Empire? Exploring the reasons for these silences and the denial of imperial responsibility that they imply – the divergence between how Britain’s former slave and settler colonies were treated – may provide us with opportunities to more fully understand and appreciate nineteenth-century British colonialism. First, it could lead to a more nuanced understanding of what settler colonialism actually entailed, creating a view that places the founding and enduring mythology of settlerism centre stage.74 Such an approach would not only support work that nuances our understanding of settler colonialism75 but would also illuminate the complicity of those who, while spatially removed from Britain’s settler colonies, oversaw, endorsed and enabled its processes: the politicians and civil servants; the land promoters and emigration agents; the supportive families of migrants; and the landed classes who paid the passages of their too-numerous tenants. In turn, this would allow the pursuit of a more inclusive history of how white colonisers – at home or in the Empire – justified and conducted imperial exploitation. In limited and divergent, but nonetheless significant, ways, contemporary Anglophone ‘settler nations’ – Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and the United States – have been forced to face up to issues of indigenous land rights and reconciliation. Like other former European imperial powers, Britain has used its geographical remove (except from its own immigrant communities) to avoid confronting aspects of its imperial past as directly. In some cases this disavowal has been the subject of debate – as with the refusal of former British premier Tony Blair to apologise in 2007 for Britain’s involvement in the slave trade, or the 2012 allegations against the government for ‘losing’ evidence relating to alleged British crimes in Malaya and Kenya. But in other cases – and the history of the settler colonies is certainly one – Britain’s complicity goes almost completely unremarked. An awareness of British imperial attitudes to indigenous peoples in settler colonies could have ramifications for scholars of the colonised as well. For example, it might complicate the too-immediate presumption that the legacies of slavery and emancipation are best contextualised via discussions of on-going labour exploitation. The ways, for instance, in which imperial and colonial ­legislation and practice worked to both dispossess and disenfranchise the Maori in the 1840s and 1850s have echoes in the Jamaican legislation of the same period and in discussions of emancipated slaves’ failure to improve – or deserve – their 143

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Caribbean small holdings.76 Equally the experiences at mid-century of the mixedrace settlers of Red River contrast intriguingly not only with endorsements of racial amalgamation in New Zealand at the same time, but also with attitudes towards mixed-race communities in the British Caribbean and Mauritius. To focus on some colonies rather than others, and on the exploited body rather than on the stolen land, can potentially mislead. Bringing colonialism and settler colonialism into the same frame could help us to better understand imperial violence and indigenous dispossession, as well as slavery and labour exploitation. Notes  1 L. A. Chamerovzow, ‘England and New Zealand’, The Colonial Intelligencer or Aborigines’ Friend (hereafter Colonial Intelligencer), 1:10 (December 1847), 171.  2 P. Burroughs, ‘Imperial institutions and the government of Empire’, in A. Porter (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire. Vol. 3. The Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1999), p. 185.  3 Ibid., pp. 187–90.  4 P. Edwards, ‘On home ground: settling land and domesticating difference in the “nonsettler” colonies of Burma and Cambodia’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 4:3 (2003).  5 J. M. Ward, ‘The colonial policy of Lord John Russell’s administration’, Historical Studies Australia and New Zealand, 9:35 (1960), 244–62; J. Parry, The Politics of Patriotism: English Liberalism, National Identity and Europe, 1830–1886 (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 184–90, 210.  6 Z. Laidlaw, Colonial Connections 1815–45: Patronage, the Information Revolution and Colonial Government (Manchester, 2005), pp. 44–5.  7 C. Bolt, Victorian Attitudes to Race (London, 1971); D. Lorimer, Colour, Class and the Victorians (Leicester, 1978); J. Cell, ‘The imperial conscience’, in Peter Marsh (ed.), The Conscience of the Victorian State (Sussex, 1979), p. 204.  8 P. Burroughs, British Attitudes towards Canada 1822–1849 (Scarborough, Ontario, 1971), p. 1.  9 A point that Parry has made with respect to parliamentary debates on foreign affairs as well as on colonial matters, Parry, Politics of Patriotism, pp. 13, 17. 10 Ibid., pp. 184–90. 11 Ward, ‘Colonial policy’. 12 P. Burroughs, ‘Henry George Grey, third Earl Grey (1802–1894), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004) online edn, May 2010, www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/11540, accessed 26 February 2012. 13 Ward, ‘Colonial policy’, pp. 246–8. 14 With the unacknowledged help of the civil servants, Henry Taylor, T. E. Elliott and Herman Merivale, as well as input from both his nephew-in-law, Lord Elgin, governorgeneral of Canada, and his former parliamentary under-secretary, Benjamin Hawes. Ward, ‘Colonial policy’, pp. 251–5. 15 Earl Grey, The Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell’s Administration, 2 vols (London, 1853). 16 P. Burroughs, ‘Liberal, paternalist or Cassandra? Earl Grey as a critic of colonial selfgovernment’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 18:1 (1990), 33–60; J. M.

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Ward, Colonial Self-government: The British Experience 1759–1856 (London, 1976), pp. 231–2, 235, 241, 248–50; M. Taylor, ‘The 1848 revolutions and the British Empire’, Past and Present, 166 (2000), 170–1, 176–9. 17 Grey, Colonial Policy, I, p. 13. 18 C. H. Currey, British Colonial Policy, 1783–1915 (London, 1916), p. 122; W. P. Morrell, British Colonial Policy in the Age of Peel and Russell (Oxford, 1930), pp. 523–7; Ward, Colonial Self-government, pp. 231–2, 328. 19 Grey, Colonial Policy, I, p. 14. 20 Ibid., p. 29. 21 Ibid., pp. 14–15 22 Ibid., pp. 26–7. 23 Ibid., pp. 318–19. 24 Ibid., p. 319. 25 For a contemporary Commons debate revealing of metropolitan attitudes to indigenous colonised subjects, and their ‘rights’, including contributions from William Gladstone, J. A. Roebuck, Lord John Russell, Benjamin Hawes, Sir Edward North Buxton and others, see House of Commons Debates, 15 April 1851, vol. 116, cols 226–86. P. Knaplund, Gladstone and Britain’s Imperial Policy (London, 1927), proved as keen to extol Gladstone’s humanitarianism as those who considered Grey’s colonial policy. Nineteenth-century humanitarians would have considered this interpretation hagiographical whitewashing in both cases. 26 James Belich characterises British intervention as moving ‘in spasms from 1833 to 1864: token in the beginning, minor in 1840, significant in 1846, substantial in 1860, massive in 1864’. J. Belich, Making Peoples: A History of the New Zealanders from Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century (Auckland, 1996), p. 181. On British attitudes to New Zealand land, see J. C. Weaver, ‘Frontiers into assets: the social construction of property in New Zealand, 1840–65’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 27:3 (1999), 17–54; M. Hickford, Lords of the Land: Indigenous Property Rights and the Jurisprudence of Empire (Oxford, 2011). 27 Letter from Amicus, Colonial Intelligencer, 1:3 (May 1847), 37–42. 28 Colonial Intelligencer, 1:1 (March 1847), 5–11. 29 Ibid. 30 For Grey’s gloss, see Colonial Policy, II, pp. 154–8. 31 Ibid., pp. 113–16. 32 Ward, ‘Colonial policy’, 249. For a discussion of the relationship between the 3rd Earl Grey and Governor Grey, see D. Salesa, Racial Crossings: Race, Intermarriage, and the Victorian British Empire (Oxford, 2011) pp. 107–13, 121–2. 33 Grey, Colonial Policy, II, p. 119. 34 Amalgamation, as Salesa has argued, was the policy advocated for New Zealand by the governor and accepted by the Colonial Office through this period: Racial Crossings, ch. 3. 35 Grey, Colonial Policy, II, pp. 121–2. 36 Ibid., pp. 125–6. 37 Ibid., p. 135. 38 Colonial Intelligencer, 1:1 (March 1847), 16. 39 B. Cooper, Alexander Kennedy Isbister: A Respectable Critic of the Honourable Company (Ottawa, 1988), pp. 10–12.

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40 J. M. Bumsted, Trials and Tribulations: The Red River Settlement and the Emergence of Manitoba (Winnipeg, 2003), pp. 97–101. 41 Ibid., p. 67. 42 The petitions and much of the correspondence were reproduced in the British parliamentary papers, British Parliamentary Papers [hereafter PP] 1849 (227) Hudson’s Bay Company (Red River Settlement). 43 A. Koonaubay Isbister to Earl Grey, 6 February 1847, PP 1849 (227), p. 9. 44 The most extensive treatment of Isbister’s life and campaign is Cooper, Isbister. 45 Ibid., pp. 91–2, 169, 187–90. 46 On Vancouver’s Island, see S. Royle, The Hudson’s Bay Company and Territorial Endeavour in Western Canada (London, 2011), pp. 8–14. 47 For further evidence of this, see the correspondence between Grey and his relative, Lord Elgin, while the latter was governor-general of Canada. The Elgin–Grey Papers, 1846–1852, 4 vols, ed. Sir Arthur G. Doughty (Ottawa, 1937). 48 ‘Isbister, Alexander Kennedy’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, www. biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?BioId=39727, accessed 1 August 2012. 49 See also the 1845 exchange between James Sinclair et al., ‘half Breeds’ of Red River, and Alexander Christie, Governor of Red River Settlement. Sinclair et al. to Christie, 29 August 1845; Christie to Sinclair et al., 5 September 1845, The Prairie West to 1905: A Canadian Source Book, ed. L. G. Thomas (Toronto, 1975), pp. 56–9. Mark McKenna’s discussion, in the Australian context, of the distinction asserted by settlers and imperial authorities between those who could lay claim to ‘British birthright’ (Europeans) and those who were merely British subjects (i.e. the colonised) helps to contextualise this lack of success: M. McKenna, ‘Transplanted to savage shores: indigenous Australians and British birthright in the mid nineteenth-century Australian colonies’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 13:1 (2012). 50 ‘Memorial to the Secretary of State for the Colonies’, 17 February 1847, PP 1849 (227), p. 1. 51 Pelly, Report on Memorial, 24 April 1847, PP 1849 (227), p. 21. 52 McKenna, ‘Transplanted to savage shores’; see also A. Curthoys and J. Mitchell, ‘ “Bring this Paper to the Good Governor”: Aboriginal petitioning in Britain’s Australian colonies’, in S. Belmessous (ed.), Native Claims: Indigenous Law against Empire, 1500–1920 (Oxford, 2012), pp. 182–203. 53 S. Drescher, The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation (Oxford and New York, 2002), provides a good discussion of how this developed. 54 McKenna, ‘Transplanted to savage shores’; A. Curthoys, ‘Special issue: Indigenous people and settler self government: Introduction’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 13:1 (2012). 55 E.g. D. B. Swinfen, Imperial Control of Colonial Legislation 1813–1865: A Study of British Policy towards Colonial Legislative Powers (Oxford, 1970), ch. 9. 56 E.g. H. E. Egerton, A Short History of British Colonial Policy, 4th edn (London, 1913), p. 270, who noted that ‘In fairness to the Dutch, it must be remembered that the Kaffir in Cape Colony was as much an intruder as the European.’ 57 Egerton, Colonial Policy, pp. 272, 338; Currey, British Colonial Policy, p. 63; Morrell, British Colonial Policy of Peel and Russell, pp. 26–7 58 See e.g. Currey, British Colonial Policy, p. 158, who noted without irony that the Dominions had been ‘animated in their dealings with [the natives], by the best tradi-

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tions of the mother country’. According to W. P. Morrell, British Colonial Policy in the mid-Victorian Age (Oxford, 1969), p. 478, the mid-Victorians duly found that the ‘presence of a large non-European population had not after all been a bar to the concession of responsible government to European settlers’. 59 Cell, ‘Imperial conscience’, pp. 196–7. 60 J. W. Cell, British Colonial Administration in the Mid-nineteenth Century: The Policymaking Process (New Haven and London, 1970), pp. ix–x. 61 See, e.g., P. Burroughs, Britain and Australia 1831–1855: A Study in Imperial Relations and Crown Lands Administration (Oxford, 1967); P. A. Buckner, The Transition to Responsible Government: British Policy in British North America, 1815–1850 (Westport, CT, 1985); G. Martin, Britain and the Origins of Canadian Confederation 1837–67 (London, 1995). 62 Cell, ‘Imperial conscience’. 63 See Curthoys, ‘Indigenous people and settler self government’. 64 C. Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination (Cambridge, 2002); J. Evans, Edward Eyre: Race and Colonial Governance (Otago, 2005). 65 E.g., T. J. Keegan, Colonial South Africa and the Origins of the Racial Order (Johannesburg, 1996); C. C. Crais, The Making of the Colonial Order: White Supremacy and Black Resistance in the Eastern Cape, 1770–1865 (Johannesburg, 1992). Another important exception includes works on race: e.g. P. Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–1930 (Ithaca, NY, 2003); Salesa, Racial Crossings. See also some of the recent ‘life writing’ treatments, such as D. Lambert and A. Lester (eds), Colonial Lives across the British Empire (Cambridge, 2006). 66 T. Holt, The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832–1938 (Baltimore, 1992). 67 A practice continued in the early twentieth century, see, e.g., Currey, British Colonial Policy, who writes of ‘Racial and political troubles in Canada’, without mentioning anyone other than English and French settlers, ch. 3. 68 Holt, Problem of Freedom, pp. 235–43. See also Taylor, ‘The 1848 revolutions’, 152–3, 161–2. 69 Holt, Problem of Freedom, p. 235. In a similar vein, Drescher analyses the transfer of ideas of systematic colonisation from the settler colonial to the plantation colony context without consideration of the dispossession intrinsic to settlement: ‘Free soil, like free trade, discouraged free labor.’ Mighty Experiment, quote at p. 58, but see also pp. 57–8, 134, 161, 224, 227. Hall, Civilising Subjects follows Holt on this point, pp. 203–4. However, in his important new work, Salesa places Canada and Jamaica alongside New Zealand in an illuminating discussion of early Victorian discussions of ‘racial amalgamation’, Racial Crossings, pp. 37–42. 70 Buckner, Transition to Responsible Government. Of course, this focus echoed Lord Durham’s famous analysis of ‘two nations warring in the bosom of a single state … a struggle not of principles, but of races’. Durham used the terms ‘race’ and ‘nation’ interchangeably. Durham, The Report and Despatches of the Earl of Durham (London, 1839), p. 8. 71 B. Porter, The Absent-minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain (Oxford, 2004), p. 14.

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72 H. Merivale, Lectures on Colonization and Colonies, new edition (London: 1861), Appendix, p. 518. 73 Porter, Absent-minded Imperialists, p. xii. 74 See P. Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event (London, 1999); P. Wolfe, ‘Land, labor, and difference: elementary structures of race’, American Historical Review, 106 (2001), 899–905; L. Veracini, Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Introduction (Basingstoke, 2010). 75 See, e.g. A. Perry, On the Edge of Empire: Gender, Race and the Making of British Columbia, 1849–71 (Toronto, 2001); P. Edmonds, Urbanizing Frontiers: Indigenous Peoples and Settlers in 19th-Century Pacific Rim Cities (Vancouver, 2010); G. Karskens, The Colony: A History of Early Sydney (Sydney, 2010). 76 Holt, Problem of Freedom, ch. 7; G. Heuman, The Killing Time: The Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica (London, 1994), ch. 6; Hall, Civilising Subjects. The number of governors who held posts both in the settler colonies and in the post-emancipation Caribbean – including Elgin, Barkly, Darling and Eyre – is also suggestive of avenues of profitable enquiry.

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Concepts of liberty: freedom, laissez-faire and the state after Britain’s abolition of slavery Richard Huzzey1

In 1830, an article in the Monthly Repository argued that ‘the proper use of government is to teach men the true enjoyment of their liberties’. The ‘men’ in this declaration were slave-holders, and the ‘true enjoyment of their liberties’ meant ‘such a degree of restraint as is necessary to prevent them from infringing on the rights of others’ – in other words, a state-enforced abolition of slavery.2 The author hoped West Indian emancipation would restrain the slave-holders and unshackle the liberties of enslaved men, women and children. However, after the Slave Trade Abolition Act of 1807 and the timid emancipation settlement of 1833–38, British arguments over how the state should best promote ‘the true enjoyment’ of liberties found a very different focus. Scholars have often been struck by the limited freedom granted to black Britons in the sugar colonies, as racist and economic imperatives quickly replaced humanitarian sympathy when they ‘did not use their liberty as was expected’, as Conservative MP Peter Borthwick put it in 1844.3 Recent research into the connections between anti-slavery ideas, the expansion of state activity and the extension of formal empire highlights the complex legacies of slavery for British politics long after West Indian emancipation. This essay explores how debates over the proper use of state power turned on conceptions of what the ‘freedom’ championed by anti-slavery campaigners should mean in practice.4 Historians of emancipation in Britain and other countries have been rightly sceptical of the ‘horrible gift of freedom’ bestowed on former slaves.5 Victorians’ eager consumption of slave-cultivated sugar or cotton from Latin America or the United States looks like a flight from humanitarian responsibility.6 Meanwhile, as Great Britain unleashed the Royal Navy to suppress illegal transatlantic slave trading, attacks on sovereignty and self-government precipitated annexations and imperial expansion across Africa.7 This was a spirit that begot new forms of unfree labour, from global indentured Indian migration to the exploitation of ‘traditional’ African slave economies within British protectorates, all against a backdrop of anti-slavery pride, patriotism and bombast.8 Because the adoption of anti-slavery pretensions as national policy led to so many different Victorian 149

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controversies, affecting different government departments or different sections of the globe in different decades, it has been easy for researchers to treat them as episodic and individual. Considering them synthetically may reveal why so many Britons might differ over policies but agree that, as David Brion Davis argues, ‘[n]egro slavery could stand as the antithesis not of autonomy but of a “freedom” which in practice included various kinds of coercion and manipulation’.9 Since ‘liberty’ could cover so many different meanings, it will be important to distinguish between different appeals to liberty. In a 1958 lecture, Isaiah Berlin popularised a distinction between ‘two concepts of liberty’. Negative liberty was ‘the area within which the subject – a person or group of persons – is or should be left to do or be what he is able to do or be, without interference by other persons’, while positive liberty was a ‘control or interference that can determine someone to do, or be, this rather than that’.10 While Berlin’s codification of the problem is famous, the tensions in liberal philosophy were very old; in his treatise On Liberty, for example, J. S. Mill chided political appeals to ‘self-government’ as meaning, too often, ‘not the government of each by himself, but of each by all the rest’.11 However, while Mill generally supported ‘human liberty’ against ‘social control’, he proposed ‘interfering’ for a range of ‘positive acts’ to ‘prevent harm to others’ or make a man ‘bear his fair share in the common defence, or in any other joint work necessary to the interest of the society of which he enjoys the protection’ – not to mention the duty not to cause ‘evil to others by … inaction’.12 Moreover, he supported education as the only means by which individuals would discover themselves and recognise what was truly good for them. While the critical reception of On Liberty confirmed that Mill’s preferred balance was radically controversial, his enemies and critics wrestled with the same problems, even if they squared autonomy with authority in radically different ways.13 Mill’s unusual genius lay in mapping the parameters of the prison he shared with his enemies, not escaping it. His sometime-nemesis Thomas Carlyle rejected appeals to liberty, fearing that individualism left the weak masses to cruel exploitation (at the best) and debased barbarism (at the worst). Carlyle occupied the polar opposite position about where the proper frontier of liberty lay, since ‘where folly is “emancipated,” and gets to govern, as it soon will, all is wrong’, and so concluded that ‘except by Mastership and Servantship, there is no conceivable deliverance from Tyranny and Slavery’.14 By examining Victorian languages of liberty in their appeals to be free from and to be free to, it should be possible to sketch the variety of interpretations without promoting Mill, Carlyle or any other individual as typical. Berlin’s categorisation has been controversial.15 The overlapping claims of liberty meant that ‘[f]reedom for the pike is death for the minnows’, as Berlin put it.16 Precisely because of the frailties of these distinctions in practice, the concepts remain useful in considering the political languages of liberty, when advocates revealed what they understood it to mean. In considering British emancipation or anti-slavery policies, Victorians might differ on whose liberty – that of freed people, planters or domestic consumers? – to prioritise and disagree on what the qualities of true liberty – independence, autonomy or virtue? – were. By uncover150

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ing the strange ways in which concepts of positive and negative liberty could be mixed together, we may reveal how Victorian concepts of liberty fell between the cracks in Berlin’s definitions; hence, this essay does not impose anachronistic distinctions on nineteenth-century debates but, rather, shows why most writers and politicians did not conform to them. A study of controversies about the post-emancipation West Indies and then an examination of the international and imperial context of anti-slavery debates may reveal contests over the size, dimensions and purpose of the state, but also the role, status and agency of free subjects in an anti-slavery empire.17 That will not resolve the inherent problems of distinguishing between types of freedom, or reveal anything new about the social realities of emancipation. However, it may disentangle concepts from methods and so bring us closer to understanding anti-slavery on the same terms as did the Victorians themselves.18 By studying concepts of liberty and their relationship to the state, this essay will offers to three sets of conclusions. Firstly, it will be possible to see what is missing from Berlin’s ‘two concepts of liberty’ that Victorians valued and rationed (and which some recent historians and philosophers have anatomised). Secondly, it will become clear that fierce disputes over anti-slavery policies could foster surprising agreement about the capabilities of former slaves. Thirdly, it may be possible to suggest how the study of anti-slavery debates points the way to new political histories of liberty, authority, state and market in Victorian Britain. Liberty emancipated Although experiences differed across the islands of the British Caribbean, state emancipation exposed freed slaves to a legal and extra-legal campaign intimidating them into accepting their inferior social and economic status. Removed from slavery, and ultimately the pseudo-slavery of apprenticeship, black subjects were meant to accept the role of agricultural labourers, though now disciplined by wages, laws or convention rather than the whip.19 In the decades after emancipation, it is not hard to find advocates of either statist or laissez-faire policies emphasising that freed people should be forced to be free in the proper way. Henry Taylor, a key civil servant devising West Indian policy, mentioned in his literary writings that those ‘whose liberty of action is disproportionate to their strength of judgement or of self-control, … must therefore either oppress their conscience, or vex them with … an ungoverned will’.20 In his work for the Colonial Office he promoted, in this vein, legal coercion against ‘those who should be labourers’ but tried to subsist by themselves; he regretted that Colonial Secretary Lord Howick (later the third Earl Grey) did not impose a poll tax, forcing freed people to work for cash wages.21 A pessimistic, hierarchical notion of black freedom also typified the laissez-faire ideas of Sir James Stephen, Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Colonial Office, author of the 1833 Act and son of the famous abolitionist whose name he shared. Examining the state of the West Indies in 1840, he a­ dvocated ‘the dread of starving’ as a replacement for ‘the dread of being flogged’.22 151

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Given the grossest cases of abuse or neglect that prospered in the Victorian metropole, such debates over the proper tactics for controlling black subjects would not be surprising – but for the fact that they came as the result of a popular anti-slavery campaign accompanied by humanitarian celebrations of human freedom.23 A ‘liberal’ thinker such as Stephen and a paternalist such as Taylor disagreed only over whether a wage-labour market would forge the subservient population they hoped to see after emancipation. Both assumed that freed people needed positive liberty thrust upon them, to teach how they ought to feel free.24 In his infamous depiction of ‘Quashee’ eating pumpkins rather working, Taylor’s sometime-friend Thomas Carlyle exaggerated common anxieties that freed slaves could not be trusted to use their freedom to work hard for white planters. Carlyle condemned market theories, but shared with market-orientated thinkers a fundamental desire to see an orderly, productive workforce rather than a free, autonomous community in the West Indies.25 In his essays on ‘the negro question’ or ‘the nigger question’, Carlyle condemned market inducements, but he was original only in temper and degree when suggesting that ‘the first “right” ’ of any ‘poor, indolent blockhead, black or white’ was ‘that whatsoever wiser, more industrious person may be passing that way, shall endeavour to “emancipate” him from his indolence, and … compel him, since inducing will not serve, to do the work he is fit for’.26 A widely repeated stereotype of black laziness, satisfied with subsistence alone, informed fears that the radical implications of emancipation – black agency, choice, entrepreneurship and independence – would unacceptably strangle the commodity export market and the sugar colonies’ prosperity. Because the choice of lower wages for greater autonomy was judged irrational, almost all politicians agreed that free people should use their liberty in ‘rational’ ways. Although the Colonial Office initially promoted gentler labour laws in the sugar islands than those in force in Britain, politicians and civil servants quickly retreated from this position. In order to enjoy proper ‘liberty’, vigilant control must stimulate hard work and commodity production, whether through wages and want or compulsion and coercion.27 Far more mainstream figures warned that Jamaica and other colonies might be ‘reduced to the condition of St. Domingo’ through black licence and sloth. The Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, feared, in 1841, ‘the occupation of the soil by negroes, content with the bare necessaries of life – the mere agricultural produce of the country – who are to raise no one exportable commodity – who can, therefore, have no trade with England’.28 Peel’s screed against the economic priorities of freed people came during a debate over free trade in sugar, where state passivity and state activity were pitted against each other in the common pursuit of black subjugation. In 1841, Peel defended the protective tariffs for West Indian sugar, but by 1846 he and  the majority Whig government supported free trade as the only way of exposing the colonies to the competitive pressures that would vindicate emancipation. In the bitter debates surrounding this question, the state tariffs protecting the ‘great experiment’ of West Indian emancipation were ranked against Britons’ laissez152

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faire freedom to buy cheap foreign sugar. Both sides were largely concerned with whether state support or market freedom would prove the better engine of West Indian prosperity. This was a test of faith in free trade and whether the market was a force for creative destruction or destructive destruction. The rival camps could present their preferred recipe – a closed imperial economy or a freer world market – as a way of controlling black freedom. Defending his party’s laissez-faire trade policy, the Whig-Liberal minister Earl Grey promised ‘adequate motive to induce the Negro to submit to continuous labour’, selling market competition for the virtues it would force upon former slaves; he suggested that protectionist policies ‘acting artificially to enhance’ wages ‘had contributed so much to encourage idleness and obstruct the progress of civilisation’ by supporting licentious, indulgent liberty.29 The overwhelming majority of protectionists and free traders differed only over whose recipe secured both free-labour production and metropolitan plenty; a handful of lonely humanitarians offered a fundamental choice between black autonomy and colonial prosperity.30 While legislators were divided on the question of tariffs, the return of restrictive labour laws in the West Indian colonies proved palatable to all but the purest devotees of laissez-faire methods. A critic of monopoly such as Herman Merivale, an official-cum-economist, would still look to state policy ‘in lowering the cost of production of colonial articles’, given that ‘the growth of wealth alone can ensure the growth of civilization’ amongst former slaves. Returning to his 1839–41 lectures after twenty years, he mourned the inadequacy of attempts to replicate the low wages of land-scarce Barbados in land-rich colonies such as Jamaica.31 However, it was not simply the ratio of land to population in each colony that decided whether freed people found alternatives to plantation wages. Law mattered too. Planters in Belize, for example, used a version of master-and-servant law to keep freed slaves under discipline as indebted labourers, not unlike the Indian migrants brought to other colonies.32 In British Guiana, freed men faced prohibitive fees or taxes on licences for ‘boats, canoes, carts and mules’ or working independently as traders, porters or charcoal manufacturers, with imprisonment for those who flouted them.33 As Diana Paton’s work on Jamaica suggests, colonial authorities increasingly placed violent coercion under state control but, throughout the 1840s, used penal sanction to enforce labour discipline.34 If the Colonial Office stopped the harshest ‘vagrancy’ laws at first, officials became more tolerant of coercion and less faithful to wage-labour markets.35 The persecution of ‘squatting’ underlined expectations that, since land reform played no part in emancipation, the only legitimate choice was plantation employment.36 In Jamaica, black small holders growing their own produce ‘walked fifteen to twenty miles with a very small parcel of produce – bananas, coffee, chickens – in a basket on their heads. These were not lazy people’, as Thomas Holt points out.37 Their choice to participate in a local market rather than the international sugar market was judged irrational, however: state power became more ­palatable to ­laissez-faire observers when it might stop spiralling wage demands and the diversification of black economic activities.38 It is wrong to see Britain’s 153

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post-emancipation colonies as unflinching experiments in negative liberty, where a doctrinaire laissez-faire prevented the vigilant fabrication of a better, freer society for former slaves. Far from restricting emancipation to a passive definition of legal freedom, British policies retained activist, statist instincts in maintaining social or economic inequalities as well as preventing the grossest abuses of the planters. Even for ‘liberal’ thinkers, the principles of the market left undefined what a ‘natural’ condition of freedom was, allowing politicians to strip away supposedly artificial aspects of the status quo, retain vigilant control in other areas and so engender the qualities demanded of freed people. If any sphere of state or voluntary action might foster an attachment to individual spontaneity, in deed as well as rhetoric, it would be the education of freed people. From 1835 to 1845, Britain spent an average of £20,000 a year on a Negro Education Grant.39 A little of the money assigned to support clergy, £23,000 a year until 1868, also went towards schools for black West Indians, though most efforts died away with the British government’s grant.40 The brief decade of schooling was founded, as the first inspector of schools suggested, on a belief that ‘[w]hatever objection may exist in more advanced societies to the principle of compulsory education’, the need to train freed slaves was so great that ‘the members ought to have it forced upon them by legislative process’.41 Charles Latrobe, appointed by the government to review West Indian education in 1837, recommended that schools must teach divinity and literacy while still impressing ‘the necessity of submitting to labour’.42 In large part, the state supported the voluntary initiative of the Lady Mico charity to create non-denominational schools across the sugar islands.43 Sir George Grey, as under-secretary for the Colonies, applauded (and funded) their work ‘to improve the moral condition of the Emancipation population’.44 Even those missionaries optimistic about freed people’s development tended to see education as a way of internalising self-control, not exploring individual talents: the Rev. J. Sterling hoped schooling would prevent ‘consciousness of their own independent value as rational beings without reference to the purposes for which they may be profitable for others’.45 So much for education helping freed people to choose and realise their own liberties. Authorising liberty In seeking a particular type of liberty, which made freed people behave as they ought, advocates diverging over laissez-faire and statist solutions could still share the tyrannies Berlin feared from promises of positive liberty.46 Conflicting principles of liberty or roles for the state could mix freely with attitudes towards racial capacity and equality: quarrels in the twenty years following emancipation did not simply pit abolitionist radicals calling for black welfare against racist reactionaries cracking the whip of the market.47 Models of liberty as legal freedom or freedom in self-fulfilment were not aligned neatly with pessimism or optimism about people of colour. As in other areas of the British Empire, claims of liberty saw universal hopes wrestling with the pessimism of difference; this was true for 154

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free marketeers as much as statists.48 Indeed, the complicated nature of political debates over whose liberties to restrain in order to promote the liberties of others made abstract consistency impossible.49 In concert with other state initiatives, the British government and colonial authorities sought to keep down wages by encouraging emigration to the West Indies from Africa, the United States and India. Immediately after the Emancipation Act, John Gladstone had pioneered indentured labour as a substitute for slave labour in his Guiana plantations. Humanitarian campaigners warned that this could lend cover to a new slave trade and quickly won restrictions and regulation from the government. Meanwhile, some parliamentarians sympathised with the planters and pleaded that ‘the natives of India should be at liberty to dispose of their labour to the best advantage’, and they soon convinced parliamentarians that the law ‘imposes strange and servile restrictions on the liberty and means of livelihood of many of the Indian people’.50 As wage bills in the West Indies spiralled in the later 1840s, Whig Prime Minister Lord John Russell recanted and endorsed these schemes. While regulation and oversight remained, Russell offered taxpayers’ money to subsidise new schemes of indenture.51 Curiously, the planters’ liberty to engage wage labourers without state interference accompanied demands for state sponsorship for the migration. The Marquess of Clanricarde gave voice to this contradiction in an 1857 speech, where he insisted that planters ‘ought to be allowed liberty to procure labour, and also assistance in obtaining it’.52 The case for wage-­suppressing emigration could be made simultaneously in terms of market freedom and state intervention, demanding a negative liberty to employ and a positive liberty to access cheap labour. By 1869 the Liberal MP Sir Charles Adderley would look back on those ‘needless and mischevious restrictions’ of past decades for ‘frustrating instead of promoting the main chance of a prosperous transition from slavery into the freedom which we were inaugurating’.53 John Bright and Thomas Wakley were rare in sticking to market principles even where they favoured former slaves, arguing that the state had no business controlling the wage bills of West Indian planters.54 In practice, appeals to laissez-faire incubated the hope of vigilant control – encouraging preferred behaviour – and not markets as ends in themselves – as Bright and Wakley saw them. More often, laissez-faire allies accepted low wages as a ‘natural’ market condition that the state should engineer. Within the British labour market, devotees of markets (even Bright) saw collective bargaining by employees as fettering, not freeing, workers (though Henry Fawcett and Mill made the lonely case for that consistency).55 Most Victorians, whatever their views on laissez-faire and however fierce their prejudice towards people of colour, prescribed liberty in the consequences of policies.56 The beleaguered advocates of black agency were equally capricious. In 1848, the abolitionists of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS) held a conference bemoaning that, in the decade since the end of apprenticeship, the Contract Ordinance had ‘been virtually repealed, and a series of laws, 155

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unjust in principle and oppressive in practice, have been substituted for it’.57 In their view, coercion was an unnatural interference in freed peoples’ right to economic freedom. However, having initially claimed that state regulation or bans on indentured migration were necessary, campaigners changed tack after mid-­century, framing their case in terms of migrants’ liberty to make free decisions about their employment and travel. At the BFASS conference, ‘friends of humanity’ resolved that they were ‘not opposed to a perfectly free immigration, unfettered by unjust laws or coercive police regulations’ for Indians. The same resolutions, however, also suggested that ‘Government control’ and regulation were necessary for African migrants. This distinction was founded on an assumption that Indian migrants came from a society where – unless coerced by state power or deception – labourers could make rational choices, whereas Africans outside British settlements on the West Coast were ‘not free, nor would be permitted, independently of the will of their chiefs, to emigrate’.58 These abolitionists applied a single standard of agency for foreign peoples, and so sought the right balance of opportunity and security for emigrants through both the retrenchment of imperial coercion of Indians and the promotion of state control in African migration. They straddled – or, rather, strained – concepts of liberty when considering how to ensure that migrants made authentic choices, free from delusion and duplicity as well as restraint. However, it is striking not how much but how little the radical abolitionists diverged from the political parties they chided.59 While the BFASS opposed the exploitation of indentured labourers or the legal disabilities deployed against freed people, it still expected a successful process of emancipation to produce the same, prosperous economy prized by Peel, Grey and their fellow statesmen. Abolitionists expected compassion rather than compulsion to produce this result, but few embraced the unpredictable consequences of black self-determination or a West-Indian retreat from the imperial economy. A sincere humanitarian such as the Birmingham Quaker Joseph Sturge, the leading force in the BFASS, supported sugar protection and government regulation in pursuit of a harmonious, hierarchical freedom in the West Indies, a position quite similar to that of government ministers.60 In an 1838 book attacking post-emancipation policies, Sturge and his co-author, Thomas Harvey, advocated both ‘nothing less than unfettered freedom’ and ‘freedom protected, not circumscribed, by new laws’. However, this appeal to both positive and negative liberty was a means to the end of ensuring that ‘the cultivation of the great staples of the colonies go on with uninterrupted success’, since ‘[f]ew will be prepared to dispute the advantages which the division and combination of labor [sic], under the direction of capital and skill, offer in comparison with that simple condition of society, in which each individual supplies all his various wants with his own hands’.61 Moreover, when he brought the freed Jamaican James Williams to Britain in 1837 to testify against the apprenticeship system, Sturge soon grew disturbed by the younger man’s independent streak. Believing that ‘all the attention … produced an unfavourable effect on him’, Sturge had Williams shipped back to Jamaica as ‘the one means of bringing 156

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him to a proper sense of his situation is for him to be compelled to labour for his bread’.62 Sturge was still hostage to his expectations of hierarchy, deference and gratitude in how he wanted black liberty used; if he rejected the prejudice of racist essentialism, he sustained those of civilisation and propriety.63 States of liberty If West Indian emancipation unleashed disputes about dismantling of sugar tariffs and regulating indentured labour, then anti-slavery politics tested Britons’ faith in the state in other ways. The Royal Navy’s forlorn campaign against the transatlantic slave trade, from roughly 1808 to 1870, saw state military power deployed to suppress the illegal export of enslaved Africans to the New World. A series of treaties secured a mutual right of search and international courts with many foreign powers, while the British Vice-Admiralty Courts dealt with British subjects and those trafficking slaves into British territories.64 British diplomacy could be nasty, brutish and short tempered: when Portugal and Brazil threatened to stop cooperation, in 1839 and 1845 respectively, both Whig and Tory governments sought to apply British domestic law to an unwilling foreign partner. In the case of Brazil, Lord Aberdeen’s Act presumed that if a foreign government would not give Britain the rights required to catch slave traders, then Parliament could unilaterally assume that authority, claiming this right under an 1817 treaty with Portugal that abolished the slave trade to Brazil.65 Alongside the legal framework of suppression, secured through a mixture of bribery, threats and presumption, military violence provided the means of apprehending Britons or foreigners who plied the Atlantic slave trade illegally. Varying from year to year, the cost of slave-trade suppression reached as much as half a million pounds and 1% of total government expenditure near mid-century – a staggering sum for a parsimonious state apparatus to spend on an anti-slavery enterprise.66 To an advocate of the naval squadron’s activities, such as sometimeForeign Secretary and Prime Minister Viscount Palmerston, the sailors acted as ‘the police’.67 For him, the Royal Navy was a West African Leviathan, interposing in a natural order that would otherwise have seen the continent (and its trade) slip into violence, anarchy and oppression. Slave traders were cast as pirates, disrupting ‘native’ efforts to trade with legitimate British merchants.68 In this scheme, state violence was needed to secure the liberties of Africans from the tyrannical slave traders, just as a night-watchman, a Peeler or a judge in the British Isles protected property as a basic defence of liberty. By contrast, the principal critics of naval power painted the suppression campaign in a wholly different light. To MP William Hutt, a radical free trader, the well-intentioned idiocy of a military campaign had actually prevented the free market’s natural tendency to promote free labour and strangle slave-holding. ‘Let the slave-trade alone, and the excess of the evil would rapidly work its own cure’, this logic went.69 Far from supporting the slave trade, advocates promised that its final abolition would come only from international amity and the spread of moral 157

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sentiments, not the abrasive gunboat diplomacy favoured by Palmerston. Press advocates of withdrawing the West Africa squadron, such the Examiner, argued that ‘[w]e must make anti-slavery majorities in Africa, Cuba, and Brazil, before we think of international penal laws enforced by national navies’.70 In this calculus, British naval efforts inflated the price paid for slaves, increased the suffering of those packed aboard and stifled the natural development of foreign anti-slavery.71 The liberty of Africans, the liberties of foreigners and the benevolent inaction of the British state might hence be cast together. By respecting other countries, removing from anti-slavery the taint of Perfidious Albion’s wickedness and permitting others to realise that civilisation was incompatible with slave-holding, a final victory might be won. Hutt and his allies thought naval suppression was preventing authentic, local anti-slavery abroad – and that only by emancipation in Brazil, Cuba and other nations importing slaves illegally would suppress slave trade.72 Clearly, the physical power of Palmerston’s ‘police’ and the market forces of Hutt’s ‘cure’ divided the power of politicians, the state and military force to redesign the world. This pivoted on Britons’ trust in free markets and maximum liberty to correct and purify any errors in the human spirit, though they could agree on certain points. Like his coercionist enemies, Hutt supported British laws against slavery and slave trading, even if he saw attempts to police the illegal slave trades of foreigners as counterproductive. Even amongst Palmerstonian suppressionists, there was no appetite for interfering directly in the domestic laws on slave-holding in foreign countries. When they discussed the sovereignty of recalcitrant Brazilians or Cubans, coercionists and anti-coercionists, both sides shared a cavalier attitude to the freedom of Africans, which was the ultimate end of any slave-trade suppression. In expecting a ‘glut’ of slaves to convince slave-importing countries to enforce their old slave-trade abolition laws, Hutt was willing to sacrifice a good many lives to the pedagogy of market forces. Moreover, the effects of an activist policy of naval suppression, encouraging disrespect for the sovereignty of African nations, were barely discussed. Frustration at continuing African participation in the slave trade, real or imagined, spurred British statesmen to incursions and later annexations.73 British intervention in Lagos in 1851 and its annexation in 1861 were harbingers for the vast extension of European empires over Africa in the later nineteenth century.74 British politicians and the public could disagree on the role of state intervention while sharing a common enmity for slavery. In hoping to end the Atlantic slave trade, by whatever means, they looked to prevent enslavement in ‘civilised’ societies. A dislike for the export slave trade did not, however, extend to anxieties or obligations relating to the freedom of those saved from the Atlantic traffic, whether left in Africa or plucked from the bowels of slave ships. Having been captured by the Royal Navy, liberated Africans aboard slave ships faced a continuing nightmare, since disease and overcrowding did not flee when a British sailor took the helm; as Hutt and his allies noted, sailing captured slavers for adjudication in far-off courts often prolonged the Africans’ journey and suffering. Politicians 158

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rarely discussed the fate of those who did survive their liberation. Britain sent liberated Africans to Sierra Leone, St Helena or the British West Indies to establish new lives and livelihoods. Like the early black founders of Sierra Leone, however, these liberated Africans found that British liberty meant coerced labour to prepare them for a proper use of their freedom. Whether they were forcibly enlisted in the army or put to work under contracts of indenture, freedom might have seemed remarkably similar to enslavement.75 In discussing where to settle freed Africans in the Caribbean, officials in London acknowledged that independent communities could be started in colonies such as the Bahamas, free from sugar cultivation, but that ‘a system of dependence and subjection’ in plantation labour would civilise them and help the prospects of the great experiment in emancipation.76 London’s Colonial Office tended to have a more restrictive view of the impositions that indentured labour contracts might place on the liberty of these workers than planters or local governors did.77 However, alongside black West Indians freed by the Emancipation Act, liberated Africans were not trusted with autonomy at the moment of self-ownership and full subjecthood under the law; while the tyrannous restraint of slavery might be lifted, the wholesome instruction of improvement might remain. Metropolitan watchdogs might recoil from indentured labour that came too close to slavery or from criminal codes that served employers’ interests too obscenely, but these were differences over how to inculcate labour discipline, not about the capabilities of labourers. Similarly, constitutional battles between West Indian planters and agents of the Colonial Office concerned the location and calibration of white authority, as James Patterson Smith suggests. ‘Local paternalism having failed, long distance paternalism’ would get the measure of authority and liberty right. The abolition of Jamaica’s planter-dominated representative government, in 1866, led to more generous policies in some areas, including land tenure, but still looked to improve ‘stationary races’, not free them.78 The only proper freedom for Africans – liberated in the Atlantic or living in Africa – came through direction of their choices and, in particular, their continued labour. It was not only Carlyle who wished ‘to abolish the abuses of slavery, and save the precious thing in it’.79 In his debates over ‘the Negro question’ (1849–50) and the prosecution of Governor Edward Eyre (1865–68), Mill was clearly more optimistic than Carlyle about the benefits of equality before the law and doses of negative liberty for freed people. As Sheth suggests, Mill had an unusual disinterest in innate nature, coming as close as any Victorian to optimism about individuals’ capacity for authentic, uncoerced self-development. He did not see markets revealing innate talents so much as allowing for variety and experimentation.80 Other advocates of negative liberty and unconstraint might not clearly distinguish ends and methods in the result of market competition, though they often shared Mill’s distinction between promoting economic freedom in the marketplace and reserving some matters for justice and obligation (meaning that all advocates of laissez-faire were rather selective devotees of it in practice).81 However, even Mill never showed much faith that other races would become equals of white Britons (rather, perhaps, that they 159

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could start improving too, but never quite catch up). Hampered by his own sense of superiority, he could not suggest that a non-white ­majority – in Jamaica or India – should enjoy the same avenues for liberty as Great Britain itself. In putting non-white peoples and ‘barbarians’ alongside children in a special category of imperfect individual agents, Mill was closer to Carlyle’s assumption of racial supremacy than we might expect.82 For Mill, it was servile ignorance and a lack of civilisation that made Indians or Africans unqualified for equal liberty. As much as he wished to see them develop their own capacity for free choice, by enjoying some liberties, he could not escape his own subjective judgement of what were debased, lower desires and discovered, higher liberties.83 Hence, in defining a private sphere of ‘individual taste’ and ‘human development’, Mill still felt that ‘liberty is often granted where it should be withheld, as well as withheld where it ought to be granted’.84 While attacking Carlyle’s presumption that work was the end of life, he still imagined that a free society in the West Indies (or Britain, for that matter) would involve labourers under the direction of talented bosses (if the planters could just reform themselves). Hence, former slaves should be ‘left to themselves, and to the chances which the arrangements of existing society provide for those who have no resource but their labour’ since ‘if he work not, at this work of necessity, neither shall he eat’.85 Freedom is slavery? After observing these debates, readers may fear that they have stumbled upon a peculiar reworking of George Orwell’s 1984, where the government assured workers that ‘freedom is slavery’. In pointing out the flaws in anti-slavery thinking after emancipation, it is not necessary to retreat into doublethink. It is possible to offer three conclusions – about the limits that notions of liberty placed upon anti-slavery politics; about hierarchies of liberty in Victorian Britain; and about liberty’s relationship to the state or market. Firstly, this study suggests that both languages of ‘individual spontaneity’ and ‘vigilant control’ could yield pessimistic, directive models of black emancipation. Just as free and slave labour are part of a continuum, not binary poles, of human experience, so the freedoms from and to have many dimensions.86 Quentin Skinner has suggested that a focus on one kind of negative liberty, defended by Thomas Hobbes, has hidden ‘the tradition that conceptualises the idea of negative liberty not as absence of interference but as absence of dependence’. Promoted by the ancient and early modern republicans he studies, Skinner sees that ‘if we are prepared to grant that freedom can be limited by coercion, we cannot exclude that it may also be limited by servitude, or at least not on the ground that the constraint involved is merely self-constraint’. In other words, the mere absence of restraints can still be impaired by ‘slipping into a state of subjugation to arbitrary power’. Even those who spoke of anti-slavery as freedom from coercion wanted to see former slaves (and former slave-owners) enjoy liberty in a particular way, 160

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disposing them ‘to make and avoid certain choices’ and ‘thus to place clear constraints on … freedom of action’.87 That wealth of self-constraint alongside formal freedom is what almost all British politicians hoped to see in the West Indies; that is why the language of negative liberty could so easily accompany expectations of discipline. The work of philosopher John Christman can similarly help to understand why aspirations for positive liberty so easily slipped between enabling and directing the free action of former slaves. As Christman notes, ‘insofar as positive liberty requires an external value condition (in its demand of rationality), it is not in conflict with the severest form of tyranny – interference with a person based on her mistaken values in the supposed name of freedom itself’. Isaiah Berlin, at the height of the Cold War, feared exactly this use of positive liberty. However, Christman argues that ‘the conditions of autonomy essentially bear on the formation of preferences’ and these ‘cannot be the result of oppressive conditions or blind, unreflective conformity’; by offering ‘a “content neutral” conception of positive freedom’ he offers an internal, ‘individual positive freedom that avoids these worries of tyranny’ while retaining autonomy as distinct from inhibition.88 It is a lack of this subjective autonomy – and its accompanying focus on cultivating a particular set of values, rationalities and ends – that poisoned with prescription all Victorian attempts to educate and develop the freedom of former slaves. Between them, Skinner’s and Christman’s refinements reveal why anti-slavery policies could celebrate both negative and positive liberties while internalising restraints of dependence and externalising valuations of rationality. With very few exceptions, Victorian politicians, abolitionists and the public expected antislavery freedom to emerge amidst hierarchy and dependence or to cultivate values and preferences of which they approved. Paradoxically, the immediate emancipation of independence (espoused, in different ways, by Skinner’s and Christman’s corollaries) was retarded by the logic that the degradations of dependency would lead liberty to be abused and hence degrade the dependent into further dependency. It is not that Victorians ignored independence, character or autonomy, far from it, but that they could not trust dependents with them.89 As historian Eugenio Biagini argues, ‘the real questions in the history of both republicanism and liberalism are not about “positive” or “negative” liberty, but about who should enjoy such liberties in the first place’.90 It is this question that highlights the value of reading anti-slavery politics through the philosophy of liberty and prompts a second set of conclusions. In debates about the consequences of anti-slavery principles, rhetorical and theoretical claims of negative or positive liberty rarely escaped the strangling grasp of racial prejudice and pessimism about the capacity of Africans to use their freedom wisely. Ideas about race were tightly wound into notions of civilisation, religion, culture, nation, climate and biology, and recent research has suggested that Victorian thinking, both scientific and popular, was far messier and incoherent than hitherto imagined.91 Precisely because Victorian elites valued i­ndependence – manliness, character and judgement – in themselves, they doubted it could 161

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be found amongst those inferior in race, station, gender or civilisation. Though Skinner contrasts the virtuous ‘republican liberty’ of Ancient Rome and the Renaissance with the dominant ‘negative liberty’ of nineteenth-century ‘classical liberalism’, Biagini has highlighted that Victorians like Mill valued independence as much as unrestraint.92 Skinner’s critique of nineteenth-century liberals such as Mill, however, holds true for the types of negative liberty that he might extend to ill-educated slaves, workers or peasants. Mill himself noted this danger when he warned that self-government could mean ‘not the government of each by himself, but of each by all the rest’. He wished for education to help Britons choose what they wished to do with liberty (as Christman would), and yet Mill still found it hard to avoid imposing his own values when deciding which choices of others were free and not deluded.93 And yet, while he escaped the sexism of his peers, who denied women the liberties of men, Mill was not so radical in expecting poorer or blacker peoples to know their own liberties, thanks to their degraded state; as Catherine Hall suggests, he ‘emphasized the potential for equality rather than an equality which was yet fully realised’.94 The great liberal rejected ‘imputing every difference which he finds among human beings to an original difference of nature’ but replaced this with ‘the laws of the formation of character’ that could have strangled ‘the original seedling’ from ‘spontaneous improvement’ of ‘internal development’ without ‘aid from other individuals or peoples’.95 He was untypically sophisticated, but even the author of On Liberty strayed away from the negative liberty of independence, as identified by Skinner, and away from the positive liberty of self-development, as promoted by Christman. By different reasoning, Carlyle’s fellow paternalist Sir Henry Taylor could use his Colonial Office position and his literary work to echo Machiavelli’s injunction that scare resources made colonists use their liberty more prudently; meanwhile, he saw liberty for responsible Englishmen in ‘the end’ of ‘independence and elevation of the minds of individual men’, but thought too much freedom would ruin freed slaves.96 We need to assay the currency of liberty that held such purchase over Victorian languages, ideas and practices by weighing how Britons differed on when, and how and for whom, liberty could inculcate good judgement. Different frailties – imagined in poverty, gender or race – could require different treatments, but they all elicited assessments of how liberty would create right-thinking freedom and not degrading licence. Considering calls for full political freedoms for working men, Oxford’s Regius Professor of Modern History Goldwyn Smith suggested in 1859 that such a dilemma was completely solved for the ancients by slavery, which placed at once out of the pale of political existence those whose capability of using rightly political power is now the great and pressing doubt. … So, again, with the question of the education of the people, which was a simple one when the people were all freemen, supported in intellectual leisure by a multitude of slaves.97

This was the same calculation, with different variables, as the ‘negro problem’ of the emancipated colonies, where maintaining hierarchy without recourse to 162

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slavery presented its own dilemma for distributing liberties amongst free subjects.98 Robert Knox spoke for this prejudice when he argued in 1850 that ‘all men love liberty, in one sense or another; but all do not attach to the term same ideas. Each race interprets the expression differently.’99 While he attached more importance to biological explanations of race than did his peers, Knox was not unusual in valuing liberty only by his respect for its recipients. A tendency to see liberty as the gift of superiors or as a tool for yielding desirable behaviours in inferiors relates to the third set of conclusions, regarding the study of liberty and the Victorian state. As discussed, markets and the state could both be championed as a way to impose values on others, rather than a way of offering neutrality; equally, law and the absence of laws could both promote neglect rather than capabilities. The state could be used or discarded, depending on the ends, for an expansive, positive view of emancipation or a narrow, negative concept of legal freedom; of course, neither model actually respected the rationality and choices of freed slaves, lacking as both did the robustness of Skinner’s uncoerced negative liberty or the autonomy of Christman’s individual positive liberty. By picking and choosing which restraints were arbitrary and which guaranteed the liberties of freed people – planters or white taxpayers back in the British Isles – the state was still refereeing competing claims for freedom; in guaranteeing the negative liberty of black West Indians by abolishing the legal institution of slavery, the state had placed an arbitrary restraint on the established activity and property of slave-holders. In deciding which impositions are artificial restraints on freedom, even advocates of negative liberty engaged in prescription; a state, even a very weak one, makes positive choices about the liberties protected by the police and the types of property to recognise and defend (such as whether the ownership of humans will be permitted and protected by the law). Hence, advocates of laissez-faire talked of freedom from restraint while picking and choosing which activities of the state to remove or retain. In his revealing work on Victorian corporate capitalism, Paul Johnson concludes that ‘the market … was a legal and ideological construct, laden with value judgements and structured to promote or protect certain interests’.100 And just as the market was a regulated, organised place of exchange, so laissezfaire politicians made normative judgements in choosing where the state should and should not tread. Generations of historians of nineteenth-century Britain studied the peculiarities of Victorian government, noticing the tendency for proponents of a small state to pick and choose when markets should have free reign.101 More recently, Philip Harling and Peter Mandler note that nineteenth-century resistance to state expenditure was often a flight from the social tensions or resentments arising from favouritism, preference and ‘old corruption’.102 Yet Joanna Innes highlights that a reduction in state spending could be accompanied by an expansion in legislation, providing state intervention in novel ways while budgets were eviscerated.103 This kind of government activity illustrates Peter Baldwin’s helpful idea of ‘lumpy’ states, which intervene a lot in some areas of life and remarkably little in 163

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others.104 Attention to the self-restraints of liberty suffered on indulgence (feared by Skinner) and the imposition of external values (feared by Christman) may help to explain this strange pattern in Victorians’ hopes for and fears of the state. A ‘persistence of hierarchical thinking’ – which Jon Lawrence dubs ‘conservative modernity’ – meant a ‘deeper governmental logic that held that most adults remained confined to the “civilizational” slow lane and, as such, were incapable of living up to the ideals of liberal selfhood’. Hence, political and social liberties could be extended in ‘the trickling down, not of liberal individualism, but of the rights and privileges of the hierarchical, paternalist old order’ only as dependents could be trusted to use them properly.105 In anti-slavery debates, liberty might be withheld by the liberal exclusions of Mill, more in sadness than in anger, as well as by the paternal authority of Carlyle, more in celebration than in regret. If the latter denounced ‘rights’ in favour of ‘the mights of men – what portion of their “rights” they have a chance of getting sorted out, and realised, in this confused world’, then the former extended ‘rights’ and ‘liberties’ on just as stingy terms.106 This agreement extended far beyond the circle of those devoted to liberal economics.107 There was no consensus on liberty, anti-slavery, laissez-faire or the state, but hierarchy could form odd commonalities amongst Victorian thinkers and politicians of wildly different persuasions. Study of the legacies of slave-holding may, therefore, point the way to new understandings of British history. The minimal state, like the market, made normative judgements, being neither an impartial field for individual moral discovery nor an amoral wasteland of spontaneous order. While the Unitarian journalist of 1830 had demanded that government teach slave-holders ‘the true enjoyment of their liberties’ through emancipation, emancipated slaves or liberated Africans were not immune from such lessons. Whether suggesting state or market as ways of advancing liberty, Victorians debating anti-slavery politics almost always failed to escape from prescriptions of how liberties should be used. In offering liberty as a kind indulgence or as prescription of certain values, rival versions of British anti-slavery all embraced the meanest forms of ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ liberties. We have long known that freedom for black West Indians was limited, but we can learn about Victorian politics by understanding how those common limitations were justified in rather different ways. Emancipation reshaped Britain’s economy, foreign policy and empire – and though it did not fundamentally reshape concepts of liberty or expectations of government, the politics of anti-slavery can reveal the contortions of Victorian debates with unusual clarity. Notes 1 Many thanks to the editors of this volume and to Eugenio Biagini, John Christman, Gregory Downs, Elizabeth Elbourne, Philip Harling, Irene Middleton, Richard Price, David Rundle and Miles Taylor for their comments on the argument outlined here, though they should enjoy the traditional absolution from guilt by association with a colleague’s ideas.

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2 Monthly Repository, November 1830, 739. While the rhetoric is intriguing, the antislavery content of a Unitarian publication is no surprise: D. Turley, The Culture of English Anti-slavery: 1780–1860 (London, 1994), pp. 19–24. 3 Hansard, 3rd series, 27 June 1844, vol. 76, col. 41; he referred to Antigua in particular. On a sharpening tone, see C. Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830–1867 (Cambridge, 2002); T. Holt, The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica, 1832–1938 (Baltimore, 1992). 4 See, for example, Z. Laidlaw, Colonial Connections, 1815–45: Patronage, the Information Revolution and Colonial Government (Manchester, 2005); K. Grant, A Civilised Savagery: Britain and the New Slaveries in Africa, 1884–1926 (New York, 2005); K. Hamilton and P. Salmon (eds), Slavery, Diplomacy and Empire: Britain and the Suppression of the Slave Trade, 1807–1975 (Eastbourne, 2009); W. Mulligan, ‘British anti-slave trade and anti-slavery policy in East Africa, Arabia, and Turkey in the late nineteenth century’, in B. Simms and D. J. B. Trim (eds), Humanitarian Intervention: A History (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 257–80; R. Huzzey, Freedom Burning: Anti-slavery and Empire in Victorian Britain (Ithaca, NY, 2012). 5 M. Wood, The Horrible Gift of Freedom: Atlantic Slavery and the Representation of Emancipation (Athens, GA, 2010). For other American and comparative works, see for example: R. Ransom and Richard Sutch, One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2001), esp. pp. 198–9; E. Foner, Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy (Baton Rouge, LA, 2007); R. Follett, E. Foner and W. Johnson, Slavery’s Ghost: The Problem of Freedom in the Age of Emancipation (Baltimore, MD, 2011); G. Downs and J. Downs, ‘Was Freedom Enough?’, New York Times ‘Opinionator’ blog, 11 November 2011, http://opin​ ionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/was-freedom-enough/, accessed 26 February 2012. The last work was published to coincide with a conference ‘Beyond Freedom: New Directions in the Study of Emancipation’, hosted by the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Abolition and Resistance at Yale University, 11–12 November 2011; the conversations at that gathering influenced the argument of this essay. 6 R. Huzzey, ‘Free trade, free labour and slave sugar in Victorian Britain’, Historical Journal, 53 (2010), 359–79. 7 R. Law, ‘Abolition and imperialism: international law and the British suppression of the Atlantic slave trade’, in D. Peterson (ed.), Abolitionism and Imperialism in Britain, Africa, and the Atlantic (Athens, GA, 2010), pp. 150–74. 8 J. U. J. Asiegbu, Slavery and the Politics of Liberation: A Study of Liberated African Emigration and British Anti-Slavery Policy (London, 1969); D. Northrup, Indentured Labour in the Age of Imperialism, 1834–1922 (Cambridge, 1995); M. Kale, Fragments of Empire: Capital, Slavery, and Indian Indentured Labor Migration in the British Caribbean (Philadelphia, 1998). 9 D. B. Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (Oxford, 1999), p. 265. 10 I. Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (London, 1969), pp. 118–72. It is not necessary for Downs and Downs, in ‘Was freedom enough?’, to deny that the concept of ‘positive liberty’ can recognise that ‘[s]elf-sufficiency, much less equality, would depend on [an African American’s] inclusion in a group of people the government could commit to successfully assisting’. For an excellent summary of Berlin’s interests and purpose, as

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well as subsequent responses, see I. Carter, ‘Positive and negative liberty’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2012 edn), http:// plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2012/entries/liberty-positive-negative/, accessed 19 December 2012. 11 J. S. Mill, On Liberty, ed. S. Collini (Cambridge, 1989), p. 8. 12 Mill, On Liberty, pp. 13–14. See also J. Gray, Mill On Liberty: A Defence, 2nd edn (London, 1996); R. Crisp, Mill on Utilitarianism (London, 1997), p. 183; M. Levin, J. S. Mill on Civilization and Barbarism (London, 2004), 31–77; J. Hamburger, John Stuart Mill on Liberty and Control (Princeton, 1999). Perhaps, given his father’s attitudes towards starvation conditions in the West Indies (see below), it is unsurprising that Sir James Fitzjames Stephen’s Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (London, 1873) was critical of Mill’s model of liberty. 13 Crisp, Mill on Utilitarianism, pp. 185–9. 14 T. Carlyle, The Nigger Question (London, 1853), as reprinted in T. Carlyle (ed.), Collected Works, 16 vols. (London: Chapman and Hall, 1864), XIII, pp. 1–28, quotation at p. 12. 15 For a small sample, see G. MacCallum, ‘Negative and positive freedom’, Philosophical Review, 76 (1967), 312–34; J. Gray, ‘On negative and positive liberty’, Political Studies, 28 (1980): 507–26; C. Taylor, ‘What’s wrong with negative liberty’, in A. Ryan (ed.), The Idea of Freedom: Essays in Honour of Sir Isaiah Berlin (Oxford, 1978), pp. 211–29; E. Nelson, ‘Liberty: one concept too many?’, Political Theory, 33 (2005), 58–78; J. Christman, ‘Saving positive freedom’, Political Theory, 33 (2005), 79–88; B. Baum and R. Nichols (eds), Isaiah Berlin and the Politics of Freedom: ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ 50 years later (New York, 2013). For a libertarian-communitarian division in political theory, see M. Freeden, ‘Liberal community: an essay in retrieval’, in A. Simhony and D. Weinstein (eds), The New Liberalism: Reconciling Liberty and Community (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 26–48; S. Caney, ‘Liberalism and communitarianism: a misconceived debate’, Political Studies, 40 (1992), 273–89. 16 Berlin, ‘Two concepts’. 17 For these concepts, see Huzzey, Freedom Burning. 18 For an excellent discussion of ‘political language’ and ‘contemporary self-­ understanding’, see D. L. Eudell, The Political Languages of Emancipation in the British Caribbean and the US South (Chapel Hill, NC, 2002), esp. pp. 35–7. 19 Faith in the preservation of racial and economic hierarchies was common to those abolitionists rejecting free-labour promises of superior productivity and those who embraced them. See, for example, J. Conder, Wages or the Whip: An Essay on the Comparative Cost and Productiveness of Free and Slave Labour (London, 1833), pp. 57–79. 20 H. Taylor, Works of Sir Henry Taylor, 5 vols (London, 1878), V, 58. Highlighted and discussed by B. Knox, ‘The Queen’s letter of 1865 and British policy towards emancipation and indentured labour in the West Indies, 1830–1865’, Historical Journal, 29 (1986), 348. 21 Holt, Problem of Freedom, pp. 42–53: Taylor’s quotations at pp. 45 and 48 as part of a comparison of his paternalist and Henry Grey’s market-orientated plans for the postemancipation order. See also Knox, ‘Queen’s letter’, 349. For comparative analyses of this process, see F. Cooper, T. Holt and R. J. Scott, Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000);

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H. Temperley (ed.), After Slavery: Emancipation and its Discontents (London, 2000); Eudell, Political Languages. 22 As quoted by D. Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Oxford, 1987), p. 21. 23 These paradoxical developments are the sort of ‘peculiarities of liberal modernity’ explored by J. Vernon, ‘What was liberalism, and who was its subject? Or, will the real liberal subject please stand up?’, Victorian Studies, 53 (2011), 303–10; S. Gunn and J. Vernon (eds), The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain (Berkeley, CA, 2011); C. Hall, K. McClelland and J. Randall, Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the British Reform Act of 1867 (Cambridge, 2000). 24 See S. Drescher, ‘Abolitionist expectations: Britain’, Slavery and Abolition, 21 (2000), 51–2. 25 D. Goldberg, ‘Liberalism’s limits: Carlyle and Mill on “the negro question”  ’, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 22 (2000), 203–16; Huzzey, Freedom Burning, p. 201. See also Holt, Problem of Freedom, pp. 284–5. 26 Carlyle, Nigger Question, p. 7. 27 W. Green, British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great Experiment (Oxford, 1976), pp. 164–6, 174–6; S. Engerman, ‘Economic adjustments to emancipation in the United States and British West Indies’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 13 (1982), 203–4; Holt, Problem of Freedom; C. Campbell, ‘Early post-emancipation Jamaica: the historiography of plantation culture, 1834–1865’, in K. Monteith and G. Richards (eds), Jamaica in Slavery and Freedom: History, Heritage, and Culture (Kingston, Jamaica, 2002), pp. 52–69. 28 Hansard, 3rd series, 18 May 1841, vol. 58, col. 618. 29 Earl Grey, The Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell’s Administration, 2 vols, 2nd edn (London, 1853), I, 55, 60. 30 Huzzey, Freedom Burning, pp. 99–106. 31 H. Merivale, Lectures on Colonies and Colonisation, 2nd edn (London, 1861), pp. 324, 340. 32 O. N. Bolland, ‘Systems of domination after slavery: the control of land and labor in the British West Indies after 1838’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 23 (1981), 591–619. 33 J. L. G. Rose, ‘ “Behold the tax man cometh”: taxation as a tool of oppression in early postemancipation British Guiana, 1838–48’, in A. O. Thompson (ed.), In the Shadow of the Plantation: Caribbean History and Legacy (Kingston, Jamaica, 2002), pp. 298, 306–7. 34 D. Paton, No Bond but the Law: Punishment, Race, and Gender in Jamaican State Formation, 1780–1870 (Durham, NC, 2004), pp. 136–7, 153–5, 192–3. 35 Holt, Problem of Freedom, pp. 185–7. 36 Foner, Nothing but Freedom, pp. 34–7; J. Besson, ‘Land tenure in the free villages of Trelawny, Jamaica: a case study in the Caribbean peasant response to emancipation’, Slavery and Abolition 5 (1984), 3–24. 37 Holt, Problem of Freedom, p. 165; K. Monteith, ‘Emancipation and labour on Jamaican coffee plantations, 1838–48’, Slavery and Abolition 25 (2000), 125–35; Eudell, Political Languages, pp. 172–3. 38 Holt, Problem of Freedom, pp. 146–50, 168. 39 S. Gordon, ‘The Negro Education Grant 1835–1845: its application in Jamaica’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 6 (1958), 141; C. Campbell, ‘British aid and West

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Indian education 1835–45’, in A. O. Thompson (ed.), In the Shadow of the Plantation: Caribbean History and Legacy (Kingston, Jamaica, 2002), pp. 283–96; Green, British Slave Emancipation, pp. 330–40. 40 C. Adderley, Review of ‘The Colonial Policy of Lord J. Russell’s Administration’ (London, 1869), p. 224. 41 As quoted by M. K. Bacchus, Education for Development or Underdevelopment? Guyana’s Educational System and its implications for the third world (Waterloo, IA, 1980), p. 72. 42 P[arliamentary] P[apers] 1837–38, XLVIII (520), p. 13; see also PP 1837–38, XLVIII (113), p. 25, and Holt, Problem of Freedom, pp. 166–7. 43 C. Campbell, ‘Denominationalism and the Mico Charity Schools in Jamaica, 1835– 1842’, Caribbean Studies, 10 (1971), 152–72. 44 F. Klingberg, ‘The Lady Mico Charity Schools in the British West Indies, 1835–1842’, Journal of Negro History, 24 (1939), 298. 45 As quoted by Bacchus, Education for Development, p. 72. 46 Foner, Nothing but Freedom, pp. 20–23. 47 See, for example, D. Levy, How the Dismal Science Got Its Name: Classical Economics and the Ur-Text of Racial Politics (Ann Arbor, 2001); D. Levy and S. Peart, ‘The negro science of exchange: classical economics and the Chicago Revival’, in D. Colander, R. Prasch and F. Sheth (eds), Race, Liberalism, and Economics (Ann Arbor, 2004), pp. 56–84; T. Arthur, ‘Economics, slavery and Victorian reformers’, Economic Affairs, 21 (2001), 49–52. For important antidotes, see S. Zlotnick, ‘Contextualizing David Levy’s How the Dismal Science Got Its Name; or, revisiting the Victorian context of David Levy’s history of race and economics’, in D. Colander, R. Prasch and F. Sheth (eds), Race, Liberalism, and Economics (Ann Arbor, 2004), pp. 85–99, and F. Sheth, ‘John Stuart Mill on race, liberty, and markets’, in D. Colander, R. Prasch and F. Sheth (eds), Race, Liberalism, and Economics (Ann Arbor, 2004), pp. 100–20. 48 On universalism and difference in ‘liberal’ thought see Simon Gunn and James Vernon, ‘What was liberal modernity and why was it peculiar to Britain?’, in S.  Gunn and J. Vernon (eds), The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain (Berkeley, CA, 2011), pp. 9–10; Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-century British Liberal Thought (Chicago, 1999); Sankar Muthu, Enlightenment Against Empire (Princeton, 2003). 49 Davis, Problem of Slavery, p. 358. 50 Hansard, 3rd series, 1 March 1842, vol. 60, col. 1329; Hansard, 3rd series, 26 July 1842, vol. 65, col. 662. 51 Huzzey, Freedom Burning, pp. 110–13. 52 Hansard, 3rd series, 24 July 1857, vol. 147, col. 350. See also Knox, ‘Queen’s letter’, 358. 53 Adderley, Review of ‘The Colonial Policy’, p. 224. 54 Huzzey, Freedom Burning, p. 112. See also Joseph Hume: Hansard, 3rd series, 1 May 1848, vol. 98, col. 543. 55 E. Biagini, ‘British trade unions and popular political economy, 1860–1880’, Historical Journal, 30 (1987), 815–16; S. Szreter, Fertility, Class and Gender in Britain, 1860– 1940 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 108; E. Biagini Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform: Popular Liberalism in the Age of Gladstone (Cambridge, 1992), p. 163. 56 See, for example, J. Seed, ‘ “Free labour = latent pauperism”: Marx, Mayhew, and

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the “Reserve Army of Labour” in mid-nineteenth century London’, in S. Gunn and J. Vernon (eds), The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain (Berkeley, CA, 2011), pp. 54–71. On the philosophical distinction, see J. Christman, ‘Liberalism and individual positive freedom’, Ethics, 101 (1991), 343–59. 57 Anti-Slavery Reporter, 1 July 1848, 111. 58 Anti-Slavery Reporter, 1 July 1848, 110. 59 Drescher, ‘Abolitionist expectations’, 53. 60 Huzzey, Freedom Burning, pp. 107–10. 61 J. Sturge and T. Harvey, The West Indies in 1837: Being the Journal of a Visit to Antigua, Monsterrat, Dominica, St. Lucia, Barbados, and Jamaica (London, 1838), pp. 374, 378. 62 J. Williams, A Narrative of Events, Since the First of August, 1834, ed. by D. Paton ([1837] Durham, NC, 2001), p. xliv; see Sturge’s correspondence, as reproduced in ibid., pp. 97–100; E. L. Wong, Neither Fugitive nor Free: Atlantic Slavery, Freedom Suits, and the Legal Culture of Travel (New York, 2000), pp. 70–1. 63 But see also Hall, Civilising Subjects, pp. 436–40. 64 Huzzey, Freedom Burning, pp. 46–9. 65 L. Bethell, Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 242–66. 66 See Huzzey, Freedom Burning, p. 43. 67 PP 1847–48, XXII (1), 13, 17. 68 PP 1847–48, XXII (1), 210. 69 Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine, March 1850, 307. 70 Examiner, 26 February 1848, 130–1. 71 See R. Huzzey, ‘Gladstone and the suppression of the slave trade’, in R. Quinault, R. Swift and R. C. Windscheffel (eds), William Gladstone: New Studies and Perspectives (Farnham, 2012), pp. 253–66. 72 Huzzey, Freedom Burning, pp. 120–4. 73 Law, ‘Abolition’, pp. 150–75; Huzzey, Freedom Burning, pp. 132–76. 74 K. Mann, Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760–1900 (Bloomington, 2007), pp. 84–116. 75 R. Adderley, ‘New Negroes from Africa’: Slave Trade Abolition and Free African Settlement in the Nineteenth-century Caribbean (Bloomington, IN, 2006); M. Schuler, ‘Alas, Alas, Kongo’: A Social History of Indentured African Migration to Jamaica, 1841–1865 (Baltimore, 1980); Northrup, Indentured Labor, p. 45; Asiegbu, Politics of Liberation. 76 Adderley, ‘New Negroes from Africa’, pp. 48–50, quotation at p. 49. 77 Ibid., pp. 14–16. This was partly true of British efforts to curb the abuse of liberated Africans when they were placed in the care of foreign governments: D. R. Murray, Odious Commerce: Britain, Spain and the Abolition of the Cuban Slave Trade (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 287–90. 78 P. Smith, ‘The Liberals, race and political reform in the British West Indies, 1866–74’, Journal of Negro History, 79 (1994), 131–64, at pp. 140–2. 79 Carlyle, Nigger Question, p. 20. 80 Sheth, ‘John Stuart Mill on race, liberty, and markets’. 81 G. R. Searle, Morality and the Market in Victorian Britain (Oxford, 1998). 82 Hamburger, John Stuart Mill on Liberty and Control, pp. 168–202; Hall, Civilising Subjects, p. 435.

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83 Goldberg, ‘Liberalism’s limits’, 211. 84 Mill, On Liberty, pp. 104–6. 85 J. S. Mill, ‘The Negro Question’, Fraser’s Magazine, January 1850, 26, 28. 86 M. I. Finley, ‘Between slavery and freedom’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 6 (1964), 233–49; G. Prakash, Bonded Histories: Genealogies of Labor Servitude in Colonial India (Cambridge, 1990), p. 7. 87 Quentin Skinner, ‘A third concept of liberty’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 117 (2002), 255–7. This republican concept of liberty is developed by philosopher Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (New York, 1997). 88 Christman, ‘Liberalism’, 346, 356, 359. 89 Catherine Hall, ‘The economy of intellectual prestige: Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and the case of Governor Eyre’, Cultural Critique 12 (1989), 167–96, esp. 169–70; W. L. Burn, The Age of Equipoise: A Study of the Mid-Victorian Generation (London, 1964), pp. 238–46, 286–94. 90 E. Biagini, ‘Neo-roman liberalism: “republican” values and British liberalism, ca. 1860–1875’, History of European Ideas, 29 (2003), 72. 91 Smith, ‘The Liberals, race and political reform’, p. 136; C. Kidd, The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600–2000 (Cambridge, 2006); S. Qureshi, ‘Robert Gordon Latham, displayed peoples and the natural history of race, 1854–1866’, Historical Journal, 54 (2011), 143–66; R. Huzzey, ‘Minding civilisation and humanity in 1867: a case study in British imperial culture and Victorian anti-slavery’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 40 (2012), 807–25; K. Wilson, The Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century (London, 2003). 92 Biagini, ‘Neo-roman liberalism’, 72. 93 Mill, On Liberty, p. 8. 94 Hall, ‘Intellectual economy’, 186–8, quotation at 187; Hall, Civilising Subjects, p. 25; Goldberg, ‘Liberalism’s limits’, 209. 95 Mill, ‘Negro question’, 29. 96 Taylor, Works, v, 59, 98. See also Knox, ‘Queen’s letter’. 97 G. Smith, Inaugural Lecture of Goldwyn Smith, MA, Regius Professor of Modern History, University of Oxford (Oxford, 1859), p. 31. 98 Ibid., p. 23. 99 R. Knox, The Races of Men: A Fragment (Philadelphia and London, 1850), p. 249. 100 P. Johnson, ‘Market disciplines’, in Peter Mandler (ed.), Liberty and Authority in Victorian Britain (Oxford, 2006), pp. 203–23, at p. 222; P. Johnson, Making the Market: Victorian Origins of Corporate Capitalism (Cambridge, 2010), p. 233. 101 For excellent surveys see A. J. Taylor, Laissez-faire and State Intervention in Nineteenth-century Britain (London, 1972) and, only slightly tainted by partisanship, E. Frankel Paul, ‘Laissez faire in nineteenth-century Britain: fact or myth?’, Literatures of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought, 3:4 (1980), 7–38. 102 P. Harling and P. Mandler, ‘From “fiscal-military” to laissez-faire state, 1760–1850’, Journal of British Studies, 32 (1993), 44–70. 103 J. Innes, ‘Forms of “government growth”, 1780–1830’, in D. Feldman and J. Lawrence (eds), Structures and Transformations in Modern British History (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 74–99. 104 P. Baldwin, ‘The Victorian state in comparative perspective’, in Peter Mandler (ed.), Liberty and Authority in Victorian Britain (Oxford, 2006), pp. 51–67, at p. 67.

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105 J. Lawrence, ‘Paternalism, class, and the British path to modernity’, in S. Gunn and J. Vernon (eds), The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain (Berkeley, CA, 2011), pp. 147–64, at pp. 147, 151–3. See also Burn, Age of Equipoise, pp. 20–32, 220–23, 304–6. Compare with Oliver MacDonagh, Early Victorian Government, 1830–1870 (London, 1977), pp. 5–21. 106 Carlyle, Nigger Question, p. 20. 107 A refinement of Holt, Problem of Freedom, pp. 307–9, chastened by Burn, Age of Equipoise, pp. 19–23.

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Part IV

Public histories, family histories

9

Family history: history’s poor relation? Alison Light

Family history is everywhere, not only on television shows like the BBC’s extremely popular Who Do You Think You Are? or in the newspapers, which frequently carry family stories and old photographs, but in the form of software, maps, books, magazines and vast events such as family history fairs, where gatherings of thousands of people share knowledge and buy things. It is a booming business across Europe, North America and Australia in particular, and has had a huge impact on information science and the practices of archivists and researchers. Local records offices have been transformed in Britain. Once dusty, daunting and silent, they are now a hub of manic activity and are likely to have been renamed ‘Family History Centres’ to make them far more user friendly. If you ask to see a map of village boundaries, or Poor Law records, it is assumed not that you are writing your doctoral thesis but that you are doing family history. For many people, however, ‘doing’ family history is a private consumer experience. Hugging a laptop, without leaving your home, it is a way of time-travelling safely from the armchair. Since the 1990s family history in Britain has become one of the fastest growing activities in the UK and is now the third most popular activity on the web after shopping and pornography.1 Family history, like shopping and porn, can be addictive online; it often becomes a fever which can’t be assuaged. In this it shares much with all work in archives, where researchers are addicted to the hit and the discovery-high. As more and more documents become available online, including Hearth Tax, court and assizes records, militia lists, commercial and telephone directories, the roll-call for the battle of Waterloo, wills, employment records for the railways and the postal service, to name but a portion, family historians lurch between feeling overwhelmed by the saturation of information and the serendipity of random strikes, the feeling that out there is the one ultimate clue to the truth about the past and our place in it – if we can just chance upon it! It is easy to disparage family history, and professional historians in the past have usually been scathing or dismissive about it, criticising its packaging of history, its relentless siphoning of the past back to the individual searcher in the form of lists of surnames and endlessly proliferating trees: ‘find.my.past’ [my italics], as one of 175

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the current websites styles itself. Myopic and solipsistic, family history is deemed history ‘lite’ or ‘comfort-zone history’ – terms which often conceal a lofty masculine dismissal of a feminised activity, seen as sentimental or unobjective.2 And indeed, the majority of researchers, as I look around the record offices, are like me, middle-aged women. There are other issues. Family history has flourished in post-industrial Britain at a time when family members are far flung and fewer of us actually live in families. Discovering long-lost ancestors online may be no more than a kind of mournful Facebook and, where it does create links between the living, this virtual family is a social network without the pain and responsibility of the family we grew up with. Indeed our virtual family may be infinitely preferable to the families in which we live; grander perhaps or more victimised, apparently more interesting, more appealing. ‘We all have half a dozen possible ancestries to choose from, and fantasy and projection can furnish us with a dozen more,’ writes Raphael Samuel in Island Stories, wondering if people turn to ‘make-believe identities in the past’ because they can no longer find a home for their ideal selves in the future?3 Is family history a sign of the morbidity of our culture, as Derrida and others have argued, the frantic search for origins a measure of the deathliness of a museum culture? Or is it rather the reverse, a sign of the vitality of the historical imagination? Until the late 1980s genealogy was the home of antiquarians, cranks and snobs. A family tree used to belong to the wealthy; only they owned a past and laid claim to a continuous history based on their claim to land and property, often displayed in churches on memorials or in the claiming of the right to a coat of arms. Like life-writing – another flourishing activity in recent times, closely connected to this search for the roots of an identity4 – family history has been democratised and it need not involve spending money. Ancestry.co.uk is free to use in most record offices and allows people to find their forbears at least as far back as the census of 1841. Given that in 1900 over 75% of the population might be classified as working class, the chances are that most family historians will find their British ancestors were not lords but labourers, not duchesses but domestic servants: what used to be called ‘the common people’. Like other historians, I have been slowly waking up to the possibilities of using family history and I want here simply to sketch my impressions of some of its uses and limits. I am currently writing a family history, which starts with my four grandparents, then digs behind them back to the families of my eight greatgrandparents, and so forth, following as many branches as I can on both sides, back to the 1750s , charting their work and their lives. In the first place I began because I had almost no information at all about my forbears; no names beyond my grandparents’, no letters or diaries; no pictures or photographs, or family graves, no heirlooms or ‘biographical objects’ and no ‘ancestral place’. I wanted to know what this lack of belongings meant. How were ‘belongings’ – possessions – and ‘belonging’ related? I knew, or thought I did, that they had been poor, these working people from the past, but who were ‘the poor’? And why had they been poor? 176

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In particular, I found four main groups – servants, sailors, casual or casualised labourers like farm carters or road menders, for instance, and artisans in the building trade, painters, carpenters and, especially, bricklayers. Their nineteenth century was a century of movement and migration. On the one hand, there are those who ‘used the sea’, as the phrase was, sailors but also boatmen, watermen or even ‘landsmen’, caulkers or carpenters, cooks and sickbay stewards, who move between ship and shore, often returning to their home-town (which was Portsmouth in this case) but making sporadic disappearances from view for long stretches in both the royal and the merchant navies. On the other hand, there are female servants, at the bottom of the heap, constantly changing situations and sometimes travelling hundreds of miles. I found that one of my greatgrandmothers, Sarah Hill, had journeyed from South Wales to Surrey in the 1880s; her grandmother, Maria Hosier, who had been born in Newfoundland because of the transatlantic cod trade, returned with her father to his home-town, Poole in Dorset, and made her living in the fashion trades in regency Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, before joining her son, who was trying his hand as a poultry farmer in Haverfordwest, Wales. Another group of ancestors, the Bennetts, were squatters on Shirrell Heath, on the edge of Waltham Chase in Hampshire. Their origins are obscure but they were part of the ‘unsettled poor’, those who do not belong to the parish but have encroached on its turf, and often on its resources in order to survive:– firewood picked up from the forest being the most crucial, as coal was usually beyond the reach of the poor. These people on the fringe of communities were often disliked and even attacked by the more legitimate ‘commoners’ as well as by the powers-that-be who wished to ‘improve’ the commons and wastes. Like many others, they did seasonal work, scratching a living doing ‘forest work’, and were often underemployed or unemployed for large parts of the year. Charlotte Bennett, one of my father’s great-grandmothers, grew up in the forest and married Robert Brown, a timber feller and forest labourer. As it became more and more difficult to survive in the forest, they moved in the 1840s to the naval base of Portsmouth, where Robert joined the gangs of dockyard labourers. Movement from place to place was built into the life of the bricklayer who went looking for work, especially in the cities (pubs called ‘The Bricklayers’ Arms’, like ‘The Carpenters’ Arms’, often served as informal labour exchanges).5 Family history has certainly made me think about the illusion, and the ideological force, shored up by the census categories, of the notion of the ‘fixed abode’, as well as what is meant by ‘occupation’. Such lives also question the emphasis placed on the village or on the centrality of the parish as the source for the strongest feelings of belonging among the ‘labouring poor’.6 If the settlement laws operated as a kind of ‘border control’ for many internal migrants, preventing them from claiming relief under the parish poor law administration, then many of my forbears were ‘illegals’, renting rooms or even beds in port towns; they can be absent from the census for decades. Then there are those who were deliberately at odds with the parish and the Church of England. The bricklayer Lights formed a staunch Baptist community in a tiny Wiltshire village in the late eighteenth 177

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century in opposition to ‘the State church’; their religion was at the heart of their lives when they migrated elsewhere and it was arguably more important than village, neighbours and even family ties. Family historians work differently from other historians as they scuttle backwards across generations, and this can also be usefully unsettling. Most historians begin their stories from a point in the past, advancing gradually forward, covering a few decades, perhaps half a century at most. Some of us are content with covering even less ground, inching our way into the future, month by month, slowly accumulating a chronology – like moss. Family historians, by contrast, are history’s speed-freaks, accelerating wildly across the generations, cutting a swathe through time, like the Grim Reaper himself. In the course of an hour’s research surfing the web at home or scanning the records in a local Family History Centre, they watch individuals die, marry and be born in hectic series; a dizzying sequence of families fall away and rise up, eras go and come, wars fizzle out and flare, cities turn back to fields. ‘Periodisation’ starts to wear thin as multiple narratives are tracked, moving at an uneven pace. Family history usually follows a series of individual life stories over time, but it can also offer a synchronic way to look at a community, horizontally as it were. It needs a split screen in the mind, refusing compartmentalisation and allowing us to see a generation emerging in relation to each other. At the very least, the person who is a statistic takes on flesh, gets a name and family, and a life holds many surprises: people make choices though not in circumstances of their own choosing. Family history humanises. Of course, unless it is to be simply a catalogue of names, the history of a family is impossible to fathom without coming up for air and scanning the wider horizon. Once the branches proliferate, families become neighbourhoods and groups, and groups take shape around the work they do and where they find themselves doing it. Without local history to anchor it, family history is adrift in time, but the local is always connected to a wider world; the apparently parochial to the national; the national to the international. Without these connections and inflections, the moves that people make are often meaningless. I have found plenty of examples of national policy played out on the human level. Take Mary Edwards, for example, one of my great-great-grandmothers, a lace maker from Northamptonshire, an area renowned for its lace made by women – sitting in their doorways, crouched over their pillows and bobbins from daybreak to dusk. Mary left the county in the 1830s at the time when hand-lacemaking was in decline; changes in fashion, the decision to allow French lace back into the country after the Napoleonic Wars, together with the new machines, all put paid to the old lacemaking and threw thousands of women on the poor rates.7 But the optic can also be reversed – the global looks different viewed in the light of the local. Mary’s son, William Whitlock, married Louisa Dowdeswell, born in the mid-nineteenth century, the daughter of a needle maker. ‘Dowdeswells’ was well known in Alcester, the home of needle making in the Midlands before it was overtaken by the more famous Redditch. But these factories were not enormous operations like the textile mills or factories in the North. They were small-scale enterprises where 178

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every family member mucked in, working on one bit of the process in temporary lean-tos or huts out the back of their homes. The needle makers’ sheds, and the family-run factories that fuelled Britain’s turbo-capitalism, invite parallels with the rural manufacturing of twenty-first-century India and China, where peasants and newly landless labourers are undergoing their own version of an ‘industrial revolution’. Tracing the lives of siblings and cousins, history is played out at home as a generation emerges with its hopes and disappointments, its random tragedies, its enormous efforts to make a living within the bounds of what is possible. What look like different social groups become connected. In 1824 there was not a single railwayman in Britain, but by 1847 there were around 47,000 permanent staff and by the 1870s 295,000.8 Another group of my ancestors, the Whitlocks, were Worcestershire farm labourers. In early photographs of their deeply rural world, the smock-wearing men with broken teeth and old clay pipes seem quite a different breed from smart, new Victorian railwaymen in uniform, peaked caps and shining boots. But as the railways were cut into the countryside, plenty of men ‘went over the fence’ from the neighbouring farms. The Whitlock farm hands had brothers and sons who joined the ranks as railwaymen or went into uniform as postmen or police constables (the police, we tend to forget, was originally made up of country boys, rural migrants who might as easily wind up on the beat in Whitechapel or in the Birmingham slums as remain anywhere local). Looking across families we can question a too-ready separation of a rural or urban way of life, as if country and city existed in sealed compartments. In 1900 my father’s mother, Evelyn Whitlock, had brothers and sisters in the metalwork factories and mills on the edge of Birmingham; cousins at a village saddlery; family who worked in the heat and din of the small, local needle works; others working as carters on a farm; Evelyn’s father, William, began life as a farm labourer and became by turns a village bobby, railway policeman and then a metalworker. Evelyn’s two grandmothers were still alive when she was growing up, but they lived very different lives: one, Prudence Dowdeswell, formerly a needle maker, ran a pub in Alcester; the other, Jane Whitlock, was a live-in caretaker for a baronet in a country house close to London. Jane had travelled 150 miles from the farm in Worcestershire where she had lived and worked for forty years (I don’t know if, like many widows, she was evicted from her tied cottage after her husband died). Her daughter had married a coachman and moved to London to serve the Dashwood family, who found Jane work. One old lady, alone with the gardener, keeping an eye on the shrouded furniture and family silver, while the family were at their town house in Regent’s Park – even the barest facts of a family history are suggestive. Family history makes direct and intimate links between the local history of places and national, even global, narratives; it is an important way for academic historians to speak to those outside the academy, to engage with public history, unofficial history, museum, archive history, with those who work in the media and with local historians. I think family history is at its most productive when it trespasses on everybody’s fields and refuses to be put off by the hedges which 179

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we are all tempted to put around ‘our’ territory. But the politics of the family history produced is more problematic. Family history offers many versions of what Benedict Anderson called, in a now justly well-worn phrase, ‘imagined communities’. Telling a story about oneself or about one’s ancestors is always a way of having a place in historical narrative, of counting, but it need not have radical potential. Genealogy has been central to the political projects of the Right and has often nurtured fantasies about blood and belonging, specious lineages with their own systematic and sometimes murderous exclusions. I would query any assumption that family history is necessarily a tool which leads historians to a more open-minded view of the past or to a less ‘top-down’ version of it; its political valency, like all history, depends on the historian, the uses to which it is put and the audience being addressed.9 Family history has its own mythologies, not least about the family itself. ‘Family’ is chameleon, it changes shape and colour to adapt over time and place; even the most conventional household expands and contracts, waxing and waning with the age of the inhabitants: prosperous newly-weds grow into a house full of children and servants, only to shrink again over time; the less-comfortable take in lodgers or apprentices, or are themselves lodgers; the elderly in turn join their children, board with other families or, like Jane Whitlock, have to make shift for themselves, working into their eighties. Neighbourhood and workmates may be every bit as intimate and important as family members. It is hard to look coolly at the fantasy of the family as sufficient unto itself, as if the family were somehow outside history, made of victims and heroes, forged through strong will and wrecked only by dire accident. Yet blood is not always thicker than water; even at its most secure, the membrane of family support can stretch only so far before it tears. No family was more extended, it turned out, than my mother’s, the Murphys, who lived in the same nest of streets around the harbour and docks in Portsmouth for most of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth. But the web of kin and connections was not enough to keep them all afloat, no matter how hard they worked and how many different jobs they juggled; my grandmother landed in the workhouse as a little girl. Family history can challenge the view that hardworking families on low pay, coping with high rents, can succeed despite whatever the state or government does; that social mobility is a matter of individual will-power and self-help; that only the lazy and feckless fall into poverty or that ‘the poor’ existed in separate, Booth-like classes. By following working lives in detail, a much more complex picture emerges. In my family there was a constant traffic between what felt like respectability or was endured as penury; the same people could find themselves moving between different states within a short time in their working lives. And the variety of those lives has yet to be fully understood. If they are not searching for a story to tell, a unique person who ‘bettered’ themselves or one who went to the dogs in a grand manner, most people, it seems, are looking for a place. They want to know where they ‘come from’, an origin; they want that plot of land which will give them a plot, a story of their lives. In my case I have found that I have no roots, or that I have so many that it is not possible to 180

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single out an ancestral place for me to attach myself to. There is no settled landscape for the family memories that can become the backdrop to fantasies about my ancestors. They come from twelve different counties, from Ireland and Wales; they emigrate to Canada, to the USA, Australia – their attachment to place and their Englishness rapidly dispensed with when they are faced with starvation or no work. Many of the places where my ancestors lived do not now exist, thanks to different kinds of clearances: cottages or hovels too paltry to be gentrified, areas that were slums or bomb targets or housing that was subject to large-scale redevelopment and ‘town planning’. Genealogy, as I have suggested, has never been neutral. Those who claimed a stake in the past, who saw themselves as ‘old families’ who ‘went back a long way’, usually ratified that claim through land and property. The history of the working poor which I have found is, by contrast, one of landlessness and temporary tenancies, expropriations, evictions. My family history has turned out to be a history of migrants, uprooted and displaced by economic forces or leaving their villages and towns in the hope of ‘betterment’. These migrations are central to the history of the largely southern white working class as it played itself out across at least two centuries. Such experiences of discontinuity may go some way toward explaining the insularity of what came to be seen as a ‘traditional working class’ from the late nineteenth century, with its often fierce and even violent attachment to streets and neighbourhoods, and the displacing of feelings of fury and envy onto other excluded groups of different race or ethnicity. Family history may help us to historicise the many ‘makings’ of the English working classes, including its diasporas, but it can also challenge the nostalgia about place which animates so much of British culture as a whole and, in particular, certain notions of Englishness. I have found the work of historical geographers and others helpful in rethinking place as ‘space’ and time (the historian’s medium) as movements in space (the geographer’s medium). As I move rapidly over the centuries, I see something of the ways in which places are endlessly recreated, however fixed they may appear, especially on maps; but I also see a kind of flow. Communities, the village as well as the town or city, are not tight containers but staging posts through which individuals and families move at variable speeds; a place is a set of social relations, relations with kin and neighbours, with the people one meets as one moves in and around the street as well as the home or at work, and it is constantly remade in human interaction.10 One final point. Family history usually begins with memories and stories passed down the generations. It is notoriously untrustworthy and, like the family itself, full of secrets and lies. Yet romances about the past, often fantasies of selfaggrandisement, these ‘myths we live by’, as oral historians have suggested,11 contain emotional truths every bit as historical as the documentary evidence. My mother’s father told his children that he came from a wealthy family in Surrey but that he had been cut off and disinherited; he had got the family servant pregnant, married her and then run away to sea. I found out that his father was a farm carter and his mother died in the mental hospital when he was sixteen. He was a milk boy at the time and all his cousins and uncles were labourers on farms or on the 181

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roads, desperately poor, living in a rural slum area. In the 1900s the pauper lunatic was even more of a nonperson that the workhouse orphan; a kind of social death and an unmentionable history. My grandfather’s romance about his past hid, I think, his shame and fear, but also allowed him to reinvent himself. Such stories, these make-believe identities, tap into the reservoir of feelings of inferiority, resentment, belligerence. They give us glimpses into the psychological and emotional legacies of being poor, part of what we call class feeling. And they bespeak the astonishingly fertile and vigorous ways that people have of resisting official versions of their lives. I want a form of family history which doesn’t debunk but respects the tall stories people tell to make themselves look big in a national history that so often diminishes them and their lives. What gets hidden, what can’t be spoken, what is screened and veiled, has been beautifully evoked in survivor memoirs like Daniel Mendelssohn’s The Lost or Mark Roseman’s The Past in Hiding. Family history of a far less drastic kind can also look at emotional legacies and the psychological inheritances played out over generations. These stories are one way that people can creatively transform the so-called facts of a life, making something of what was done to them.12 As I have gone on with this work I find that I believe less and less in the idea of origins or in any anterior self or identity which I will discover or that exists apart from that which I am creating in the writing. I am not looking for the plot of land which will tell me who I am. In some ways I am writing a history of absences: the places around which the chapters are structured exist as much in the imagination as in reality and are often as institutional as they are personal. Some, like the workhouses, are rich with the power to generate feeling long after they have disappeared. I am not working chronologically but moving between past and present, and the book will be a mongrel (or a dog’s dinner!), something between memoir and social history, and neither autobiography proper nor a linear family history. I hope that the Englishness I write about emerges as temporary and provisional, as something made rather than given. I want a family history which allows me to inhabit the past, respect it, and yet view it from a distance, as if from out at sea, its narrative offering a kindly fiction of stability, like weighing anchor, at least for a while; an anchorage without which it is hard to live. I want to write an English family history without roots, a family history for a floating world.13 Notes   1 ‘Great-Auntie Ruth’s family secrets’, Guardian, 27 December 2008, where Dr Nick Barratt, historian and chief genealogist for the BBC, reports that websites such as ­ancestry.co.uk have seen a 500% increase in business since 2005.  2 Tristam Hunt, for instance, attacks genealogy programmes on television as ‘an ­indulgent search for identity and understanding’, preferring a more bracing public school approach: ‘television history, done well, should be more of an ice-bath than a comforting warm soak’: ‘The time bandits’, Guardian, 10 September 2007.   3 Raphael Samuel, Island Stories: Unravelling Britain (London, 1998), pp. 272, 221.

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 4 I have explored this in ‘Biography and autobiography since 1970’, in P. Nicholls and L.  Marcus (eds), Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century English Literature (Cambridge, 2004).   5 Eric Hobsbawm discusses the tramping traditions of masons and bricklayers in his invaluable essay, ‘The tramping artisan’, in Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour (London, 1968). It begins by reminding us that ‘the story of nineteenth-century labour is one of movement and migration’.  6 See, for example, K. D. M. Snell, Parish and Belonging: Community, Identity and Welfare in England and Wales 1700–1950 (Cambridge, 2006).   7 Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution 1750–1850 (London, 1981), pp. 208–9.   8 Frank McKenna, ‘Victorian Railway Workers’, History Workshop Journal, 1 (1976), 26.   9 Tanya Evans discusses this question in relation to changing versions of Australian national history in ‘Secrets and lies: the radical potential of family history’, History Workshop Journal, 71 (2011). 10 David Rollison makes some of these points, arguing against the view of communities as settlements in a relatively unchanging landscape, in ‘Exploding England: the dialectics of mobility and settlement in early modern England’, Social History, 24:1 (1999). For the idea of communities as ‘staging posts’, see Charles Phythian-Adams, Re-thinking English Local History, (Leicester, 1987). 11 R. Samuel and P. Thompson (eds), The Myths We Live By (London, 1990). 12 The psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas has written a suggestive essay on this theme, ‘The functions of history’, in Cracking Up: The Work of Unconscious Experience (London, 1995). 13 Common People: An English Family History without Roots will be published by Fig Tree/Penguin in 2014.

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Writing Sugar in the Blood Andrea Stuart

In March 2003, just after my second book was published, I was on holiday in my family’s villa in Barbados. Aware that I had an interest in family history, my uncle Trevor (now dead) brought Carlisle Bourne, a distant cousin, to visit. After some awkward introductions – my newly excavated relative was an intensely shy man – we convened around a table on the shady patio overlooking the pink and orange bougainvillea, in the stifling heat of the midday sun. Bourne, whom I had never met before and have never seen since, was a dark, nervy man with thick bottle-top glasses and shaky, tentative hands. After a long preamble about the travails of genealogical research, during which I could barely conceal my impatience, he presented me with three sheets of white, lined A3 paper, on which he had meticulously written, in his cramped and slanted hand, a family tree that traced my maternal ancestors back to the eighteenth century. His manner was both reluctant and exultant, torn between pride in his achievement and his desire to keep this hard-won material to himself. I was delighted. Laid out in black and white were the generations – this was my family! My vague interest in the family’s history sharpened. I decided to find out more. To do this I utilised all the tools of the amateur genealogist: I began by sifting through the stories told by parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, checking what was true and what was hearsay; I searched archives all over the world for details of my ancestors’ births, deaths, marriages; I contacted relatives I barely knew and badgered them for any information they could provide. Old, yellowing mementos were acquired and, despite the difficulty in deciphering them, felt unbearably precious. Who can resist the fragile beauty of old, yellowing letters, folded and crumbling, like some forgotten pressed flowers discovered in an old discarded Bible? And who is not both moved and disturbed by old ­photographs – gazing into the face of an ancestor you have never seen, the longdead eyes staring back at you? I scrutinised them over and over again, longing to unlock their secrets. I laboured to extend my family tree over the following years, joining the ranks of the genealogical army – those thousands and thousands of people, from all 184

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backgrounds, searching for clues about ‘their’ pasts. In Britain and the US, recreational genealogy is the second most popular hobby (after gardening) and genealogy websites are the most-visited sites on the internet (after pornography). There are genealogical studies groups, websites, magazines, evening courses and an army of freelance researchers who, for a fee, will help you to trace your departed kinfolk. Genealogy is big business. Why this explosion of interest? Why now? There are answers on many levels. Some interest in our family stories must be considered natural, inevitable: we all long to understand ourselves, to place our experiences in a context. Jonathan Freedland, whose book Jacob’s Gift (2005) is based on such a search, argues that, ‘thanks to technology and globalisation, the world around us is changing so fast: it is reassuring to find constancy. Modern life may be whizzing all around, but at least you have a family tree to stand under.’1 The quest for an identity beyond that which can be purchased and consumed, for connection to a vein of life that seems (however erroneously) rooted in authenticity, for a narrative that creates a sense of purpose and destiny, could only be this popular at a time when community is something you escape to, rather than from. Undoubtedly, the revolution in access has played a part in genealogy’s growing popularity. Instead of having to approach intimidating academic institutions and search through dusty library shelves, the family historian can now, with a click of a mouse, access a gold-mine of information. This new breadth of access has democratised historical research. Anyone can now investigate genealogical websites, worldwide manuscripts and literary catalogues. Ordinary people can explore their ordinary families, the ‘small people’ from whom most of us are descended; those who cast but a faint historical shadow. In the process, many of us have realised that the great stories do not belong only to ‘great people’. Somewhere amongst all of our ancestors are people who have survived terrible calamities and acted with great courage, as well as those who have incurred secrets and shame. Family research can be boring, arduous, frustrating. but also exhilarating. The first time I saw the name of my earliest known ancestor in a Barbados census, I couldn’t help but exclaim and pump my fist. I felt just like a detective who had finally worked out whodunnit. Far from being annoyed by my unbidden oath, my fellow researchers were sympathetic; some even smiled. They had all experienced, or longed to, the ‘genealogy high’, when a longed-for fragment of information is finally tracked down. There are also, of course, less-happy times. For me, these clustered around that scar of modern times: transatlantic slavery. It is hard to describe the intensity of emotion I felt when I first found one of my ancestors on a plantation inventory, just another commodity listed like pigs and cows and farm machinery. I was profoundly grieved and angered, but also grateful to have found him, that he hadn’t been completely erased from history. The discovery allowed me to pay a tribute to a life forgotten; a life as valuable as any other. Genealogy doesn’t just give people a narrative for their own lives: it allows them to tell wider stories. In my case, the desire to write about the twinned industries of sugar and slavery preceded and developed discretely from the desire to explore 185

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my own ancestors. I have long been troubled by the often simplistic understanding of slave societies in those countries that have most profited from them. The intricate, often contorted, social dances that characterised slave-owning societies gave rise to a level of mendacity and perversion in intimate relationships that is missed by didactic good-versus-bad accounts. I particularly wanted to make some sense of the social relationships within Caribbean communities today, across the diaspora. The story of my own family, of slaves who become plantation owners and enjoyed a very real level of power over other, black people, is one that is simply not comprehended now. That is the story I wanted to explore, and I was delighted to discover that my own family was a perfect vehicle to convey it. I had traced my maternal ancestors back to the seventeenth century, to the earliest days of settlement. I was initially triumphant; it was much earlier than so many people had been able to go. But as time went on a sense of anti-climax overwhelmed me. What did my neatly formatted family tree really mean? It was after all just names on a page. Genealogical research had its limitations after all; what it yielded was the skeleton, not the body. But between the bones I had, nonetheless, glimpsed something intriguing: a story of migration, settlement, survival, slavery and the making of the New World. I continued researching, but on this leg of the journey I focused on scholarly secondary sources that brought to life the context and detail of the period. I began with modern general histories of the region so that I could lay out the territory, creating a detailed narrative time-line from the beginning of the colonial project to the present day. These also helped me to identify and begin to understand what the crucial areas of study would be. Early historical accounts such as those provided by explorers John Smith and John Davies, History of the Caribby Islands, published in 1666, were revelatory, in that they demonstrated how these new settlements were experienced by the early colonists. Richard Ligon’s visit to Barbados, for example, in the mid-seventeenth century was invaluable in showing how this unfamiliar terrain worked on the new arrivals, as well as how they thought about their black slaves and the region’s indigenous peoples. I later focused on contemporaneous accounts of the period provided both by professional historians and other observers. Particularly significant in understanding the planters’ perspective were The Letters and Diary of Pierre Dessalles, Planter of Martinique 1808–1856 (1996), Douglas Hall’s account of Thomas Thistlewood, In Miserable Slavery (1989) and Matthew Lewis, Journal of a WestIndia Proprietor, Kept During A Residence in the Island of Jamaica (1834). These were balanced by surviving slave accounts such as Frederick Douglass’ memoirs My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), Mary Prince’s The History of Mary Prince (1831) and Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents of Life of a Slave Girl (1861). Despite their rather patronising and imperial perspectives, travellers’ accounts also added essential specificity to my account. These included Sir Henry Colt’s journey to the Caribbean in the seventeenth century (in V. T. Harlow [ed.], Colonising Expeditions to the West Indies and Guiana 1623–1667 [1925]) and George 186

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Pinckard’s Notes on the West Indies (3 vols, 1806), which bridged the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. To write a family story such as this I also had to become an expert on areas about which otherwise I had had limited understanding; these included the sugar industry, slave health, piracy and the colonial education system. As well as these specialist histories it was also crucial to understand how theoretical perspectives had evolved in the postcolonial period, so it was necessary to explore the work of current historians, such as Catherine Hall’s Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830–1867 (2002) and Bernard Bailyn and Philip Morgan’s Strangers within the Realm (1991). Contemporary local historians such as Hilary Beckles profoundly influenced the shape of the project, as did the work of Dr Pedro Welch, while the Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, which has published articles associated with the island’s history for over fifty years, was a treasure trove of local knowledge and provided much of the imperative detail that deepened my account. Inevitably, however, there were gaps and silences. This was true when trying to recreate the stories of ‘small men’ like George Ashby, the founder of our New World family. He was not the kind of person who dominated the grand narratives of history. He was neither a king nor queen, neither powerful nor important. So why would his letters or diaries be preserved? His story is like that of the majority of people, the details of their lives are like footprints in the sand, washed away with the first tide. And if this was true of my white ancestry in the Americas it is even truer for my black ancestors. Whereas for George Ashby, a white man, the data available in archives could provide the scaffolding of a life, for my enslaved ancestors not even genealogy can provide any insights. From the moment that they were captured in Africa, my African ancestors were reduced merely to a number and a commodity and thus do not figure in data such as birth, deaths, marriages and appear in wills and other legal documents only as property. This wilful destruction of their personhood and all of the minutiae and artefacts of their lives is one of the most terrible legacies of Atlantic slavery. So the challenge for me as a writer was how to bring my slave ancestors alive when virtually nothing is left behind. The conventions of writing ‘proper’ history, which discourages, even abhors, speculation, only make this task more difficult. For a writer attempting to resurrect the lives of the enslaved, there is so little to go on that these strictures sometimes feel like insurmountable hurdles. In moments of discouragement I have sometimes wondered whether I should simply give up and not bother with these anonymous people. But this would be the most terrible defeat, since we would be left only with the histories of politicians and warriors, those powerful and rich individuals who already dominate the history of our culture. My response to this dilemma was to borrow some of the techniques of the creative writer. Indeed the centrality of the fictional imagination in capturing the legacies of slavery is well known, bearing in mind the dearth of information. Thus I have used existing slave narratives to imagine the inner lives of my 187

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a­ncestors. This was particularly important in recreating the story of my first enslaved ancestor, John Stephen Ashby, who was born in bondage on the plantation of his planter father. And I have used contemporaneous accounts to recreate my ancestors’ – both black and white – own journeys, across the island, around the plantation, even across the Atlantic. Imagining, for example, how my first English ancestor felt on setting out for his small holding: ‘At some point on the journey to his new plot of land, George Ashby must have cursed the duplicity of this small island. The tangerine sunsets, the cooing doves, which had seduced him as they did all newcomers, had deceived him into believing in the island’s benign felicity. But now as he moved inland, the orderly vistas of Bridgetown gave way to a ­nightmarish jungle.’ At other times it was my job to try to find a fresh angle on a seemingly familiar historical event. It was fascinating for me to realise how much longer and more terrible the process of capture was than the much-represented leg of the journey on the slave ship: ‘Most slaves’ ordeal began long before they even saw a slave ship. Spirited away from their communities, often the result of inter-ethnic conflict, they joined a dusty convoy across Africa, in the company of others captured before them, as well as goats and horses, black traders and the occasional white slavers. The men were bound together into coffles, linked by wood and rope and chain, with the women and children straggling alongside, free of shackles but ever vulnerable to violence and opportunistic sexual abuse by the armed men who chaperoned them.’ Over time I managed to give my maternal line both shape and colour. I had followed my ancestors from seventeenth-century England to the Caribbean island of Barbados to the cold winters of New York and Canada. At last I had a landscape for my family. And I realised something else: that if my family’s story is at once very specific, very particular, it is also wholly typical and representative. In other words, a story that belongs not just to me but to many, many others. As far as I know the book that has emerged out of this family history project is the first non-fiction book that looks at a single Caribbean family, both black and white, and tracks them over a period of time to examine the minutiae of subjectivities and negotiations between them. My family’s story, which spans almost four hundred years, began in the early modern period with the settling of the New World, when connections between continents seemed to become closer even as relationships between European nations became more fraught. This was the tumultuous backdrop to the great adventure undertaken by George Ashby. Like thousands of others – ordinary men, women and children – he made the protracted and perilous journey by sea to the New World, where he was witness to the birth of the Americas and the emergence of transatlantic slavery. (The story of these pioneers has a privileged place in North America’s collective mythology, but elsewhere they are all but invisible to us, although Barbados was in many ways the testing ground of settlement for all of the Americas.) Thus my book, Sugar in the Blood: One Family’s Story of Slavery and Empire (2012), is the account of my maternal family; one that begins in the mid-­ 188

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seventeenth century when my first known ancestor, George Ashby, who was my grandfather eight times removed, was swept up in the huge wave of migration to the New World. It then continues from his arrival in Barbados, charting the dynasty he founded to the present day. It turns out that their story demonstrates the evolution of the plantation complex in microcosm. A European family relocating to the tropics, in the neophyte years of the sugar industry, who first exploited indentured labour and then, as they became more enmeshed in the burgeoning sugar industry, converted to the exploitation of enslaved labour. For many years they then went on to make their living producing a commodity that was for sale across the Atlantic, and were ruled by a mother country that was several weeks away by sea. For almost eight generations their lives would centre on the plantation and the unique society that developed around it. Inevitably the early section of the narrative is built on very limited material, since what the archives reveal about George Ashby can be summed up in a few lines. He steps into history in the year 1650, when a Barbados census taken of the parish of St Philip lists him as possessing nine acres. The parish record also credits him as being married and the father of two children. He ‘possessed’ only one, white, servant. With the exception of a few small mentions, history would forget him again until 1672, when he made his will. And my choice as a creative writer was either to ignore him because he was a small man who cast only a very faint historical shadow, or to use the very limited historical facts available to reconstruct his world. I chose the latter, even if it did mean falling prey to the evils of speculation. George Ashby was the pioneer of the family; but the patriarch, the one who made our fortune, achieved our social place and stands at the head of its black and white lines, was his great-great-grandson Robert Cooper Ashby. His life – as a planter, a slave-owner and the father of white and black children – allows us to explore plantation life ‘from the inside out’. He owned people – a great many people – formed lasting sexual relationships with some of them, and freed some of the resulting ‘property’. The challenge in this section was not to portray his life, about which so much is written; it was to depict the silent lives of my slave ancestors, despite the fact that they are enshrined in history only as property, and never as people. Some of them – and their descendants – became among the first ‘freed coloureds’, that little-known social caste who occupied a perilous social position, free but without equal rights, permitted to forge a new path but alienated from the trust or community of either the white masters or the black slave class from which they had been allowed to escape. It was these freed coloureds, unsurprisingly, who became the first agitators for political emancipation, the first black professionals and leaders, the ‘brown’ class that eventually became plantation owners in their own right. Some even owned slaves. My childhood memories of the Caribbean are firmly rooted in this world – of the drive up the road to Plum Grove, the plantation where my mother’s family lived, through fields of waving sugar corn being harvested by poorer, blacker 189

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Barbadians. Of my aunts, Rosie and Pam, sitting on the steps in their starched frocks, for all the world like modern-day Scarlett O’Haras. Of dinner parties on campus at the newly created University of the West Indies, where I was brought up and where idealists of all races, from all over the world, passionately debated the new ideas about how to raise up the race. It is a world almost completely unknown outside the Caribbean, where to be black is considered equal to being poor and powerless. But the influence of the black descendants of white planters has been immense, not just in the Caribbean but in all those places where its emigrants have settled: the UK, the US, Canada and Australia. My family story follows them, burdened with the legacy of their shared history, with all its pains and privileges, as they make their way in the modern world. The story of the Ashbys has been shaped by the kinds of people my ancestors were, whether restless or courageous, cruel or venal. But theirs is also a story moulded by wider social forces. For the Ashbys, though ‘small people’, were a family who always seemed to be at the front line of history, intimately and perilously enmeshed in the transformations of their age. Whether it was colonisation or imperial aggression, war or transoceanic trade, they were under pressure from events that they could neither mitigate nor control. As the generations unfolded, every aspect of the Ashby family – the circumstances of their birth, their marriages, their upbringing and their attitudes, even the colour of their skin – would be determined by these great trans-continental developments. One of the most important of these was the sugar industry. For we are the family – one among millions – that sugar made. Just as oil drives the geopolitics of our age, so sugar drove that of the period from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. Sugar, and the riches it generated, was, according to one eighteenth-century commentator, ‘the principal cause of the rapid movement which stirs the Universe’. During these years sugar precipitated the forced movement of millions of people from Africa, created nations and enriched Europe beyond its wildest imaginings. In Britain, it part-financed the Industrial Revolution and bankrolled much of our cultural heritage. In Europe, it helped to fuel the Enlightenment and, by extension, the French Revolution, described by historian Eric Hobsbawm as ‘the beginning of the modern world’.2 In the Americas, particularly South America, it was the basis of many economies, while further north it played an important part in the evolution of what is, today, the world’s only superpower. The ‘white gold’ also financed an era of great scientific and medical advances, symbolised by the invention of the vaccination. The age of sugar helped to create seismic shifts in society, from rural to urban, from local to global, from nation to empire. By exploring how sugar, slavery and settlement made my family, I examined how these forces influenced the minutiae of intimate family relationships – and, in turn, how those family relationships acted outwards, transforming in their turn the societies in which they lived. So the book attempts to place a family within the context of world history as well as to explain world history through the evolution of a single family. It is, then, more than a family history: it is a global story, 190

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too – one that fixes its gaze on the connections between continents, between black and white, men and women, the free and the enslaved. As the story shifts gear between personal experience and global history, I hope it will simultaneously both show how one family evolved over time and deepen our understanding of our global past – thereby reminding us that it is never really possible to separate the ­individual from global history. Thus my ambition for the book was both literary and polemical; it was to demonstrate how the wider forces of colonial settlement, the rise of the sugar industry and the associated development of the Atlantic slave trade shaped one individual family’s story, and to do so in a manner that created a sense of pace, narrative tensions, strong characterisation and so on. But this book represented a very different challenge from my previous ones. My first, Showgirls, was a cultural history of a very modern icon, and the second was a biography of the Empress Josephine, both of which had a wealth of research to work from. In the case of Sugar in the Blood, however, there were areas where the material was scant to nil. With this book, therefore, my job as a writer was to create characters out of skeletal information, as well as to pin-point and dramatise certain inevitable points of the story, despite not having any personal accounts of these events. I think of this book as being appropriate for both an academic audience and those who appreciate literary non-fiction. I hope too that it will be particularly useful in education, as a palatable way to explore issues like race and slavery, as well as be useful for black British students to understand how wider historical forces have shaped lives. I also hope that my more personal approach to history will seduce more readers into exploring the complex and difficult realities of Atlantic slavery. Since I do feel that academic historians could – on some ­occasions – work harder to make people understand how directly – and viscerally – history works on us, rather than present it as a rather abstract and distant force. For me, writing this book has been transformative. When I started this project I thought of myself as having a fairly sophisticated appreciation of issues of race and slavery, but this process of researching and composing has deepened my understanding of these issues immeasurably. It personalised these processes, helping me to understand how my family evolved, and even explained some of the smaller tics in the family; for example, my dad’s rejection of ‘slave food’. I felt myself inside my family’s story, rather than a spectator watching it from outside; and it made me reconsider how history is taught and remembered. (For example, my discovery in the investigative period of how the history of the emergence of Haiti and the slaves’ own contribution to abolition had been written out of history.) I emerged from the process with a fierce sense of pride in my slave roots and the family that these forces have made. Forgive me for being mawkish, but I think again and again of Maya Angelou’s line: ‘Still I rise’.3 And I also have a greater appreciation of how linked my family’s story is with the emergence of Britain as a world power. So it has made me rethink my place in British society, and made me more determined to explain the past so that we can understand the present. 191

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Notes 1 Jonathan Freedland, ‘Introduction’, Family History Guide, Guardian (Supplement) April 2007, p. 7. Available at http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/guides/family history/0,,2053687,00.html. 2 Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution 1789–1848 (London, 1962). 3 Maya Angelou, And Still I Rise. Poems (New York, 1986).

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Legacy and lineage: family histories in the Caribbean Mary Chamberlain

My first research in Caribbean history, which I began shortly after I arrived in Barbados, involved the 1840 Masters and Servants Act, the punitive legislation and restrictive practices put in place after slave emancipation to ensure the planters a continuous, cheap and ‘located’ labour force. Commonly known as the Contract Law or, more colloquially, the tenantry system, to which it gave rise, the Act was not repealed until 1937. In 1989, when I began the research, there were still people alive who could recall it, either as children or as labourers. One such was Reginald Franklin, born in 1909 and brought up on Bushy Park plantation, in St Philip, in the east of the island. He had agreed to talk to me about his childhood and working life as a plantation tenant and labourer. I began the interview as I would in England. ‘Tell me about your father.’ After a long pause, he said, ‘You know the thing about West Indian family?’ I did not. Mr Franklin never knew his father, an agricultural labourer who migrated to Panama, one of fifty thousand Barbadians (one in four of the population) who left for the Canal Zone between 1904 and 1914. He may have died there, or remigrated (to Central, South or North America). He may have returned, and kept a low profile. Either way, Mr Franklin did not know him. Nor could he remember his mother. She, too, had migrated to Panama, independently of his father. While she could not work as a labourer on the canal project, a service industry had grown up around the men. They needed laundresses, seamstresses, cooks and, undoubtedly, comforters. He never saw her again. His mother had, however, left him in the care of her mother, and it was she who brought him up on the plantation where she was ‘located’, sending him out to begin his working career as a twelve-year-old scaring birds. ‘In those days’, he recalled, ‘you say “Blackbird, flee blackbird. Get up out of the Massa corn hole.” You know, little children, you would be running up and down … or picking beetle.’1 Although he rose to become superintendant at the plantation, it ‘didn’t a lot of money’. His own children, he told me, had all emigrated to the United States, and to Britain. He was over eighty when I met him, long since retired, but still living 193

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on the former ‘tenantry’ at Bushy Park. Mr Franklin’s story, and my memories of him – a small, wiry man with a mischievous humour – remain vivid. But what struck me at the time was the family story he recounted of migration as both the child and parent of migrants. Mr Franklin himself never left Barbados. By the time he came of age in 1930, the United States had effectively closed its doors to migration from the West Indies, and most of the rimland Caribbean had followed suit. This, coupled with the impact of global economic depression, had left his generation with no migratory outlets. On the contrary, many Barbadians, expelled from Cuba or Panama or the Dominican Republic or other parts of the Caribbean, were returning, exacerbating the chronic overcrowding in the island and the desperate shortage of employment. It was a significant contributory factor in the riots in Barbados of 1937, which left fourteen people dead, part of the insurgency that spread throughout the British West Indies in the 1930s. Migration was central to his life story, and to that of his family. In turn, his family story was also the story of twentieth-century Caribbean migration. It was the direct inspiration for my subsequent research, which used generations of families as the prism through which to view the histories of migration from Barbados.2 That research, in turn, led me to look at the impact generations of migration had had on families in Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad.3 Mr Franklin’s words, this ‘thing’ about West Indian families, ran through the research like gristle through meat, for it begged the question: what is a family? There are inside questions – who can claim membership, who can refuse it? And outside questions – what do families look like, what are they for? In the case of the Caribbean, families have been consistently vilified as porous, negligent and dysfunctional – a vilification which is the first direct legacy of slavery. The second I shall come to later. Until the late eighteenth century slave marriages were neither promoted nor recognised by civil and church authorities. Slave families were similarly disregarded. Instead, Europeans propagated the idea that promiscuous sexual mores were the essential and defining characteristic of black West Indians which, in their view, was both evidence of deviant behaviour and precluded family life. (No matter that this behaviour characterised their own predatory behaviour, rather than that of their slaves, who were powerless). But, as Barry Higman has shown, slaves did form families adapted to, and from, the social conditions in which they found themselves, although many, for the most part, looked nothing like their European counterparts.4 After emancipation, it was hoped that the former slaves would form families modelled on the European, patriarchal model. To the chagrin of the reformers, former slaves resisted marriage, except perhaps later in life, insisted on continuing what the 1842 Select Committee on West India Colonies termed ‘polygamy’, and established households in which women continued to work, albeit where possible on their terms.5 Throughout the nineteenth century and for the first half of the twentieth, with the crippling poverty that characterised the Caribbean in the period and the riots which dogged it, church and colonial authorities were quick to make the link between what was perceived as lack of family form, as evidenced by high rates 194

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of illegitimacy, and a failure of citizenship. It was a constant theme in the annual reports of the Registrars General, in the reports of contemporary observers, in vestry records and in Colonial Secretaries’ correspondence. The West India Royal Commission, reporting on the riots which racked the British West Indies in the 1930s, listed as one of the causes the lack of stable marriages and families, the consequence of ‘the absence of a strong, opposing public opinion among a people whose immature minds too often are ruled by their adult bodies’.6 Scholars continued to misunderstand or misrepresent family forms, filtering their views through white, European and American lenses. Convinced that there was no ‘native’ culture or social organisation among the slaves and their descendants, they continued to be baffled by what they found and to flounder for appropriate analytical tools. Even Thomas Simey, the Charles Booth Professor of Social Science at the University of Liverpool, a personal progressive and staunch advocate of the importance of ‘the sociological approach to problems of colonial administration’, who was appointed as Welfare Adviser to Sir Frank Stockdale, the Comptroller of Development and Welfare, provided a poor exemplar for the scientific method.7 Caribbean families, he argued, could be broken down into four groups, ‘Christian’, ‘Faithful Concubinage’, ‘Companionate’ and ‘The Disintegrate Family, consisting of women and children only, in which men merely visit the women from time to time, no pattern of conduct being established.’8 By far the majority of West Indians lived in ‘disintegrate families’ where, to compound the problem, ‘not a single [household] consisted only of parents and their children’.9 These debates and criticisms continued to echo in popular circuits throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, despite increasingly nuanced studies by social anthropologists and sociologists. They reverberated in the United Kingdom, for instance, in the 1981 Scarman report, which blamed ‘Mothers, who in the West Indies formed the focus of family … [who in the UK] were absent from the family home.’10 They were echoed in sensational press reports such as this: among the West Indian community the sanctity of the family is in ‘meltdown’. Latest unpublished Government Statistics obtained by the Sunday Express reveal that almost six in ten black mothers are bringing up children on their own, urged on by our benefits system … In the black community the traditional family is collapsing at a faster rate than among any other group, costing the State at least £130 million a year.11

And most recently, the final report of the Riots Communities and Victims Panel in 2012 (on the 2011 summer riots in the UK) prefaced the section on ‘Children and Parents’ with a photograph of a black mother and child, unequivocally contextualising the subsequent findings on ‘poor parenting’ and ‘absent fathers’ as contributing factors in the profile of rioters who lack ‘a stake in society’.12 My blunder into Mr Franklin’s life carried centuries of European arrogance, and his corrective was timely and appropriate. But if viewers from the outside fail to see the forms and functions of Caribbean families, what do these look like from the inside? This was my research problem and I chose to use oral histories 195

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and life stories as my tool, to glean insight from the recollections of what people told me and the narratives in which they framed their memories. Yet these are not neutral tools. We take the concept of ‘life story’ as a given, but it relies on a very particular concept of the self rooted in Western modernity. Who is an individual, a self, is by no means universally understood, any more than the rhetorical devices of stories or narratives are universal, or necessarily linear. In the case of the Caribbean, two features stand out which suggest a very different base. First, the language of self conveys different concepts and approaches. On the one hand, descent and rebirth consistently blur the boundaries of self-hood (‘I am a grandmother child’, ‘I am from my mother’) and, on the other, an intrinsic existentialism, epitomised by phrases such as ‘when I first knew myself coming up’, ‘when I born and I got the sense’. The concept of self, and its narration, and the concept of biography may have different meanings and purposes in which some identification with the group and ancestry takes precedence over the metaphysics of the self. ‘We were all full of my grandmother,’ the Trinidadian novelist Dionne Brand put it. ‘She had left us full and empty of her.’13 This elision may well be one element which can be traced to an African philosophy and ancestry.14 Orlando Patterson, suggesting the vibrancy of African traditions in Caribbean slave culture, and citing Radcliffe Brown, points out that ‘ “There is a widespread custom of privileged familiarity between grandparents and grandchildren” in Africa based on the “structural principle” that “one generation is replaced in the course of time by the generation of their grandparent”.’15 The implications of this on individual memory are significant. In many ways, all memories extend beyond the individual, as personal memories necessarily incorporate the retold memories of others – of themselves, of other family members and of friends and acquaintances. Public and official memories similarly become absorbed into the personal repertoire, not always voluntarily, or with beneficial effects.16 Equally, as already suggested, how memories are framed and articulated is structured by the range of narratives and genres available, which will vary from culture to culture, faith to faith, ritual to ritual.17 Examining memories in relation to these narrative structures and genres may, therefore, reveal more than the ‘purely’ personal and open ways in which culture not only makes possible the articulation of memory, but (in some cases of pain and trauma) its soothing and resolution or, conversely, its celebration of shared values. Equally, memories of individuals may be recounted in terms of prototypical behaviour which may function as both an individual and collective biography: one individual may stand as the embodiment of all.18 Despite – or because of – these caveats, oral histories and life stories were revealing in my own research on migration and families. On an empirical level, they showed how families facilitated migration by, for instance, raising the funds for the migrant to travel or caring for their children while they were abroad. Migrants in turn received other family members, providing them with housing and opening the way for them as pioneers in the new land, introducing them 196

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to local employment sources – and customs. Cedric, for instance, on his first morning in London, ‘walk, bare feet … I didn’t know why everybody watching … so when I get up my cousin, she says, “where’s your shoes?” I say, “home”. She say “nobody walk here bare feet.” ’19 Engaging also in collective Caribbean practices to make their way – throwing a little ‘partner’ or holding a ‘meeting turn’ to save the deposit on a house. Migrants, in turn, supported (and continue to support) family members ‘back home’ through remittances in kind or cash. Indeed, the value of remittances sent back from Panama changed the landscape of West Indian politics in the 1930s,by enabling land or business purchases which qualified for the franchise, while the migrants themselves introduced militant labour practices. More recently, Keith Nurse has pointed out that the value of remittances sent back to families outstrips Foreign Direct Investment, and Overseas Assistance, and for many Caribbean countries constitutes a significant proportion of GDP.20 Such patterns of support, along with migrations, have continued across generations and have generated within families, reflected in the wider society, an ethos or dynamic of migration, encouraging and supporting it across the generations and providing the narratives through which to talk about migration experiences. Thus, using families as both the research tool and its subject exposed and challenged well-accepted ‘tropes’ of Caribbean behaviour. Migration could no longer be viewed as a simple economic decision, as the push/pull model would have it, but was an infinitely more complex set of behaviours in which families were centrally embroiled and complicit. Caribbean families could no longer be viewed as dysfunctional and disintegrate, as European observers characterised them, but as inclusive and responsive, fit for purpose as functioning units in the vagarious world of migration and labour. So far so practical. But there is another way in which oral histories and life stories have revealed the inner life of families, which brings us to the second legacy of slavery: the construction of a powerful counter-narrative to that promulgated by colonial and other authorities. In my interviews with families particular stories were repeated again and again. We are a ‘close family’, people would tell me, ‘supportive,’ ‘loving’. The families themselves were inclusive institutions, ‘we’re all a big circle together, big family, happy family, together’, embracing ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ members as equals, family friends and godparents as kin.21 ‘They’re not for the same dad,’ Alana said about her own four children, But you’d never know it … because I bring the four of them up myself, and they just … gel together, you know, you would never know that they’ve different dads, because they’re so close, you know, as a family.22

Grandparents would regularly bring up their grandchildren (and sometimes other people’s too). Aunts would adopt nieces or nephews, children ‘shifted’ to childless kin at home and abroad. Family members would trace relatives across generations, on all sides. Hyacinth was close to all her family ‘up to the fourth 197

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cousin … I’ve got cousins is no different from my sister’.23 Another remarked how, We have a family reunion now … New York. Two years ago … (it was) Canada … the one before that was in Jamaica … Every two years, yes … every year it become bigger … a few hundred I would say … How many tables it was? About thirty!24

Death notices confirm the inclusiveness and breadth of families and the emphasis on belonging, by stressing kinship links and lineages. Oswald B. who died in 2012 was, we learned, Father of Marcel Brown and Collis Errol Pile (both of the United Kingdom), Bernard Pile (USA), Heather Williams-Mayers (Teacher, Wesley Hall Junior School), Fitzgerald Pile (Barbados Light & Power Company Ltd.), Myrna and Decoursey-Pile and Anderson Pile (Sanitation Service Authority). Grandfather of Sherry-Ann Pile (Customs & Excise Department), Allison, Dario and Roger Pile, Shaé Pile (United Kingdom), Collis Orlanda Pile (USA), Shelly Ann Taitt (Purity Bakeries), Ashlee Douglin (Canada), Akeila Pile (Student, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus), Shakira Sargeant (Student, University of the West Indies, Mona Campus), Rommel Perch (Sanitation Service Authority), Jamel Harewood (Quality Tyre) and three others. Great-grandfather of Keeva, Tarique, Lashaé, Deandre and Akayla Pile. Foster-father of Earl and Leroy Brathwaite and Gina Coggins. Brother of Ismay Warner and The late Stanley Harewood. Uncle of Maureen Robinson (Canada), Barry Heather and Decoursey Harewood, Judy Yarde, Sylvester and Ormond Chase, Wendy, Harriet, William, Richard, Jackie Warner. Father-in-law of Ricardo Brown and Arlene Brathwaite-Pile (both of the United Kingdom), Judy Giffear-Pile (USA) and Laurison Mayers (Labour Department). Relative of The Bynoe family (Lodge Road, Christ Church), The Harewood and Yarde families (both of Edey Village, Christ Church) and The Warner family (Oistins, Christ Church). Friend of Steven and Margaret Holder, Darnley Hunte, Liz, Colleen Simmons, Corlita Mayers, Rhonda Greene, Elmena Joseph, Mrs Padmore, The Dayrells Road, Paddock Road and Edey Village Communities.25

The notice of the recent tragic death of five-month-old Nyomi N. told us that she was: Daughter of Camille Nicholls (Burrowes Chartered Accountants) and Russell Greaves (Supreme Counselling for Personal Development). Granddaughter of Allison Skeete (Accountant, Island Heritage Insurance Co.), Ricardo Skeete (Minister, Church of God in Christ), Etwyn Greaves and Michael Grosvenor. Great-granddaughter of Merle Nicholls (Brooklyn, New York), Emmerson Small, Mavis Skeete-Hutson, Kathleen Greaves and Lucille Seale. Great-great-granddaughter of Millicent Small. Niece of Pierre Nicholls, Regina and Jeremy Skeete, Renee, Dawn, Jamal and Ebonii. Great-niece of Carolyn and Shaundelle Forde, Shawn Nicholls, Judy, Antoinette Skeete, Milton and Lyle Greaves and three others. Great-great-niece of Rhonda Parris, Marva Allsopp and four others. Cousin of Julia Maynard (New York), Shakira, Keara, Kiola and others too numerous to mention. Goddaughter of Jalisa Jones, Pastor Jerry Price, Jamal Young and Sabrina Goodridge. Relative of the Parris, Franklin, Brandford, Brathwaite, Hart families. Specially loved by Gloria Rock, Deborah

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Downes, Janelle Ifill, Vanessa, Mandisa, Dwaneisha, Corey, Gregg The Staff of J & S Daycare, Dr. Ayanda Holder, Pastor and Members of Pentecostal Fellowship Church of God in Christ and Springer Memorial 2008 Class Upper 5–4.26

For Gladstone W., a retired foreman of St. Andrews Sugar Factory, in addition to his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, siblings, nieces and nephews, we learn that he was also cousin of Millicent Cave, Herbert, Vivienne, Doreen, Sandra and Paulette Walker, Mildon Applewhite and Gorring Squires; godfather of Beverley Grant and Matthew Sinckler; special friend of Simeon Belgrave, George Clarke, Mr. and Mrs. Gamble, Cecil Clarke and the late Clairmonte Kellman; friend of Icilma Downes, Harcourt Griffith, Allan Codrington, Basil Dawson and many others too numerous to mention; relative of the Walker, Carrington, Austin and Clarke families.27

Why list great-grand-nieces or nephews, cousins, possibly several removes from the deceased, godparents, friends and their place of work or residence? What are we to make of this emphasis on kin and lineage? What do these notices say? On the one hand, they reveal, for the historian, significant information about family and living arrangements. They help to answer the ‘outside’ question – what do families look like? In the case of Oswald there is no mention of a wife, and neither his sons nor his brothers share his name. He probably never married, but cohabited with the mother(s) of his children, bringing up alongside his own the children of his partner(s). He was, we learn, a foster father – an unusual term in the context of Caribbean families, although a very common practice, as men assumed the role of parent over new partner’s existing children and, less commonly, women mothered their partner’s ‘outside’ children. Oswald’s occupation was not referred to, but most people of his generation began their working life, like Mr Franklin, like Gladstone, as plantation labourers, probably as children. He was almost certainly the son and the grandson of labourers and the great-grandson of slaves. Oswald was 89, Gladstone 98 when they died. Little Nyomi was five months. Her lineage was no less complex, and no less acknowledged, despite her young age. All had kin spread across the globe, were microcosms of the region and its movements. Migration from the Caribbean islands began almost as soon as the ink was dry on the ending of apprenticeship. Despite the planters’ best efforts to arrest migration, the former slaves moved to other parts of the Caribbean, and to South and North America. It was a difficult environment of poor communications, impoverishment and poor literacy, yet the instincts were in place to retain contact, where possible. Caribbean peoples lived a precarious life at home and, particularly, abroad. They stuck together in the often hostile host environment, forging networks of friendship as well as kinship. ‘One finds approximately 30 benevolent and mutual aid societies’, wrote Ira Reid in New York, organised by immigrant groups from Anguilla, Antigua, Guiana, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, British Jamaica, St. Lucia, Turks and Carios [sic] Island, Trinidad and the British Virgin Islands. Numerous social clubs … literary clubs … cricket clubs and tennis associations … politically centred groups.28

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‘I knew everybody who was here’, said Estelle, ‘all the black people knew one another … If anybody was sick, you would always … go and look after them … you always kept together.’29 These are transnational families. A global context was part of the everyday milieu in which Oswald and Gladstone operated, and little Nyomi would have operated, had she survived. From Edey village to Canada, the United States, Europe, Jamaica. ‘I live in New York but was born in Panama,’ wrote Marcelino Campbell to the Barbados Free Press. ‘I am trying to find some background on my grand-father George Coulthrust …’30 ‘Living in this country,’ Jerry suggested, ‘where there’s a lot of pressures … especially because we’re an ethnic minority, the family unit provides the solace, stability, that’s needed to go ahead, we’re always looking out, or thinking about the other one, or the two that’s not here, or the three that’s not here … it’s as if we carrying on a tradition that we’re not even fully aware of.’31 Knowing where the kin are placed is of strategic importance. ‘Imagine me in Britain’, Roy pointed out, ‘I’m not writing to my brother, I’m not writing to my niece …’32 But like those broad kinship links, it also challenges, in this case, the primacy of place by both locating and dislocating, a reminder that place is never permanent, always contingent. Migration – voluntary or forced – wasn’t the exception in these family histories, but the rule. Migration and modernity went hand in hand, but the more people moved, the more they needed ‘fixing’. The movement of peoples – then as now – carries with it the threat of chaos. Moving people trample over political, tribal and cultural borders. They resist organisation. It was the need to anchor the movement of peoples from the old world to the new, or in the metropolis, from rural to urban, that forged the modern world of nation-states, and empires. Migrants who laboured and acquired property, including wives and children, became citizens; and the acquisition of property determined who had the franchise, who had claims to citizenship. Not native Americans who roamed the land, nor African slaves who laboured on it, nor English vagrants who tramped from town to town in search of an honest crust. Those were stripped not only of citizenship but, potentially, of history. We find them by accident. Place is where families live, where generations are born and buried. The ground, of course, shifts. It shifts in perspective. Black labourers and their slave ancestors undoubtedly saw the place that was the plantation very differently to any white ancestor, engaging in very different sets of relations, values and so on. Place shifts geographically, its axes tilting to accommodate the outside with the inside, the global with the local. Relationship to place, like that of the family, shifts over time, and in the course of a life-span. Place can also be symbolic, like ‘family land’ in Jamaica. The land is real, but its utility rests in the symbolic claims to belonging which it represents. Place can also be in the imaginary. ‘I had no nation, now’, Derek Walcott wrote, ‘but the imagination.’33 The borders of place may, like the family, be emotional rather than political, in terms of being not just attached to a place, but also detached from it, and what that means in the constructions of national identities. 200

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Without reference to a larger history, genealogies are like bones in a bag, to borrow the image of the orphaned Rebeca in Garcia Marques’ One Hundred Years of Solitude, out of context and incomprehensible. We need to know what Andrea Levy calls the Long Story. I would argue that the emphasis on lineage is one of the legacies of slavery and the subsequent history of the post-emancipation Caribbean. Caribbean people are a diasporic people, once from Africa, twice from the Caribbean, and it is a history that has shaped those families. Torn from the traditions and cultures of home, and from networks of family and kin, slaves were thrust into the logic of the plantation regime, becoming what Sidney Mintz described as the first ‘modern’ people.34 Brutalised and isolated by these regimes, slaves nevertheless reconstructed families of both fictive and non-fictive kin. The passion for lineage in the West Indies is the legacy of slavery, the need to keep tabs on everyone who could claim compassion in an otherwise harsh environment. Psychologically – and we can only guess at this – it must have been important. Practically, it was invaluable, for kin, however distant, could be relied upon to give help, succour and, if necessary, protection, as the many notices of slave runaways attest. Post-slavery, the need to reconnect with family was urgent. ‘People badly want to unite with the family’, recalled Samuel Smith, born in Antigua in 1877, ‘particularly the womenkind. I hear that the women was furious and desperate to find their people.’35 The 1842 Select Committee on West India complains again and again of former slaves leaving the plantations to live with wives or husbands or children, of sending children to live with other kin to avoid their working on the plantation, of securing care for elderly kin, of embracing people into their kinship fold. ‘There is a connexion of the negroes that is not generally known in this country [Trinidad]’, one planter recorded, ‘that is as godfathers and godmothers, which is as binding as the relation of parents themselves.’36 These lineages provide a footing for the personal narrative that follows, allow the bearer to stand tall in a history which negated and belittled them, allows them the right, the legitimacy, to claim or refuse family membership, to make families of their own. These lineages, which sprawl horizontally and vertically – what the anthropologist Jean Besson defined more technically ‘ancestor-orientated nonunilineal or cognatic descent lines’37 – challenge assumptions of lineality and the essentialism of the family, for in those slave women, raped by their masters, in those masters living double lives between the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ families, we have family formations which challenge the high-minded (and late romantic ideals of) nucleated units, and are reminded of the slipperiness of class and race and sexual transgressions. The trauma, and post-trauma of slavery, drives what I term the diasporic memory, embodied by and embedded in genealogy. Understanding the rupture and shame of slavery makes sense of the genealogies which families recount about themselves and continue to recount. Family stories and genealogies work as engines of inclusion, not exclusion, emphasising global linkages and shared communities who speak the same normative shorthand. They celebrate family and affirm survival, and surviving slavery was possible only through the f­ormation 201

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and knowledge of networks of kin and fictive kin and assumptions of trust and affection. These are stories of resistance, which both conceal and reveal this history. Notes  1 Interview 6 February 1990, tape 2, side 1. Cited in Mary Chamberlain, ‘Renters and farmers: the Barbadian plantation tenantry system, 1917–1937’, Journal of Caribbean History, 24:2 (1990), 195–225.  2 Mary Chamberlain, Narratives of Exile and Return (New Brunswick, [1997] 2004).  3 Mary Chamberlain, Family Love in the Diaspora: Migration and the Anglo-Caribbean Experience (New Brunswick, 2006). This book was based on ESRC-funded research by Harry Goulbourne and myself for Living Arrangements, Family Structure and Social Change of Caribbeans in Britain (Award number L315253009). The interviews in Britain, Jamaica and Barbados were conducted by our research fellow, Dr Dwaine Plaza. I conducted the interviews in Trinidad.  4 Barry Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean (Kingston, Jamaica, [1984] 1995).  5 Mimi Scheller, ‘Quasheba, mother, queen: black women’s public leadership and political protest in post-emancipation Jamaica, 1834–1865’, Slavery and Abolition, 19:3 (1998), 90–117. See also Chamberlain ‘Renters and farmers’; various evidence in Parliamentary Papers [hereafter PP] 1842 (479) XIII, Select Committee on West India Colonies; C. Hall, ‘White visions, black lives: the free villages of Jamaica,’ History Workshop Journal, 36 (1993), 100–32.  6 West India Royal Commission 1938–9 (1945), p. 221.  7 T. S. Simey, Welfare and Planning in the West Indies (Oxford, 1946), p. 232.  8 Simey, Welfare, p. 83.  9 Simey, Welfare, p. 84. 10 Lord Scarman’s Report on the Brixton Disorders, Cmd. 8427(1981). Scarman continued: ‘Some idea of the destructive changes wrought in family lives by their new circumstances can be got from a few statistics. The percentage of children in care and of single-parent families in the black community is noticeably higher than one would expect in relation to the proportion of black people in the community as a whole. Fifty per cent of single-parent families in the Borough of Lambeth in 1978 were non-white. The two wards where the April disorders were centred – Tulse Hill and Herne Hill – contain some 22 per cent of all the single-parent households in Lambeth and 2.1 per cent of the 0–18 age group in those wards are in care. Of the 185 children in care in those two wards on 10 September 1980, 112 (61 per cent) were black.’ Research shows, however, that black children are more likely to be taken into care earlier than their white counterparts, and to remain there longer. See Ravinda Barn, ‘Caribbean families and the child welfare system in Britain’, in Harry Goulbourne and Mary Chamberlain (eds), Caribbean Families in Britain and the Atlantic World (London, 2001). 11 Sunday Express, 13 August 1995, p. 1. 12 http://riotspanel.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Riots-Panel-FinalReport1.pdf, accessed 1 September 2012. 13 Dionne Brand, ‘Photograph’, in Sans Souci and Other Stories (Toronto, 1989), p. 75. 14 Paget Henry, Caliban’s Reason. Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy (London, 2000).

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15 Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery (London, 1967), p. 170. 16 For a fuller discussion of public memory see Katharine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone (eds), Contested Pasts. The Politics of Memory (London, 2003); Timothy Ashplant, Graham Dawson and Michael Roper (eds), The Politics of Memory. Commemorating War (New Brunswick and London, 2004); Barbara Miller, Guilt and Compliance in a Unified Germany. The Stasi Files Unveiled (New Brunswick and London, 2004). 17 For a brilliant exposition of this see Tayba Hassan Al Khalifa Sharif, ‘Resistance and Remembering: History-telling of the Iraqi Shi’ite Arab Refugee Women and their Families in the Netherlands’ (PhD thesis, University of Amsterdam, 2003). 18 See Gloria Wekker ‘One finger does not drink okra soup: Afro-Surinamese women and critical agency’, in M. Jacqui Alexander and C. Talpade Mohanty (eds), Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Future (London and New York, 1997). 19 Chamberlain, Narratives of Exile and Return, p. 87. 20 http://www.caricom.org/jsp/community/conference_on_caribbean/two_caribbeans. jsp?null&prnf=1, accessed 1 September 2012. 21 Cited in Chamberlain, Family Love, p. 75. 22 Cited in ibid., p. 72. 23 Cited in ibid., p. 97. 24 Cited in ibid., p. 111. 25 Barbados Today, 9 March 2012. http://208.11.143.253/detail.asp?id=1317&n=DEATH--Oswald-Bynoe; accessed 1 September 2012. (Emphasis added.) 26 http://classes.nationnews.com/obits//noticelisting.asp?Obits_ID=4309, accessed 5 September 2012. (Emphasis added.) 27 http://classes.nationnews.com/obits//noticelisting.asp?Obits_ID=4404, accessed 5 September 2012. (Emphasis added.) 28 Ira Reid, The Negro Immigrant: His Background, Characteristics and Social Adjustment 1899–1937 (New York, 1939), p. 156. 29 Chamberlain, Narratives of Exile and Return, p. 87. 30 http : / / barbadosfreepress . wordpress . com / 2011 / 12 / 27 / live - in - new - york - born - in -pan ama-looking-for-relations-in-barbados/, accessed 5 September 2012. 31 Cited in Chamberlain, Family Love, p. 98. 32 M. Chamberlain, Narratives of Exile and Return, p. 87. 33 Derek Walcott, ‘The schooner flight’ (1979), Collected Poems 1948–1984 (New York, 1986). 34 Sidney Mintz ‘The Caribbean as a socio-cultural area’, Journal of World History, 9:4 (1966), 914–15. 35 Keithlyn B. Smith and Fernando C. Smith, To Shoot Hard Labour: The Life and Times of Samuel Smith, an Antiguan Working Man, 1877–1982 (Scarborough, 1986), p. 29. 36 PP 1842 (479) XIII, Select Committee on West India Colonies, para. 1280. 37 Jean Besson, Martha Brae’s Two Histories: European Expansion and Caribbean Culture Building in Jamaica (Chapel Hill, NC and London, 2003), p. 27.

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Part V

Reparations, restitution and the historian

12

The Mauritius Truth and Justice Commission: ‘eyewash’, ‘storm in a teacup’ or promise of a new future for Mauritians? Vijayalakshmi Teelock

The Neale conference panel ‘Reparations, restitution and the historian’, at which this paper was originally presented, attempted to address issues that have long plagued independent states that were formerly colonial plantation and slave societies. This was a laudable initiative, given that slavery and its legacies continue to haunt these societies in so many ways, with calls for reparations growing louder day by day. As a Mauritian academic specialising in colonial slavery and former Vice-Chairperson of the Mauritius Truth and Justice Commission, it was particularly challenging for me to combine historical study (with its conventions of detachment and evidential rigour) and research in the field on contemporary issues (which necessarily entailed commitment to social and political programmes of change). Ultimately the two areas coalesced, but it remains difficult for me to claim full academic objectivity in any assessment of the work of the Commission or the issues it was faced with. Regrettably, few in Mauritius have spoken in terms of ‘restitution’ or ‘reconciliation’, and for this reason I have refrained from using such terms in the title of this chapter. In Mauritius, one can easily feel removed from any real understanding of the concepts of ‘reparation’, ‘restitution’ or ‘reconciliation’. Yet the establishment of the Commission in 2009 gave many Mauritians high hopes and expectations of a better future, though many did not necessarily link their contemporary problems to slavery or indenture and its consequences. By the end of 2012, a year after the Commission’s report was submitted, it had still not been publicised widely, despite praise from civil society and hundreds of copies having been printed.1 Civil servants were given CD copies and the task of perusing the thousands of pages and advising their Ministers as to which of the Commission’s 290 recommendations were feasible. Whether they were the best people to be entrusted with the responsibility for implementation remains to be seen; most of the civil servants’ prior knowledge of slavery or indenture was limited to official commemorations. Only time will tell whether the establishment of the Commission was just eyewash, a ‘storm in a teacup’ or born from a real desire to give Mauritians a new future. My personal disappointment at the 207

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slowness of implementation was somewhat mitigated by hearing from Verene Shepherd at the Neale conference that a similar Commission started in Jamaica in 2009 had, for various reasons, failed to get off the ground until its relaunch in 2012. When an assessment of the value of the Mauritian Commission’s analysis and recommendations is carried out in future, a comparative analysis of the ways in which slavery, its consequences and the issue of reparations have been addressed in all ex-slave colonies around the world must surely be undertaken. What will be addressed here are the issues that were raised during the lifetime of the Commission; these deserve our attention as concerned scholars of how slavery and its consequences were perceived and internalised in one former slave society. Some of these issues were specific to Mauritius, but most were of more general relevance to those studying the history of slavery and its legacies. The issues at hand that the Commission had to grapple with were multiple and mostly interconnected: landownership, racism, casteism, demands for financial compensation, apology and the necessity of assessing the consequences of slavery and impact on descendants. As expected, it provoked at times heated debates on the precise definitions of ‘victims’ and ‘descendants’, on relationships between the descendants of slaves and the indentured, on restitution of property, on forgetting and (much less so) on reconciliation. It is important to understand the particular context of Mauritius to explain why the recommendations were taken badly by the establishment. The level of sophistication in intellectual debate is poor, to say the least, across most institutions. The term ‘reparations’ (as a form of transitional justice), which for the Commission was taken to mean all measures enacted by the state to redress gross and systematic injustices, was in Mauritius (particularly by some political parties and by the media) reduced to the issue of financial compensation. How reconciliation was actually to come about was barely discussed in any meaningful way, and has disappeared entirely from public discourse since the Commission ended. The term ‘restitution’, which to the Mauritian Commission signified efforts to restore people to a more dignified existence in Mauritian society, was reduced to the issue of returning land that had been appropriated by large proprietors to those who considered themselves its rightful owners. Although it is widely accepted (by, among others, the American Law Institute) that a law of restitution is required and that those who unjustly enriched themselves by slavery should compensate its victims, putting this theory into practice and undertaking the studies to investigate and follow the trail of profits and compensation as a precursor to putting theory into practice are simply non-existent for Mauritius. Few persons of slave or indentured descent have studied the history of slavery or indenture, and even fewer have conducted any scientific studies that would have allowed the Commission (during its very brief mandate) to identify specific companies with historic links to slavery. Following the paper trail required detailed study of complex networks of supply chains and subsidiary companies spanning over two hundred years. To fully complete this work would take at least another decade. Similarly, legal historians do not exist in Mauritius: no studies could 208

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be ­undertaken on how the laws, past and present, have engendered racism and discrimination in landownership, and allowed the little Mauritian land owned by persons of African descent to be lost. Despite this pessimistic introduction, the creation of the Mauritius Truth and Justice Commission was a unique moment in the island’s history, and set a precedent that no country that has experienced colonial slavery or indenture can ignore. It was the very first Presidential Commission created with the specific purpose of examining the history of slavery and its consequences and charged with making appropriate recommendations for reparations. This in itself is a significant event, and even if the Commission’s recommendations are not fully implemented in Mauritius, it can still pave the way for similar commissions to be established elsewhere and for others to learn from the Mauritian experience. Indeed, many countries have recently attempted to set up commissions to examine the possibility of slavery reparations. In the United States, for example, Congressman John Conyers’ H.R. 40 Reparations Bill, first introduced in 2007, lingered ‘infamously’ in a congressional subcommittee and was eventually ‘presented in front of a half asleep audience’.2 The Mauritius Truth and Justice Commission is also the first Commission created to examine a historical situation that existed over two hundred years ago and to require the study of the impact of that history on descendants who have since (unlike in the Caribbean) undergone substantial métissage (intermarriage between different ethnic and cultural groups) with the original native population and with successive waves of migrations. Finally, it is the first Commission mandated to research not only the consequences of slavery, but also the consequences of indenture. The inclusion of indenture in the original mandate reflects the official tendency to ‘balance’ different ethno-cultural forces in Mauritius and avoid the criticism of favouritism towards any particular group. However, in the case of indenture the local and international desire for the ‘truth’ to be known or for reparations to be paid is more subdued than in the case of slavery. As far as we know, the only group attempting to claim reparations for indenture internationally are a small number of Surinamese, but this topic had never been discussed in Mauritius until the creation of the Commission, and remains under the radar. At the Scientific International Conference on Indenture, held in Mauritius in December 2011, a team led by Sandew Hira from the Netherlands presented a detailed study of how compensation for indenture could be claimed by the Surinamese from the Dutch government.3 It is important to understand the scope of the Commission’s mandate and its powers; in the process of its creation, there was little real discussion of how one was to investigate a system that existed two hundred years ago, with no surviving victims or perpetrators. It was clear that the focus was not to be those who endured slavery at first hand but, rather. on their living descendants and those consequences of the slave trade that are believed to have an enduring impact on life in Mauritius today. The Prime Minister of Mauritius, Dr Navin Ramgoolam, as well as a long list of Ministers and MPs, debated at length the Bill that created 209

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the Commission, and it was ultimately passed unanimously (it could not have been otherwise). This quotation from the Prime Minister’s speech helps us to understand the scope of the Commission, as well as the aims and objectives of the government in setting it up: The object of this Bill is to establish a Truth and Justice Commission to make an assessment of the consequences of slavery and indentured labour during the colonial period up to the present, and for that purpose, conduct as complete as possible an analysis of slavery and indentured labour. It will also carry out inquiries in relation to complaints made by persons aggrieved by a dispossession or prescription of land. The Commission shall make recommendations to the President on measures to be taken following its assessments and its findings with a view to achieving social justice and national unity. This Commission will pave the way to reconciliation, social justice and national unity through the process of re-establishing the historical truth. It is the legitimate expectation of everyone to know our true history. It is only after we have been faced with this reality that we can consolidate unity in our country. It is important therefore that we recognise our past history and lay that past to rest so that we can move on to reconciliation, justice and national unity.4

It will be essential to remember these words when we are asked in years to come to assess the impact of the Commission. Social justice was a primary aim, as was national unity, and the link between them is crucial. These words remained in the back of our minds throughout the two and a half years of the Commission’s life. We believed that we had a moral duty to assist those who had suffered through policies and actions of the past. There was much to overcome: those who preferred amnesia to remembering; those who argued that it was better to turn the page and not to disturb the past; those who felt the money could have been better spent helping the poor; those who feared an ‘ethnic’ war; and so on. Other obstacles included the heavy bureaucratic machinery that impeded our work – decisions about initial recruitment took six months to be implemented, leaving us only twelve months to complete the research (we therefore requested a six-month extension, which was granted). Before the passing of the Bill, there had been no mention of inquiries to be conducted on land restitution. Initially, the scope of the measures for reparations was to be limited to structural reforms, more particularly to ‘set up institutions that would redress the injustice caused to the descendants of slaves and indentured labourers’. However, the Mauritian National Assembly decided to add this new objective. The aim, as stated by the Vice-Prime Minister Xavier Duval (now the island’s Finance Minister), was to help all those old men and women desperately trying to recover lost land. Investigating land dispossession therefore became part of the Commission’s mandate and was to prove one of the most intractable parts of the implementation of our mandate.

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The issues Slavery and indenture This proved to be the least problematic aspect of the implementation of the Commission’s mandate, as a result of the extant interest of professional historians in this subject. The Commission was fully aware that reviewing over two hundred years of the history of slavery and indenture would be impossible in the two years allocated, with only a handful of scholars willing to collaborate. The Commission therefore chose to concentrate on those least-researched areas, and on the collection of data that others might use to continue the research in the future. The very broad powers given to the Commission and the low levels of available funding made this the most judicious decision, and it has been validated by the fact that researchers have continued to work on some of the projects initiated and to use the wealth of data collected by the Commission. The slave trade, French slavery and the post-slavery situation became the focus of the Commission’s work, as slavery under the British administration had been covered in my own PhD and subsequent publication, Bitter Sugar: Sugar and Slavery in 19th Century Mauritius.5 However, the shortage of qualified staff in Mauritius did impact on the success of the research. There are no economists or statisticians in the country who have studied slavery or indenture, and most local historians are not ‘numerically inclined’. It was not possible to find a historical demographer to undertake a demographic study of either the slave or indentured populations, to me the most fundamental piece of research. There are no Nick Drapers or Barry Higmans in Mauritius yet. The situation of indentured sugar workers, most of whom came from several generations of sugar workers and knew little of life outside the sugar sector until they found themselves facing so-called ‘voluntary’ retirement and an uncertain future, has been thoroughly investigated by scholars like Carter, Deerpalsingh, Allen, Peerthum and many others who have helped to generate a coherent narrative.6 However, subsequent ‘homogenization’ of the multiple origins of indentured workers has led Mauritians today to assume that all those of Indian descent were Hindu Bihari, and so an attempt was made to show the multiple origins of indentured labourers. Also worthy of consideration was the Mauritian version of the caste system and the profound silence that surrounds it, a silence that caused us to investigate ‘casteism’ surreptitiously under the ‘stratification project’. It is as taboo today to discuss ‘casteism’ openly as it was thirty years ago to discuss slavery. The slave trade A slave voyages database project was initiated by the Commission, in full knowledge that it would not be completed. It was felt that even making a start on such a project was highly necessary, and the Commission recommended that work on the database continue beyond the lifetime of the Commission itself. This work is crucial because it is still unknown how many slaves arrived in Mauritius during the operation of the slave trade, as all figures, from the eighteenth century until 211

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the British took over the island, are aggregated with neighbouring Réunion, as both islands were administered together at the time. It is believed that slaves would disembark on both islands from most slave ships, but we needed to verify this. We secured the collaboration of Thomas Vernet of the Université de Paris Sorbonne but, regrettably, many other historians declined to offer their data. As the slave trade in Mauritius was essentially French and thus most of the relevant documents were in French, three research assistants worked full time to compile an inventory of documents relating to the slave trade in France and begin ­inputting this information into the database. Slavery Delving into the French archival material was felt to be necessary partly because British slavery in Mauritius is already comparatively well documented (in my own book Bitter Sugar and by numerous other historians). With the notable exception of Megan Vaughan’s work, French slavery in Mauritius has received little scholarly attention, and perceptions of the practice have remained influenced by Karl Noel’s Esclavage a l’ile de France, in which the author concludes that French slavery was mild in Mauritius, as compared with Caribbean colonies.7 The Commission therefore began a detailed search and inventory of documents on slavery in Mauritius found in France, and made thousands of copies that are now stored in Mauritius. In particular, the C4 series at the French National Archives devoted to Mauritius was thoroughly investigated and analysed. My own reading of the archives does not substantiate Noel’s claim and indeed indicates that French slavery was by no means mild, compared even to the system in Mauritius as it later evolved under the British. The repression of maroons, the freedom given to owners to punish slaves and the legal system governing the property and civil rights of non-white and slave populations8 in French slave colonies (not studied by Noel) also belie the claim that this was a ‘mild’ form of slavery.9 Post-slavery situation Inevitably, the post-slavery situation, and questions about the consequences of slavery on ex-slaves and their descendants, became a major focus of the Commission’s attention, particularly for those non-historian Commissioners. Consensus was not reached on the question of what these consequences were, or even if there were consequences at all. Although it was clear to all that more research was required, this was a luxury we did not have. Some were eager to show that there was a direct link between slavery and the situation in Mauritius today, but the hard evidence was simply not there because the necessary studies had not been carried out. The theoretical debates (if one could label them as such) of the 1980s and 1990s between Bolland and Green in the case of the Caribbean, and Fogel and Engerman’s work in the US, have found few adherents in studies of Mauritian slavery, as there is no mastery of the historical empirical data by those engaged in the local debate, nor an attempt to look at what happened elsewhere. The only issue provoking some debate was whether slaves were pushed out of 212

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estates, or withdrew of their own will. There was little attempt to adopt a more nuanced region-by-region approach, which would have showed the multiplicity of experiences endured by ex-slaves in the different regions of Mauritius and the importance of the sugar expansion in these regions. As a historian, I felt it was my responsibility to argue that the actual situation in the pre-emancipation period, and the motivations of slaves after abolition, needed to be understood. Similarly, in order to properly assess the consequences of slavery, the post-slavery situation from 1835 to 1910 needed to be studied in greater depth than hitherto. Unfortunately, much of this argument fell on deaf ears. A second seemingly intractable problem occurred when we initiated an internal workshop entitled ‘Who is a descendant?’ Accusations of ‘betrayal’ flew when one historian close to the Creole community vehemently asserted that there were few slave descendants left, due to the prevalence of death and disease in the immediate post-emancipation period and extensive métissage with Indian immigrants. There was also the additional complexity arising from the importation of freed slaves, ‘liberated Africans’ and free Malagasy after the abolition of slavery. It is safe to say that the ‘historicist’ approach did not win out. The research conducted at the Commission into family histories showed that here, too, a more nuanced approach was necessary to understand the impact of slavery and the post-slavery period on the lives of descendants. The view and consensus that gradually emerged was one that recognised that, although extensive métissage had occurred, through family history reconstruction conducted extensively by the Commission’s Research Assistants, it was also possible to demonstrate that many of the families that had undergone métissage also clearly had their family roots in the slavery period. The acrimonious discussions about what did and did not constitute a ‘descendant’ had therefore been quite unnecessary; the ‘descendants’ were descendants of slaves, of indentured immigrants and of free Africans and Malagasy all rolled into one. The popular definition of the ‘Creole’ propounded by Creole linguists today – that a Creole is a ‘descendant of a slave’ – is actually belied by these family histories. Heated disputes also ensued about whether slaves and their descendants should be viewed as ‘victims’, and whether studies on slavery (such as my own, Bitter Sugar) had created a ‘victim’ syndrome in contemporary Mauritius. This argument plays directly into debates about the need to present a case for reparations; if we claim that slaves and their descendants are victims, then the case for reparations is strengthened, but there are also those who vehemently believe that slaves should not to be considered ‘victims’ but, rather, ‘agents’ because they fought against their oppression. It is felt by some that the concept of agency was promoted by some historians to counteract the ‘victims’ approach and to indirectly counteract claims for reparations. However, not all slaves were agents of change, as the majority did not survive their slavery, and many of those who did manage to escape it did so through maroonage and manumission. This multiplicity of lived experience of slavery makes it resistant to simple binary definitions. 213

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Another related debate centred on whether the slaves had been victims of ‘cultural genocide’, a view hotly contested by those who reject the use of the term ‘genocide’ entirely. Given the absence of overt African and Malagasy cultures, as compared to Asian and European cultures in Mauritius, despite the fact that Africans and Malagasy formed over 80% of the population in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, cultural genocide does seem an appropriate description of activity during this period. Studies by the Commission on the role of the Catholic Church, mass campaigns of evangelisation and the educational system in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries show clear evidence of the suppression of African and Malagasy culture and religion.10 The Church was one of the first institutions to come forward with an apology after the Commission recommended that various institutions present an official apology. In 2012, the Church has in fact been at the forefront of public demands to implement the recommendations of the TJC report. Perceptions of slavery and indenture During the process of reviewing the history of slavery and indenture, it became clear to researchers and to the Commission that they also needed to contend with perceptions of history, of slavery and of contemporary Mauritius. In addition to reconstructing history through studies, an examination of the views and perceptions of Mauritians from all walks of life was therefore also carried on concomitantly. In the interests of reconciliation, it was important to examine views held by all Mauritians, not all of whom were descendants of slaves or indentured, considered themselves victims or believed that the problems faced by persons of African descent in Mauritius today were traceable to slavery. The perception study led us to conclude that people’s understanding of history is very much based on received wisdom about what has happened and on the relationships between their own contemporary experiences and the situation of slaves and indentured labourers. Poverty was and is rampant in Mauritius, and transcends all ethnic and gender boundaries. As scholarly research and public consultations progressed, it became clear that we needed not only to understand popular perceptions, but also to treat the experiences of contemporary Mauritians and those of slaves and indentured labourers as parallel or even continuous experiences. Although the two periods of experience may not necessarily be linked directly, people felt there was a shared commonality of experience, due to the fact (demonstrated in the TJC report on economic history) that there has been no manifest interruption in economic systems. The abolition of slavery did not abruptly terminate the associated e­ conomic system; instead the latter was perpetuated by indentured labour immigration, a practice that fell somewhere between slavery and ‘free’ labour. Historians and others will no doubt continue to debate how free or coercive indenture was, and at the time of the Commission’s work there was no ­convergence in academic and popular definitions of slavery and indenture.

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The law and landownership A major preoccupation of the Commission, and one that should rightly have involved legal historians, was the role of the legal system in the dispossession of land and property and the violation of human rights throughout Mauritian history. The country’s legal system was also partly responsible for maintaining structural inequalities that led to non-whites being debarred from benefitting from voting, from property acquisition, from access to credits and loans and from marrying freely; they were also subject to the break-up of those families that they did form. Certain aspects of the system also engendered inequality of access to sound legal opinion. By 30 June 2010, the Truth and Justice Commission had received some 230 files from Mauritius and 30 from Rodrigues (the autonomous island that forms part of the Republic of Mauritius). Over 100 more that arrived after that date could not be processed, given the shortage of time and qualified staff. In the analysis of the 230 cases, the Commission was able to demonstrate that people had been legally dispossessed, with dozens of examples of case law as supporting evidence. The loopholes and abuses of prescription law in particular were singled out for study by the Commission. Prescription is a method of acquiring rights over property by occupying a portion of land for a fixed period of time. The rationale is to ‘punish’ those who abandon their land. However, due to the fact that, in the past, large numbers of Mauritians were illiterate and did not see the value of keeping documents, or were constantly migrating within Mauritius, many families were dispossessed of their land. Others have since used unscrupulous methods, attorneys and notaries to defraud people who were not in possession of the necessary documents to prove ownership, such as Memoranda of Survey or affidavits confirming their relationship with ancestors who had previously possessed land This has hit ex-slave families the hardest, as civil status documents concerning slaves and ex-slaves were found by the Commission to have disappeared from the Civil Status Office, making it quasi-impossible for these families to collate the necessary paper trail to their ancestors. These problems are common knowledge but, despite years of criticism, little had been done to limit loss of property ownership, fraudulent actions. The act of prescription itself was not to blame. Making a claim upon land that is not your own is a relatively inexpensive procedure, but claiming back land that has been taken from you is costly. Rightful owners are therefore easily dispossessed and are subsequently required to pay a small fortune in order to investigate an illegal prescription and have it reversed by a court. The question of why these major flaws in Mauritian property law have never been addressed or resolved remains a mystery. Legal professionals who were questioned by the Commission about why they participated in the dispossession all responded that they were acting within the law; the morality or otherwise of the situation was irrelevant. The acquisition of land and property by ex-slaves has been well documented by Richard Allen’s masterly study,11 but dispossession is also a major factor, and the Commission sought to understand this process. Richard Allen was accordingly 215

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commissioned to investigate why so many people in Mauritius had lost their land within decades of having acquired plots.12 The main reason appeared to be the absence of the necessary capital to maintain the plots, to complete purchases or to repay loans contracted to purchase the land. Investigations into contemporary dispossession revealed that family greed, unscrupulous land grabbers, developers and sugar estates had also gradually encroached on people’s land. The British colonial government of the nineteenth century never had any success in amending the Mauritian versions of French laws to ensure fairness and equity in land distribution and prevent legal dispossession. The inability of the British to master the Code Napoléon and the Code Decaen allowed for abuse and malpractice on the part of the colonists.13 The Civil Code of Napoleon championed white people’s property rights. The British promise to French colonists to ‘respect the laws’ at the time of capitulation was continually used by the descendants of colonists in Mauritius. In independent Mauritius today, many people do own land, but as a general rule they do not own substantial tracts. Sugar estates covering thousands of acres have instead been transformed into green tourism projects and luxury housing for foreigners, with the blessing of the authorities. For the Commission, the question was: how far is the modern state willing to go towards increased democratisation or ownership of land? Sadly, the answers were all around us. In one Commission hearing, we learned that a recently created ‘Democratisation Commission’ had a clause relating to the democratisation of land removed from its mandate by the State Law Office.14 Open accusations against the authorities were made in the media, alleging that they colluded with the ‘big barons’ of the sugar industry ‘to thwart attempts at land claims made by descendants of slaves and indentured labourers’. The refusal of the authorities to permit the Commission to help certain persons in their land surveys or to pay their notarial fees also spoke volumes. The Commission’s conclusion was that there was no justice for the poor in landownership. Action against corrupt civil servants working in land departments, or those materially benefitting from inside information concerning land, has rarely been taken. Many of these people are now property developers who personally own substantial properties – the same is true of many politicians. The collusion of nineteenth-century civil servants with large property owners has thus continued into the twenty-first century. The Commission therefore felt that structural adjustments (a popular phrase today) were necessary. The Commission recommended setting up several new institutions, including a Land Research and Monitoring Unit to assist Mauritians in researching their land cases. The Commission has also recommended the abolition of certain laws relating to prescription, a stricter code of ethics for all legal and land-related professions and greater control over the unofficial ‘brokers’ who ply their trade outside legal offices, unscrupulously enticing naïve and illiterate people with promises that they will restore their land. Related to this was the preparation of affidavits to substantiate land claims, in particular genealogy trees. Another aspect of the Commission’s work was assisting deponents in compiling family trees through oral history and civil status documents. The Commission was 216

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extremely concerned to discover that the civil certificates of most slaves and their descendants were missing. However, fortunately the same information could be collected from other sources, including notarial acts, censuses etc. The creation of a National Genealogy Centre was therefore also recommended. Slavery as social tort The legal system and those who work within it are still perceived as an elite group that turns a blind eye to the injustices perpetrated in the name of the law. The question of a potential tort of slavery (a tort, in common law jurisdictions, is a civil non-contractual wrong) has never been seriously discussed by Mauritian lawyers, many of whom are highly trained and were educated at some of the best universities in the world. An extremely interesting interdisciplinary study of reparations, law and the potential for a Mauritian social tort of slavery has been written, but by the History PhD student Ms Joyce Fortune and not by a legal historian. Ms Fortune viewed slavery as a ‘social tort’ and analysed the international cases relating to reparations movements, including the compensation paid to the Japanese in the USA. In her report, she asserted that the type of reparations claims made by the Japanese could in fact be replicated in Mauritius. Historians of slavery such as myself believe that this claim needs further investigation. To put it simply, the law recognised slavery and the law thus contributed to the harm done to slaves. It allowed and enforced a system in which slaves did not have the ability to marry freely, it enforced severe physical punishment for minor acts and facilitated the cultural repression of slaves and their descendants. It tolerated the absence of civil rights, the refusal of slave-owners to teach slaves and ex-slaves to read and write and allowed the separation of families: Seeing that our past is still with us, which is true in the United States and Mauritius, a Commission for Truth is an opportunity to heal the damages done to Mauritians through slavery and the indenture system … ‘No nation can enslave a race of people for hundreds of years, set them free bedraggled and penniless, pit them, without assistance in a hostile environment, against privileged victimizers, and then reasonably expect the gap between the heirs of the two groups to narrow. Lines, begun parallel and left alone, can never touch.’15 Reparations through the Truth and Justice Commission are a means of democratizing history, it gives a voice to those who are seldom heard; silenced by a society founded on slavery.

Ms Fortune also quotes Ralph Ellison: [C]an a people (its faith in an idealized American Creed notwithstanding) live and develop for over three hundred years simply by reacting? Are American Negroes simply the creation of white men, or have they at least helped to create themselves out of what they found around them? Men have made a way of life in caves and upon cliffs; why cannot Negroes have made a life upon the horns of the white man’s dilemma.16

Furthermore, forced migration and forced labour may also constitute an important component of the tort of slavery. Tort law can be a way of ­providing 217

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substantive (usually financial) compensation for an injury and may well be applicable to slavery and the question of reparations. According to Brophy, ‘tort law also offers, however, a way of framing discussions of moral culpability’. Thus he believes, like Joyce Fortune, that ‘we can use analogies to tort law to apportion moral culpability to governmental entities (and the communities they represent) for their role in slavery and Jim Crow’.17 Racism In Mauritius, racism and ‘communalism’ are interchangeable terms. The situation is stark: phenotype and name are all-important. A person may be 100% Indian by blood, but if he/she has frizzy hair and holds Christian beliefs, he/she is a Creole and therefore a descendant of an African slave. A study of the perceptions of people across the island, recorded in hundreds of interviews between 2009 and 2012, drew out the contrast between black and non-black persons in Mauritius. The keen sense of injustice and inequality felt by Creoles was not shared by non-Creoles, who felt that there were no major racial problems in Mauritius. This insouciance about race issues, whether feigned or genuine, raised many questions in the Commission. Also of concern was the refusal of top politicians and officials to agree to interviews with the chief researcher on racism. Though the question of racism was an integral part of the Commission’s final report, it was roundly ignored by the Mauritian media in the aftermath of the submission of the report. Although indenture is not the subject of this paper, there are many parallels between slavery and racism, and indenture and casteism. Although it cannot be said that casteism is a product of indenture (it existed in India long before Mauritius was colonised), it has nevertheless been transformed in postindenture Mauritius into an even more sinister version of the original prejudice. It is a well-known fact that many immigrants did not declare their true caste for fear of being prevented from boarding the ship, but knowledge about their true caste has percolated orally across families and down generations, with the result that in present-day Mauritius everyone believes that they know what caste each family belongs to, as well as the extent of métissage among castes. However, examples of deception and inaccuracy abound, and it comes as a shock to many when they decide to investigate their family history and find that the archives do not match up with reality as they know it. Many migrants used relocation as an opportunity to move up in the caste ladder, adding higher caste names to their original name. In other cases, people have been moved ‘up’ or ‘down’ the caste system by misspellings and other clerical errors in the official records. The consequence is that many persons are ‘wrongly’ listed in the immigration records, which do not reflect the caste they believe they are, or wish to be, in twenty-first-century Mauritius. The Commission sparked off hysteria among right-wing Hindu groups when it sought to access the immigration database, containing records of hundreds of immigrants and their original castes, and was accused of causing social unrest. Ironically, these archives are housed in an institution named after Mahatma Gandhi, considered the ‘apostle of truth and non-violence’ in Mauritius. At the 218

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time of writing, the recommendation to open up the archives to public has still not been implemented. Casteism (in the sense of discrimination against lower castes) still exists but is a taboo subject, as exemplified by the number of deponents and interviewees on the subject who requested complete anonymity. The failure of politicians to do away with the remnants of this system is a stain on twenty-first-century Mauritius. To me as a historian of slavery who witnessed some thirty years ago a profound reluctance to talk openly about slavery and the oppression of slave descendants, the parallels are painfully obvious. We now need a campaign that will allow people of low-caste origin to speak out about past discrimination and the humiliation they have endured, and to be proud rather than ashamed of their status. By contrast, however, the Commission’s recommendations to improve the number and visibility of Creoles in the higher echelons of public life (such as board membership) were accepted, causing some uproar among non-Creoles. Unfinished business The British colonial government took the credit for having freed the slaves in 1835, but it continued to sustain the plantation economy both locally and, by protective tariffs, internationally. The colonial government was therefore complicit in perpetuating an economic system that engendered continued dependence on a cheap, coercible and abundant labour supply. The government also ignored the ex-slave population, which was left to fend for itself. In 1835, thousands were left homeless, separated from their families, illiterate and with no visible means of support. They fell prey to the diseases and epidemics that ravaged the island in the 1850s and 1860s, and succumbed in massive numbers. There were no schemes for re-empowering them or reincorporating them into civil society. As British officials observed, they ‘disappeared’ from public view. This is the unfinished business of the British colonial government. A more recent analogy has been drawn between the treatment of the Chagossian community, descendants of slaves who were forced to leave their homes on Diego Garcia and the other Chagos islands to make way for the establishment of the British Indian Ocean Territory and a US naval base. There is an overarching sense that ex-slaves and their descendants cannot find a fixed home or permanent settlement. In independent Mauritius, the privileges gained by the sugar industry’s upper hierarchy continue today in the form of economic policies, loans, tariffs, ‘voluntary’ retirement for sugar workers and the conversion of sugar land for ‘ecotourism’ and luxury resorts. Apology Given the complicity (if not the collusion) of the colonial state throughout history in depriving people of African and Malagasy origin in Mauritius of their most basic human rights, the Commission felt that it was entirely appropriate that the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister and the Leader of Opposition make a formal apology as representatives of the state for the trafficking in slaves in the eighteenth century, the continued mass importation of cheap labour, the 219

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tolerance of abuses against slave and indentured labourers and the continuation of some aspects of the slave economic system. The Commission also asked private institutions such as the Chamber of Commerce, the Chamber of Agriculture and the Sugar Planters’ Association to make a formal apology. However, only the Catholic Church offered an apology, while the other private institutions, in their traditional arrogance, refused to do so. The Prime Minister, who happens to be of indentured origin, told the press that he did not understand why he was being asked to apologise when he was himself a descendant of an indentured labourer. Conclusion Since the Commission submitted its Report, an Inter-Ministerial Committee has been created by the Prime Minister to look into the report and advise on which recommendations could be implemented in the near future or on a long-term basis. Several major recommendations have been accepted: the creation of a special Land division in the Supreme Court to deal with all land-related cases; the continuation of the Notarial Acts database; the creation of a Land Bank and the donation of land to persons of slave and indentured origin who had never previously owned it. Memorialisation measures approved included a Museum of Slavery, a National Inventory of all heritage collections and better protection for historical sites relating to slavery and indenture. An audit of the state of health and environment in the housing units where many slave descendants live will also be undertaken. Finally, the government will provide a lunch of bread, cheese and fruit to all schoolchildren from low-income families, as well as breakfast before school begins in the morning. However, at the time of writing no amendments had been made to land laws, no measures had been put in place to control the behaviour of land professionals and brokers and the authorities remained silent on the question of democratisation of land ownership. An Equal Opportunities Commission was set up, as well as another Commission to look into fraudulent land sales to foreigners and a third one to investigate abuses of the Prescriptions. The Deputy Prime Minister, who chairs the Inter-Ministerial Committee, has stated that he expects more measures in line with the Commission’s recommendations to be announced as his fellow Ministers and their respective Ministries plough through the several thousand pages of the report. It is far too soon to judge the impact of the new measures and those measures still to be announced, but even if just a few of the recommendations are implemented, I believe these will go some way in ensuring social justice for a larger number of Mauritians. Thus reparations and restitution may become a reality, but whether reconciliation will occur is another issue and may be impossible if civil society is not brought into the picture. To end on a personal note, the Commission reaffirmed my belief that historians of Mauritius need to show greater humility; they need to get closer to the human subjects and situations they are studying. Spending time in dusty archives is all well and good, but combining archival research with observation 220

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and consultation is even better. No academic knowledge or theory is required for us to empathise with the misfortunes of others. The common people of Mauritius empathised with slaves and the indentured, using their own historical experience and what we academics label ‘collective memory’. I believe that in the twenty-first century it is the ability and willingness to listen to, touch and reach people that makes a good historian. Notes  1 Although on an official website, www.gov.mu/portal/goc/pmo/file/TJC_Vol1.pdf, it is in a format that makes it very difficult to download; and only four of the six volumes are online. The reasons for this are not clear. In one particularly interesting volume are transcripts of all hearings held at the Commission as well as the transcripts of oral history interviews conducted with Mauritians from all over the island. This volume is titled ‘The Voice of Mauritians’. Another volume contains the historical data collected from the ‘Indian Immigration Archives’ (still not fully accessible to the average Mauritian) and the slave trade, land and press cuttings databases designed for the TJC and iconographic collection consisting of the work of the Commission.  2 Joyce Fortune, ‘Reparations’, in Mauritius Truth and Justice Commission Report (hereafter TJC Report), vol. 3:1, (Port Louis: TJC, 2011), p. 269.  3 Armand Zunder, ‘Reparations: the case of Suriname – the Dutch role in the period of the plantation economy 1650–1939’, in The Academic Journal of Suriname, 2 (2011), 150–67.  4 Dr Navinchandra Ramgoolam, Prime Minister of Mauritius, Second reading of the Truth and Justice Commission Bill (2009).  5 Vijaya Teelock, Bitter Sugar: Sugar and Slavery in 19th century Mauritius (Moka, Mauritius, 1998).  6 M. Carter and J. Ng Foong Kwong, Forging the Rainbow: Labour Immigrants in British Mauritius (Mauritius, 1997); M. Carter (ed.), Across the Kalapani: The Bihari Presence in Mauritius (Mauritius, CRIOS, 2000); M. Carter, C. Anderson et al., Colouring the Rainbow: Mauritian Society in the Making (Port Louis, CRIOS, 1998); M. Carter, ‘The family under indenture: a Mauritian case study’, Journal of Mauritian Studies, 4:1 (1992), 1–19; M. Carter, Voices from Indenture: Experiences of Indian Migrants in the British Empire (Leicester, 1997); Richard B. Allen, Slaves, Freedmen and Indentured Labourers in Colonial Mauritius (Cambridge, 1999).  7 Megan Vaughan, Creating the Creole Island: Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Mauritius (Durham, NC, 2005); Karl Noel, L’esclavage à l’ile de France (Paris, 1991).  8 See Laurent Sermet, Université de la Réunion, ‘Esclavage et libertés : le Code civil colonial’, paper presented at the International Conference Slave Trade, Slavery and Transition to Indenture in Mauritius and the Mascarenes 1715–1848, organised by the Truth and Justice Commission in collaboration with the University of Mauritius and Cemaf/Paris 1.  9 TJC Report, vols 1 and 4, has two chapters on the slave trade. 10 TJC Report, see reports on education, on Church, in vols 3 and 4. 11 Richard B. Allen, Slaves, Freedmen and Indentured Laborers in Colonial Mauritius (Cambridge, 1999). 12 Richard B. Allen, ‘Land ownership by persons of African and Asian origin and descent’, TJC Report, vol. 2:2, Land Reform – Legal and Administrative Aspects.

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13 TJC Report, vol. 2:2 Land Reform, p. 136. 14 Testimony of Cader Sayed Hossen, Chairman of the Democratisation Commission, Cader Sayed Hossen hearing, TJC/H/MrHossenC.S/010910, in TJC Report, vol. 5. 15 Robert Randall, The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks (New York, 2000), p. 74. 16 Ralph Ellison, ‘An American dilemma: a review’, in John F. Callahan (ed.), Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison (New York, 2003), p. 339. 17 Alfred L. Brophy, ‘Reparations talk: reparations for slavery and the tort law analogy’, Boston College Third World Law Journal, 24 (2004), 136.

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Jamaica and the debate over reparation for slavery: an overview1 Verene A. Shepherd

[W]e must not be embarrassed or timid to claim compensation on behalf of our ancestors, because if we don’t, we would have negated their contribution and failed to correct the wrongs of history. (Hon. Clive Mullings MP, Debates in Parliament, Jamaica, 13 February 2007.)   The injustice and the inhumanity; the savagery of slavery, is incontrovertible. The devastation that was brought on the people of Africa by this human pillage cannot be refuted. (Opposition Leader, Bruce Golding, Debates in Parliament, Jamaica, 27 February 2007.)

The comments above are examples of the prevailing sentiment expressed by the parliamentarians who participated in a historic debate in the Jamaica House of Representatives on the question of reparation for African enslavement and the transatlantic trade in Africans in February 2007. In their view, Britain has a responsibility to compensate the descendants of enslaved Africans for the brutality meted out to their ancestors under a system of human trafficking sanctioned by the British, and in which they participated profitably from 1655 to 1838. This chapter sets out the historical evidence upon which the parliamentarians’ views are based, as well as discussing the precedents and justification for the claim for reparation and possible settlement strategies. It admits the opposition of Europeans to any claim for reparation but insists on the morality and legality of the claim. The historical evidence for the scope and brutality of slavery is overwhelming and is the easiest to marshal. The system of African enslavement under, first, the English and, after 1707, the British in Jamaica lasted from 1655 to 1834. Precise estimates of the numbers of Africans they enslaved from a wide catchment area (from Sene-Gambia down to West-Central Africa and as far east as Madagascar) during this period vary, but the 1999 Slave Trade Database conservatively estimates that 3,429 voyages carrying enslaved Africans were made to Jamaica between 1660 and 1808, with a total of 1,082,623 enslaved Africans recorded as embarking and 915,015 recorded as disembarking. These statistics represent an 85% survival rate, and do not take into account the number of enslaved Africans who died before embarkation. 223

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In spite of the extensive supply area, discernible patterns emerge. The majority of enslaved Africans were captured from the Gold Coast (part of modern-day Ghana) and the Bight of Biafra in present-day Nigeria. Throughout the first half of the eighteenth century, the shipment to Jamaica of Gold Coast Africans rose sharply, compared to shipments from the other catchment regions, but declined somewhat after 1776. This decline is a reflection of a 9% decline in total exports of enslaved people from the region between 1751–75 and 1776–1800. In fact, the dramatic decline observable in total exports from the Gold Coast region in the early nineteenth century was a reflection of the British abolition of the trade in 1807. During the operation of the slave trade as a whole, 40% of all Gold Coast Africans shipped to the Americas went to Jamaica. The principal ports of embarkation in the Gold Coast region were the Cape Coast and Anomabu, which together accounted for 85% of all Africans shipped from the Gold Coast to the Americas.2 Between 1726 and 1750, the Bight of Biafra emerged as a major supplier of enslaved labour to Jamaica. This continued until the trade was abolished in 1807. However, it was not until 1776 that the Bight of Biafra replaced the Gold Coast as the leading supplier of African labour to Jamaica. Table 13.1 reveals a fluctuation in the number of enslaved labourers exported from the Sene-Gambia, Sierra Leone and the Windward Coast. However, of the larger trading regions, the Bight of Biafra and West-Central Africa were the only regions that experienced an increase in exports during the period between 1726 and 1800. In the twenty-five years after 1776, the Gold Coast was replaced by both the Bight of Biafra and the Bight of Benin as the leading supplier of slave labour and the Bight of Biafra emerged as the second leading region in exports to the Americas. By 1801, approximately 50% of Jamaica’s enslaved imports came from the Biafran region.3 The principal ports of embarkation in the Bight of Biafra were Bonny and Old Calabar. Together, these ports accounted for roughly 82% of the enslaved Africans shipped from Bight of Biafra to the Americas, of which Bonny alone supplied 55%.4 This level of concentration suggests that there was a large pool of potential labourers in the surrounding hinterland. It is also well known that the storage facilities and forts along the Gold Coast were highly developed and these characteristics may have helped to facilitate the trade in captured Africans in the region. The structure of the transatlantic trade was heavily skewed by sex and age, and there was a strong and consistent preference among planters for men. Table 13.2 shows the percentages of men and children shipped from the exporting regions of Africa. Men made up 57.5% to 69.8% of those shipped from Africa to the Americas, while children accounted for between 13.2% and 31.6%. Men and children together thus accounted for over 80% of the Africans shipped to the Americas. In some regions this figure was even higher; in West Central Africa, for example, men and children accounted for 91.5% of the trade.5 The captured Africans endured a harrowing ‘slave route’. It is generally accepted among historians of slavery that the ‘Middle Passage’ encompassed not just the voyage across the Atlantic, but also the capture and sale of Africans and 224

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107 64 177 365 399 699 1,304 724 917 228 0 4,985 45

1519–1600 1601–50 1651–15 1676–1700 1701–25 1726–50 1751–75 1776–1800 1801–25 1826–50 1851–67 All years % of total trade

2 0 04 35 71 105 969 106 697 1,004 161 4,127 37

Sierra Leone 0 0 01 07 42 143 1,051 195 24 144 06 183 17

Windward Coast 107 52 354 503 1,817 1,863 2,639 2,407 69 0 0 10,432 94

Gold Coast 107 24 219 2,235 4,083 3,065 2,505 2,646 2,633 2,573 259 20,346 184

Bight of Benin 107 255 586 515 458 166 3,401 3,604 2,603 1,915 73 1,5179 137

Bight of Biafra 2,212 4,619 1,043 1,326 2,572 5,528 7,149 8,162 7,008 7,706 155 48,875 442

West-Central Africa

2,660 5,014 2,384 4,986 9,442 13,063 19,018 18,798 14,788 1,357 2,049 105,774

Total

Source: David Eltis, ‘The volume and structure of the transatlantic slave trade: a reassessment’, William and Mary Quarterly, 58:1 (2001), Table II.

Sene-Gambia

Period

Table 13.1  Transatlantic departures by African region to the Americas, 1519–1867 (in thousands)

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Table 13.2  Percentage distributions of Africans in the transatlantic trade, 1702–1807

Males Children Total

Bight of Biafra

Bight of Benin

Gold Coast

SeneGambia

Sierra Leone

West Central Africa

Windward Coast

57.5 18.6 76.1

65.6 17.2 82.8

64.8 16.5 81.3

69.8 13.2 83

66.7 31.6 98.3

67.4 24.1 91.5

68.5 27.9 96.4

Source: Transatlantic Slave Trade Database: http://wwwslavevoyagesorg/, accessed 14 July 2011.

their adjustment experience in the Americas. Each of the six identified stages of the Middle Passage – capture and enslavement in Africa, storage and package for shipment, transatlantic crossing, sale and dispersion in the Americas, and seasoning/adjustment in the Americas – was marked by violence and death. Communities on the African coastlines became literal and metaphorical graveyards for many Africans, who were exposed to foreign diseases and subjected to unimaginable brutality and psychological trauma. Africans captured inland were subjected to long journeys to the coastline without food, sleep or rest, tied together in the most uncomfortable and inhumane way. The average length of a journey from inland to the forts was about one hundred days. Many who could not keep up were left by the wayside to die or were murdered by their captors. It is not known exactly how many persons died en route to the forts/dungeons. The sample of ships shown in Table 13.3 is a selection of Atlantic crossings with mortality rates over 50%. The specific ports of arrival are not listed in the table (with two exceptions), but it can be readily assumed that most of the disembarkation would have taken place in Kingston, as it was the major trading hub for ships and imports of enslaved Africans. These records might suggest that, of the ships with very high mortality rates, those in the seventeenth century were larger or more tightly packed than those in the eighteenth century; such ships that made the journey in the seventeenth century carried an average of 458 enslaved people, while those that crossed in the eighteenth century carried an average of 281. The relative ease of identifying voyages of the seventeenth century with mortality rates above 50% suggests that mortality was much higher during the seventeenth century. The significant disparity between embarkation and disembarkation figures shown in the ‘Mortality per slaver’ column indicates, but cannot come close to fully conveying, the human costs of the transatlantic trade in Africans. Those ships that departed with the largest numbers of enslaved people tended to have the largest number of deaths. These ships include the East India Merchant, the Vyner, Prosperous George and Betty, all of which recorded over three hundred deaths. However, it does not seem that slavers that were ‘loosely packed’ or smaller had low mortality rates. In fact, the Saint Michel and Providence had the highest mortality rates, 96% and 81%, respectively. This leaves us to speculate about the reasons for such a high level of mortality, since these ships were not as 226

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1732 1679 1684 1694 1792 1680 1677 1684 1681 1659 1683 N/A 1781 1683 1686 1691 1772

Saint Michel Providence Allepine East India Merchant Eagle Vyner Arthur Return African St Jan George and Betty Matty Zong Merchant Bonadventure Prosperous John and Thomas Hare Jamaica Jamaica Jamaica Jamaica Kingston Jamaica Jamaica Jamaica Jamaica Jamaica Jamaica Jamaica Black River Jamaica Jamaica Jamaica Jamaica

Port of disembarkation 170 223 410 650 130 600 410 330 400 195 531 215 440 448 651 400 386

No. of enslaved embarked  6  43 122 195  40 220 167 134 170  85 231  97 208 221 321 195 190

No. of enslaved disembarked

Source: Transatlantic Slave Trade Database: http://wwwslavevoyagesorg/, accessed 14 July 2011.

Year of arrival

Ship name

Table 13.3  Names of ships, embarkation and disembarkation, and mortality rates above 50%

164 180 288 455 90 380 243 196 230 110 300 118 232 227 330 205 196

Mortality per slaver 96 81 70 70 69 63 59 59 58 56 56 55 53 51 51 51 51

Mortality per slaver (%)

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tightly packed as those previously mentioned, assuming that the ships were of the same dimensions and carrying capacity. What is indisputable is that, regardless of ship size, capacity or legal specifications, high mortality was an endemic feature of the Atlantic crossing. Several factors played a part in these mortality rates. Firstly, disease was highly prevalent on most slavers. The cramped conditions, the inability of the enslaved to move freely and the unsanitary state of their living conditions allowed fecal-oral transmission of pathogens and led to high rates of infection and contagion. Death by asphyxiation and malnutrition was also common. Secondly, Africans who protested against their conditions, resisted their enslavement or participated in open rebellions were frequently executed or thrown overboard by their captors. Another factor that contributed heavily to the high mortality of the trade was the loss of entire vessels during the Atlantic crossing. The journey from Western Africa to Jamaica usually lasted eight to ten weeks and weather patterns were unpredictable, meaning that some vessels never completed their journeys across the Atlantic. The database on the slave trade developed by David Eltis and his colleagues lists 27,233 voyages, though records exist for only 23,040. Of these, 145 ships were lost at sea and it is presumed that they sank with all Africans on board. The events that took place aboard the slaver Zong in 1781 provide an example of the casual disregard for human life that characterised the transatlantic trade in Africans. It is not known when the Zong first arrived in West Africa, but records do show that it traversed the Gold Coast and, in particular, the Cape Coast, Anomabu, Adja and Agga, looking for hapless African victims to kidnap and transport to Jamaica. On 6 September 1781, a total of 440 Africans faced an uncertain future as the Zong left the Gold Coast for Jamaica. The large number of Africans on board and the cramped and inhumane conditions quickly caused widespread sickness and death. The Africans were afflicted with dysentery, fever, diarrhoea, smallpox and respiratory illnesses, and as many as sixty of them died within the first few weeks of the voyage. The ship’s insurance did not cover the ship-owners for their financial loss when an enslaved person died from disease, but if some were thrown overboard to save the rest of the human ‘cargo’, an insurance claim could be made under the principle of ‘general average’. After receiving reports that there was insufficient water left on board for all the ship’s remaining occupants, captain Luke Collingwood met with his crew to determine what to do with the sick and dying Africans. The consequences of this conversation reinforce for us how the slave trade was one of enterprise and returns, with almost no regard for human dignity or welfare. Over the next three days, the 133 Africans who the crew thought were least likely to recover were chained ankle to ankle and then thrown overboard, weighed down with balls. Some fifty-five Africans were thrown overboard on 29 November, and on 30 November forty-two more were jettisoned. On the same day, there was heavy rainfall, which provided enough fresh water for eleven days. In fact, when the ship arrived in Black River on 28 December, it had over four hundred gallons of fresh water on board. Nevertheless, twenty-six more Africans were thrown overboard 228

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on 1 December, while ten, in a last act of defiance, committed suicide. Some historians claim that one African managed to climb back on board. It should be stressed that the case of the Zong was brought to court on 6 March 1783 (Gregson vs. Gilbert) not because Collingwood and his crew were being prosecuted for mass murder, but because the underwriters refused to honour the £30 per African loss that the Liverpool consortium was demanding. In the first court case, the jury found for the ship-owners, but this ruling was set aside and a new trial at the Court of King’s Bench was ordered after the story of what had really transpired aboard the Zong became public. There it was held that there had not been sufficient necessity for throwing the Africans overboard, and that the situation with regard to the water had been created by the errors of the captain and crew. The Court ruled that the owners, not the insurers, were liable for the loss. Although it may seem that some modicum of justice was thus dispensed, it is important to remember that the essence of the legal proceedings was not culpability for the murder of 133 Africans but, rather, whether or not the loss of ‘cargo’ fell within the remit of the insurance policy. Chief Justice Mansfield, who is widely acclaimed as having brought justice to freed blacks in England (1772 Somersett’s Case), stated that the question before the jury at the first court case had been simply whether there was or was not an absolute necessity for throwing the Africans overboard, for they had no doubt that ‘the case of slaves was the same as if horses had been thrown overboard’. The Zong arrived in Black River on 28 December 1781 with 208 Africans, 232 fewer than when it departed the African Coast – a mortality rate of 53%. This places it among the ships with the highest mortality rate, and is especially noteworthy because the deaths were deliberate and premeditated. The journey had taken 112 days, almost twice the average 60-day length of a Middle Passage journey. As well as highlighting the brutality of the transatlantic trade in Africans, the story of the Zong also reveals how central issues of profitability were for the European countries and citizens who engaged in it. Indeed, the transatlantic trade in Africans became very important to the European nations who engaged in it, continuously providing replacement labour for the plantations in the Americas as existing labour forces were eroded by demographic catastrophe. African labour was central to the development and expansion of the sugar industry in the Caribbean, and ultimately to the industrial and economic revolution which took place in Britain in the eighteenth century. The sheer numbers of Africans forcefully relocated to the Caribbean provide an indication of how lucrative, and how important to the survival of the plantations system in the Americas, the trade was. Africa provided a constant flow of unpaid labour, which Britain and other European nations tapped into at will, with no regard for the decimation of an entire continent and civilisation.6 The transatlantic trade in Africans was particularly important to the British Empire, the English having given it royal patronage at an early stage. In 1663, the English incorporated the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa (later replaced by the Royal African Company), a mercantile company created under 229

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the auspices of King Charles II that sold at least 100,000 Africans to the Caribbean between 1672 and 1690 at a cost of £18 per male and £20 per female. The keen interest and participation of the English (later British) Crown in the transatlantic trade was an indication of the importance of the trade. The enslaved Africans provided free labour for European-owned plantations in the Americas, which reduced production costs and improved profits significantly. According to Eric Williams, ‘the profits obtained from the Caribbean was one of the mainstreams of accumulation of capital in England which financed the Industrial Revolution’. Williams further stated that ‘the grandeur and glory of England was advanced more by sugar than any other commodity, wool not excepted’. Evidence shows that commerce in the Caribbean reached an unprecedented high in the eighteenth century, making these the most valuable colonies of the world.7 Jamaica’s total contribution to Britain was equal to all the other Caribbean countries combined, and trade statistics reveal that Jamaica’s exports to Britain were worth five times more than those from the ‘bread basket colonies’ in North America. Jamaica’s imports from Britain were nearly a third more than those from Britain to New England and minimally less than those from Britain to New York and Pennsylvania combined. This would not have been possible without the indispensable role played by the enslaved on the Caribbean sugar plantations. Britain transported sugar, rum, molasses, logwood, spices and other goods, all  produced on the plantations, to Europe, facilitating businesses there and contributing to a financial and consumer revolution. Further analysis of the trade would highlight the multiplier effect of the system as navigation and ship­ building industries flourished, as did the wharfage, storage, retail and wholesale, and banking and insurance industries, while fishing villages such as Liverpool developed into thriving port cities. Though lucrative, the trade in Africans was a costly business and therefore required a great deal of investment capital to ensure its success. For the entire duration of the trade, European royal families, politicians, churches and influential commercial families were pooling their resources in order to engage in it. The cost of outfitting a slaver to sail from Europe, to Africa, to the Americas and then back to Europe was, according to French calculations, about 250,000 livres. Funds were usually raised via a financial system that was structured to accommodate the trade. Joint-stock companies were established and given royal charters and trading rights to reduce risks and protect investments. The transatlantic slave trade was such a profitable venture that it eclipsed the trade in ivory and gold between Africa and Europe by 1700. But the outfitting of slavers was only one aspect of the process. ‘Recruitment’ was also important; trading posts were established along the western coast of Africa and agents were employed to negotiate for the procurement of the best lot of captured Africans. The slavers and their captives were insured at very high premiums. All the major financial centres in Europe provided this service, with Amsterdam leading the way in the eighteenth century and London taking over in the nineteenth century. The lists of shareholders of the different trading compa230

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Table 13.4  Population of Jamaica by race, selected years 1660–1805 Year

Whites

1660 1664 1703 1715 1730 1734 1740 1745 1750 1762 1768 1778 1787 1789 1795 1800 1805 1807

 4,500  6,700  3,500  2,000  7,648  7,644 10,080  3,777 12,000 15,000 17,949 18,420 25,000

Other (free)

865

2,119 4,000 3,500

Blacks

Total population

 1,400  2,500  45,000  60,000  74,525  86,546  99,239 112,428 127,881 146,805 166,914 205,261 210,894 250,000 291,000 300,939 308,542 319,351

 5,900  8,200  48,500  62,000  83,038  94,190 109,319 116,205 142,000 165,805 188,363 223,681 235,894

Sources: John McCusker, Rum and the American Revolution (New York and London, 1989), pp. 609–12; Stanley L. Engerman and B. W. Higman, ‘The demographic structure of the Caribbean slave societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, in General History of the Caribbean (6 vols, 1997–2011), III; Franklin W. Knight (ed,), The Slave Societies of the Caribbean (1997), p. 46; Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery (London, 1967), pp. 95–6.

nies read like a ‘who’s who’ of contemporary European society; the English Royal Adventurers Company shareholders’ list was headed by the King of England. However, small businessmen were not willing to stand by and allow the royal families and big commercial families to dominate the trade. In fact, by the eighteenth century the trade was increasingly dominated by groups of small businessmen who pooled their resources and challenged the monopoly of big business. The adaptation of the slave mode of production led to a rapid change in the demography of Jamaica. As a result of the mass importation of Africans, blacks became the majority social group and this demographic composition remained until the end of slavery. The transformation is seen in the population estimates for Jamaica in Table 13.4. It should be noted that annualised population estimates are not available, and that the data presented are for selected years. In 1660, the ratio of whites to blacks was 3:1, this changed dramatically to 1:12 by 1703. With repeated attempts by the Jamaica Assembly to bolster the white population in the face of internal and external threats throughout the eighteenth century, the ratio declined to about 1:8 in 1787.8 Blacks’ dominance of the population was a reflection of the success of the 231

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plantation system.9 African labour was the foundation upon which Jamaica’s eighteenth-century economy was built. However, the disparity between the black population of Jamaica in 1807 and the total number of Africans imported into the island during the course of the slave trade suggests that by the time the trade was abolished, roughly two-thirds of imported Africans had died. In the broader context of eighteenth-century plantation societies, the relative reproductive failure of Jamaica’s enslaved population, in contrast to the ability of the enslaved populations in mainland North America, Bermuda and later Barbados to procreate, is one of the anomalies of the slavery period.10 Jamaica imported 835,846 Africans between 1702 and 1807.11 Some were re-exported to the mainland and the foreign West Indies. By the time the trade was abolished in 1807, the estimated enslaved population of Jamaica was 319,351.12 By comparison, the total number of Africans imported into mainland North America before emancipation in 1865 was 453,000. However, by 1800, it is estimated that the black population in North America was 1,002,000.13 The annual increase (excess of births over deaths) in the black population in North America was therefore far greater than the increase in the enslaved population as a result of newly arrived Africans – the inverse of the trend we see in Jamaica. If the demographic experience in North America had been similar to that of the British West Indian colonies, the North American black population would have been 186,000 in 1800.14 So why did Jamaica’s enslaved population experience this abnormal demographic deficit relative to other enslaved populations in the Americas, especially mainland North America? The high mortality rate in Jamaica is attributed to the harsh conditions of sugar plantation labour. The colonies that experienced a natural increase in population, like the Bahamas15 and mainland North America, had relatively few or no sugar plantations, as compared to the other British Caribbean colonies.16 In 1850, the major crop cultivated in the Southern United States was cotton, which accounted for 73% of all crops, followed by tobacco (14%), sugar (6%), rice (5%) and hemp (2%).17 In the enslaved colonies of the British Caribbean, sugar and, later, coffee were the dominant crops during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is widely known that, apart from those given domestic roles, the majority of female labourers were put to work in the cane fields.18 In an essay on enslaved women on the Mesopotamia estate in Jamaica, Richard Dunn noted that ‘every one of them laboured in the cane fields, that most of them did this work for many years, and that collectively they performed much of the hardest sugar labour’.19 Dunn evidenced his argument by presenting a breakdown of Mesopotamia’s enslaved population from 1736 to 1831. In 1801, for example, there were 352 enslaved on Mesopotamia, with a total of 192 prime workers, of whom 113 were males and 79 females. Of this number, 92 were prime field workers, of whom 61 were women and 31 were men. For the period 1751–1831, Dunn noted that 182, or 84%, of the women on the estate worked as field labourers, as compared to 177, or 55%, of the men. It seems therefore that the statistical preponderance of men in the Atlantic crossing and the enslaved labour force was not translated into fieldwork, which, by all accounts, was the most arduous task on the sugar plantation.20 232

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Once the enslaved people had been selected to work on a particular estate, they were organised into gangs of several workers or by more individualised task work. This allowed planters to better manage the labour force by organising them in terms of their suitability for certain jobs. There were three gangs, First, Second and Third, with the ‘First Gang’ (comprised mostly of women) being the best labourers on the estate. This gang primarily undertook field-work – clearing the field, holing, cutting and transporting the cane to the mill at harvest time. It was the most regimented gang on the plantation, and the enslaved worked throughout the day, from sunrise to sunset. It has been found that the work demands placed on the labouring population in Jamaica shaped their demographic experiences during the eighteenth century, affecting both mortality and fertility rates across the island. The constraints and intensity of the gang system meant that prime field-workers, most of whom were women, worked upwards of sixty hours a week, and double that during periods of harvesting. The effect of this on the demographic experiences of the enslaved population was shown on Mesopotamia. Dunn highlighted the low and seasonal nature of the estate’s fertility rate, from which ‘the impact of the sugar labour system upon mothers can be inferred’.21 He noted that of the 407 births recorded, 126, or 31%, were from October to December, while of the 89 infant deaths recorded, 32, or 38%, were from January to March, which was the harvesting period. In other words, the likelihood of an infant surviving birth during crop time was relatively low. The life expectancy of field-workers on the Mesopotamia estate, both male and female, was shorter, as compared to non-field labourers. Using the estimates provided, it was found that of the 177 male field-workers recorded between 1751 and 1831, the average life span was forty-two years, compared to forty-five years for those in supervisory positions. The difference between female fieldworkers and domestics was much greater. The life expectancy of field-workers was forty-five years, compared to fifty-five years for domestics. It must also be noted that for the entire recorded period, Mesopotamia’s mortality rate was higher than its fertility rate. This pattern was slightly different on non-sugar estates and in artisanal and service sectors, where the mortality rate, because of the difference in work regime, was typically lower. The case for constituting slavery as genocide, suggested by the high mortality rates in the transatlantic trade in Africans and the low life expectancies of enslaved people on estates, is further strengthened when one quantifies the replacement demand for enslaved Africans in Jamaica. The increase in Jamaica’s enslaved population during the eighteenth century was possible because of the increase in net imports over the same period. Demographically, Jamaica’s enslaved population was one of net natural decrease. This has led to the belief that growth in the number of retained labourers was the major factor influencing the overall growth of the island’s labouring population. In other words, the only way of sustaining the labour force, and by extension the plantation economy, was through the continuous importation of Africans.22 The importance of retained labourers to the growth of the enslaved population is shown in Table 13.5. It shows the 233

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Table 13.5  Jamaica’s enslaved imports and changes in population, selected years 1703–1807 Year

Population

1703 1715 1730 1734 1740 1745 1762 1768 1778 1787 1789 1795 1800 1807

 45,000  60,000  74,525  86,546  99,239 112,428 146,805 166,914 205,261 217,584 250,000 291,000 300,939 319,351

Change in population

No. of enslaved retained

Ratio of enslaved retained to change in population

15,000 14,525 12,021 12,693 13,189 34,377 20,109 38,347 12,323 32,416 41,000  9,939 18,412

 42,271  41,442  2,605  12,736  22,626 107,334  50,164  88,056  54,122  11,823  86,894  56,790  45,478

282 285 022 100 172 312 249 230 439 036 212 571 247

Source: Transatlantic Slave Trade Database: http://wwwslavevoyagesorg/; McCusker, Rum and the American Revolution, pp. 609–12; Patterson, Sociology of Slavery, pp. 95–6.

total enslaved population of Jamaica at selected dates from 1703 to 1807. This is the best we can do in the absence of annual estimates of the population during the eighteenth century. The table highlights changes in the enslaved population, i.e. the population of the current year minus the population of the previous year. Retained labourers are the total disembarked minus those re-exported for the corresponding period. An analysis of Table 13.5 indicates that in 1715, Jamaica’s enslaved population was 60,000. The net import from 1703 to 1715 was 42,271, which was approximately 70% of the population. However, what is interesting is the change in population and the number of enslaved retained for the same period. The data indicate that from 1703 to 1715 the enslaved population increased by 15,000, but the net import figure for the same period was 42,271, or 2.82 times the actual change in the population. In other words, Jamaica imported 42,300 Africans between 1703 and 1715 to facilitate a population change of 15,000 over the same period. This trend continued for much of the period under investigation, with each period showing that the net import was higher than the actual change in population (with the exception of the years 1734 and 1789, both of which showed a lower net import relative to the change in population). The table gives us statistical evidence of the brutality of the system perpetrated against our ancestors. The labour regime required to make plantations and other enterprises profitable took its toll on the enslaved, and naturally they resisted. The cost of resistance – for example, in wars like the 1760 war led by Takyi and the 1831–32 war led by 234

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Table 13.6  Names of anti-slavery activists who participated in the 1831–32 war and punishments received Name

Punishment

Catherine Brown Mary Campbell Nancy Campbell Catherine Clarke Sarah Jackson Ann James Christina James Eliza James Susan James Sophia Maitland Jane Maitland Matty Amelia Murray Priscilla Ann Ramsay Caroline Smith Charlotte Smith Mary Walker

Flogged and imprisoned 150 lashes 50 lashes 50 lashes and 3 months in prison at hard labour Transportation for life Death/executed 50 lashes and 3 months in prison at hard labour 100 lashes, 2 months and 50 lashes when discharged 200 lashes, 2 months and 50 lashes when discharged 25 lashes 25 lashes 50 lashes 100 lashes Transportation for life 100 lashes, 6 months and 50 lashes when discharged 100 lashes 50 lashes 10 lashes

Source: UK National Archives, CO 137/185.

Samuel Sharpe – has been well documented, with hanging, flogging, imprisonment and transportation (deportation) from Jamaica being the most common forms of punishment. The punishment meted out to the 1831–32 anti-slavery activists for their role in the final emancipation war led by Samuel Sharpe (Table 13.6) makes chilling reading; so does the journal of the enslaver Thomas Thistlewood, which documents the response to day-to-day acts of non-cooperation.23 These activists did not struggle and suffer in vain, as a year later the Emancipation Act was passed. Upon emancipation in 1834, British Caribbean planters received £20 million from the British government as compensation for the loss of their so-called ‘property’. According to Mary Butler, each enslaved person in Jamaica was estimated to have cost an average of approximately £44 at the time of emancipation. As a result, the 311,070 enslaved persons who remained in Jamaica at emancipation were valued at £13,951,139, 30% of the value of all the enslaved people in the British Caribbean and other colonies including Mauritius. Jamaican planters received some £6,161,927, approximately 30% of the compensation funds (some £5 billion in today’s value, based on average earnings). Some 47% went to merchant houses like W. R. & S. Mitchell and Company, one of the giants of the West India trade.24 In essence, not much of the compensation money remained in Jamaica, and, more importantly, no compensation was given to the enslaved people for the hundreds of years they had laboured on the plantations and thereby enriched the Britain economy. 235

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Historians such as Walter Rodney, Eric Williams and Joseph Inikori contend that only Europe benefited from the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans, which led only to economic stagnation in Africa and, by extension, in the Caribbean.25 This divergence occurred because the trade was a pure product of European imperialism; the strategy behind it and the production that supported it were firmly in the hands of the Europeans. Thus Europe dictated the roles that each region in the system played: the Caribbean was the agricultural hub where produce was grown (and to some extent processed) before it was exported to Europe and ultimately transformed into wealth for Europeans. Africa’s role was to supply human beings to furnish the labour demands in the Americas. In his discussion of the concepts of development and underdevelopment, Rodney argues that development ‘cannot be seen purely as an economic affair, but rather as an overall social process which is dependent upon the outcomes of man’s efforts to deal with his natural environment’.26 In other words, although it may be proven that there was economic prosperity within plantation economies, it should not be said that there was development, which is a more holistic concept. Development is also seen as a comparative, rather than absolute, model. ‘Underdevelopment’ is therefore not the absence or lack of development, as different peoples and societies have all attained some level of development in one way or another. The comparison must take place at a socio-economic level, though, conventionally, more emphasis is placed on the economic side of the equation, leading to a misinterpretation of the concept of development. In fact, social change and progress are hinged on economic prosperity and growth; if an area is economically underdeveloped, the chances of its social fabric also being underdeveloped are high. Thus, while slavery was a lucrative and economically viable industry, most of the social development benefits that should have flowed to the Caribbean were transferred to Europe, together with the economic gains derived from slavery. Many scholars, such as George Beckford, have asserted that Caribbean economies remain plantation economies in essence, as the vestiges of the plantation system are very much alive and present.27 Slavery and its legacies continue to stifle the consciousness of most Jamaicans, and one of the major contributory factors is the inordinately long period of human exploitation and subjection. Undoubtedly this period began with conquest and discovery, germinated and thrived within slave societies and was reinforced by the period of colonisation. So more than a century and a half after emancipation, the descendants of enslaved people still face discrimination, injustice, inequality and denial of their basic human rights. Self-governance and independence removed some of the old injustices and inequity as the descendants of the formerly enslaved began to occupy positions and offices of influence and power. However, many practices that persist today bear a strong resemblance to those in operation during the periods of British rule; so much so that many still view emancipation as a work in progress. Such a view is understandable when one examines the length and breadth of modern Jamaican society and finds multiple incidences of subjugation 236

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and oppression. These include expropriation of national resources, monopolisation, objectification of the human body, unequal distribution of resources, unequal access to social services and land, ill-treatment of the poor and marginalised, elite alienation and dependency, poor employer/employee relations and industrial relations and imbalanced relationships between Caribbean states and former imperial states, to name a few. These are widely considered to be the unfortunate consequences of subordination and imperialist rule, which have prevented our people from enjoying true emancipation. The ownership of the means and factors of production, especially land, is one area in which gross inequity still exists. Landownership is basically concentrated in the hands of the rich business class, who are either ‘naturalised’ Jamaicans or foreigners. There has been a significant influx of multinational corporations and foreign-owned companies, who tend to buy up prime real estate and large plots of land, all ripe for commercial development, resulting in significant expatriation of profits. The local population (those who own land at all) are left with land that is unsuitable for commercial uses, and in some cases hardly even appropriate for residential purposes. Those without this ‘privilege’ are forced to encroach or ‘squat’. This problem is further complicated by the bureaucratic process of land transfer and registration, with antiquated legislation, policies and procedures for land administration still rooted in a plantation economy and thus geared towards accommodating small numbers of transactions on large properties with wealthy owners.28 The moneyed class, which tends to be of a certain ethnic and racial disposition, also owns and controls major businesses within important sectors and is either in possession of large reserves of funds or eligible to receive capital to facilitate the establishment and ownership of businesses. This culture is reminiscent of the old plantation society, as in both systems the masses are at the beck and call of the moneyed class. Wealth creation among the masses has therefore been significantly thwarted by the lack of opportunities and resources. Within the large businesses, top management and executives are recruited or transferred from overseas to fill vacancies; even where the necessary expertise is available locally, there is a culture of crowding locals out of these positions. This is especially so with the hiring of consultants. This set of circumstances undoubtedly produces a perpetual state of underdevelopment, as at no time is it in the best interest of the majority to equip the masses with the requisite resources to participate in wealth creation, and much of the wealth that is produced will always be expatriated. A culture of ‘brain drain’ – in which educated locals are motivated or compelled to seek employment abroad and ultimately to acquire permanent status in other countries – is another repercussion of this economic system. This further cripples the economy and creates a vicious circle in which it is impossible for a society to thrive. Jamaica has long suffered this problem; the genesis of mass migration began with the construction of the Panama Canal. With the most productive and innovative sectors of the population drawn to foreign countries where opportunities abound, entrepreneurial spirit in Jamaica is stifled, while the maximisation 237

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of natural resources and the development of a thriving small business sector becomes impossible. All the aforementioned have created a heavy reliance on developed countries for financial assistance and trade preferences. The old (and soon to be defunct) preferential arrangement for the trade in sugar and bananas between the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States and Europe is one such example. So illequipped are Caribbean farmers for the international markets that, in order for them to survive and compete, they are given free access and special prices for their products. This arrangement is the only reason for sugar still being produced locally, but, with its impending demise, the sugar industry now hangs in the balance. This is because sugar (one of the oldest industries in Jamaica) seems still to be in a nascent stage; under local management since the end of slavery, it has never succeeded in developing into a mature industry. This ‘dependency syndrome’ transcends the sugar industry, and in fact has permeated whole crosssections of the economy, demonstrated by the high reliance on multilateral and foreign aid grants, loans and economic assistance. The retardation of Jamaican inventiveness and the crippling of its agricultural sector are undoubtedly significantly linked to slavery. Upon emancipation, most Jamaicans saw owning land as the sole way forward, and were unconcerned with education or the production of non-agricultural goods and service. This has created a dependency on European goods, technology and expertise, and it is this dependency and subordination that is at the root of our underdeveloped status. Another component of Jamaican underdevelopment is exploitation. Exploitation was at the crux of the relationship between Europe and Africa forged by the Atlantic trade system and transferred to the Caribbean region, and it continues in the modern Jamaican society. It was bred and ingrained by racialised slavery, and its continuation after emancipation was probably the main reason for the development of our mammoth trade union industry. The inferiority complex developed as a result of such sustained practices of exploitation by those of African descent is no less palpable than the legacies of slavery in labour relations. This complex was and is propagated by the notion that black is ‘ugly’, inferior and will result in fewer benefits, which has created certain destructive learned behaviours. Chief among these are the low self-esteem, engagement in harmful cosmetic practices like skin-bleaching and discrimination suffered by those of a darker complexion. The latter, though still extant, is fortunately much less conspicuous as a result of legislation, the culture of talk shows and the proliferation of civil society and human rights organisations. Class structures and divisiveness are still pervasive and affect interpersonal relationships, as people find both overt and subtle ways of distinguishing themselves from those who are considered underprivileged or even beyond redemption. This sort of behaviour seems to be transferred from the perceived differences that were constructed between enslaved domestic and field-workers (though hardly any existed in practice), and the perceived superiority of those of mixed race over those with black skin. Other remnants of slavery include the belief 238

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that material acquisitions will propel one to a state of prominence and make one deserving of respect. It is also axiomatic that a large proportion of the population accept their economic status as fixed destiny and consider themselves incapable of surmounting their poverty or of any kind of social mobility. These people are constantly dependent on others for their survival and indeed assume that their needs should be met by someone else. Other remnants of the system include the modes of punishment administered, a culture of abuse and the victimisation of people in one form or another. To summarise, there is overwhelming evidence to support the claim of Rodney and others that the transatlantic trade in Africans directly led to the underdevelopment of the Caribbean. Although some will contend that the problems in economies like Jamaica’s are of our own making and should not be blamed on any system or specific occurrence, it seems unquestionable that many of the problems that are faced today have their antecedents in the transatlantic trade and the atrocities of slavery. The case for reparation Based on the economic contribution of the Caribbean to the development of Britain, the injustices of British colonialism, the underdevelopment of Africa and the Caribbean as a consequence of the transatlantic trade in African captives, the harm done by slavery to the descendants of the enslaved ancestors and the failure of former colonial powers to repair the damage done by slavery, experts argue that the case for reparation rests on firm philosophical and legal grounds. Reparation has been used to redress wrongs and achieve peace and reconciliation for centuries, so clear precedent exists. Perhaps the most famous case of reparation was the compensation paid by the German state to the Jews in territories controlled by Hitler’s Germany who had suffered persecution under the Third Reich. Reparation has also been paid to First Nation people in the USA and Canada, as well as to Japanese-Americans, Koreans and Japanese-Canadians. In 1825, Haiti was asked to pay 150 million gold French francs to France in exchange for France’s recognition of Haiti as a sovereign nation, thereby ending the twentyone years’ isolation from the international community that the country had suffered for its ‘audacity’ in taking its freedom. The second historic reparation case occurred in 1834, when at emancipation enslavers argued that the freeing of enslaved people by British legislation was a violation of their property rights and demanded compensation. Britain paid £20 million as compensation, about £16.5 billion in today’s money. Compensation was also an ingredient of other emancipation settlements in the Caribbean.29 European powers continue to reject the notion that they are liable for any reparation payment, and maintain that the historic trade in captured Africans was not a crime at the time it was pursued but, rather, was legal commerce. They further contend that slavery happened too long ago for there to be any contemporary claimants, that in any event the statute of limitation would apply and that 239

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present governments cannot be held liable for the actions of past governments. However, in opposing this line of argument, prominent Jamaica-based advocate Lord Anthony Gifford has suggested that the legal basis for reparation rests on the following arguments: • Enslavement was and is a crime against humanity. • The right to reparation is recognised by international law. • There is no legal barrier to prevent those who still suffer the consequences of enslavement from claiming reparation, even though the crimes were committed against their ancestors. • There is no statute of limitation and there is precedent. • International law provides the means for descendants to receive recompense on behalf of their ancestors. • As descendants of enslavement continue to suffer from the legacies of slavery (for example, racism on the basis of skin shade and ethnicity), the continuing legacies of slavery provide further justification for pressing the case for reparation. • There is proof of unjust enrichment and the continued enjoyment of such riches by individuals and European states. Indeed the recent findings of the team of researchers from University College London on the beneficiaries of the compensation money provides proof that prominent British families inherited some of this money, 50% of which went to absentees in Britain, and continue to enjoy such inheritance today. Yet the reparation issue remains unresolved, and continues to fracture international relations, because of the obduracy of Europeans on the issue. For example, on 22 September 2011, during the International Year for People of African Descent, the United Nations General Assembly held a high-level meeting in New York to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA) at the historic 2001 United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (W-CAR). Adopted by consensus at the 2001 W-CAR in Durban, the DDPA is a comprehensive, action-oriented document that proposes concrete measures to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. The meeting did not have the full support of all UN member states. Indeed, the following key states boycotted the event: Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, the United Kingdom and the USA. While support for the Palestinian cause against Israel by some member states was a factor in the boycott, it is also well known that the DDPA’s insistence that African enslavement and the transatlantic trade in African captives were crimes against humanity when they were practised by Western European powers, and that those powers should find ways to repair the damage done by slavery and the 240

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slave trade, also played a major role. The outcome document of the DDPA states unambiguously that slavery and the slave trade, including the transatlantic slave trade, were appalling tragedies in the history of humanity not only because of their abhorrent barbarism but also in terms of their magnitude, organised nature and especially their negation of the essence of the victims; … slavery and the slave trade are a crime against humanity and should always have been so, especially the transatlantic slave trade.

The DDPA further asserts that slavery and the transatlantic trade in captured Africans were among the major sources and manifestations of racism and racial discrimination, and explicitly recognises the relationship between this legacy and the current unequal condition of African people worldwide. The Declaration formulated specific recommendations to combat these problems, among them reparation. It should be stressed that the calls for reparation for genocide against the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, the kidnapping, forced migration and enslavement of Africans in the Americas (the Maafa or African holocaust), the establishment of chattel slavery as a unique form of human domination and as a global regime of racial terror, the exploitation of Indian people through the nineteenth-century indentureship system and the murder of hundreds of people in various post-slavery protests across the region have only intensified since the 2001 Durban World Conference on Racism. This was particularly true during 2007, when the bicentennial of the passing of the Slave Trade Abolition Act in Britain was celebrated. Of course, the reparation struggle dates back to long before 2001; certainly in Jamaica, where the Rastafarians have been calling for repatriation (a key aspect of reparation) since 1948. But, whatever its provenance, many argue that it remains as relevant today as it ever was, and efforts have been directed towards calculating Europe’s financial liability as accurately as possible and debating the models of reparation. Yet, despite the moral and legal justifications, few former slave societies have taken active steps to file a claim against Europe, not even in the Caribbean, where the legacies of slavery are patently obvious. Haiti is the exception. In 2004, then President Jean Bertrand Aristide officially served a claim on France for restitution of the sums paid to France in recognition of its freedom. He argued that the sum paid by Haiti represented about US$21 billion in 2004. But the ‘coupknapping’ of Aristide followed the serving of that claim, and his immediate replacement, LaTortue, moved swiftly to renounce Aristide’s reparation claim. Since 2004, only a few Caribbean states have been revisiting the reparation issue, although individual politicians, academics, non-governmental organisations and the Rastafarians have kept the matter firmly in the limelight through speeches, lobbies, media efforts, commemorative events and publications. For example, in 2010 Surinamese economist Dr Armand Zunder published a book on reparations to be paid by the Dutch government; several public lectures on reparations have been delivered by leading Caribbean historian Professor Hilary 241

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Beckles; and conferences and seminars to debate the issue have been held in several countries. In 2007, expectations soared that Britain would make a grand gesture of apology and negotiate reparation packages with her former colonies. No such gesture materialised, with then Prime Minister Tony Blair simply issuing a statement of regret. But Mr Blair’s statement did not deny Britain’s participation in the trade and slavery, and the economic benefits that it gained from such participation, paving the way for stepped-up reparation campaigns. Jamaica responded with the first-ever debate in Parliament on the issue of reparation in a former British colony. The debate took on heightened significance because it was held during Black History Month, during the bicentennial and on the anniversary of Bob Marley’s birthday, 6 February 2007. It lasted for three sessions, ending on 27 February 2007. It was an historic debate, with fifteen parliamentarians taking part in a rare bi-partisan show of support for MP Mike Henry’s Private Member’s Motion, which had placed the matter before Parliament. Those who participated (in addition to Mike Henry) were Heather Robinson, Victor Cummings, Aloun Assamba, Pearnel Charles, Dr Patrick Harris, Andrew Holness, Clive Mullings, Olivia Grange, Dr Neil McGill, Dr Kenneth Baugh, Sharon Hay Webster, Luther Buchanan, Mr Ralston Anson and Bruce Golding.30 The then (and current) Prime Minister, Portia Simpson Miller, did not participate but, according to Bruce Golding (then Opposition Leader), the government’s position could be said to have been articulated by Hon. Aloun Assamba, Minister of Tourism, Entertainment and Culture, who informed Parliament that there was support for reparation but in order to gather mass support, there would need to be stepped-up public education, research and regional consultation at CARICOM (the Caribbean Community Secretariat). When the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) came to power in 2007, it acted on a parliamentary resolution, as well as pressure from the Jamaica National Bicentenary Committee, and established the National Commission on Reparation (NCR), chaired by the late Professor Barry Chevannes. The Commission was officially launched on 14 May 2009. Its Terms of Reference were to: 1 receive submissions, hear testimonies, evaluate research, and undertake public consultations, with the aim of guiding a national response to reparation; 2 recommend the diplomatic initiatives, security considerations, education and public information required; 3 recommend the form or forms that reparations may take, taking into account social, moral, cultural, economic and international factors; 4 provide a report of its deliberations and recommendations to the Minister of Information, Culture, Youth and Sports within 18 months from the date of its first meeting. The Commission was initially composed of ten members: the Chair, Rastafarian Junior Manning (who died shortly after), Mrs Jeannette Grant-Woodham; Lord Anthony Gifford QC; Ms Tanya Batson-Savage; Mr Garth Whyte; Professor 242

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Rupert Lewis; Mrs Donna Parchment-Brown; Mr Robert Miller; and Ms KimMarie Spence. A late addition to this group was University of the West Indies lecturer Dr Sonjah Stanley-Niaah. The absence of a professional historian was to become a matter for public comment. To date, the Commission has not presented its findings to Parliament or to the Jamaican people; and lack of funds caused it to suspend its activities on 10 March 2010. In the elections of December 2011, the JLP lost, and the People’s National Party (PNP) once more formed the government. In April 2012, the PNP reconvened the NRC under the same Terms of Reference, with a slightly increased membership, among them Professor Rupert Lewis, Mr Robert Miller, Mrs Donna ParchmentBrown and Lord Anthony Gifford, QC from the previous Commission. New members, in addition to the Chair, are Mr Michael Holgate, law student Mr Maurice McCurdy, lawyer Mr Bert Samuels, Dr Donna McFarlane, Ms Thelma Jo Hill, Dr Kadamawe Knife, Dr Jahlani Niaah, ‘Sister Mitzie’ of the Millennium Council of Rastafari and Ms Michelle Walker. The NCR falls under the Ministry of Youth and Culture and is serviced by staff members from the Culture section, Ms Marisa Benain and Ms Marcian Walters. Time will tell if this new Commission, which I have been asked to Chair, will receive the level of financial and other support needed to fulfil the Terms of Reference. Antigua and Barbuda also transformed its Bicentenary Committee into a National Reparation Commission, and Barbados now has a Reparation Task Force chaired by Professor Pedro Welch of the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies. But, despite the Debate in Parliament in Jamaica, the continued activism of the Rastafarians, the early Jamaica Reparation Movement led by Barbara Blake Hanna (who later renounced the reparation cause) and the establishment of National Reparation Commissions or Task Forces (and later International Year for People of African Descent committees), there is no ground-swell of support for reparation in the Caribbean and in Africa. There is also no majority support for the planned separation of Jamaica from the British monarchical system. Indeed, of 1,000 people polled in 2011, 60% stated that the island would have been better off during British rule. This is despite evidence of the brutality of the British colonial regime, as illustrated by data on the capture and sale of Africans, the Middle Passage journey to Jamaica, the rigours of the plantation regime and the punishment meted out to those who dared to make a bid for freedom. The published statement attributable to the Jamaican Prime Minister that the island will not seek reparation from Britain plunged activists in the movement into the depths of despair. The Gleaner headline on 7 March 2012 screamed ‘Jamaica will seek no reparation from Britain – Simpson Miller’. Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, in an interview conducted at the Gleaner’s North Street, Kingston offices on 5 March, is reported to have said she would not join the calls for such a payment. Her interview was also reported in the UK Telegraph and Mirror. Ms Simpson Miller admitted in the published interview that the capture and sale of people in Africa, their forced shipment across the Middle Passage, as well 243

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as slave labour on plantations, were ‘wicked’ and ‘brutal’, and that ‘no race should have been subjected to what our ancestors were subjected to’. But she is reported as saying that she did not think that there was a case for reparation, a view shared by several of those who responded via Facebook and other media and social media websites to her alleged statement. As expected, long-time reparation activist Mike Henry, Opposition JLP Member of Parliament for Central Clarendon, fired back, with the following headline appearing in the Jamaica Gleaner on 8 March: ‘Henry bashes Simpson Miller for reparation comments’. ‘I am very saddened that in this, our 50th year of anniversary, because of the visit of a Prince Harry, who may be coming here to show that we should not run faster than them, the Prime Minister has taken this stance,’ Henry reportedly told the Gleaner. He argued that the Prime Minister had spoken out of turn and urged her to be guided by the findings of the Reparation Commission – which until then had not revealed its findings. In justifying his claim, Henry said: ‘Great Britain paid the slave owners of the Caribbean and Jamaica £20 million. I am saying, “pay the same amount now, compounded over the period of slavery and if, indeed, you say you have granted to us any issue that you think is of value – whether it be jurisprudence or ­education – deduct that; but reparation is a demand that I intend to pursue.” ’31 The thirty-four comments that appeared in response to Henry’s remarks and the seventeen that followed Simpson Miller’s interview, as well as the letters to the editors of the two main Jamaican newspapers, should be of concern to those in the Caribbean who might still wish to pursue reparation. A summary of the main issues and queries raised follows. • • • • • • •

• • • • • •

There are no survivors to be claimants; those who suffered slavery are all dead. Britain has already given Jamaica money in terms of loans and grants. Present governments cannot be held liable for past wrongs of their ancestors. It would be difficult to ascertain to whom payment would be made. Will Africans also be asked for reparation? After all, ‘they sold us into slavery’. Payment should not be made to politicians, who would only mismanage it. Jamaicans who believe that we should be compensated by Britain for slavery, should file a class action suit against the British government instead of having our politicians handle the issue, because they are looking for favour with the British government. No amount of money from whites will make black people rich or take them out of poverty. Can I seek reparations from Jamaica for the things that were done to me by some Jamaican people in the name of ‘colonial’? How about those who enriched themselves while they ignored the country’s needs and propagated the systemic discrimination? Can you put states on trial as opposed to individuals? Jamaica was better off under the British. Britain might ask for its island back: ‘If England were to pay reparation then they may ask for there [sic] island back and ask all to leave Jamaica and go back 244

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to Africa!! They gave us the island, be happy!! They gave us independence and we can’t take care of our self. The amount of money England give us to date is enough, don’t let England ask back for their island, if they do there is no one to stop them. They can give you reparation and tell you to leave the country, is that what Jamaica wants? What was particularly alarming for historians and reparation supporters (and the final comment above brought this sharply into focus) was the level of ignorance of Caribbean and African diaspora history, as well as the lack of awareness of the nature of British colonialism in the region displayed by many who have weighed in on the public reparation debate, leading one respondent to exclaim in frustration: ‘You have made up your version of history.’ The mental separation from their slavery past and the apparent nostalgic attachment to Britain of many of those who commented are particularly troubling, especially in a year in which Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago mark fifty years of independence from Britain and Jamaica moves towards constitutional change in order to become a republic. Happily, the Prime Minister seems firm in her commitment to spearhead the discussion on the transition from monarchy to republic; and in a recent interview I conducted with her she clarified the news report on her views on reparation, indicating that she was misquoted and affirming her support for the NCR in Jamaica. So, what is the historian to do? Is it our role to lead the reparation movement or to ignite interest in it? Of course some may embrace (and have embraced) this activist role; for the Caribbean has a long history of scholar-activism. At the very least, we should become engaged in public history education – at least until Caribbean and African history become compulsory subjects in the schools. In other words, historians need to provide people with the educational tools that they need to make an informed decision on the merits and demerits of reparation. The movement will go nowhere if the masses do not support it, and without proper understanding of the history of slavery in Jamaica, this may not be possible. For this and many other reasons, the content of the history education available to Caribbean and diasporic audiences remains a concern. The Debate in the Jamaican Parliament in 2007 demonstrated an impressive level of awareness of African and Caribbean history among politicians. This meant that they were able to marshal evidence and glean data from the published, revisionist texts that now abound, texts that deal with Caribbean civilisation before the fifteenth century; conquest and colonisation; Africa before the export trade in African captives; slavery and the plantation systems in the Americas; the brutality of European colonialism; and the agency of their ancestors. However, many of them would not have had access to this information at school; the older ones would have been exposed only to the Eurocentric history that dominated the educational system until the 1960s. The task now is to ensure that these data are available to the masses and are presented to students in accessible ways, including through audio and visual media. At the very least, people should be exposed to the fact that the Caribbean 245

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had a civilisation and an indigenous culture before 1492; that European conquest and colonisation had devastating consequences for that indigenous culture, with very little non-archaeological evidence in the Caribbean today (except in Belize, Cuba, Guyana, Suriname, Dominica and St Vincent) that the Taino and Kalinago ever existed; and that the transatlantic trade in Africans and African enslavement in the Americas were brutal systems of exploitation that enriched Europe while severely retarding the development of the Caribbean and Africa. They should be exposed to the tremendous loss of life in wars of resistance against colonialism and reminded that the legacies of those historical experiences are visible everywhere.32 Above all, Caribbean societies should be educated about the immorality of slavery, indigenous genocide, Indian indentureship and the trade in captives. This is the moral underpinning of the reparation struggle – but the moral argument alone will not be enough. Historians will have to engage in detailed research that will provide Caribbean governments and legal experts with the kind of evidence (especially economic and psychological) that they will need to present the case in an international court. As Bruce Golding reminded us in his intervention in the Jamaica Reparation Parliamentary Debate, ‘if we are to face the international community, if we are to take on these powerful European … former slave traders, we cannot go there with some of the victims saying one thing and some saying a different thing … there is work to be done’.33 That work has already started. Although some say it is impossible to quantify the debt owed by Europe for slavery, and others that a diplomatic rather than a legal approach is preferable,34 some historians have made efforts to calculate the debt. In his documentary ‘The Empire Pays Back’, Robert Beckford, lecturer in the School of Historical Studies at the University of Birmingham, proposed a method for calculating the monetary sum owed to the descendants of the trade in Africans. Utilising the expertise of economic historian David Richardson, actuary Peter Tomkins and lawyer Mick Anthony, Beckford divides his calculation into three sections: unpaid labour, benefit of slavery to Britain’s economy and human cost or pain and suffering. In terms of unpaid labour, he estimates that Britain owes £4 trillion. He based his calculations on an estimation that, if each enslaved African worked an average of twenty years in his/her lifetime at a rate of £10 per year, then an enslaved African in the Caribbean would lose out on £200 in his or her working life. With the addition of compound interest over the period of enslavement up until now, the estimated earning power of an enslaved African would be about £1 million. That figure is then multiplied by the estimated three million enslaved Africans who survived the Middle Passage, plus an additional estimated one million who were born into slavery. The formula is as follows: 1  Calculation of labour cost • Cost of labour over a 20-year period for one enslaved African: £10 @ 20 years = £200. 246

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• Appreciation: £200 × compound interest over time = £1 million per enslaved African. • £1 million × estimated 3 million Africans who survived the Middle Passage + estimated 1 million Africans who were born into slavery = £4 trillion. 2  Calculation of benefit to the economy or unjust enrichment Britain earned £5 million per year from sugar during the peak of the industry (from the seventeenth century until the mid-eighteenth century), therefore over a century Britain made £500 million, the equivalent of £2.5 trillion in today’s money. 3  Calculation of human cost/pain and suffering Using the estimated £12,500 average compensation granted to a British citizen for bondage in prison and/or wrongful imprisonment, multiplied by the average twenty years of labour for an enslaved African, the total average cost of compensating an individual African would be £250,000. When this estimated £250,000 is multiplied by the estimated number of Africans who survived the Middle Passage, plus those who were born into slavery, the total cost for pain and suffering is estimated at £1 trillion. • £12,500 × 20 years: £250,000 per African • £250,000 × 4 million: £1 trillion The total monetary reparation owed by Britain, according to Robert Beckford’s calculations would be an estimated £7.5 trillion. 4  Calculation of Jamaica’s monetary claim Using Beckford’s estimate of £7.5 trillion, the amount of compensation owed to Jamaica would be 30.6%, or £2.298 trillion. • Estimate of total Africans who disembarked at Jamaica + the estimate at emancipation: 914,902 + 311,070 = 1,225,972 • 1,225,972 ÷ 4 million × 100 = 30.64% • 30.64% of £7.5 trillion = £2.298 trillion According to the Durban Declaration, as well as a formal apology and monetary compensation, reparation should also take the form of writing off debts and supporting infrastructural development. The aim of this aspect of reparation is to assist the countries that suffered underdevelopment as a result of the transatlantic trade to reach a level of development on a par with those developed countries that benefited from the trade. This would help to balance the level of development across the world, and put some of the poorest countries on the path of development. To this end, any reparation claim put forward by Jamaica should include the following as priorities, in addition to an apology and monetary compensation: 247

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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

debt relief poverty eradication building or strengthening democratic institutions promotion of foreign direct investment market access intensified efforts to meet the international agreed targets for official development assistance (ODA) transfers to developing countries new information and communication technologies (ICT), bridging the digital divide agriculture and food security transfer of technology transparent and accountable governance investment in health infrastructure in tackling HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, including, inter alia, through the Global AIDS and Health Fund infrastructural development human resource development, including capacity building education, training and cultural development mutual legal assistance in the repatriation of illegally obtained and illegally transferred (stashed) funds, in accordance with national and international instruments assistance with working against illicit traffic in small arms and light weapons restitution of art objects, historical artefacts and documents to their countries of origin in accordance with bilateral agreements or international instruments programmes to combat trafficking in persons, particularly women and children facilitation of welcomed return and resettlement of the descendants of enslaved Africans.

Whatever the approach, concrete action is needed, for slavery was unjust and, as Hilary Beckles argues, ‘an injustice without remedy is abhorrent to the spirit of justice’.35 The former colonial powers should be made aware (if they are not already) that the reparation struggle is likely to be high on the global politics agenda in the twenty-first century, and initiated not only by formerly enslaved peoples but by those who have suffered colonial or neo-colonial forms of exploitation all over the world. The fractured state of international relations today is deeply rooted in the various human rights violations committed under colonialism (it is estimated that as many as 75% of the world’s peoples fall into this category). Redressing such historic wrongs could help to heal many of the wounds of the past, bring about reconciliation in the present day and advance the project of globalisation in all its positive possibilities. Notes   1 I thank Dr Ahmed Reid for his valuable assistance with statistical data for this chapter.  2 David Eltis et al. (eds), The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM (Cambridge, 1999).

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 3 Ibid.  4 Ibid.  5 British Parliamentary Papers, 1803–4 (119) X, pp. 93–194.  6 For the most recent account of the Zong, see James Walvin, The Zong: A Massacre, the Law and the End of Slavery (New Haven and London, 2011).  7 Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, NC, 1944).  8 To correct the perceived imbalance, the Jamaica Assembly instituted a series of Deficiency Laws that penalised slave holders who failed to have the accepted ratio of whites to blacks. See Edward Long, The History of Jamaica (3 vols, London, 1774), I, p. 376.  9 It is estimated that the enslaved population grew at an annual rate of 2.3%. See S. L. Engerman and B. W. Higman, ‘The demographic structure of the Caribbean slave societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, in General History of the Caribbean (6 vols, 1997–2011), p. 46. 10 Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of Negro Slavery (Boston, 1974), p. 22–5; Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, WI, 1960), p. 71; R. Fogel, Without Consent or Contract (New York, 1989), pp. 123–7; B. W. Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 1807–1834 (Kingston, Jamaica, 1995), pp. 72–100, 303–78. 11 Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. 12 O. Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery (London, 1967), p. 96. 13 Fogel and Engerman, Time on the Cross, pp. 28–9. 14 Ibid. 15 The Bahamas was never developed into a sugar-dominated economy during the eighteenth century. Instead, it utilised its varied resources, most notably cotton. See Gail Saunders, ‘Slavery and cotton culture in the Bahamas’, in Verene Shepherd (ed.), Slavery without Sugar: Diversity in Caribbean Economy and Society since the 17th Century (Gainesville, FL, 2002), pp. 129–51. 16 Commercial sugar planting started in the 1790s in North America and was located mostly in the Louisiana area. In the older settlement colonies, commercial sugar planting was combined with settlement, which in the case of Barbados started circa 1640. 17 Fogel and Engerman, Time on the Cross, p. 41. 18 Lucille Mathurin Mair, The Rebel Woman in the British West Indies during Slavery (Kingston, Jamaica, 1975); Hilary Beckles, Centering Woman: Gender Discourses in Caribbean Slave Society (Kingston, Jamaica, 1999); Barbara Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650–1832 (Bloomington, 1989). 19 Richard Dunn, ‘Sugar production and women in Jamaica’, in Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan (eds), Cultivation and Culture (Charlottesville, 1993), p. 50. 20 Ibid., pp. 54–62. 21 Ibid., p. 69. 22 Fogel and Engerman, Time on the Cross; Fogel, Without Consent or Contract, pp. 123–7; B. W. Higman, Slave Populations, pp. 72–100, 303–78; Patterson, Sociology of Slavery. 23 See Douglas Hall, In Miserable Slavery: Thomas Thistlewood in Jamaica (London, 1989). 24 Mary Butler, The Economics of Emancipation: Jamaica and Barbados 1823–1843 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1995) or ‘Slave Compensation and Property: Jamaica and Barbados 1823–1843’, PhD thesis, Johns Hopkins University, 1991.

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25 Williams, Capitalism and Slavery; Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London, 1972); Joseph Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in International Trade and Economic Development (Cambridge, 2002). 26 Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, p. 66. 27 George Beckford, Persistent Poverty: Underdevelopment in Plantation Economies in the Third World ([1972] Kingston, Jamaica, 2000). 28 Grenville Barnes, David Stanfield and Kevin Barthel, ‘Land registration modernization in developing economies: a discussion of the main problems in Central/Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean’, paper prepared for Urban and Regional Information Systems Association Annual Conference, Chicago, Illinois, 21–24 August 1999). 29 Hilary Beckles, Reparation Public Lecture, Mona Academic Conference, Plenary, August 2007. See also Randall Robinson, The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks (New York, 2000). 30 Mr Mike Henry is once again trying to get the Jamaican Parliament to vote on the issue of reparation; to ‘declare their hand’, so to speak, and debate the issue further in 2012. 31 In an interview I conducted with the Prime Minister in November 2012, she stated her support for reparation and the work of the Jamaica NCR, repeated that she doubts Britain could ever adequately pay for what it did, and insisted that she was misquoted. But she has not so far issued a public disclaimer. 32 Key texts that cover these issues are, of course, Williams, Capitalism and Slavery; Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa; Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution; Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd, Trading Souls (Kingston, Jamaica, 2007) and Beckles and Shepherd, Saving Souls (Kingston, Jamaica, 2007). 33 Debate in the Jamaican Parliament, 27 February 2007. See also Cavell Francis, Ahmed Reid and Verene Shepherd (compilers), ‘Jamaica’s case for reparation for slavery: a discussion paper’, The Jamaica Bicentenary Committee, 2007. 34 This is the view of Judge Patrick Robinson of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, in the Hague, in his evidence to the Jamaica Reparation Commission. 35 Beckles, Reparation Public Lecture, University of the West Indies, Mona, August 2007.

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Aberdeen, Lord 157 abolitionism 3–6, 24–5, 39, 48, 78–93, 133, 156 Aboriginal peoples 12 Aborigines Protection Society (APS) 136–7, 140, 142 absentee slave-owners 4 Adderley, Sir Charles 155 Allen, Richard 215–16 Althusser, Louis 3 American Law Institute 208 Andaman Islands 124 Anderson, Benedict 180 Anderson, Clare (author of Chapter 6) ix–x, 10–11, 91 Angelou, Maya 191 Anstey, Roger 29 Anthony, Mick 246 Antigua 103 ‘apprenticeship’ system 6, 9, 49, 77–8, 83–4, 90, 98, 103, 106, 110, 124 Aristide, Jean Bertrand 241 Arnold, Thomas 136 Ashby family 187–91 Assamba, Aloun 242 Australia 135 Bacon, Anthony 38, 62–3 Bahamas 159 Bailyn, Bernard 187 Baldwin, Peter 163–4 Bales, Kevin 118 Ball, Elias 68 Barbados 103, 115, 186–90, 194, 243 Barclay’s Bank 38

Barham, John Foster 63–4 Baring family and Baring’s Bank 36, 48–9 Bathurst, 3rd Earl 91 Beckford, George 236 Beckford, Robert 246 Beckford, William 100 Beckles, Hilary 100, 187, 242, 248 Belize 153 Bengal 117 Bennett, J.H. 102 Bentham, Jeremy 123 Berlin, Isaiah 150–1, 154, 161 Besson, Jean 201 Biagini, Eugenio 161–2 Biddle, Nicholas 31 bills of exchange 8–9, 22, 45–7, 51 Blackburn, Robin (author of Chapter 1) x, 8 Blackstone, William 19 Blair, Tony 143, 242 Blake Hanna, Barbara 243 Bodenhorn, Howard 30 Bodin, Jean 19 Bold, Jonas 38 Borthwick, Peter 149 Bosch, Johannes van den 91 Bose, Sugata 117 Bourne, Carlisle 184 Boyer, Jean Pierre 91 ‘brain drain’ 237–8 Brand, Dionne 196 Brazil 157 Bright, John 155 Bristol 63, 66

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British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS) 155–6 British Guiana 103–4, 153 Brophy, Alfred L. 218 Brougham, Lord 49 Brown, Christopher 80 Buckner, Philip 142 Burma 119 Burnley, William 104 Butler, Mary 235 Canada 132, 135, 142 canal-building 32 Cape Colony 135–6 Caribbean region 98–110, 114, 143–4 Carlyle, Thomas 150, 152, 159–60, 164 Cateau, Heather (author of Chapter 5) x, 10–11, 120–2 Catholic Church 214, 220 Catholic Emancipation 5 Cell, John W. 141 census data, US 31 Chakrabarty, Dipesh 114 Chamberlain, Mary (author of Chapter 11) x, 13 Chandler, Alfred 32 Chartism 6 Chatterjee, Partha 3 Chevannes, Barry 242 Christman, John 161–4 Christopher, Emma 118 Clanricarde, Marqess of 155 Clarkson, Thomas 80–1, 84, 116 Clive, Robert 65 Collingwood, Luke 228–9 Colonial Office 133–4, 138–9, 142, 151–3, 159, 162 Colt, Sir Henry 186 Colvile, Andrew 50 compensation for former slave communities 208 for former slave-owners 4–7, 48, 65, 69–70, 131, 235 for other persecuted communities 239 Congress of Vienna (1815) 25 continuum of colonial labour regimes 115–18, 121 convict labour 115–20 Conyers, John 209 copper production 65–7 Coster family 66–7

Coulomb, Charles-Augustin de 91, 123 Council of Foreign Bondholders 30 Crawshay, Richard 61 credit, supply of 45–7, 51 Creole communities 213 critical colonial studies 1–2 Crothers, Glenn 28 Cuba 25, 70 Dattel, Gene 31 Davenport, William 46 Davies, John 186 Davis, David Brion 150 ‘dependency syndrome’ 238 Derrida, Jacques 176 Dessalles, Pierre 186 development and underdevelopment 236–9, 247 de Vries, Jan 20 Doan, J.P. 89 Dodd, A.H. 60 Dominica 106 Dougan, John 89 Douglas, Frederick 186 Dowlais ironworks 61 Draper, Nicholas (co-author of Introduction and co-editor) ix, 48 Drescher, Seymour 10, 79, 83, 122 Dumfries, Cargan 101 Dunn, Richard 232–3 Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (2001) 240–1, 247 Duval, Xavier 210 East India Company 44, 67, 117, 132, 139 economic history 3 of Wales 60–1 electoral reform 6 Ellison, Ralph 217 Eltis, David 20, 29, 228 emancipation and the Emancipation Act (1834) 39, 48, 50, 93, 117, 131, 235 Emancipation, Slave-ownership and the Re‑making of the British Imperial World (conference, 2012) 3 ‘enlightened plantership’ 78 Esdaile, Sir James 70 Evans, Chris (author of Chapter 3) x, 9, 43 Evans, Julie 141 exploitation 238 Eyre, Edward 141, 159

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factors, role of 30, 46 family, the in Caribbean communities 194–7, 200–2 as an imperial institution 7 family history 12–13, 175–202 Fawcett, Henry 155 Fazackerly, Sir William 38 feminist scholarship 2 fictional accounts of slavery 187–8 Findlay, Kevin 22 Fortune, Joyce 217–18 Foucault, Michel 2 Franklin, Reginald 193–5 ‘free air’ doctrine 19–21, 33 ‘free labour’ 79–83, 92–3, 109–10, 125 free trade 6, 27, 29, 39, 134, 152–3 Freedland, Jonathan 185 freedom, concept of 11 Furnivall, J.S. 119 Gandhi, Mahatma 218 genocide, slavery seen as 233 Gifford, Anthony 240 Gikandi, Simon 1 Gladstone, John 50, 155 Gladstone, W.E. 139 Glissant, Edouard 7 Golding, Bruce 223, 242, 246 Goring Thomas, Rees 70 Gorril, John 38 Gramsci, Antonio 2–3 Grenfell, Pascoe St Leger 70 Grey, Charles 142 Grey, Sir George 137, 141, 154 Grey, Henry George (3rd Earl Grey) 12, 132–43, 151, 153, 156 Griffiths, Trevor 42 guarantee system for trade credit 46–7 Haiti 25, 83, 239, 241 Hall, Catherine (co-author of Introduction and co-editor) ix, 141, 162, 187 Hall, Douglas 103, 186 Harling, Philip 163 Harris, Lord 104 Harvey, Thomas 26, 156 Henry, Mike 242, 244 Higman, Barry 194 Hira, Sandew 209 hiring rates 104–6 hiring system 98, 100–9

history education 245–6 Hobbes, Thomas 160 Hobhouse, Isaac 66–7 Hobsbawm, Eric 190 Holt, Thomas 142, 153 Hoppit, Julian 5 Horne, Gerald 29 Horton, Wilmot 91–2 Howick, Lord 151 see also Grey, Henry George (3rd Earl Grey) Hudson, Pat (author of Chapter 2) x, 8–9 Hudson’s Bay Company 136–9 Hume, David 79–80 Hunt, Philip A. 42 Hutt, William 157–8 Huzzey, Richard (author of Chapter 8) x–xi, 11–12 Iles, Joseph 66–7 ‘imagined communities’ 180 import substitution 42 indentured labour 9–11, 20, 23, 50–1, 83–93, 98–101, 106–10, 113–16, 120, 155, 159 differences from slavery 99 India 6, 132–3 indigenous peoples 12, 140–3 Industrial Revolution 8–9, 21–2, 41–5, 190, 230 industrialisation 41–2 contribution of slavery to 21–8, 40 Inikori, Joseph 8–9, 37, 41–4, 51, 236 Innes, Joanna 7, 163 insurance, marine 44 Ireland 6 Isbister, Alexander Kennedy 138–9 Jacobs, Harriet 186 Jamaica 77, 104, 132–3, 142–3, 153, 159, 223–48 legacy of slavery in 236–41 National Commission on Reparation 14–15, 242–3 population of 231–4 resistance to slavery in 234–5 jobbing 100 see also hiring system John, A.H. 60 Johnson, Howard 102 Johnson, Paul 163 Johnson, Walter 78

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kala pani 124 Kewlay, John 64 Knox, Robert 163 Kolsky, Elizabeth 118 Laidlaw, Zoë (author of Chapter 7) xi, 11–12 laissez-faire policies 152–5, 159, 163–4 Laroche, James 67 LaTortue, Gérard 241 Latrobe, Charles 154 Laurence, K.O. 108 Laurens, Henry 68 Lawrence, Jon 164 leasing of labour 101–2 Lee, William 68 Legacies of British Slave-ownership (LBS) project 3–4, 7 Legendre, Thomas 21 Lehman Brothers 31 Leigh, John 47–8 Levy, Andrea 7, 201 Lewis, Matthew 78, 186 liberty, positive and negative 150–1, 154–6, 159–63 life stories 195–7 Light, Alison (author of Chapter 9) xi, 12 Ligon, Richard 186 Lloyd, David 93 Louisiana Purchase 36 ‘lucrative humanity’ 49 Macaulay, Thomas Babington 5–6, 27 Macaulay, Zacharay 84 McCardell, John 31 McClelland, Keith (co-author of Introduction and co-editor) ix Machiavelli, Niccolò 162 Madden, Richard 77–8, 81, 93 Major, Andrea 117 Mandler, Peter 163 Mansfield CJ 229 Maori people 136–8, 143 Marley, Bob 1, 242 Marques, Garcia 201 Marshall, Benjamin 29 Marshall, Paule 1 Mauritius 115–16, 123, 144 Truth and Justice Commission 13–14, 207–20 Maxwell-Stewart, Hamish 115, 124

Mendelssohn, Daniel 182 mercantilism 39–40, 80 Merivale, Herman 142, 153 Mesopotamia estate 232–3 metayage 98, 104 ‘Middle Passage’ 224–6 Mill, J.S. 150, 155, 159–64 Millette, James 104, 106, 108 Mintz, Sidney 201 mixed-race communities 139–40 Moody, Thomas 89–92, 123 Morgan, Philip 187 Morris, Valentine 63 Morrison, Toni 118 mortality rates in Jamaica 232–3 on slave ships 226–8 Mullings, Clive 223 ‘native policy’ 141 Negro Education Grant 154 New Zealand 135–40, 143–4 Nixon, John 64 Noel, Karl 212 Nourse, James (and Nourse Line) 50–1 Nurse, Keith 197 O’Brien, Patrick 42 oral history 195–7 O’Rourke, Ronald 22 Orwell, George 160 Palmerston, Viscount 157–8 Paton, Diana 153 Patterson, Orlando 196 Paxman, Jeremy 119 Peel, Sir Robert 49, 152, 156 Peiris, Anoma 119 Pelly, John Henry 139–40 Pennant family of Penrhyn 9, 62, 64 peonage 49, 51 Petty, William 90 Phillip, Arthur 124–5 Piercefield estate 63–4 Pinckard, George 186–7 plantation system 19–26, 49–51, 232–3 financing of 28–32 see also ‘enlightened plantership’ Polanyi, Karl 8, 23–4 political economy, theory of 79–82, 92

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Pomeranz, Kenneth 8, 22 Porter, Bernard 142–3 Portugal 157 Postlethwayt, Malachy 37–8 preferential trade arrangements 238 Prince, Mary 186 Prizes, capture of 40 profitability of slavery 10 property rights in slaves 4 protectionism 27, 39, 42, 69, 153 Pybus, Cassandra 118 racism 218–19, 241 Raffles, Thomas Stamford 119 Ragatz, Lowell 4 railroad construction 32 Ramgoolam, Navin 209–10 Ramsey, James 80–1 Rastafarian movement 241 Red River Settlement 136–40, 144 Rediker, Marcus 118 re-export substitution 42 reform, wider programmes of 5–6 Reid, Ira 199 religion 5–6 reparations for slavery 7, 13–15, 208–10, 220, 223, 239–48 calculation of the cost of 246–7 legal basis for 239–40 restitution for slavery 208, 210, 220 Richardson, David 246 Riviere, William 103 Rodney, Walter 236, 239 Roseman, Mark 182 Rothschild, Nathan 48 Rothstein, Morton 32 Royal African Company 66–7, 229–30 Royal Navy 25, 49, 94, 125, 149, 157–8 Rupprecht, Anita (author of Chapter 4) xi, 10–11, 116, 122 Rushdie, Salman 1 Russell, Lord John 113–14, 134, 155 Ryden, David Beck 80 St Croix 49 St Domingue 39 St Lucia 104 Samuel, Raphael 176 Sandbach, Samuel 64 Sandbach, Tinne & Co. 50 Say, Jean-Baptiste (and Say’s Law) 43, 91–2

Scarman Report (1981) 195 ‘second slavery’ 23, 25, 33 self-government, colonial 135, 140 self-hire 100, 103 Sellers, Charles 24 settler colonies 12, 132–6, 139–44 sharecropping 98, 104 Sharpe, Samuel 234–5 Shepherd, Verene A. (author of Chapter 13) xi, 14, 208 Sherwood, Marika 29 Sheth, F. 159 Shilliam, Robbie 81 Ship Bank of Glasgow 38 Shrewsbury 68–9 Sierra Leone 84, 86 Simey, Thomas 195 Simpson Miller, Portia 242–5 Singapore 119 Sinha, Mrinalini 2–3 Skinner, Quentin 160–4 ‘Slave Power’ 33 slave trade 8–11, 22, 25–9, 32–3, 39, 49, 66, 157–8, 223–30, 241 economic impact of 37–8 Slave Trade Abolition Act (1807) 84–5, 90, 93, 149 Slave Trade Database 223 slavery in England 19 Smith, Adam 10, 79–82, 92, 122 Smith, Goldwyn 162 Smith, James Patterson 159 Smith, John 186 Smith, Samuel 201 Smith, Thomas 19 Somerset, 1st Duke of 19 South Africa 140–1 Spieler, Miranda 125 Stephen, James (author of 1807 Act) 83–5 Stephen, Sir James (author of 1833 Act) 151–2 Sterling, J. 154 Stoler, Ann Laura 118 Stuart, Andrea (author of Chapter 10) xi–xii, 12–13 Stuert, James 81 Sturge, Joseph 156–7 sugar industry 39, 190–1, 232–3 future prospects for 238 Sunday work, payment for 102

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tariff protection see protectionism Taylor, Sir Henry 151–2, 162 Taylor, Miles 5 Taylor, Simon 101 Teelock, Vijayalakshmi (author of Chapter 12) xii, 13–14 Te Rauperaha 137 Thistlewood, Thomas 186, 235 Thomas, Hugh 26, 29 Thomas, Samuel 64 Thompson, E.P. 2 Thompson, Jeremiah 29 Tinker, Hugh 51, 99, 110 Tobago 104 Tomich, Dale 8, 23 Tomkins, Peter 246 tort, law of 217–18 Touchet, Samuel 38 Toussaint Louverture 91 ‘trade goods’ 25 transportation, sentences of 115 triangular trades 38, 40 Trinidad 103–8 Trodd, Zoe 118

Vaughan, Megan 212 Vergés, Françoise 7 Vernet, Thomas 212

United Nations General Assembly 240

The Zong, voyage of the (1781) 228–9 Zunder, Armand 241

Waitangi Treaty (1840) 136 Wakefield, Edward Gibbon 23 Wakley, Thomas 155 Walcott, Derek 200 Wales 9, 60–70 ‘waste lands’ 136 Watt, James 38 Welch, Pedro 187, 243 Wellington, 1st Duke of 48–9 Wells, Nathaniel 64 Wilberforce, William 85–6, 116 Williams, Eric 4–5, 8–9, 20, 22, 37–41, 48, 51, 62, 107, 230, 236 Williams, James 156–7 Williams, L.J. 61 Williams, Thomas 67 Wilson, Jon 6 Wood, William 37 Woodman, Harold 30 Wright, Gavin 31

256