To Begin the World Over Again

by Matthew Lockwood

  23. John Cannon, “Francis, Sir Philip (1740–1818),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).

  24. Henry Elmsley Busteed, Echoes from Old Calcutta (Calcutta, 1882), 171.

  25. Franklin, Orientalist Jones, 163.

  26. Keay, The Honourable Company, 362–4.

  27. 24 George III, c. 25.

  28. Dirks, Scandal of Empire, 105.

  29. Ibid., 87, 117; Marshall, “Hastings, Warren (1732–1818).”

  30. Dirks, Scandal of Empire, 121.

  31. Jon Wilson, India Conquered: Britain’s Raj and the Chaos of Empire (London, 2016), 121–34; P.J. Marshall, The Making and Unmaking of Empires (New York, 2005), 207–2, 355–70.

  32. Alexander Baillie, Call of Empire: From Highlands to Hindostan (Montreal, 2017), 86–7; Halliday, Habeas Corpus, 288–90.

  33. Ibid.; Alavi, The Eighteenth Century in India, 24.

  34. Wickwire and Wickwire, Cornwallis, 89.

  35. Marshall, “Hastings, Warren (1732–1818)”; Franklin, Orientalist Jones, 299–308.

  36. Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, D-MH/H (India)/A/E6. Lord Hobart (Earl of Buckinghamshire) had begun the American War as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, was Governor of Madras from 1793 to 1798, and later held the post of Secretary of State for War and the Colonies and President of the Board of Control.

  37. Marshall, “Hastings, Warren (1732–1818)”; Franklin, Orientalist Jones, 309–10. When he received a copy of the draft of Cornwallis’s Permanent Settlement, William Jones crossed out the first sentence and wrote instead, “Surely the principal object of every Government is the happiness of the governed,” a sentiment with which Hastings would have agreed and that nicely sums up the difference in approach between Hastings and Cornwallis.

  38. Roy, War, Culture and Society, 87–9.

  39. C.A. Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire (Cambridge, 1988), 97; Roy, War, Culture and Society, 87–9; Habib, Confronting Colonialism, xxx–xxxi, xxxvii, 35; Colley, Captives, 274, 296; Keay, India, 397–9.

  40. Habib, Confronting Colonialism, xxxvii; Keay, India, 399–400.

  41. Keay, India, 400–1; Habib, Confronting Colonialism, xxxii, xxxvii.

  42. Roy, War, Culture and Society, 129–30.

  43. Francis Buchanan, A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar (London, 1807); Kranti Farias, The Christian Impact in South Kanara (Mumbai, 1999), 84–6.

  44. Fay, Letters from India, 187–92.

  45. Ibid., 214–23.

  46. Fisher, ed., Travels of Dean Mahomet, 26–7.

  47. Ibid., 124–35.

  48. Ibid., 135–44.

  49. Ibid., 145–78.

  9 CONVICT EMPIRE

  1. Jack Brook, “The Forlorn Hope: Bennelong and Yemmerrawannie go to England,” Australian Aboriginal Studies 2001 (spring): 36–47.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Ibid.

  5. OBSP, t17850914-181.

  6. 16 George III, c. 43. See also Marilyn Baseler, Asylum for Mankind: America 1607–1800 (Ithaca, 1998), 125–6.

  7. As quoted in, Hitchcock and Shoemaker, London Lives, 334.

  8. Ibid., 334–40.

  9. The Scots Magazine, December 1785, 614.

  10. A. Roger Ekirch, “Great Britain’s Secret Convict Trade to America, 1783–1784,” American Historical Review 89(5) (December 1984): 1285–91. The ship tried to land its felons at Honduras as well but was similarly rebuffed.

  11. OBSP, o17870110-1;o17870110-2.

  12. Paul Fidlon and R.J. Ryan, eds, The Journal of Arthur Bowes-Smyth: Surgeon, Lady Penrhyn, 1787–1789 (Sydney, 1979), 43.

  13. Ibid.

  14. The Nagle Journal: A Diary of the Life of Jacob Nagle, Sailor, from the Year 1775 to 1841, ed. John Dann (New York, 1988), 85–6.

  15. Ibid., 87–91.

  16. Ibid., 5–15.

  17. Ibid., 46–67.

  18. OBSP, t17820703-5; Hitchcock and Shoemaker, London Lives, 355; The Nagle Journal, 84; Tom Keneally, The Commonwealth of Thieves: The Story of the Founding of Australia (London, 2006), 65.

  19. Keneally, Commonwealth of Thieves, 19.

  20. George Worgan, Journal of a First Fleet Surgeon (Sydney, 1978), 5.

  21. Fidlon and Ryan, eds, The Journal of Arthur Bowes-Smyth, 53.

  22. The Nagle Journal, 95.

  23. Although it has become widely associated with him, Rousseau never used the term “noble savage.” The term was coined in 1672 by John Dryden in his play The Conquest of Granada, but the idea of primitive men free from the trivial concerns and vices of modern life was ubiquitous in the early modern period, running through the works of Alexander Pope, Tobias Smollett, and Benjamin Franklin to name just a few.

  24. Worgan, Journal of a First Fleet Surgeon, 8–13.

  25. The Nagle Journal, 99.

  26. Watkin Tench, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson (London, 1793), 9.

  27. Ibid., 9–10.

  28. Ibid., 10–12.

  29. Ibid.

  30. The Nagle Journal, 109–10.

  31. Ibid., 111, 360.

  32. The Nagle Journal, 111.

  33. Ibid., 111, 360; Tench, Complete Account, 33.

  34. Tench, Complete Account, 33.

  35. Ibid., 19.

  36. Ibid., 20.

  37. Ibid., 23.

  38. Craig Mear, “The Origin of the Smallpox Outbreak at Sydney in 1789,” Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society 94(1) (June 2008): 1–22.

  39. Ibid.; Christopher Warren, “Could First Fleet Smallpox Infect Aborigines?” Aboriginal History 31 (2007): 152–64.

  40. Tench, Complete Account, 24.

  41. The Nagle Journal, 104.

  42. Ibid.

  43. Tench, Complete Account, 43.

  44. Ibid., 59.

  45. Ibid.

  46. The Nagle Journal, 104.

  47. Ibid., 104–5.

  48. Tench, Complete Account, 61.

  49. Ibid.

  50. Ibid., 63. It is clear from his later accounts that Tench’s statement is meant to foreshadow future, less flattering descriptions of Barangaroo’s character, and thus his suggestion that we ought not to judge a person or civilization on their first appearance takes on a less positive aspect.

  51. Ibid., 65.

  52. Ibid., 111.

  53. Ibid., 59.

  54. Kate Vincent Smith, “Bennelong Among His People,” Aboriginal History 33 (2009): 19–22.

  55. Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, January 9, 1813.

  56. George Rudé, Protest and Punishment: The Story of the Social and Political Protestors Transported to Australia (Oxford, 1979); Jack Brook, “The Forlorn Hope: Bennelong and Yammerrawannie Go to England,” Australian Aboriginal Studies 1 (2001): 36–47.

  10 EXILES OF REVOLUTION

  1. Manchester Mercury, April 19, 1785; Cassandra Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and their Global Quest for Liberty (Boston, 2007), 29, 69, 95.

  2. For the most complete account of the Black loyalist diaspora see: Schama, Rough Crossings.

  3. Boston King, “Memoirs of the Life of Boston King,” in Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the 18th Century, ed. Vincent Carretta (Lexington, 2004), 351–2; Schama, Rough Crossings, 106–10.

  4. Douglas Egerton, Death or Liberty: African Americans and the American Revolution (New York, 2011), 47–9.

  5. Ibid., 50.

  6. William Ryan, The World of Thomas Jeremiah: Charleston on the Eve of the American Revolution (New York, 2012), 51.

  7. Ibid., 40–9.

  8. Ibid., 40, 50, 157.

  9. Ibid., 68, 161–9.

  10. Ryan, Thomas Jeremiah, 18; Egerton, Death or Liberty, 70–2; Pybus, Epic Journeys, 9.

  11. Egerton, Death or Liberty, 86; Pybus, Epic Journeys, 17–19.

  12. Ryan, Thomas Jeremiah, 11–24.

  13.
King, Memoirs, 352–3.

  14. Ibid., 353–5.

  15. Pybus, Epic Journeys, 59.

  16. Egerton, Death or Liberty, 200–2; James Corbett David, Dunmore’s New World (Charlottesville, 2013).

  17. King, Memoirs, 355.

  18. Ruma Chopra, Choosing Sides: Loyalists in Revolutionary America (New York, 2013), 167.

  19. King, Memoirs, 356; John Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources (Washington, DC, 1938), vol. 26, 364–5; Pybus, Epic Journeys, 63.

  20. Fitzpatrick, The Writings of George Washington, vol. 26, 402–6.

  21. Graham Russell Hodges, The Black Loyalist Directory (New York, 1996).

  22. Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles, 6.

  23. John Dunmore, Where Fate Beckons: The Life of Jean-François de la Pérouse (Fairbanks, 2007), 155–7.

  24. King, Memoirs, 356.

  25. James Walker, The Black Loyalists: The Search for the Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone (Toronto, 1993), 18–20; Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles, 147–209; Schama, Rough Crossings, 221–55.

  26. King, Memoirs, 360.

  27. John Clarkson, Mission to America, 66–7, in New York Historical Society Digital Collections, nyhs_jc_v-01_00a.jpg..

  28. Ibid.

  29. Walker, Black Loyalists, 50–1.

  30. Ibid., 48–9.

  31. David George, An Account of the Life of David George (London, 1793); George Liele, An Account of several Baptist Churches (London, 1793).

  32. Liele, An Account of several Baptist Churches; George, Life of Mr. David George; King, Memoirs, 357–363; Egerton, Death or Liberty, 208.

  11 AFRICA, ABOLITION, AND EMPIRE

  1. Clarkson, Mission to America, 15–17.

  2. Sancho, Letters, vol. 1, 39, 158–9.

  3. James Walvin, The Zong (New Haven, 2011), 67–70.

  4. Ibid., 92–9.

  5. Ibid., 211–12.

  6. Ibid., 159.

  7. National Archive, AO 13/79/774; AO 12/99/357.

  8. London Lives, t17830910-31; Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles, 113–45.

  9. The Times, November 14, 1786.

  10. Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital (Chapel Hill, 2006), 26–7; Kenneth Morgan, Slavery and the British Empire (Oxford, 2008), 157; Richard Huzzey, Freedom Burning: Anti-Slavery and Empire in Victorian Britain (Ithaca, 2012); Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean (Philadelphia, 2000), 240.

  11. James Walvin, England, Slaves, and Freedom, 1776–1838 (London, 1986), 106–8, 123–43; Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains (New York, 2005), 154–5.

  12. Morgan, Slavery and the British Empire, 157; London Lives Database, LMSMPS508910013.

  13. Public Advertiser, January 6, 1786; Walker, Black Loyalists, 96.

  14. Walker, Black Loyalists, 97–8.

  15. Ibid., 99; Simon Schama, Rough Crossings, 321–97; Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles, 279–309.

  16. The Times, October 27, 1791.

  17. Ulbe Bosma, The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia (Cambridge, 2013), 44–52.

  18. Sancho, Letters, vol. 1, 189.

  19. Walker, Black Loyalists, 103–4.

  20. Clarkson, Mission to America, 5–10.

  21. Ibid.

  22. Ibid., 1, 8–10, 26.

  23. King, Memoirs, 359, 363; Clarkson, Mission to America, 30–3; Walker, Black Loyalists, 117.

  24. Clarkson, Mission to America, 35.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Anna Maria Falconbridge, Two Voyages to Sierra Leone During the Years 1791–2–3 (London, 1794), 18–19, 42, 49, 51, 74–5.

  27. King, Memoirs, 364.

  28. Falconbridge, Two Voyages, 64.

  29. King, Memoirs, 364.

  30. Ibid.

  31. Anon., An Account of the Colony of Sierra Leone (London, 1795), 107–8.

  32. Our Children Free and Happy: Letters from Black Settlers in Africa in the 1790s, ed. Christopher Fyfe (Edinburgh, 1991), 37.

  33. Anon., An Account of the Colony of Sierra Leone, 96–7, 103–4.

  34. Ibid., 105–6.

  35. Ibid., 99–100, 112–13.

  36. Zachary Macaulay, Life and Letters of Zachary Macaulay (London, 1900), 87–9, 176, 212, 215.

  37. Ibid., 133–4.

  38. Ibid., 127, 140, 165, 188–9.

  39. Ibid., 29, 34.

  40. Ibid., 26–7.

  41. Ibid., 43.

  42. Ibid., 47.

  43. Ibid., 29, 214.

  44. Fyfe, Our Children, 29, 30–2; Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles, 11–12; 279–309.

  45. Fyfe, Our Children, 25–7.

  46. Ibid., 29–32.

  47. Ibid., 35–7, 43, 48, 51.

  48. Anon., An Account of the Colony of Sierra Leone, 29–32, 81.

  49. Ibid., 85–7.

  50. Ibid., 88–9.

  51. King, Memoir, 365–6.

  52. Fyfe, Our Children, 56–7.

  53. King, Memoir, 365–6; Fyfe, Our Children, 54–6.

  54. Fyfe, Our Children, 63–4.

  55. Ruma Chopra, Almost Home: Maroons between Slavery and Freedom in Jamaica, Nova Scotia, and Sierra Leone (New Haven, 2018).

  12 OPIUM AND EMPIRE

  1. John Barrow, A Voyage to Cochinchina, in the Years 1792 and 1793 (London, 1806), 63–4.

  2. Jonathan Spence, In Search of Modern China (New York, 1990), 132–4; Jürgen Osterhammel, Unfabling the East: The Enlightenment Encounter with Asia (Princeton, 2018), 1–33; Stephen Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age (New York, 2018), xxv–xxvi.

  3. Spence, In Search, 120–1.

  4. H.V. Bowen, The Business of Empire (Cambridge, 2006), 239–49; Stephen Conway, The British Isles and the American War of Independence (Oxford, 2000), 63–4; Spence, In Search, 129.

  5. Spence, In Search, 130–1; Hunt Janin, The India–China Opium Trade in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1999), 31–40.

  6. Helen Robbins, Our First Ambassador to China: An Account of the Life and Correspondence of George, Earl of Macartney (New York, 1908), 13–17.

  7. John Barrow, Narrative of the Public Life of Lord Macartney (London, 1807), vol. 1, 230–1, 342–3; George Staunton, An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China (London, 1797).

  8. John Barrow, An Auto-Biographical Memoir of Sir John Barrow (London, 1843), 1–43.

  9. Barrow, A Voyage to Cochinchina, 2.

  10. Ibid., 28.

  11. Ibid., 41–5.

  12. Ibid., 66.

  13. Ibid., 75–6.

  14. Ibid., 110–15.

  15. Ibid., 116–18.

  16. Ibid., 118–19.

  17. Ibid., 158–64.

  18. Ibid., 169.

  19. Friedrich Edler, The Dutch Republic and the American Revolution (Baltimore, 1911), 238–46. Samuel Shaw, The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw (Boston, 1847) 260–1, 290.

  20. Barrow, A Voyage to Cochinchina, 169–79.

  21. Ibid., 174.

  22. Ibid., 203.

  23. Aeneas Anderson, A Narrative of the British Embassy to China (London, 1795), 43–4.

  24. Ben Kiernan, Viêt Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present (Oxford, 2017), 221–80; Spence, In Search, 111.

  25. Spence, In Search, 336–7; Lord Macartney, An Embassy to China, ed. J.L. Cranmer-Byng (London, 2004), 3–4.

  26. Keay, The Honourable Company, 425–9.

  27. Kiernan, Viêt Nam, 256–95.

  28. Macartney, An Embassy to China, 5.

  29. Ibid., 4–5; John Barrow, Travels in China (London, 1805), 22.

  30. Macartney, An Embassy to China, 6–7; Barrow, Travels in China, 36–9.

  31. Macartney, An Embassy to China, 12, 266 n. 3; Barrow, Travels in China, 47.

  32. Macartney, An Embassy to China, 14–31; Barrow, Travels in China, 45–46.

  33. Ibid., 15–16. The line is from Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
/>
  34. Macartney, An Embassy to China, 20; Barrow, Travels in China, 47–51. Even the practice of foot-binding, which so fascinated and repelled European visitors, was excused by an interesting exercise in moral relativism. Barrow thought the practice appalling, but suggested that rather than hold it against the Chinese, one should remember that the practice of circumcision prevalent in Europe would be sure to shock the hypothetical Chinese traveller.

  35. Ibid., 268, n. 6.

  36. Macartney, An Embassy to China, 23–35.

  37. Ibid., 37–50.

  13 THE DAWN OF THE CENTURY OF HUMILIATION

  1. Anderson, A Narrative, 262.

  2. Mark Elliott, Emperor Qianlong: Son of Heaven, Man of the World (London, 2009), 1–25.

  3. Ibid., 25–33, 68–106; Peter Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge, 2010), 256–92, 409–57; Spence, In Search, 97–8.

  4. Barrow, A Voyage to Cochinchina, 216–21; Joanna Waley-Cohen, The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History (New York, 2000), 93, 97.

  5. George Bogle had been sent to Tibet in 1774, and Samuel Turner in 1782. Kate Teltscher, The High Road to China: George Bogle, the Panchen Lama and the First British Expedition to Tibet (London, 2006); Macartney, An Embassy to China, 30, 46, 275 n. 24.

  6. Shaw, Journals, 186–95; Waley-Cohen, Sextants, 100–1; Spence, In Search, 127.

  7. Macartney, An Embassy to China, 33, 58.

  8. Anderson, A Narrative, 262. Macartney, An Embassy to China, 65–73. Staunton chose to wear his Oxford gown, making the meeting perhaps the most august assembly ever graced by academic robes.

  9. Spence, In Search, 110–12. Platt, Imperial Twilight, 49–70.

  10. Ibid., 93–5, 114.

  11. Macartney, An Embassy to China, 165. Though he was in agreement with the general sentiment of Chinese stubbornness, Barrow was clear that the failure to kow tow had nothing to do with the failure of the mission. As he mentioned, a subsequent Dutch embassy to Peking agreed to perform all of the required rituals and was still treated even worse than the British had been. Barrow, Travels in China, 1–16.

  12. Barrow, Travels in China, 79–80.

  13. Ibid., 330–53.

  14. Ibid., 358–68.

  15. Macartney, An Embassy to China, 154–60.