‘have built in those islands as if we were but passing visitors’: Froude, English in the West Indies, 256.
p. 294
‘animates their industry and alleviates their misfortune’: Edwards, Thoughts on the Late Proceedings, 29.
p. 294
‘incessantly sigh for a return’: quoted in O’Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided, 3.
p. 294
One third of Jamaican plantation owners were absentees by the 1740s, two thirds by 1800: ibid., 4–5.
p. 295
In St Kitts, half the property was owned by absentees in 1745: Pitman, Development of the West Indies, 39 fn 82.
25. The Sugar Lobby
p. 296
Herald newspaper, 23 August 1797: quoted in Keith, ‘Relaxations in the British Restrictions’, 16.
p. 296
‘Sugar, sugar, hey? – all that sugar!’: quoted in Pares, Merchants and Planters, 38.
p. 296
trebled between 1700 and 1740, and had doubled again by 1770: Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery, 21.
p. 296
as invented by Rebecca Price: Shephard, Pickled, Potted and Canned, 163.
p. 297
‘Sugar is so generally in use’: Long, History of Jamaica, 1:525.
p. 297
12 to 16 pounds of sugar be used with every pound of tea: Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery, 28.
p. 297
willing to accept factory discipline in order to afford their luxury stimulants: Davis, Inhuman Bondage, 88.
p. 297
‘Among the lower orders … industry can only be found’: Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery, 35.
p. 297
importing more than twice the amount as much more populous France: O’Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided, 72; Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery, 24.
p. 297
British livelihoods in the West Indies colonies depended on it: The Country Journal or the Craftsman, 5 June 1736, quoted in Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery, 345–6.
p. 297
‘their rum is excellent of which they consume large quantities’: Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery, 346.
p. 298
rum imports into England and Wales had risen to two million gallons: ibid., 347–8.
p. 298
‘a constant Mine whence Britain draws prodigious Riches’: Leslie, A New and Exact Account of Jamaica, 354.
p. 298
‘necessary appendage to our present refined manner of living’: Browne, Civil and Natural History of Jamaica, v.
p. 298
‘the principal cause of the rapid motion which now agitates the universe’: Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, 105.
p. 299
‘that excited the indignation of every honest man who became acquainted with the transaction’: Cundall, Historic Jamaica, 304.
p. 300
Francis owned lands in Hampshire and Surrey, as well as a house in Albermarle Street London: Sheridan, ‘Planter and Historian’, 41.
p. 300
‘there were scarcely ten miles together throughout the country’: Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery, 473.
p. 300
stocked with the best furniture, objects and paintings that money could buy: Alexander, England’s Wealthiest Son, 34–5.
p. 300
‘where expense has reached its utmost limits in furniture and ornaments’: Warner, Excursions from Bath, 119.
p. 301
‘with the appearance of immense riches, almost too tawdrily exhibited’: Climenson, Passages from the Diaries, 166.
p. 301
‘there was no such thing as a borough to be had now’: Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery, 66.
p. 301
‘West Indians’, able to ‘turn the balance on which side they please’: quoted in Penson, Colonial Agents, 228.
p. 301
‘West Indies vastly outweigh us of the Northern Colonies’: Franklin to Collinson, 30 April 1764, quoted in Beer, British Colonial Policy, 136.
p. 302
his ‘intelligent and perfect’ ‘comprehension of its essential interest’: Long, History of Jamaica, 1:122.
p. 302
‘which he could not parry’: Cumberland, Memoirs, 97.
p. 302
‘hence somewhat out of place in City epicurism’: Redding, Memoirs of William Beckford, 1:28.
p. 303
‘He is of a very agreeable disposition, but begins already to think of being master of a great fortune’: Lees-Milne, William Beckford, 3.
p. 303
such as that of 1758 against French slave forts in Africa: Hotblack, Chatham’s Colonial Policy, 16.
p. 303
‘great guns fired out at sea’: TD, 16 February 1757.
p. 303
‘plundered Mr Thos. White’s house’: ibid., 7 December 1762.
p. 304
only 3,000 men still in action out of an original force of nearly 15,000: Rodger, Command of the Ocean, 286.
p. 305
several prisoners had been taken by their cruisers four times in less than two months: Stout, Royal Navy in America, 16.
p. 305
‘sewed in the hinder part of his britches or drawers’: ibid., 17.
p. 306
‘a lawless set of smugglers’: Beer, British Colonial Policy, 83.
p. 306
‘illegal and most pernicious trade’: Taylor and Pringle, Correspondence of William Pitt, 2: 320–1.
p. 306
‘the large supplies they have lately received from their good friends the New England flag of truce vessels’: Stout, Royal Navy in America, 17.
p. 306
he was taken to Williamsburg: JCBL, Obadiah Brown Records, Series IV, Maritime records, Sub-Series F: Brigantine Prudent Hannah.
p. 306
In fact the Prudent Hannah carried 47 barrels of flour: Rhode Island Historical Society, Providence, RI, Obadiah Brown papers I, Series 2, Subseries 4, Box 2x, Folder 5:1758 Vice-Admiralty Court Case against brig Prudent Hannah, Virginia.
p. 306
‘they Looked on me as an Enemy and Trator to my Country’: letter of 26 August 1758, JCBL, Obadiah Brown Records, Series IV, Maritime records, Sub-Series F: Brigantine Prudent Hannah.
26. Luxury and Debt
p. 311
‘Sugar, sugar, is the incessant cry’: Ramsay, Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves, 80.
p. 311
‘epidemical disorder’: Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery, 443.
p. 311
‘Threats, Arguments & the force of money’: Smith, Slavery, Family and Gentry Capitalism, 116.
p. 311
‘Thus I am placed in his shoes’: ibid., 130.
p. 312
‘the greatest failure that ever happened here’: ibid., 190.
p. 313
had by the 1770s accumulated more than 26,000 acres across 11 parishes: Craton and Walvin, A Jamaican Plantation, 79.
p. 313
‘a very fine piece of water, which in winter is commonly stocked with wild-duck and teal’: Long, History of Jamaica, 2:76.
p. 313
‘that respectable but unfortunate family’: Cundall, Historic Jamaica, 262.
p. 314
‘fraudulent Trading of the Sugar Planters’: Massie, Brief Observations concerning the Management of the War, 8–9.
p. 314
‘the interest of the home-consumer has been sacrificed’: Smith, Wealth of Nations, 274 (T. Nelson ed., 1868).
p. 315
the only impulse is to eat as much as possible and do as little work as possible. ibid., 159.
p. 315
two-thirds of all American slaves worked for the sugar barons: Thomas, Slave Trade, 447.
p. 316
‘Some happier island …’: Pope, ‘Essay on Man’, 1:107.
p. 316
‘a place of great wealth and dreadful wickedness, a den of tyrants, and a dungeon of slaves’: Boswell, Life of Johnson, 2:5
59, 561.
p. 316
‘negro whipping Beckford’: quoted in O’Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided, 14.
p. 316
‘For B … f … d he was chosen May’r …’: quoted in Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery, 178–9.
p. 316
‘made in less enlightened times than our own’: Beilby Porteus, quoted in Ryden, West Indian Slavery and Abolition, 185.
p. 317
‘The status of slavery is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law’: Deerr, History of Sugar, 2:299.
p. 317
‘I absolutely deny all Slave-holding to be consistent with any degree of even natural Justice’: Wesley, Thoughts on Slavery, 31.
p. 318
‘the inconsistency of holding slaves’: Clarkson, The History of the rise …, 1:152.
p. 318
‘without seeing the inconsistency of such conduct’: Benezet, A Caution, 11.
p. 318
‘Wherefore we’, the Newport Quakers resolved, ‘on that account do Disown him’: Bolhouse, ‘Abraham Redwood’, 31.
p. 319
‘1 boye slave Dyed’: Brig Sally Account Book, 86, JCBL.
p. 319
‘and forced overboard eighty of them which obliged the rest to submit’: Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade, 3:213.
p. 320
‘than the taking of Fort William Henry did in 1757’: Stout, Royal Navy in America, 40.
p. 320
‘What are the people of England now going to do with us?’: Tench Francis to Nicholas Brown, 16 September 1763, JCBL Box 7, Folder 4, Letter 7.
p. 320
‘What method will be best for us to Take’: Letter to Nicolas Brown & Co., 28 October 1763, quoted in Wiener, ‘Rhode Island Merchants and the Sugar Act’, 471.
p. 320
‘open a correspondence with the principal merchants in all our sister colonies’: Boston Evening Post, 19 December 1763.
p. 320
‘in order to … Join with Those of the other Colonys’: Nicholas Brown to David Van Horne, 24 January 1764, quoted in Hedges, Browns of Providence Plantations, 200.
p. 320
the first to lodge an official protest against the Sugar Act: Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade, 3:203.
p. 321
‘rich, proud, and overbearing Planters of the West Indies’: Providence Gazette, 14 January 1764.
p. 321
‘excessive contraband Trade carried on at Rhode Island’: Stout, Royal Navy in America, 65.
p. 321
‘without the concurrent Assistance of Swaggering Soldiers: Providence Gazette, 3 December 1763.
p. 322
‘they ceased firing before we had convinced them of their error’: Smith to Colvill, 12 July 1764, Bartlett, Records of the Colony of Rhode Island, 6:430.
p. 322
‘There was not a man on the continent of America who does not consider the Sugar Act’: Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery, 355.
p. 322
‘every one is convinced of the Necessity of a Unanimity amongst the Colonies’: 31 July 1764, JCBL, Box 7. Folder 2, Letter 20.
p. 322
‘Rummagings and Searchings, Unladings & Detainings’: Crane, Benjamin Franklin’s Letters, 66–7.
p. 322
‘can walk the streets without being affronted’: Stout, Royal Navy in America, 76.
p. 322
criticism of the term ‘mother country’: Providence Gazette, 18 August 1764.
p. 323
producing nearly 80 per cent of Stamp Act revenue before the measure’s repeal in February 1766: O’Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided, 81.
p. 323
‘I was at the House of Commons yesterday’ letter of 17 February 1767, LNHA
p. 324
‘George Grenville and his Stamp Act raised the foul fiend’: Taylor and Pringle, Correspondence of William Pitt, 3:203.
p. 324
‘natural appendages of North America’: O’Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided, xi.
27. The War Against America
p. 325
‘nothing will save Barbados and the Leewards’: Handler, A Guide to Source Materials, 1:43.
p. 325
‘You will starve the islands’: quoted in O’Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided, 142.
p. 325
as early as 1652 Barbados had requested representation in Parliament: Cal Col 1574–1660, p. 373.
p. 326
‘the horrors of a Civil War’: quoted in O’Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided, 141.
p. 326
‘too many friends of America in this island’: ibid., 142.
p. 326
‘the North Americans might beat the English’: Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, & Desire, 94.
p. 327
‘the total reduction of the colonies by the Administration’: Silas Deane to Robert Morris, 26 April 1776, quoted in Clark and Morgan, Naval Documents of the American Revolution, 4:1275.
p. 327
‘falsely imagining that he might declare his mind here’: London Chronicle, 25–7 July 1776.
p. 327
‘to inspire [them] with courage to beat the Yankee Rebels’: quoted in O’Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided, 149.
p. 328
‘entirely covered with Blood’: Public Advertiser, 21 October 1779.
p. 328
‘to sweeten his tea for breakfast by Christmas’: quoted in O’Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided, 170.
p. 329
‘My God! It is all over’: Rodger, Command of the Ocean, 352.
p. 329
‘The attack on Jamaica makes more noise than all North America’: Nankivell, ‘Rodney’s Victory over DeGrasse’, 119.
p. 330
‘miserably shattered’: Bridges, Annals of Jamaica, 2:472.
p. 330
‘the decks were covered with the blood …’: Blane, An Account of the Battle, 10.
p. 330
‘to prepare an elegant Marble Statue of your Lordship’: J. Arch., Stephen Fuller letter book, Volume Two, 1B/5/14/2.
p. 330
‘No Man has their Interest more at Heart than myself’: ibid., 1B/5/14/1.
p. 331
‘the invincible law of absolute necessity’: Ragatz, Fall, 295.
p. 331
‘They can neither do without us, not we without them’: quoted in Deerr, History of Sugar, 2:421.
p. 331
‘Our Governors and Custom-house officers pretended’: Johnstone, ‘Nelson in the West Indies’, 521.
28. The West Indian ‘Nabobs’: Absenteeism, Decadence and Decline
p. 333
‘Despair … has cut off more people in the West-Indies’: Beckford, Descriptive Account, 2:332.
p. 333
when locally owned than when it passed into the hands of the absentee William Beckford: Armstrong, Old Village and the Great House, 43.
p. 334
leaving an estate worth about £120,000: Sheridan, ‘Planter and Historian’, 45.
p. 334
an ‘uncommon beauty’: Anon., ‘Biographical Sketch of William Beckford, Esq.’, 261.
p. 334
‘to view the romantic wonders of his estates’: ibid., 261.
p. 334
‘covered with a sapphire haze’: Beckford, Descriptive Account, 1:21.
p. 334
‘less romantic than, the most wild and beautiful situations of Frescati, Tivoli, and Albano’: ibid., 1: 8–9.
p. 335
‘the vegetation here, and the stamina of the land are of such a nature’: Brumbaugh, ‘An Unpublished Letter’, 6.
p. 335
‘vacant and inactive’: Beckford, Descriptive Account, 2:366.
p. 335
‘The situation of Hertford is one of the pleasantest in the country’: Dallas, A Short Journey in the West Indies, 140.
p. 335
costing nearly £10,000: Anon., ‘Biographical Sketch of William Beckford, Esq.’, 261.
p. 335
‘My native country’ and ‘paternal soil’: Brumbaugh, ‘An Unpublished Letter’, 4.
p. 335
‘I shall carry Mrs Beckford back’: ibid., 5.
p. 335
‘Looked over many Folio Volumes of excellent plates’: TD, 11 June 1778.
p. 336
‘preserves the strength of the whole’: Beckford, Descriptive Account, 2:347–8.
p. 336
‘idle, drunken, worthless and immoral’: ibid., 2:380.
p. 336
be lent some of his impressive collection of books: TD, 22 August 1786.
p. 336
‘The heat becomes intolerable’: Dallas, A Short Journey in the West Indies, 31.
p. 336
‘to almost its whole value’: ibid., 66.
The Sugar Barons Page 57