by Tom Anderson
The King received the men with great hospitality and treated them to a royal feast of what the King called Inkuku yasekya nama qeselengwane, roasted chicken with an African herb topping. The King also gave them Bjala bja setso, a tribally brewed corn beer which tasted quite dark and rich. The men also enjoyed watching a game of the now famous Matetwa Stick-fighting (Donga) competition, long before the art became so fashionable in Europe. Dingiswayo viewed the European displays of guns and other technology with respect rather than awe. Shaka, who was present at the Boma, remarked that while the firepower was quite impressive, his fastest regiment of men could rush up and kill European gunmen while they would be slowly reloading. Grenville’s men were similarly impressed by the organisation and civility of the Matetwa as well as the incredible power that King Dingiswayo commanded. But, as enlightened as the expedition was, they were reluctant to describe them as equals. Ultimately a treaty was signed allowing the British to claim the entire coastline of Natal up to the Maloti Mountains to border the Matetwa Empire.
Natal grew immensely during this time period as British East India Company authorities reinforced their holding and took advantage of the rich farmland secured for them. Between the first landings in 1805 and the expedition by Grenville in 1811, over five thousand British and American settlers came to the coastal areas near Port Natal and Port St. Lucia. By that same year, the first feasible sugar plantations were being considered and because the British colonies in Africa (unlike the Dutch) had a strong Abolitionist streak, labourers would have to be drawn from elsewhere. The relative prosperity of the Matetwa Empire discouraged native labourers from coming to work on the plantations. The colonies in West Africa were under the control of the Royal Africa Company, which saw the BEIC as a rival and would not co-operate in any venture that might undermine its economic supremacy on the Dark Continent. This left the BEIC with only one option.
A new age dawned in Natal’s history as the first Bengali labourers stepped onto the white beaches of Africa…
Chapter #61: These Isles
You must build the new House of Parliament on the river, so that the populace cannot exact their demands by sitting down round you.
- Richard Wesley, 1st Duke of Mornington[34]
*
From: “A History of Ireland” by E.J. Sheridan (1935)—
The defeat of the rebellion of the United Society of Equals (USE) in October 1799 was just the beginning of a new era for the Kingdom of Ireland. What resulted from the ashes of this civil war was considered greatly surprising at the time. Arguably the outcome only occurred because events conspired to hamstring conservative interests in both London and Dublin that would have preferred to crack down with an even more authoritarian constitution than that which the island was already ruled by. Primarily, of course, there was the fact that a majority of Irish statesmen – mostly deeply conservative Anglican peers – had been killed in the burning of the Irish Parliament by the USE in November 1798. Secondarily, Great Britain’s own political structure had undergone a shift no less dramatic, if less bloodily obtained. Tired of the increasing authoritarianism and paranoia that had persisted under the Rockinghamite ministry, which bled Liberal Whigs at an alarming rate as the war with France raged on, the British people had conspired – despite the problems with their own electoral system, with its rotten boroughs and family party machines sewing up many seats – to elect the most reformist House of Commons in Parliamentary history. As may be covered elsewhere, the resulting Fox ministry had good reasons to support a liberalisation of the Irish political system.
Under the uncodified Irish constitution as it stood, all Irish Parliamentary legislation was ultimately subordinate to that of Westminster, as Irish bills were signed into law by virtue of the Great Seal of the Kingdom of Great Britain – which was held by the British Privy Council. This was known as Poyning’s Law and dated from the late fifteenth century, as part of Henry VII’s attempt to bring Ireland under more direct control (which his son would further with his declaration of a Kingdom of Ireland). This meant that real power in Ireland usually rested with the Viceroy, the Lord Lieutenant, and the elected Irish MPs had little power. In any case, the system by which they were elected – excluding the Catholic majority from either standing or voting, along with all non-Anglican Protestants such as the Presbyterians and even poorer Anglicans – meant that there was little connection between the wishes of the Irish people as a whole and the resulting legislation.
This changed with the USE rebellion. As well as the deaths of so many Irish MPs and Lords, the then-Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Romney, had hanged himself after escaping from the conflagration in Dublin and realising that Westminster would blame the civil war on him. The post was seized almost by default by Richard Wesley, the Earl of Mornington, who had successfully commanded combined Irish loyalist, British, and American forces in the crushing of the rebellion. His de facto position of power was then recognised by the Foxite government in London in late 1800. Wesley[35] wanted primarily to rebuild Ireland in such a way that it would be stable and reliable, in his own words, not a perpetual distraction for a British government paranoid about invasion and sedition. A member of the ‘Protestant Ascendancy’ and devout Anglican himself, he was on record as saying that he disliked Catholicism (though not individual Catholics) but “It is better to let dissenters inside your house, as then they are less inclined to try and set it on fire.” Wesley’s policies formed the basis for a great deal of the case studies that underwrote the ideology of Reactivism when it was coined later in the 19th century.
Thus, when Fox (and his sympathetic foreign minister, the Earl FitzWilliam) gave Wesley a free hand, he acted to institute a new Dublin Parliament. Fortuitously for the cause of reform in Ireland, the USE had attacked Dublin on a day when most of the minority of reformist Irish MPs (the “Patriots”), led by Henry Grattan, had walked out in protest at a bill that painted pro-Catholic reform as sympathetic to French Republicanism, even though the French Republicans were virulently anti-Catholic. Wesley thus asked Grattan to form a new temporary caretaker government, and used his conventional powers as Lord Lieutenant to institute reforms under which the next parliament would be elected – thus cleverly avoiding having to deal with another unreformed parliament first. This blatantly unconstitutional move sparked protests both in Ireland and in Britain,[36] but Wesley was able to maintain the peace in Ireland by virtue of having so many troops still present from the crushing of the rebellion. Using tactics he had learned while fighting in India, where consideration of the religious affiliation of troops and enemies was just as important as in Ireland, he tried to use American troops primarily to crack down on anti-reform protests of any type. The American contingent, the 79th (New York) Regiment of Foot, were commanded by General Benedict Arnold VI, who became friendly with Wesley despite his soldiers being continuously called out (much to the frustration of the Constitutionalist government of James Monroe back home, who wanted to recall them).[37] Wesley used the Americans because they had no single established church, and New York in particular was notoriously eclectic, thus preventing the stigma of a rebellion being crushed by ‘British’ or ‘Irish Papists’ or similar.
Unilaterally, Wesley abolished the Disenfranchising Act of 1728, which had set down in law that Catholics could not vote in Ireland. This did not mean that Catholics could stand as MPs, but it did mean that those among the Catholic population who fulfilled the property requirements[38] could vote for sympathetically-minded, reformist Protestant MPs – of which there were not a few. Despite further protests, the election went ahead in July 1801 and returned an Irish Parliament as reform-minded as the one in Westminster, though like Britain’s it still had a large number of strong-minded conservatives. The respected Grattan became leader by default as Wesley relinquished some of his powers, thus leading to the first creation of an Irish ‘prime minister’. From 1801 to 1808 (elections were held every seven years) the Parliament legislated continuously to rescind and abolish som
e of the anti-Catholic strictures that had been put in place in previous years. It was a ripe time for reform, as the British Government and the King both sympathised with at least limited compensation and were not as obstructive as they would have been if this had come at an earlier time.[39]
In particular, the Grattan ministry ended restrictions on Catholic education (allowing education overseas, and for Catholics to study at Trinity College Dublin), inter-religious marriages, and the creation of a militia allowed the ownership of firearms by non-Anglicans, which was particularly controversial. Wesley’s response was typically acerbic – “If keeping guns out of the hands of Papists stops rebellions, what have we just been fighting?!” These issues conspired to make Wesley temporarily unpopular in Britain, which now faced uncomfortable questions about emancipating its own Catholics. Though Fox and the King still supported Wesley, an attempt to grant him a British peerage was struck down hard by protests in the British House of Lords, and Wesley had to be content with having his existing Irish one upgraded from Earl to Duke.
Inevitably the situation was not as sunny as some reformists have portrayed it. With his attempts to improve the Catholics’ situation, Wesley had deprived the Irish of a natural scapegoat, and Protestant dissenters such as Presbyterians (especially since Presbyterians had made up such a large percentage of the USE) often took their place. As far as the Constitution of 1802 was concerned, people in Ireland were either Anglican or Catholic, and that was that.
Events in Ireland were watched with interest elsewhere, but few realised how significant a part the island would play a few years down the line…
*
From: “Fatal Hesitation: The Foxite Ministry” by Sir Arthur Rumbelow (1912)—
With the death of the Marquess of Rockingham in November 1799, his Liberal Whig government collapsed. The confusion that prevailed in Parliament for days, with the royal power also in a state of transfer from George III to Henry IX, mirrored the similar situation in France with Lisieux’s rise to power – hence the term Double Revolution. However, by the end of January 1800, the situation had stabilised. Charles James Fox, leader of the Parliamentary Radical Whigs and their sympathisers, became Prime Minister under the sympathetically reformist King Henry IX. According to his own notions that Republican France was still an improvement over the war-mongering and ideologically absolutist Bourbon Royalist France that the British had fought for so long, Fox abandoned Louis XVII and sought peace with Lisieux. In this he obtained surprisingly strong support from many factions in the divided Parliament. There were moderate Whigs who thought the war was a distraction from domestic business; ultra-conservative Tories who disliked the French Royalists even more than the Republicans; and a growing number of thoughtful men from all parties who recognised the import of the new technological innovations that the French had introduced, and that Britain needed time and breathing space to match them.
Thus the Peace of Caen in March of that year was signed, and the war was over. What happened next was a great matter of parliamentary turbulence: Fox tried to introduce some of his pet plans for radical reform, such as the abolition of the slave trade, and was heavily defeated. Parliament had supported him in the attempt to obtain peace, but did not cleave to his agenda. Typically lacking the urge to compromise, Fox decided that the premiership was worthless if he could not pass the bills he wanted, and asked the King to dissolve Parliament and call a general election.
The result was greatly surprising to many commentators, as candidates who publicly declared support for Mr Fox were returned in great numbers, though still far from a majority. Fox’s eloquence had intrigued enough Britons into wondering just what the rest of his plans were, and there is also the fact that a politically active generation was coming to fruition which had grown up with the Empire of North America’s more enlightened parliamentary strictures being accepted as a norm. The resulting parliament gave Foxites, Parliamentary Radicals and like-minded Whigs slightly more than a third of the seats, but given the controversial nature of the Foxites’ policy agenda, a minority government was not realistic. The reform agenda was saved by an agreement negotiated between Fox’s supporter Frederick Wilberforce and the second-largest cohesive faction in Parliament, the rump Liberal Whigs who had rallied around Richard Burke, son of Edmund Burke. Fox had previously been very friendly with the elder Burke before they split bitterly over the French Revolution. Now, Wilberforce secured a coalition deal which would grant them a majority over the divided opposition. Burke would be made both Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary, while Fox would remain Prime Minister, Wilberforce would be Lord President of the Council (and informal education minister) and Lord FitzWilliam would be made Foreign Secretary. This ‘Reform Coalition’, as it was dubbed, enabled Fox to get much of his legislation through the House of Commons, though it meant Burke had a perpetual veto. The House of Lords was more obstructionist, but the fact that the King sided with Fox meant that most of Fox’s agenda was eventually passed in the face of threats by Henry IX to ennoble enough like-minded men and sit them in the Lords. Ironically, this close political alliance of Prime Minister and King led some to cry that this was a return to the days of royal absolutism.
The chief reforms of the Foxite government were the abolition of the slave trade (1802), voting reform to reduce property requirements and increase the franchise (1804, taking it down to twenty shillings for the counties and harmonising it in the boroughs) and the establishment of the Borough Committee. This latter was a compromise, after Fox’s own starry-eyed dreams of universal suffrage were patiently shot down by Parliament. For centuries, England’s and then Great Britain’s electoral system had been plagued with the existence of rotten boroughs – places which had once been thriving towns and had been granted borough status by the King in order to elect MPs, but were now abandoned, shrunken places with only a few voters, who continued to send those MPs to Parliament and were readily susceptible to bribery. By contrast, the fact that new boroughs had not been created for a century meant that many large new towns such as Manchester did not directly elect any MPs, only contributing to the two MPs elected on the Lancashire county list. This situation had been clearly absurd for a long time, but reform had been set back when Cromwell had abolished the rotten boroughs – and, of course, at the Restoration, anything Cromwell did was automatically wrong and had to be reversed and considered taboo.
Fox’s initial attempts to have the rotten boroughs abolished and then new ones enacted for the new towns failed. This was largely because he was talking about removing politicians from Parliament, some of whom were even on his own side.[40] The eventual compromise proposed by Burke was that the new Committee would study each borough in turn, and if it was found to be rotten, that borough would be transferred to a new town rather than abolished. That meant the standing MP would then represent, for example, Manchester instead of Old Sarum. This achieved cautious support, though the transferred MPs often then left Parliament anyway to go to their new constituency and set up a new party machine there to ensure their re-election. A surprising number of them succeeded, selling their experience and political capital as an asset to suspicious new constituents to fight for their towns’ interests.
This method of reform was slow and tentative, but ultimately achieved Fox’s stated aims. However, Fox’s enlightened attitudes to reform were matched by blindness in the face of French intentions. He was convinced that the aggressiveness under Robespierre of the French Republic was merely the remnants of Bourbon old guard officers up to their usual imperialism, and that now Lisieux was in charge the Republic had been purged of such notions. The war ministries under Fox ended up being dominated by the Liberal part of the Coalition, as the Foxites considered them unimportant, and the Secretary at War was Frederick Dundas, a Scottish politician and close ally of Burke. British experimentation with French military technology was ultimately the pet project of Dundas, though he was able to obtain limited support from Fox by putting it in terms of how in
novative the French Republicans were. Burke and Dundas were also at the forefront of the naysayers in an issue that split the Reform Coalition in 1803 after Nelson’s Neapolitan attack on the French fleet – Fox even wanted to brand the popular mercenary admiral a traitor, but was forced to back down.
The establishment of Fort Rockingham near Doncaster was also the brainchild of Dundas, though he was supported by many of the conservative opposition. Few of even the most paranoid anti-Foxites, however, realised how significant this would be…
Chapter #62: The Monroe Doctrine
“To understand the character of American exceptionalism, one must look at the mother country. From the 1500s to the first decade of the nineteenth century, England and then Great Britain saw itself as being apart from Europe; her Navy, her ‘Wooden Walls’, meant that the narrow English Channel might as well have been a vast ocean, shielding her from any hostile invasion. England was splendidly isolated and, therefore, special. When English settlers came to America, they brought this attitude with them. Though what became the Empire of North America was not an island, and was always vulnerable to attacks by native Indians or rival colonial powers, nonetheless the idea of the nation having a special, unique place in the world was retained. And this idea continued in America long after events had led to its death in Britain…”