“A work purely local?”: Narratives of Empire in George Benn’s A History of the Town of Belfast

Wright, Jonathan Jeffrey

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-25984-6_8

Jonathan Jeffrey Wright⁵

Part of the book series: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series ((CIPCSS))

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Abstract

This chapter seeks to identify the presence of empire in the work of George Benn, the influential nineteenth-century historian of Belfast. Benn’s A History of the town of Belfast from the Earliest Times to the Close of the Eighteenth Century (1877) and its successor volume, A History of the Town of Belfast from 1799 till 1810 Together with Some Incidental Notices on Local Topics and Biographies of Many Well-Known Families (1880), appear initially as exercises in “local” history. However, Belfast was a town with multiple imperial connections, and it is possible, within Benn’s work, to identify narratives of empire that speak to, and in some instances obscure, the realities of Belfast’s connections with empire. Beginning with Benn himself, the chapter discusses the circumstances behind the production of his history. Following this, it reflects on the extent of Belfast’s connections with empire in the early nineteenth century, before turning to discuss the overt references Benn makes to empire in his work and, more broadly, the way in which empire and imperial connections are reflected in Benn’s accounts of Belfast’s trade, its merchant families and its initial development in the early seventeenth century.

Thanks are due to Sean Connolly and Raymond Gillespie for their comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

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Notes

1.
Raymond Gillespie, Early Belfast: The Origins and Growth of an Ulster Town to 1750 (Belfast: Ulster Historic Foundation in association with Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society, 2007), xiii.
2.
George Benn, A History of the Town of Belfast from the Earliest Times to the Close of the Eighteenth Century and A History of the Town of Belfast from 1799 till 1810 Together with Some Incidental Notices on Local Topics and Biographies of Many Well-Known Families (London: Marcus Ward and Co., 1877 and 1880; repr. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 2008) (subsequent references will be given as Benn, Belfast, i or ii); Patricia Craig, “History of Belfast,” Irish Pages 4, no. 2 (2007): 159.
3.
The overview of Benn’s life and career offered in this paragraph is based on Raymond Gillespie, “Benn, George (1801–1882),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: In Association with the British Academy: From the Earliest Times to the Year 2000, eds. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Howard Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), v, 90. Additional accounts of Benn’s life and career can, however, be found in Fred Heatley, “The Benn Family of Belfast and Glenravel Part 1” and “The Benn Family of Belfast and Glenravel Part 2,” Ulster Local Studies 5, no. 2 (1980): 21–23 and 6, no. 1 (1980): 12–16; Séamas O. Saothraí, “Two Ulster Historians,” Books Ireland 15 (July 1977): 131–32; and C.J. Woods , “Benn, George” in Dictionary of Irish Biography: From the Earliest Times to the Year 2002, eds. James McGuire and James Quinn, 9 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), i, 450.
4.
[George Benn], The History of the Town of Belfast, with an Accurate Account of its Former and Present State: to which are Added a Statistical Survey of the Parish of Belfast, and a Description of Some Remarkable Antiquities in its Neighbourhood (Belfast: A. MacKay Junr., 1823).
5.
Benn, Belfast, i, xi; Belfast News-Letter, 31 January 1823.
6.
Belfast Literary Society 1801–1901: Historical Sketch with Memoirs of Some Distinguished Members (Belfast: M’Caw, Stevenson and Orr Ltd., The Linenhall Press, 1902); Arthur Deane, ed., The Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society: Centenary Volume 1821–1921: A Review of the Activities of the Society for 100 Years with Historical Notes, and Memoirs of Many Distinguished Members (Belfast: Published by the Society, 1924). For a discussion of the cultural life of Belfast in the early nineteenth century see Jonathan Jeffrey Wright, The “Natural Leaders” and Their World: Politics, Culture and Society in Belfast, c. 1801–1832 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012), chapter 4.
7.
Heatley, “The Benn Family … part 1,” 23. For the discovery and mining of iron-ore in the Glenravel area see Kevin J. O’Hagan, “The Iron Mines of Glenravel,” The Glynns: Journal of the Glens of Antrim Historical Society 8 (1980): 5–10 and Donal P. McCracken, “The Management of a Mid-Victorian Irish Iron-Ore Mine: Glenravel, County Antrim, 1866–1887,” Irish Economic and Social History 11 (1984): 60–72.
8.
Benn’s contributions to the Ulster Journal of Archaeology included a series of four articles on “Local Tickets Issued in Ulster,” two articles presenting his personal “Reminiscences of Belfast” and discussions of topics as diverse as smoking-pipes, aqua-vitæ and Edward Bruce’s connections with Connor in County Antrim. See Ulster Journal of Archaeology First Series 2 (1854): 29–31 and 230–32; 3 (1855): 172–75 and 260–64; 4 (1856): 4–5 and 239–41; 5 (1857): 144–50 and 343–44; 6 (1858): 283–93; and 7 (1859): 40–45.
9.
Benn, Belfast, i, xi–xii.
10.
Craig, “History of Belfast,” 159.
11.
Rosemary Sweet , “Provincial Culture and Urban Histories in England and Ireland During the Long Eighteenth Century,” in Provincial Towns in Early Modern England and Ireland: Change, Convergence and Divergence, eds. Peter Borsay and Lindsay Proudfoot (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 223.
12.
F.D. Ward to George Benn, 7 March 1878, Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (henceforth PRONI), D3113/6/87.
13.
Sweet, “Provincial Culture,” 235.
14.
Henry Joy, Historical Collections Relative to the Town of Belfast: From the Earliest Period to the Union with Great Britain (Belfast: George Berwick, 1817), iv and xv; Sweet, “Provincial Culture,” 235.
15.
See, for a classic statement, Catherine Hall and Sonya Rose, “Introduction: Being at Home with the Empire,” in At Home with the Empire: Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World, eds. Catherine Hall and Sonya O. Rose (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1–31. Dane Kennedy, “The Imperial History Wars,” Journal of British Studies 54, no. 1 (2015): 5–22 offers a useful overview, locating the “new imperial history” in the wider historiography relating to the British Empire.
16.
Catherine Hall, Macaulay and Son: Architects of Imperial Britain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), xv and xvi (see chapter 6, esp. 319–29, for Hall’s reading of Macaulay’s History).
17.
John Kenyon, The History Men: The Historical Profession in England Since the Reformation (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983), 68. For Macaulay’s experience of imperial administration, see Hall, Macaulay, 205–38.
18.
Wright, The “Natural Leaders,” 160 and 164. For standard histories of the Belfast Academical Institution see [Royal Belfast Academical Institution], Centenary Volume, 1810–1910 (Belfast: M’Caw, Stevenson and Orr, 1913) and John Jamieson, The History of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, 1810–1960 (Belfast: W. Mullan, 1959).
19.
[Royal Belfast Academical Institution], Centenary Volume, 69–70, 196–99 and 200–2; Benn, History of the Town of Belfast, 120. Likewise, in 1819 Belfast’s Harp Society, which had run into financial difficulties several years previously, received funds from Ulstermen resident in India, and a committee was established to administer the so-called “India money.” See John Killen, A History of the Linen Hall Library, 1788–1988 (Belfast: Linen Hall Library, 1990), 49 and 186–87, and Roy Johnson with Declan Plummer, The Musical Life of Nineteenth-Century Belfast (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 64. (I am grateful to Sean Connolly for bringing these references to my attention).
20.
[Royal Belfast Academical Institution], Centenary Volume, 95.
21.
Sarah E. Yeh, “‘A Sink of all Filthiness’: Gender, Family and Identity in the British Atlantic, 1688–1763,” The Historian 68, no. 1 (2006): 75.
22.
William Grimshaw, Incidents Recalled: or Sketches from Memory (Philadelphia: Zieber and Co., 1848), 17.
23.
For the morphology of Belfast in the early nineteenth century see Raymond Gillespie and Stephen A. Royle, Belfast: Part 1, to 1840 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2003), 7 and maps 10 and 11.
24.
This account of the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society and its museum is based on Jonathan Jeffrey Wright, “‘A Depot for the Productions of the Four Quarters of the Globe’: Empire, Collecting and the Belfast Museum,” in Spaces of Global Knowledge: Exhibition, Encounter and Exchange in an Age of Empire, eds. Diarmid A. Finnegan and Jonathan Jeffrey Wright (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2015), 143–66.
25.
Minute Book of the Belfast Natural History Society, 1821–1850, entry for 24 May 1828, PRONI, D3263/A/B/1.
26.
Donation Book of the Belfast Natural History Society, 1821–1844, passim, PRONI, D3263/J/1.
27.
Belfast News-Letter , 21 October 1834 (I am grateful to Raymond Gillespie for bringing this reference to my attention). Edward Benn appears to have become a member of the Belfast Natural History Society in March 1837 and in 1880, following his death, his personal collection of antiquities was donated to the Society by George Benn on the understanding that “the Society would furnish a suitable habitat for the collection.” Members List of the Belfast Natural History Society, 1821–1841, PRONI, D3263/A/B/1; Proceedings of the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society, for the Session 1880–81 (Belfast: Alexander Mayne, 1882), 1–2. Heatley, “The Benn Family … part 2,” 12.
28.
These comments draw on Jonathan Jeffrey Wright , “‘The Donegalls’ Backside’: Donegall Place, the White Linen Hall and the Development of Space and Place in Nineteenth-Century Belfast,” in Urban Spaces in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, eds. Georgina Laragy, Olwen Purdue and Jonathan Jeffrey Wright (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018), 61–83, in which the use and development of the building and its surrounding street-scape is discussed in more detail. But see also, for the background to the building’s construction, Brenda Collins, Trevor Parkhill and Peter Roebuck, “A White Linen Hall for Newry or Belfast?” Irish Economic and Social History 43 (2016): 1–12.
29.
Benn, Belfast, ii, 121.
30.
Thomas Bradshaw, Belfast General & Commercial Directory for 1819 … with a Directory and History of Lisburn (Belfast: Francis D. Finlay, 1819), xiii and xvii.
31.
Literature relating to the Atlantic World is now extensive. For a historiographical and conceptual primer, see Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).
32.
See, for the history of this institution, Killen, Linen Hall Library.
33.
Laws of the Belfast Society for Promoting Knowledge; With a General Catalogue of the Books, Maps, & c. to which is Subjoined, for the Greater Ease of Reference, a Classified Catalogue, Relating to Some Particular Subjects (Belfast: David Lyons, 1819), 19, 21, 31, 32, 36, 37, 42, 46, 61, 64, 59 and 82.
34.
John Gamble, Society and Manners in Early Nineteenth-Century Ireland, ed. Breandán Mac Suibhne (Dublin: Field Day, in association with the Keogh Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame, 2011), 268.
35.
Bradshaw, Directory for 1819, xxxiv; Narcissus G. Batt, “Belfast Sixty Years Ago: Recollections of a Septuagenarian,” Ulster Journal of Archaeology Second Series 2, no. 2 (1896): 92; R.M. Young, “Old Times in Belfast,” The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland Fifth Series 35, no. 4 (1905): 381.
36.
Isaac Ward, “Belfast Castle, Donegall House, and Ormeau House, the Residences of the Donegall Family,” Ulster Journal of Archaeology Second Series 11, no. 3 (1905): 128; A.T.Q. Stewart, The Summer Soldiers: The 1798 Rebellion in Antrim and Down (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1995), 53 and 80–81; Amelia Murray MacGregor, History of the Clan Gregor from Public Records and Private Collections, 2 vols (Edinburgh: William Brown, 1898–1901), ii, 299; Peter B. Boyden, “Nugent [formerly Fennings], Sir George, first Baronet (1757–1849),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, eds. Matthew and Harrison, xli, 255–56.
37.
Gillespie and Royle, Belfast, map 11; Benn, Belfast, ii, 117.
38.
Norman E. Gamble, “The Business Community and the Trade of Belfast, 1767–1800” (PhD Thesis, University of Dublin, 1978), 40.
39.
Wright, The “Natural Leaders,” 19 and 29.
40.
Benn, Belfast, ii, 117.
41.
Nini Rodgers, Ireland, Slavery and Anti-Slavery: 1645–1865 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 146–47 and 157–58; Nini Rodgers, “Making History in Belfast: The Tale of Francis Joseph Bigger, Samuel Shannon Millin and Waddell Cunningham,” in From the United Irishmen to Twentieth-Century Unionism: A Festschrift for A.T.Q. Stewart, ed. Sabine Wichert (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004), 29 and 32.
42.
Historic Memorials of the First Presbyterian Church of Belfast: Prepared in Connection with the Centennial of its Present Meeting House (Belfast: Marcus Ward and Co., 1887), 1, 24 and 56; Benn, Belfast, i, 525–26; Elizabeth Benger, Memoirs of the Late Mrs Elizabeth Hamilton, with a Selection from her Correspondence and Other Unpublished Writings, second ed., 2 vols. (London: Longman, Hurts, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1819) i, 122–23; Alexander Gordon, “Elizabeth Hamilton, 1756–1816,” Ulster Journal of Archaeology Second Series 1, no. 1 (1894): 25 and 27.
43.
Gordon Goodwin, revised by Philip Carter, “Hamilton, Charles (1752/3–1792),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, eds. Matthew and Harrison, xxiv, 773.
44.
Gordon, “Elizabeth Hamilton,” 26–27.
45.
Benger, Memoirs of … Elizabeth Hamilton, i, 123.
46.
Gillespie and Royle, Belfast, map 11.
47.
Belfast Night Watch Reports, 12 May 1812 to 19 May 1816, PRONI, D46/1A (pages 53, 189–91 and 301–2). For the Night Watch, see also Brian Griffin, Police and Crime in Belfast, 1800–1865: The Bulkies (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1997), 11–17.
48.
Belfast News-Letter , 5 September 1828. For the reportage of this episode at the national level see “Bermuda Slaves,” Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter 2, no. 17 (Oct. 1828): 326–28.
49.
John M. MacKenzie, Museums and Empire: Natural History, Human Cultures and Colonial Identities (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 7; Wright, “‘A Depot,’” 154 and 166.
50.
[George Benn], “Reminiscences of Belfast,” Ulster Journal of Archaeology First Series, 3 (1855): 260.
51.
Benn contributed £10 to the fund. Belfast News-Letter , 18 September 1877. (I am grateful to Raymond Gillespie for bringing this reference to my attention).
52.
Benn, Belfast, i, xiii.
53.
Benn, Belfast, i, 641 and ii, 69–70. For the Duke of York affair, see Philip Harling, “The Duke of York Affair (1809) and the Complexities of Wartime Patriotism,” The Historical Journal 39, no. 4 (1996): 963–84.
54.
Benn, Belfast, i, 348.
55.
Joy, Historical Collections, xv; Sweet, “Provincial Culture,” 235.
56.
Benn, Belfast, i, 484.
57.
Benn, Belfast, ii, 48 and 123.
58.
Gillespie, “Benn, George,” 90.
59.
Jonathan Jeffrey Wright , “‘The Belfast Chameleon:’ Ulster, Ceylon and the Imperial Life of Sir James Emerson Tennent,” Britain and the World 6, no. 2 (2013): 201–2 (201 for quote). See also, for this speech, John Bew, The Glory of Being Britons: Civic Unionism in Nineteenth-Century Belfast (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2009), 136–37.
60.
Hall, Macaulay, xv.
61.
For modern accounts of Belfast’s trade in the mid- to late-eighteenth century see Gamble, “Business Community” and Gillespie, Early Belfast, 112–19 and 156–60.
62.
Benn, Belfast, i, 316–23.
63.
Benn, Belfast, ii, 122.
64.
News-Letter Notebook, PRONI, D3113/4/14: PRONI’s online catalogue attributes the compilation of this notebook to Pinkerton . See https://apps.proni.gov.uk/eCatNI_IE/ResultDetails.aspx (accessed 8/4/2019).
65.
Benn, Belfast, i, 653.
66.
Catherine Hall, Nicholas Draper and Keith McClelland, “Introduction,” in Legacies of British Slave-Ownership: Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Victorian Britain, eds. Catherine Hall, Nicholas Draper, Keith McClelland, Katie Donington and Rachel Lang (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 1–2 and 27 note 1. See also Hall, Macaulay, 320–23, where the telling absence of slavery in Macaulay’s History of England is discussed.
67.
Benn, Belfast, ii, 6.
68.
Benn, Belfast, ii, 181. For Greg’s holdings in the West Indies see “Thomas Greg: Profiles and Legacies Summary” at Legacies of British Slave-ownership https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/10314 (accessed 3/4/2019) and Rodgers, Ireland, Slavery and Anti-Slavery, 147.
69.
Benn, Belfast, ii, 179–81 and 182.
70.
“Thomas Greg: Profiles and Legacies Summary” at Legacies of British Slave-ownership https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/10314 (accessed 3/4/2019); Rodgers, Ireland, Slavery and Anti-slavery, 147 and 158.
71.
Benn, Belfast, ii, 195; “William Smith of Barbados: Profiles and Legacies Summary” at Legacies of British Slave-ownership https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146654619 (accessed 3/4/2019).
72.
Benn, Belfast, ii, 183–87; Linde Lunney, “Jones Valentine,” in Dictionary of Irish Biography, eds. McGuire and Quinn, iv, 1044–46.
73.
Benn, Belfast, ii, 6.
74.
Benn, Belfast, ii, 143.
75.
Gillespie, “Benn, George,” 90.
76.
Alison Light, “Family History: History’s Poor Relation?” in Emancipation and the Remaking of the British Imperial World, eds. Catherine Hall, Nicholas Draper and Keith McClelland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), 179.
77.
For Macartney’s career see Peter Roebuck, ed., Macartney of Lisanoure, 1737–1806: Essays in Biography (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 1983).
78.
Benn, Belfast, i, 260.
79.
Benn, Belfast, i, 1 and 3; Gillespie, Early Belfast, xiii and xiv.
80.
Benn, Belfast, i, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
81.
Benn, Belfast, i, 16–95 (86 and 88 for quotes).
82.
S.J. Connolly , Contested Island: Ireland, 1460–1630 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 263.
83.
Benn, Belfast, i, 24–25 (25 for quote).
84.
Benn, Belfast, i, 78 and (for quote) 85.
85.
Benn, Belfast, i, 5.
86.
Benn, Belfast, i, 16, 61–62 and 86–88.
87.
Benn, Belfast, i, 271.
88.
Hall, Macaulay, 270–71 and 312–13.
89.
Patricia Grimshaw, “Faith, Missionary Life, and the Family,” in Gender and Empire, ed. Philippa Levine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 264.
90.
A.T. Harrison, ed., The Graham Indian Mutiny Papers (Belfast: Public Records Office of Northern Ireland, 1980), 150.
91.
Wright, ‘“A Depot,’” 161–62.
92.
The Saturday Review of Politics and Literature, 1 December 1877, 688.
93.
Benn, Belfast, i, 97.
94.
Hall and Rose, “Introduction,” 23.
95.
See, for instance, Kevin Kenny, “Ireland and the British Empire: An Introduction,” in Ireland and the British Empire, ed. Kevin Kenny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 1–4.
96.
Alvin Jackson, “Ireland, the Union and the Empire, 1800–1960,” in Ireland and the British Empire, ed. Kenny, 123.

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Jonathan Jeffrey Wright

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Daniel Sanjiv Roberts
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Jonathan Jeffrey Wright

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Wright, J.J. (2019). “A work purely local?”: Narratives of Empire in George Benn’s A History of the Town of Belfast . In: Roberts, D., Wright, J. (eds) Ireland’s Imperial Connections, 1775–1947. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25984-6_8

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