Abstract
In the January 1834 issue of the popular British periodical, The Quarterly Review, John Gibson Lockhart anonymously reviewed two travel narratives that centered on life in Britain’s West Indian colonies. In his introduction he recalled “ignorant” speakers in Parliament, “stupid” agitators in the public sphere, and relentless arguing in the face of hard facts:
The reflections to which the whole treatment of our colonists during the past ten years, by successive parliaments and governments, must give rise in every impartial bosom, are of a painful kind; the ignorance, the rashness, the blind audacity of too many influential persons—the mean shuffling and intriguery of others—and the hot, heavy, dogged stupidity of the perhaps not ill-meaning agitators, to whose pertinacity the present ministry has at last succumbed—are features in our recent history, on which future times will pause with mingled wonder, contempt, and pity.1
Lockhart was speaking of the abolitionists who had recently won the slavery debate. As the conclusion to his review demonstrates, some of the most passionate, shocking, and provocative language of the slavery debates was put forth outside of Westminster to defend the colonies and the practices of slaveholding and trading. Printed works of all types contributed to the slavery debate as authors, planters, publishers, artists, and playwrights weighed in on the slavery question.
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Notes
[John Gibson Lockhart], “Art. IV–1. Journal of a West India Proprietor,” The Quarterly Review, 50.100 (January 1834), 374.
Gordon K. Lewis, “Proslavery Ideology,” in Caribbean Slavery in the Atlantic World, ed. Verene Shepherd and Hilary Beckles (Oxford: Ian Randal, 2000), 549.
For a detailed discussion of the origins of the proslavery position in Britain in this period, see Srividhya Swaminathan, “Developing the West Indian Proslavery Position after the Somerset Decision,” Slavery & Abolition, 24 (2003), 40–60.
Brycchan Carey, British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility: Writing, Sentiment and Slavery, 1760–1807 (Basingstoke: Macmillan Publishers, 2005), 2.
H. T. Dickinson, Caricatures and the Constitution, 1760–1832 (Cambridge: Chadwyk-Healey Ltd., 1986), 12.
John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997), 100.
Anand C. Chitnis, The Scottish Enlightenment: A Social History (London: Croom Helm, Ltd., 1976), 6.
Vic Gatrell, City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth Century London (London: Atlantic Books, 2006), 16.
Roy Porter and Lesley Hall, The Facts of Life: The Creation of Sexual Knowledge in Britain, 1650–1950 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 18. For further discussion on the outward display of politeness in public settings, see Helen Berry, “Polite Consumption: Shopping in Eighteenth-Century England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series 12 (2002), 375–94.
Philip Babcock Grove, ed., “Utilitarianism,” in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged (Springfield: Merriam-Webster Inc., 1993), 2525.
Bart Schultz and Georgios Varouxakis, “Introduction,” in Utilitarianism and Empire, ed. Bart Schultz and Georgios Varouxakis (Oxford: Lexington Books, 2005), 7.
Frederick Rosen, “Jeremy Bentham on Slavery and the Slave Trade,” in Utilitarianism and Empire, ed. Bart Schultz and Georgios Varouxakis (Oxford: Lexington Books, 2005), 45.
Olivia Smith, The Politics of Language, 1791–1819 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 158.
For a detailed overview of the abolitionist works and arguments that influenced the British public in the 1780s and 1790s, see Srividhya Swaminathan’s Debating the Slave Trade (London: Ashgate, 2009), Ch. 3.
Christer Petley, “Slavery, Emancipation and the Creole World View of Jamaican Colonists, 1800–1834,” Slavery & Abolition, 26 (2005), 100.
Ibid.
Srividhya Swaminathan, Debating the Slave Trade: Rhetoric of British National Identity, 1759–1815 (Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2009), 142–3.
For example, see the introductory pages of Jesse Foot’s A Defence of the Planters in the West Indies; Comprised in Four Arguments, 2nd edn. (London: J. Debrett, 1792), discussed in this chapter.
For a detailed look at the rhetorical strategies and intended readership of early pro- and anti-slavery pamphlets, see Brycchan Carey’s British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), Ch. 4.
Thomas Maxwell Adams, A Cool Address to the People of England, on the Slave Trade (London: R. Faulder and J. Stockdale, 1788), 18–9.
See Alexander McDonnell, The West India Legislatures Vindicated from the Charge of Having Resisted the Call of the Mother Country for the Amelioration of Slavery (London: John Murray, 1826), 89–102.
Ibid., 7–8.
James Walvin, England, Slaves and Freedom 1776–1838 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986), 19.
A Resident, Sketches and Recollections of the West Indies (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1828), ix.
F. W. N. Bayley, Four Years’ Residence in the West Indies (London: William Kidd, 1830), vi–vii.
Ibid.
Mrs. Carmichael, Domestic Manners and Social Condition of the White, Coloured, and Negro Population of the West Indies, 2 vols. (London: Whittaker, Treacher, and Co., 1833), vol. 1, 32.
Allan Gallay, “‘The Origins of Slaveholders’ Paternalism: George Whitefield, the Bryan Family, and the Great Awakening in the South,” Journal of Southern History, 53 (1987), 393–4.
Andrew Lewis, “‘An Incendiary Press’: British West Indian Newspapers during the Struggle for Abolition,” Slavery & Abolition, 16 (1995), 348–51.
Rev. George Wilson Bridges, A Voice from Jamaica in Reply to William Wilberforce, Esq. M.P. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1823), 19.
Ibid., 8.
Ibid., 46.
Robert Hibbert Jun., Facts, Verified Upon Oath, in Contradiction of the Report of Rev. Thomas Cooper, Concerning the General Condition of the Slaves in Jamaica; and More Especially Relative to the Management and Treatment of the Slaves Upon Georgia Estate, in the Parish of Hanover, in That Island (London: John Murray, 1824) ix.
James MacQueen, The West India Colonies; The Calumnies and Misrepresentations Circulated Against Them by The Edinburgh Review, Mr. Clarkson, Mr. Cropper, etc. etc. (London: Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1824), 1–2.
David Lambert, White Creole Culture, Politics and Identity During the Age of Abolition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 145.
James MacQueen, The Colonial Controversy, Containing a Refutation of the Anticolonists; the State of Hayti, Sierra Leone, India, China, Cochin China, Java, &c. &c.; the Production of Sugar, &c. and the State of the Free and Slave Labourers in those Countries; Fully Considered, in a Series of Letters, Addressed to the Earl of Liverpool; With a Supplementary Letter to Mr. Macaulay (Glasgow: Khull, Blackie, & Co., 1825), 5.
Ibid., 9.
Alexander Barclay, A Practical View of the Present State of Slavery in the West Indies; or, An Examination of Mr. Stephen’s “Slavery of the British West India Colonies” (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1826), i–ii.
Ibid., ii.
Alexander McDonnell, Compulsory Manumission; Or an Examination of the Actual State of the West India Question (London: John Murray, 1827), 6–7.
Ibid., 62.
Richard Watson, The Religious Instruction of Slaves in the West India Colonies Advocated and Defended. A Sermon Preached before the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, in the New Chapel, City-Road, London, April 28, 1824, 4th edn. (London: Butterworth and Son, n.d.), 6.
Ibid., 8–9; Rev. B. Bailey, The House of Bondage. A Dissertation upon the Nature of Service or Slavery under Levitical Law, among the Hebrews in the Earliest Ages, and in the Gentile World, Until the Coming of Christ… (London: C. & J. Rivington, 1824), 15–7. Vincent Carretta and Philip Gould have noted that by interpreting Genesis Chapter Nine to mean that Africans were Ham’s descendants, writers could argue that Africans were meant to be slaves. See Vincent Carretta and Philip Gould, “Introduction,” in Genius in Bondage: Literature of the Early Black Atlantic, ed. Vincent Carretta and Philip Gould (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2001), 5.
Joanne Shattock, Politics and Reviewers: The Edinburgh and the Quarterly in the Early Victorian Age (London: Leicester University Press, 1989), 10–11.
Biancamaria Fontana, Rethinking the Politics of Commercial Society: The Edinburgh Review 1802–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 6.
John Clive, Scotch Reviewers: The Edinburgh Review, 1802–1815 (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1956), 84–5.
Jonathan Cutmore, “Introduction,” in Conservativism and the Quarterly Review: A Critical Analysis, ed. Jonathan Cutmore (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007), 10.
John O. Hayden, The Romantic Reviewers, 1802–1824 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), 11.
“Art. VIII. Substance of the Debate in the House of Commons on 15th May, 1823 …,” The Quarterly Review 29.58 (1823), 477.
William Christie, The Edinburgh Review in the Literary Culture of Romantic Britain: Mammoth and Megalonyx (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009), 20–3.
Anne H. Stevens, British Historical Fiction before Scott (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 124.
Ibid., 125.
[George Ellis], “Art. II. The History of Barbadoes, from the first Discovery of the Island in the Year 1605, till the Accession of Lord Seaforth, 1801,” The Quarterly Review 1.2 (1809), 267.
The contributor was likely Joseph Lowe who had published an Inquiry into the State of the British West Indies in 1807. See Jonathan Cutmore, Contributors to the Quarterly Review: A History, 1809–1825 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008), 176.
[Charles Rose Ellis and Robert John Wilmot Horton], “Art. XIII–1. Speech of the Right Honourable George Canning …,” The Quarterly Review 30.60 (January 1824), 566–7.
Ibid., 572.
Ibid., 570–1.
Brycchan Carey and Sara Salih, “Introduction,” in Discourses of Slavery and Abolition: Britain and its Colonies, 1760–1838, ed. Brycchan Carey, Markman Ellis, and Sara Salih (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 2–3.
Steven Fuller, The Representation of Steven Fuller, Esq; Agent for Jamaica, to His Majesty’s Ministers (London: n.p., 1785), 1.
Marcus Wood, Slavery, Empathy, and Pornography (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 142–3.
Edward Long, The History of Jamaica. Or, General Survey of the Antient and Modern State of That Island: with Reflections on its Situation, Settlements, Inhabitants, Climate, Products, Commerce, Laws, and Government, 3 vols. (London: T. Lowndes, 1774), vol. 1, 2.
Ibid., vol. 2, 370. Note that orangutans are native to Indonesia and Malaysia, not Africa.
Bryan Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, 2 vols. (London: John Stockdale, 1793), vol. 1, xvii.
Ibid., vol. 1, xviii.
Ibid., vol. 1, xx–xxi.
Bryan Edwards, An Historical Survey of the French Colony in the Island of St. Domingo: Comprehendinga Short Account of its Ancient Government, Political State, Population, Productions, and Exports; A Narrative of the Calamities which have Desolated the Country ever since the year 1789, with some Reflections on their Causes and Probable Consequences, and a Detail of the Military Transactions of the British Army in that Island to the End of 1794 (London: John Stockdale, 1797), xxii.
Ibid., 83–5.
Ibid., 86.
Ibid., 7.
John Poyer, The History of Barbados, from the First Discovery of the Island, in the Tear 1605, Till the Accession of Lord Seaforth in 1801 (London: J. Mawman, 1808), xiv.
Ibid., xiv–xv.
Ibid., xxi.
J. Stewart, A View of the Past and Present State of the Island of Jamaica; With Remarks on the Moral and Physical Condition of the Slaves, and on the Abolition of Slavery in the Colonies (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1823), v–vi.
Ibid., vi–vii.
Ibid., 242.
Ibid., 243–4.
Ibid., 244.
George Boulukos, The Grateful Slave: The Emergence of Race in Eighteenth-Century British and American Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 6–7.
James Grainger, An Essay on the More Common West-India Diseases; and the Remedies which that Country Itself Produces: To Which are Added, Some Hints on the Management, etc. of Negroes, 2nd edn. (Edinburgh: Mundell & Son, and London: Longman & Rees, 1802), vi–viii.
Ibid., v–vi.
Ibid., i.
Ibid., v–vi.
Ibid., 8.
Ibid.
Ibid., 89.
Ibid., 88.
“The Following Address to the People of Great Britain and Ireland has been of Late Most Extensively Circulated throughout the United Kingdom by the West India Body in this Country,” The Anti-Slavery Reporter 82 (June 25, 1831), 296.
A Professional Planter, Practical Rules for the Management and Medical Treatment of Negro Slaves, in the Sugar Colonies (London: J. Barfield, 1803), 9–10.
Ibid., 25.
Ibid., 28.
Ibid., 35.
Ibid., 47–8.
Ibid., 85.
Peter Kitson, “‘Candid Reflections’: The Idea of Race in the Debate over the Slave Trade and Slavery in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century,” in Discourses of Slavery and Abolition: Britain and its Colonies, 1760–1838, ed. Brycchan Carey, Markman Ellis, and Sara Salih (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 22.
Peter J. Kitson, Romantic Literature, Race, and Colonial Encounter (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 103.
H. F. Augstein, “Introduction,” in Race: The Origins of An Idea, 1760–1850, ed. H. F. Augstein (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996), ix–x.
Charles White, An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man, and in Different Animals and Vegetables; and from the Former to the Latter (London: C. Dilly, 1799), iii.
Ibid., 43.
James Cowles Prichard, Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, 2nd edn., 2 vols. (London: John and Arthur Arch, 1826), vol. 1, 2.
Ibid., vol. 1, 240.
Ibid., vol. 2, 533.
John Bigland, An Historical Display of the Effects of Physical and Moral Causes on the Character and Circumstances of Nations: Including a Comparison of the Ancients and Moderns in Regard to their Intellectual and Social State (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1816), 4.
Ibid., 13.
Ibid., 61.
Ibid., 28.
Ibid.
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© 2016 Paula E. Dumas
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Dumas, P.E. (2016). Proslavery in Print. In: Proslavery Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137558589_3
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