THE UNIVERSITY OF HULL Power and Persuasion: The London West India Committee, 1783-1833 Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Hull by Angelina Gillian Osborne BA (American International College) MA (Birkbeck College, University of London) September 2014 1 Abstract In 1783 the West India interest – absentee planters, merchants trading to the West Indies and colonial agents - organised into a formal lobbying group as a consequence of the government’s introduction of colonial and economic policies that were at odds with its political and economic interests. Between 1783 and 1833, the London West India Committee acted as political advocates for the merchant and planter interest in Britain, and the planters residing in the West Indies, lobbying the government for regulatory advantage and protection of its monopoly. This thesis is a study of the London West India Committee. It charts the course of British anti-abolition through the lens of its membership and by drawing on its meeting minutes it seeks to provide a more comprehensive analysis of its lobbying strategies, activities and membership, and further insight into its political, cultural and social outlook. It explores its reactions to the threat to its political and commercial interests by abolitionist agitation, commercial and colonial policy that provoked challenges to colonial authority. It argues that the proslavery position was not as coherent and unified as previously assumed, and that the range of views on slavery and emancipation fractured consensus among the membership. Rather than focus primarily on the economic aspects of their lobbying strategy this thesis argues for a broader analysis of the West India Committee’s activities, exploring the decline of the planter class from a political perspective. 2 Contents Acknowledgements 4 Introduction 5 Chapter 1 The West India Committee and British Commercial Policy 1783-1785 25 Chapter 2 The West India Committee, 1785-1833: Structure, Functions, Scope 62 Chapter 3 Outraging the Deepest Human Sentiment: Undermining the Proslavery Stance 105 Chapter 4 An Incompatibility of Interests: Lobbying against Black Soldiers 145 Chapter 5 Slave Registration and the War of Representation over Slavery 181 Chapter 6 The West India Committee and the Politics of Amelioration 212 Conclusion 251 Appendices 257 Bibliography 271 3 Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful for the invaluable advice, guidance and support of my supervisors at WISE (University of Hull), Douglas J. Hamilton and Charles W. Prior. Many thanks also to Simon D. Smith, my former supervisor who kept in touch with me and very kindly offered advice and suggestions on many of the economic aspects of this thesis. I am grateful to the University of Hull for awarding me a studentship which enabled me to undertake my research full time, and to the Graduate School for patiently answering my many questions! I would also like to thank the staff at the various institutions where I carried out my research, in particular the knowledgeable folks at the British Library and at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. Enormous thanks go out to a number of individuals who offered me advice, suggestions and support in the course of the development of this thesis: Hakim Adi, Kate Donington, Ary Gordien, Gad Heuman and Kimani Nehusi. For all his support and generosity I thank Arthur Torrington CBE. A huge thank you must be given to my family and friends for their support over the past four years. Lastly, thank you to my son Gabriel Nii Kotey Osborne-Neequaye. You were a baby when I started this and now you have just started school; how time has flown! Thank you for all your cuddles and your jokes. This thesis is dedicated to you. 4 Introduction In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Britain accumulated vast resources of wealth through the production of sugar in its West Indian colonies. Sugar enriched the lives and fortunes of many West Indian planters, as well as those of the merchants who furnished them with supplies and credit. It also required a large labour force to cultivate it. British merchant ships had been transporting enslaved Africans to the West Indies for that purpose since the end of the sixteenth century; what had begun as a modest enterprise became an extensive and highly competitive trade. Forced African labour brought vast changes to the Atlantic world; Europe’s sweet tooth desired sugar, and England was its major consumer. As early as 1660, sugar was England’s most valuable import from her West Indian colonies.1 The involvement with the transatlantic slave trade provided the key element that determined the profitability of the West Indian colonies. Plantation slavery, which formed part of the ‘triangular’ trade of manufactured goods from England, enslaved workers from Africa and sugar from the West Indies, became the basis for a booming international economy. The profits that flowed from the West Indies into Britain and the commerce generated between colony and metropole shaped the British economy and created a powerful merchant and planter interest that played a significant role in the development of political, economic and moral discourses in Britain. This thesis is a study of the London West India Committee, a lobby comprised of planters and merchants who acted as advocates for the West India interest. It explores its reactions to threats to West Indian society and economy as represented by the abolition of the slave trade and slavery, and metropolitan challenges to colonial authority. These events took place between the end of the American Revolutionary War in 1783, and the Act to emancipate the 1 James A. Rawley, London, Metropolis of the Slave Trade (Columbia, MO; London: University of Missouri Press 2003), p. 2 5 enslaved population in the British West Indies in 1833. By examining the entries of the West India Committee’s minute books, the thesis seeks to answer six questions: who were the men that made up the membership of the West India Committee? What were their objectives during the period under study, and the tactics they employed in achieving them? How did they function as an organisation, what were their political arguments, and how did these things change over time? It argues that the West India Committee was not a coherent and unified group; it was not univocal in its reactions and strategies to prevent abolition and emancipation. These events tended to fracture consensus among its membership which had an impact on its organisation and lobbying activities. The minutes of the West India Committee offer insight into how it reacted to changes in government policy brought about by the campaigns to abolish the slave trade and slavery. They also provide insight into how the lobby functioned and was structured. Studying these aspects of the minutes means that this thesis provides a more comprehensive study of this organisation that goes beyond the traditional study of its identity as an economic lobby.2 This thesis makes no contribution to the historiography that debates the factors that contributed to abolition of the slave trade and slavery, although some of these issues are explored at various points.3 Rather, it engages with recent discussions on West Indian plantership and slave 2 Key economic studies on merchants and planters include Richard Pares, ‘Merchants and Planters,’ Economic History Review, Supplement No. 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1960); Richard Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623-1775 (Barbados: Caribbean Universities Press 1974); S.D. Smith, ‘Merchants and Planters Revisited,’ Economic History Review, 55:3 (2002), pp. 434- 465 3 The extensive literature on abolition discusses the primary factors that contributed to achieving abolition of the slave trade and slavery. Studies that address the economic factors include Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1944, 1994); Seymour Drescher, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition, 1760-1810 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press; London: Feffer and Sons 1977); for the religious/humanitarian perspective see James Walvin, England, Slaves and Freedom, 1776-1838 (Basingstoke: Macmillan1986); John Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Antislavery: the mobilisation of public opinion against the slave trade (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1995); for the self-liberating efforts of the enslaved see Richard Hart, The Slaves who abolished Slavery: Blacks in Rebellion (University of the West Indies Press 2002); Gelien Matthews, Caribbean Revolts and the British Abolitionist Movement (Baton 6 ownership in the age of abolition. These studies take an alternative approach from traditional studies of planters and merchants that explore the nature of the economic relationship between Britain and its West Indian colonies. As Christer Petley remarks, the emphasis is ‘not on the economic interests of the group, but focusing on their political and cultural outlook’.4 The philosophy, strategies, culture and foundations of the antislavery movement continue to occupy the attention of historians.5 Conversely, the aspects of the proslavery worldview have not received the same level of scrutiny.6 In his classic study of the slave trade debates in Parliament, Roger Anstey summarised the West India interest as ‘the defenders of the established order’ in parliament who acted out of ‘instinctive concern for traditional imperial interests’; Eric Williams regarded the planter as ‘the biggest capitalist of the mercantilist epoch.’7 Both historians interpret the West India Interest as an economically motivated political lobby, made rich by eighteenth-century monopoly. The economic interests of the Rouge: Louisiana State University Press 2006); Hilary Beckles, Natural Rebels: A Social History of Enslaved Black Women in Barbados (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press 1989) 4 Christer Petley, ‘Devoted Islands and that Madman Wilberforce’: British Proslavery Patriotism during the Age of Abolition, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 39:3 (2011) p. 395 5 Explanations of the origins of anti-slavery thought continue to be debated.