The Bishop of Jamaica and Slave Instruction

1975 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Turner
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
The West ◽  
Religious Instruction ◽  
Reform Programme ◽  
Windward Islands ◽  
Moral Instruction ◽  
The Government ◽  
Future Condition

In July 1824 two new bishoprics were organised in the West Indies, the bishopric of Jamaica including Honduras and the bishopric of Barbados and the Leeward and Windward islands, to promote the activity of the Anglican Church among the slave population. A series of resolutions passed in the House of Commons in May 1823 committed the government to reforms intended to prepare the slaves for eventual freedom, and primary importance was given to their need for religious instruction. Knowledge of Christianity was regarded as an ‘indispensable necessity to…the foundation of every beneficial change in their character and future condition’. Most of the reform programme, which included the abolition of flogging for women, the admission of slave evidence in court and the improvement of manumission facilities, involved revision of existing slave codes and implementation, therefore, depended, outside the crown colonies, on the cooperation of the island assemblies. The imperial government, however, was free to promote religious instruction and chose to appoint the bishops. Under their supervision the Anglican Church in the West Indies was to become a missionary force. As the Secretary of State explained to the governor of Jamaica, ‘his Majesty's Government have been anxious to prove the deep interest which they feel in the encouragement of the religious and moral instruction of the Negroes, by at once taking upon themselves the whole charge of placing the Clergy of the West Indies under Episcopal control’. Funds were voted to pay the bishop of Jamaica £5,600 p.a. and salaries were also provided for six auxiliary curates and an archdeacon to help to supervise the clergy.

IV. The Colonial Office and the Abolition of Slavery

1971 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 723-734 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Reckord
Keyword(s):  
West Indian ◽  
Slave System ◽  
British Government ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
The West ◽  
Reform Programme ◽  
Viable Solution ◽  
Indian Slavery ◽  
Slave Population ◽  
Colonial Office

Under pressure from the anti-slavery interest in the House of Commons, the British Government undertook, in 1823, to reform West Indian slavery and prepare the slaves for eventual freedom. This policy of amelioration was based on the assumption that the West Indian planters would co-operate with the British Government to improve slave conditions. As George Canning explained to the House of Commons, ‘The masters are the instruments through whom, and by whom, you must act upon the slave population.’ Ten years later the reform programme was abandoned in favour of abolition. This change of policy reflected, in part, the conversion of officials at the Colonial Office who began to urge the need for emancipation in 1831. For eight years the Colonial Office made persistent efforts to induce the co-operation of the West Indian planters; these attempts failed and a mass of evidence accumulated which suggested that the slave system could not be improved, it could only be abolished. This article demonstrates the efforts made by the Colonial Office to effect amelioration in the legislative colonies with particular reference to Jamaica and the nature of the evidence which demonstrated that emancipation was the only viable solution to the problem of West Indian slavery.

The Origins of the Commission System in the West India Trade The Alexander Prize Essay

1952 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 89-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. G. Davies
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
West Indian ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
Direct Administration ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
The Government ◽  
Prize Essay

The half-century which followed the capture of Jamaica in 1655 was characterized by the consolidation rather than by the expansion of the English interest in the West Indies. In the political sphere this consolidation took several forms. The acquisition of Jamaica, by far the largest English West Indian colony, and the termination of proprietary rule in, the Caribee Islands in 1663 brought the greater part of the English West Indian empire under the direct administration of the Crown. As a corollary to this extension of Crown rule, the creation of effective institutions for the government of these and other colonies became a matter of urgent necessity. After a series of experiments in the decade following the Restoration, the constitution in 1672 of the Council of Trade and Plantations inaugurated 'a more thorough system of colonial control than had been established by any of its predecessors'. The sum effect of these developments was that London became, in a way that it had never been before, the place where all the major decisions affecting the destinies of the West Indies were taken. From London there issued not only Crown-appointed governors and a stream of Orders-in-Council, but also declarations of the King's pleasure on such minor questions as appointments to colonial judgeships and seats in colonial councils.1 To London there flowed, besides acts of colonial legislatures for approval or rejection, a torrent of complaints and petitions for redress.

The Negro Code

2019 ◽  
pp. 177-201
Author(s):  
P. J. Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Family Life ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
The West ◽  
Religious Instruction ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Universal Scale

What came to be known as Burke’s ‘Negro Code’ was a draft for an act of Parliament, whose aim was to put an end over a long period to ‘all traffic in the persons of men’ and to the holding of them in ‘a state of slavery’. The measures to bring this about were comprehensive and detailed. ‘Civilization and improvement’ were to be spread in Africa by the exertion of British influence, so that other forms of trade would replace slaving. Improved conditions for the slaves were to be imposed in the West Indies, so that the enslaved population would reproduce itself and there would be no need to import new slaves. By religious instruction, the cultivation of family life, and the acquisition of property rights, the enslaved were to be gradually prepared to become a free labour force. Underlying this very ambitious programme were assumptions about the backwardness of Africa on the universal scale of human progress, which necessitated outside influence for it to develop beyond the barbarism of enslaving its people, and about the degradation of the slave populations, which meant they would not be fit for freedom for a very long time. Probably drafted in 1780, Burke’s Code was almost immediately overtaken by the mass popular movement to abolish the slave trade.

scholarly journals X. Report of the observations of the total solar eclipse of august 29, 1886, made at the Island of Carriacou

1889 ◽  
Vol 180 ◽  
pp. 351-362
Keyword(s):  
Solar Eclipse ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Total Solar Eclipse ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Committee Meeting ◽  
The West ◽  
Astronomical Observations ◽  
Windward Islands ◽  
Green Island

The astronomers appointed by the Committee of the Royal Society to proceed to the West Indies to observe the total eclipse of the Sun on the morning of August 29, sailed together from Southampton in the R. M. S. “Nile,” Captain Gillies, on July 29, and, after a fair passage, anchored at Barbados at daybreak on August 11. A committee meeting on board had partly fixed our plans with regard to the stations of observation, so that, when we found two of H. M.’s gunboats awaiting our arrival in the roadstead, the instruments of Mr. Maunder and of the Rev. S. J. Perry were, after consultation with the commanders of H.M/s vessels, at once transferred to the “Bullfrog,” whilst the remainder of the instruments found a ready berth on the deck of H. M. S. “Fantôme,” which, being the larger of the two unboats, was reserved for the observers destined for Grenada and its immediate vicinity. Both the war-vessels started the same morning for Grenada, Mr. Lockyer and Dr. Thorpe sailing on board the “Fantome,” in order to secure the earliest possible interview with the Governor of the Windward Islands. The rest of the astronomers left the same evening in the R. M. S. “Eden,” Captain Mackenzie, and, after touching at St. Vincent, arrived at Grenada early on the afternoon of the 12th. The private luggage of Mr. Maunder and of the Rev. S. J. Perry was immediately placed on board H. M. S.“Bullfrog,” where they received the heartiest welcome from Captain Masterman, R. N., who devoted the best part of his own cabin to Father Perry, and found a comfortable private cabin for Mr. Maunder. Captain Archer, R. N., had also arrived at Grenada in command of H. M. S. “Fantome”; and the “Sparrowhawk,” a surveying vessel, commanded by Captain Oldham, R. N., was anchored in the harbour of St. George, her officers having been placed by the Hydrographer of the Admiralty at the disposal of the expedition. Previous to our arrival Governor Sendall, most ably assisted by Captain Melling, had personally inspected most of the best sites for the astronomical observations, collected all existing records of the weather, and designed huts for the protection of the instruments. Carriacou and Green Island were told off for the northern station, to be occupied by Father Perry and Mr. Maunder, assisted by the officers and men of H. M. S. “Bullfrog” and by Sub-Lieutenant Helby, of H. M. S. “Sparrowhawk.” It was thought, however, more advisable not to separate the members of this party by a distance of some twenty miles, and, therefore, the more northerly island of Carriacou was fixed upon as the site best suited for both observers.

scholarly journals ‘True, Publick and Notorious’: The Privateering War of 1812

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Faye M. Kert
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
United States Navy ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The United States ◽  
War Of 1812 ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
The West ◽  
The Government ◽  
British North American

During the War of 1812, hundreds of private armed vessels, or privateers, carrying letters of marque and reprisal from their respective governments, served as counterweights to the navies of Great Britain and the United States. By 1812, privateering was acknowledged as an ideal way to annoy the enemy at little or no cost to the government. Local citizens provided the ships, crews and prizes while the court and customs systems took in the appropriate fees. The entire process was legal, licensed and often extremely lucrative. Unlike the navy, privateers were essentially volunteer commerce raiders, determined to weaken the enemy economically rather than militarily. So successful were they, that from July 1812 to February 1815, privateers from the United States, Britain, and the British provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia (as well as those sailing under French and Spanish flags) turned the shipping lanes from Newfoundland to the West Indies, Norway to West Africa, and even the South Pacific into their hunting grounds. In the early months of the war, privateers were often the only seaborne force patrolling their own coasts. With the Royal Navy pre-occupied with defending Britain and its Caribbean colonies from French incursions, there were relatively few warships available to protect British North American shipping from their new American foes. Meanwhile, the United States Navy had only a handful of frigates and smaller warships to protect their trade, supported by 174 generally despised gunboats. The solution was the traditional response of a lesser maritime power lacking a strong navy—private armed warfare, or privateering.

Crèvecoeur’s Pennsylvania

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Lyman Bushman
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
Lancaster County ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
The Government

Slavery existed in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, just north of the Maryland line, but it was spotty and restricted to a small number of families. The relatively few slaves put a cap on Pennsylvania’s wealth. There were no vast estates like the great southern plantations and wealth per capita was much less. But Pennsylvania was more prosperous than New England. Wealth per capita was substantially higher. It stood in the middle between the South and New England. Wheat with its thriving markets in the West Indies and Europe buoyed all aspects of the Pennsylvania economy. There were far more shops and tradesmen in Lancaster borough, for example, than in comparable towns in New England like Springfield, Massachusetts, or Hartford, Connecticut. It was a prosperous society but rent with conflict. The most telling division in Pennsylvania society was not between rich and poor but between frontier farmers exposed to Indian attacks and more protected areas. Stories of atrocities formed a distinctive mentality. Frontier towns were outraged by the failure of the government to protect them and took affairs into their own hands by slaughtering the Indians. Crèvecouer, who observed both the prosperity of Pennsylvania and its bitter conflicts, marveled that a society with so much promise endured so many miseries.

The Government of the West Indies

1924 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 205-206
Author(s):  
E. ff. W. Lascelles
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
The West ◽  
The Government

III. Party Politics, 1801–1802: George Canning and the Trinidad Question

1969 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 442-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick C. Lipscomb
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
The West ◽  
Opposition Party

On 23 November 1801 Henry Addington addressed the House of Commons on the financial affairs of the nation. The prime minister, in the course of his remarks, alluded briefly to the government's intention of selling certain Crown properties in the West Indies. The measure was planned, he explained, as a means of reducing arrears charged upon the Civil List.1 Although Addington hoped to effect the sales without parliamentary opposition, the question soon became entangled in the meshes of political intrigue. With remarkable cunning the young Pittite, George Canning, sought to use the issue as a means of driving William Pitt into opposition to Addington's government and of creating a new opposition party with Pitt as its leader.

A Catalogue of Books printed between 1498 and 1700 now in the Library of the British School at Athens

1978 ◽  
Vol 73 ◽  
pp. 189-211
Author(s):  
Dennis E. Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Boarding School ◽  
The West ◽  
British School ◽  
The Government ◽  
University Of Göttingen ◽  
The University ◽  
Of Greece

The nucleus of the collection of books printed before 1701 which are now in the Library of the British School at Athens was left by the distinguished historian of Greece, George Finlay ( 1799–1875), whose name the library still bears. His father, John Finlay (1757–1802), a Major in the Royal Engineers and a Fellow of the Royal Society, who had seen service in the West Indies, was already a book-collector, and many of the books contain his printed label. He was in charge of the Government Powder Mills at Faversham in Kent when his second son, George, was born there on 21 December 1799. Three years later John Finlay died, and in 1806 or 1807 Mrs. Finlay married Alexander MacGregor, a Liverpool merchant. George was put into a boarding school for some years at Everton, Liverpool; and it was here, in 1815, when he was not yet sixteen, that we have the first evidence of his love of books, for he bought in that year at least one seventeenth-century edition. He was later moved to Glasgow to live with an uncle, and afterwards spent some time at the University of Göttingen.

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