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“Home” and “this country”: Britishness and Creole identity in the letters of a transatlantic slaveholder

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 6; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14788810802696295

1740-4649

Christer Petley,

Australian History and Society

Abstract Abstract This article uses a case study of the transatlantic correspondence of Simon Taylor, a wealthy Jamaican planter, to examine the cultural identity of slaveholders in the British Caribbean at the end of the long eighteenth century. White settlers in the Americas faced metropolitan criticisms from as early as the seventeenth century. These became more pronounced in the period after the American Revolution with the development of an organised British anti-slavery campaign. Opponents of the planters claimed white West Indians lacked self-control and that they exhibited characteristics of excessive ostentation, cruelty and sensuality. In his letters, Taylor tried to avoid discussion of those aspects of his life that might attract censure, such as his long-term sexual relations with women of colour and his daily involvement with slavery. He wished others to consider him as a transplanted Briton and downplayed the distinctively local, or Creole, features of his life, presenting himself in his letters as an industrious, self-restrained and loyal colonist. Taylor's letters highlight the anxieties of white slaveholders in the Caribbean, who worried about how their Creole lives in a distant slave society would affect their status as Britons. This evidence illustrates the importance of national belonging to such colonists. They fashioned a distinctively colonial British identity, seeking metropolitan acceptance as useful subjects of an extended British world, and these features of their worldview fed into the unsuccessful pro-slavery campaigns of the period. Keywords: slaveryplantersJamaicalettersnational identity Acknowledgements The author should like to thank the AHRC for providing a grant to facilitate research for this article (Award Number: 119503) as well as Trevor Burnard and the anonymous reviewers for Atlantic Studies for their useful and productive suggestions. Notes 1. Other studies have made use of Taylor's personal correspondence. For example, Pearsall, "After all these Revolutions" and Clayton Clayton, T.R. 1986. Sophistry, Security, and Socio-Political Structures in the American Revolution; or, Why Jamaica did not Rebel. The Historical Journal, 29(2): 319–44. [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], "Sophistry, Security, and Socio-Political Structures." The questions addressed by Pearsall and Clayton differ to those dealt with here. Scholars have also made use of Taylor's correspondence as manager of absentee-owned sugar estates. See Higman, Plantation Jamaica; Campbell Campbell, John Fitzgerald. 1999. 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Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London (hereafter, ICS), II A 32, Simon Taylor to John Taylor, Kingston, 26 November 1778; I A 50, Simon Taylor to Robert Graham, Kingston, 2 April 1785; I J 48, Simon Taylor to Robert Taylor, Kingston, 19 August 1811. On these characteristics of Jamaican white society, see Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire, 69–100. 33. ICS, I J 9, Simon Taylor to Robert Taylor, Kingston, 9 June 1810. 34. Wood Wood, Betty and Roy, Clayton. 1985. Slave Birth, Death and Disease on Golden Grove Plantation, Jamaica, 1765–1810. Slavery and Abolition, 6: 99–121. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar] and Lynn, Travel, Trade and Power, 64; ICS, II A 14, Simon Taylor to John Taylor, Kingston 28 March 1775. 35. Wood and Lynn, Travel, Trade and Power, 125. 36. Lewis Lewis, Matthew. 1999. Journal of a West India Proprietor: Kept During a Residence in the Island of Jamaica, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar], Journal, 105. 37. 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ICS, I B 29, Simon Taylor to Margaret Graham, Kingston 30 October 1798; I B 27, Simon Taylor to Robert Taylor, Kingston, October [1798]. 44. Wright, Lady Nugent, 68, 98. 45. Wood and Lynn, Travel, Trade and Power, 24–5. 46. Moreton, West India Customs, 131–2. 47. House of Lords, "Minutes of Evidence," 122–3. 48. ICS, I A 12, Simon Taylor to John Taylor, Kingston, 20 Dec 1780. 49. ICS, I A 27, Simon Taylor to John Taylor, Kingston 27 January 1783. 50. Morgan, "Slaves and Livestock," 52. On this aspect of the planters' worldview, see also Davis Davis, David Brion. 2006. Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar], Inhuman Bondage, 3, 32. 51. ICS, I A 52, Simon Taylor to Robert Graham, Kingston, 15 July 1785. For further allusions to "stock," see ICS, I A 29, Simon Taylor to Sir J Taylor, Kingston 11 May 1783; I I 43, Simon Taylor to George Hibbert, Kingston, 31 October 1807. 52. Amussen, Caribbean Exchanges, 91, 134. 53. ICS, II A 21, Simon Taylor to John Taylor, Kingston, 2 September 1776. 54. ICS, I B 21, Simon Taylor to George Hibbert, Kingston, 11 May 1798. 55. Wilson, Island Race, 13. 56. Esguerra, "Spanish America in Eighteenth-Century European Travel Compilations," 334. 57. Craton, "Reluctant Creoles." 58. Greene, "Liberty, Slavery, and the Transformation of British Identity," 2. 59. ICS, I A 3, Simon Taylor to John Taylor, Kingston, 16 November 1779. 60. ICS, I A 27, Simon Taylor to John Taylor, Kingston, 27 January 1783. 61. For examples, see ICS, I A 33, Simon Taylor to John Taylor, Kingston, 24 November 1783; I A 38; Simon Taylor to John Taylor, Kingston, 21 May 1784; II A 12, Simon Taylor to John Taylor, Spanish Town, 9 December 1774; I A 50, Simon Taylor to Robert Graham, Kingston, 2 April 1785; I B 21, Simon Taylor to George Hibbert, Kingston, 11 May 1798. 62. ICS, II A 14, Simon Taylor to John Taylor, Kingston, 28 March 1775. 63. ICS, I B 43, Simon Taylor to Simon Richard Brissett Taylor, Kingston, 6 February 1799. 64. ICS, I A 17, Simon Taylor to John Taylor, Kingston, 25 September 1781. 65. ICS, I I 13, Simon Taylor to Simon Richard Brissett Taylor, Kingston, 17 February 1807. 66. ICS, II A 14, Simon Taylor to John Taylor, Kingston, 28 March 1775. 67. ICS, I A 52, Simon Taylor to Robert Graham, Kingston, 15 July 1785. 68. ICS, II A 34, Simon Taylor to John Taylor, Kingston, 6 March 1779. 69. ICS, F 58, Simon Taylor to Simon Richard Brissett Taylor, Kingston 13 June 1804; I G 9, Simon Taylor to Simon Richard Brissett Taylor, Kingston, [1804]. 70. ICS, I D 15, Simon Taylor to Simon Richard Brissett Taylor, Kingston, 14 May 1800. Possibly, his nephew failed to read Blackstone as instructed, because Taylor continued to recommend he read the Commentaries. I F 9, Simon Taylor to Simon Richard Brissett Taylor, Kingston, 10 December 1802. 71. ICS, I C 25, Simon Taylor to Simon Richard Brissett Taylor, Kingston, 26 September 1799. 72. Greene, "Changing Identity," 254. 73. ICS, I C 25, Simon Taylor to Simon Richard Brissett Taylor, Kingston, 26 September 1799. 74. ICS, I D 30, Simon Taylor to Simon Richard Brissett Taylor, Kingston, 5 September 1800. 75. ICS, I B 27, Simon Taylor to Robert Taylor, Kingston, October [1798]; I B 31, Simon Taylor to Simon Richard Brissett Taylor, Kingston, 30 October 1798. 76. Long, History of Jamaica, 247. 77. Yeh, "A Sink of All Filthiness," 76. 78. Long, History of Jamaica, 254. 79. ICS, I A 52, Simon Taylor to Robert Graham, Kingston, 15 July 1785; 1 B 2, Simon Taylor to Hugh Innes, Kingston Jamaica, 11 January 1798. 80. David Hancock Hancock, David. 1995. Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735–1785, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar] has used the term "citizens of the world" to describe London merchants of the period, who he argues were restless opportunists, "critical to the economic development of the British Atlantic community during the eighteenth century's middle decades." Taylor had much in common with them. See Hancock, Citizens of the World, 14, 20. 81. Lambert, White Creole Culture, 1. 82. Swaminathan, "Developing the West Indian Proslavery Position," 43, 50. 83. See Bayly Bayly, C.A. 1989. Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780–1830, London: Longman. [Google Scholar], Imperial Meridian.