The Sugar Barons (81 page)

Authors: Matthew Parker

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BOOK: The Sugar Barons

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²²In April 1669 he wrote to London that he was ‘very glad to find himself so well backed by his Majesty’s commands, since his former actions of this nature have with some gained him the imputation of severity’.

²³Blacks were in the majority by 1660, and outnumbered the whites by two to one by the 1680s. By the end of the century, by which time a quarter of a million had been shipped to the English sugar islands, there were, according to most estimates, 50,000 enslaved Africans and fewer than 16,000 whites in Barbados: more than three slaves for every white person.

²⁴Only once in the Act was the word ‘slave’ used rather than ‘Negro’, which indicates both the squeamishness that the English had over the term ‘slave’ and also how increasingly status and race were being collapsed.

²⁵Emigrants to South Carolina were not just poor whites, many of whom still held on in Barbados. A number were younger sons of the island’s big planter families, such as the Sandifords and Halls. With no more room to expand there, lesser offspring were sent off with whatever members of the household could be spared. From the Caribbean they brought with them slaves, the plantation system and ‘mentality’, a slave code, speech patterns and architectural styles. In all, Barbadians had a decisive role in shaping the new colony, creating a slave-based plantation society more similar to the islands than to the rest of North America. Lowland Carolina would soon have a population ratio of four blacks to every white, similar to the ratio in Barbados. Parts of Charleston’s ‘brittle, gay and showy society’ of the eighteenth century would echo the Barbados atmosphere of a century before, and between 1669 and 1737, nearly half of the governors of South Carolina had lived in the West Indies or were sons of islanders. Seven of the early Carolina governors had Barbados backgrounds.

²⁶An eighteenth-century historian of Jamaica would write: ‘The French [are] less haughty, less disdainful, consider the Africans as a species of moral beings. The English consider them as productions which ought neither to be used nor destroyed without necessity. But they never treat them with familiarity, never smile upon them, nor speak to them.’ Certainly, the
Code Noir
of Louis XIV was more benevolent than the slave laws in the English colonies. For slaves in the French colonies, rudimentary religious instruction and baptism were compulsory.

²⁷‘And such others that have more favour shown them by their masters, which adds abundantly to their crimes.’

²⁸John Codrington died in about 1688, his will giving a stark reminder of the precariousness of these new possessions, in comparison to relatively safe property in Barbados: the land in Antigua and Barbuda is covered by a caveat ‘if estate lost or taken by enemies …’

²⁹Taylor was born in 1664, on the Isle of Wight, the son of a minor gentleman. Having studied mathematics, he fought for James II during the Monmouth Rebellion. He had much in common with Richard Ligon, in his curiosity about the slaves and creole culture, and like Ligon came to the West Indies at a time of personal crisis (in his case a family argument), and left having been floored by illness.

³⁰A small number of their names have survived, their signs uncovered by archaeologists: Black Dogg, Blue Anchor, Catt & Fiddle, Sign of Bacchus.

³¹Peter Beckford’s portrait has him standing by an open window with a fort in the background, probably Fort Charles, wearing a magnificently embroidered coat that reaches to his knees. On the windowsill is an enormous hat, with ostrich plumes.

³²A subsequent fire in 1704 completed the work of the earthquake, although the remaining tiny spit of land remained a Royal Navy base for many years.

³³The War of the Grand Alliance (1688–97) is also known as the Nine Years War, and King William’s War. Across the Americas, France fought against England, Spain and the Dutch.

³⁴Johnson took 100 slaves with him and became a wealthy planter, serving as governor of South Carolina for six years from 1703.

³⁵Like most Englishman of his time, Codrington hated and despised the Irish, but would admit, in a letter to the Governor of Montserrat, that ‘the Irish have never had any great kindness from the English … witness Ireland itself … they have a grievance against you, and doubtless hope for revenge’.

³⁶This was the moment that Ned Ward visited Jamaica – when it was at its most wretched.

³⁷The worst periods for disease would always coincide with military expeditions from Europe, for example 1693, 1703–4, 1732 and 1745.

³⁸That said, he did find a lucrative job for his cousin William, his uncle John’s son, then aged 21, according to his uncle ‘a young gentleman of great virtue and efforts’.

³⁹Codrington would later write of the people of St Kitts that ‘They are a parcell of Banditts, and wd willingly be without government, religion, or any appearance of order.’

⁴⁰Parke and Mrs Chester had a daughter, Lucy. In his will, Parke requested that she change her name to his, and that anyone marrying her also become a Parke.

⁴¹William Codrington, Chistopher’s nephew and heir, would father a number of mulatto children, whom he cheerfully acknowledged and took with him to England when he became an absentee sugar baron.

⁴²The plantation went to his sister and brother-in-law Samuel Reynold.

⁴³William Beckford became an alderman of London in 1752; he is known as Alderman William distinguish him from his son, William Beckford of Fonthill.

⁴⁴It was not just Anglo-Americans; all nationalities engaged in piracy. One of the worst was a Spaniard, Miguel Enriquez, who was based in Puerto Rico, and whose favourite tactic was to maroon the crews of the ships he attacked on deserted islands to die of hunger or thirst.

⁴⁵A slaver owned by the Malbones of Newport was attacked by pirates, whereupon the captain offered freedom to all the slaves who would join in defending the vessel. The enemy was repulsed and the freed slaves settled on the Malbone estate in Pomfret, Connecticut.

⁴⁶On 6 March, James Brown wrote to Captain Fields: ‘it is ticklish times here my neighbors threaten to inform against us, so I hope you will not be too bold when you come home, enter in the West Indias [western inlet] if you can, and if you cannot bring too down the River and send your cargo some to Rhode Island and some up here in boats, so as not to bring but a few hhds. up to Wharff’.

⁴⁷The style of the library would be hugely influential: it was much admired by Thomas Jefferson, when he visited Newport in 1790. Thereafter Jefferson began championing classical architecture as the model for public building in the new republic.

⁴⁸Thistlewood had met Cudjoe back in 1750, and found his men a reassuring presence: ‘He Shook me by ye hand and Begg’d a Dram of us, which we gave him – he had on a feather’d hatt, Swords at his Side – gun upon his Shoulder &c Bare foot and Bare legg’d, Somewhat a Majestick look – he brought to my Memory ye picture of Robinson Crusoe.’

⁴⁹During Tacky’s Revolt, a group of rebels shot the three white people they found on an estate, then raped and prepared to kill the white overseer’s mulatto mistress. She was spared after the intercession of the plantation’s slaves, who saw her as their friend.

⁵⁰It was a double wedding, with Rose’s widow marrying the distinguished Sir Hans Sloane, who would thereafter be looked upon by the Fuller boys as their true grandfather. The links between the two families strengthened further when Rose’s sister Elizabeth married Sloane’s son William in 1733.

⁵¹By 1767, there were nearly 600 sugar works in St Domingue, producing, with the labour of more than 200,000 slaves, some 60,000 tons of sugar, about twice the production of Jamaica.

⁵²This Dallas became Secretary of the US Treasury. His son, George Miflin Dallas, was Vice President of the United States, 1845–8. The city of Dallas is named after him.

⁵³Napoleon would try to re-establish slavery in St Domingue in 1802, but apart from the treacherous capture of Toussaint L’Ouverture, the expedition was a failure, with up to 40,000 French troops succumbing to yellow fever. Independence, as the new republic of Haiti, was declared in 1804.

⁵⁴Bond villain Sir Hugo Drax was named after Ian Fleming’s friend Admiral Sir Reginald Drax, Richard Drax’s grandfather. As well as a distinguished Navy man, he was a pioneer of solar power, using it to heat his pool, but he failed to get the idea to catch on.

⁵⁵There are pages and pages of Beckfords in the Jamaican phone book, as there are of Codringtons all over what was the British West Indies. In contrast, there is only a single Drax in the Barbados phone book, a Greta Drax, who lives in Bowling Alley, St Joseph.

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Published by Walker Publishing Company, Inc., New York
A Division of Bloomsbury Publishing

Excerpt from “Tales of the Islands” from SELECTED POEMS by Derek Walcott.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR
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ISBN: 978-0-8027-1744-3 (hardcover)

First Published in Great Britain by Hutchinson in 2011

First published in the U.S. by Walker Publishing Company in 2011
This e-book edition published in 2011

E-book ISBN: 978-0-8027-7799-7

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Contents