It’s interesting to compare this report on the British government’s compensation scheme for former slaveholders with the way the ‘plantocracy’ has often been treated in accounts of British history: as vulgar arrivistes intent only on spending their ill-gotten gains, thereby guaranteeing their status as essentially marginal, dead end figures. What this tends to conceal is that firstly a lot of them came back from the colonies to establish enduring commercial and political dynasties, and that secondly the amount of absentee ownership, including by some very noble figures indeed. There must have been a hell of a lot of insider dealing in slaves going on in the months before the payoffs came down the tube.
All of which also casts the whole process of abolition in a different perspective: less a matter of moral force and more a matter of show us the money. Hardly a surprise, I guess.
I also note with interest the comnnection between slaveholding and my own amla mater, the former PCL, whose student magazine used to be called McGarel. It was the first place I got anything published.
I hadn't realised that the amounts involved were quite so huge - £20 million, 40% of total government spending! And my own idiot ancestor didn't see a penny of it, having manumitted all 200 of his slaves on moral grounds about 20 years before abolition.
Posted by: ajay | February 25, 2013 at 10:24 AM
What it reminds me of most strongly, actually, is Bevin (?) being asked how he would overcome the BMA's opposition to the foundation of the NHS, and replying "we will stuff their mouths with gold".
You can add to that the bill (and the butcher's bill) for the West Africa Squadron; quite apart from the cost of maintaining the squadron, it freed 150,000 slaves, and there was head money awarded (similar to prize money) of £5 per person.
Posted by: ajay | February 25, 2013 at 10:30 AM
Not to mention that the 'sickly season' of anti-slavery patrols kept RN officer promotion going during the hideous post 1815 blockage. Also it enabled ex RN officers to stand for election on Liberal tickets, in the basis that they'd suppressed the trade. That Bartholemew Roberts, he freed quite a few slaves - til he was executed for premature anti-slavery.
Snark aside, abolition was a Good Thing, and worth remarking upon. Well done to Ajay's grandsire, too.
*inter alia.
Posted by: Chris Williams | February 25, 2013 at 02:50 PM
Not to mention that the 'sickly season' of anti-slavery patrols kept RN officer promotion going during the hideous post 1815 blockage.
That was one of the reasons for the great Wave of Explorers that swept across northern Canada in the 1820s and 1830s from right to left (starting, correctly, in Hudson Bay) - ambitious young naval officers needed something dangerous to do to show they were worthy of promotion.
Posted by: ajay | February 25, 2013 at 03:18 PM
FRANKLIN KLAXON *eats boots*
Posted by: belle le triste | February 25, 2013 at 05:21 PM