What was the west india lobby

In , Richard Barrett, speaker of the Jamaican House of Assembly, wrote that the planters of the island 'are Englishmen; their literature is English'. He sought to impress on his British readers that this had an effect on the slaveholders' outlook. He exclaimed that those 'in Jamaica sympathise with their friends in England' in their concerns for the welfare of slaves. Like Bryan Edwards's writing 40 years previously, Barrett reflected a conservative and racist worldview, arguing that it was necessary for white men to control black people and compel them to labour.

Both men advanced these arguments while conceding some rhetorical ground to the abolitionists. They did this partly because they wished to refute abolitionist claims that they had degenerated from acceptably British standards of behaviour, wanting outsiders to see them as they saw themselves, not as supine despots, but as industrious and loyal Britons. They also did it to try to maintain an economic and social system that relied on a thoroughgoing denial of human equality.

The slaveholders of the Caribbean therefore borrowed the language of their progressive and liberal opponents to try to justify and shore up practices based on violence and dispossession. As Stanley made clear, by the British government had seen through the planters' rhetoric and was not prepared further to indulge slaveholder claims about 'benevolence' and 'improvement'.

By this time, however, the British had been debating slavery for over half a century, and the self-interested opposition of the proslavery lobby had played a significant part in holding up the moment of freedom for the half a million enslaved men, women and children of the British Empire. Created Spring by the Institute of Historical Research. Copyright notice. No javascript: other issues. An engraving of a plantation driver, Jamaica, s James M. British links and the West Indian proslavery argument Christer Petley, Leeds Metropolitan University In his proslavery History of the British Colonies in the West Indies , the planter-politician Bryan Edwards noted an important shift in British sensibilities, claiming that 'the age itself is hourly improving in humanity'.

Back to 2 Jeffrey R. Back to 3 See Richard S. Back to 8 The Jamaica Magazine , 1 Feb. Back to 9 See Jack P. Greene, 'Liberty, slavery, and the transformation of British identity in the eighteenth-century West Indies', Slavery and Abolition , Back to 11 The Royal Gazette , 5 July Back to 13 Trevor Burnard, 'Passengers only: the extent and significance of absenteeism in eighteenth-century Jamaica', Atlantic Studies , 1.

Back to 14 Elizabeth A. Ward Cambridge, , Back to 16 Edwards, History , vol. Back to 17 Edwards, History , vol. Chaplin, 'Slavery and the principle of humanity: a modern idea in the early lower south', Journal of Social History , 24 —1. Their claim to be "West Indians" was an attempt to position themselves between metropolis and colonies. In the English port cities where they lived, and in their interactions with other commercial groups, the West India merchants and planters had to confront both liberal political economy and rival monopolies, in particular the East India Company.

As the self-proclaimed representatives of the colonies in England, these sugar merchants and absentee planters, many of whom had never visited a plantation, identified and described the special economic and cultural conditions of the Caribbean colonies as fragile links in the chain of imperial authority, not to be disturbed by antislavery or free-trade enthusiasm.

Source A Planter's Letter. Source An Economic Defence. Source Royal Gazette. Source Working class slavery. By using this site, you agree we can set and use cookies. For more details of these cookies and how to disable them, see our cookie policy. They argued, millions of pounds worth of property would be threatened by the abolition of the slave trade, that the slave trade was necessary to provide essential labour on the plantations and that abolition would ruin the colonies.

In the period before the abolition campaign got going, Sir James Lowther was the richest commoner in England. He owned properties in both England and the West Indies. Although his English estates brought him greater financial returns, it was the profits from his Barbados sugar plantations that allowed him to purchase land in England. The House of Commons was dominated by various interest groups, of which the West India Lobby was for long the most powerful.