Rethinking the Decline of the British-Caribbean Planter Class: A Case Study of Simon Taylor of Jamaica, 1760 - 1813

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This project will shed valuable new light on the social, cultural and political activities of British West Indian planters during a period defined by democratic revolutions in America, France and Haiti; by a shift towards a more centralised and authoritarian British colonial policy; and by the rise of a transatlantic abolition movement. This period also saw a decline in the planters' political influence, cultural reputation and economic prospects, as slaveholders with properties in the Caribbean struggled to come to terms with the political problems posed by metropolitan criticisms of slavery and with the practical problems posed by the loss of mainland trading partners as a result of the American Revolution.These broad themes will be explored via the extensive and rich letter collection of Simon Taylor, who was a wealthy and politically influential Jamaican sugar planter. Taylor's letters to friends, business partners, political allies and family members reveal details about all aspects of his life, ranging from information about his relationship with a free-coloured mistress to his political engagement with the anti-abolitionist West India Committee in London. This project will combine research on these letters with work on other sources, such as records of the Jamaican legislative Assembly, Taylor's last will and testament, contemporary newspapers and other published material. By using these sources to study Taylor and the world he inhabited, it will be possible to present a far more in-depth and subtle analysis of the planter class during the second half of the eighteenth century than we possess at present.Key questions include:- How did Taylor and other planters interact with other groups in local society? For example, how did he interact with poorer white managerial staff on his sugar estates, and what was the nature of his relationship with his free-coloured mistress and mixed-race children?- How and to what extent did Taylor and other planters change their attitudes towards enslaved people between 1760 and 1813? Did they adapt their management techniques or their attitudes towards their workers in response to abolitionist campaigning?- How and to what extent did Taylor's letters bind him into family, social, business and political networks that spanned the Atlantic? Did the Atlantic networks that Taylor forged connect him to places other than Jamaica and Britain? - How influential were Taylor and other Jamaican planters during debates over the British Atlantic slave system? To what extent were he and his colleagues able to stave off and influence the reform of Britain's slave system?- How did planters like Taylor perceive their connection with the imperial metropole? How did they attempt to reconcile their involvement with slavery with their identities as Britons? How did they respond to changing metropolitan ideas about Britishness? In seeking to answer these questions, this work will build on my previous research, including my recently published monograph, Slaveholders in Jamaica (2009). I have also recently completed a short project on Simon Taylor's cultural identity, and as part of that, I worked on some of Taylor's letters. I therefore have a good sense of the value of these letters as a largely untapped source for the study of British Caribbean slave societies and transatlantic political debates. I have also acquired a full set of the letters on microfilm.