Telling West Indian Lives
NEW CARIBBEAN STUDIES Edited by Kofi Campbell and Shalini Puri New Caribbean Studies is a unique series of monographs and essay collections focused on the still burgeoning field of Caribbean Studies, a field that is contributing to Caribbean self-understanding, global understanding of the region, and the reinvention of various disciplines and their methodologies well beyond the Caribbean. The series especially solicits humanities-informed and interdisciplinary scholarship that addresses any of the region s language traditions. Kofi Campbell is an associate professor of English at Wilfrid Laurier University and coordinator of the English program at its Brantford Campus. He is the author of Literature and Culture in the Black Atlantic: From Pre- to Postcolonial Shalini Puri is an associate professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh. Her book The Caribbean Postcolonial: Social Equality, Post-Nationalism, and Cultural Hybridity was the winner of the 2005 Gordon and Sybil Lewis award for the best book on the Caribbean. Published by Palgrave Macmillan: Humor in the Caribbean Literary Canon By Sam Vásquez Rhys Matters: New Critical Perspectives Edited by Mary Wilson and Kerry L. Johnson Between Empires By Koichi Hagimoto Desire between Women in Caribbean Literature By Keja L. Valens The Queer Caribbean Speaks: Interviews with Writers, Artists, and Activists By Kofi Omoniyi Sylvanus Campbell Telling West Indian Lives: Life Narrative and the Reform of Plantation Slavery Cultures 1804 1834 By Sue Thomas Coloniality of Diasporas: Rethinking Intracolonial Migrations in a Pan-Caribbean Context (forthcoming) By Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel The Grenada Revolution in the Caribbean Present: Operation Urgent Memory (forthcoming) By Shalini Puri
Telling West Indian Lives Life Narrative and the Reform of Plantation Slavery Cultures 1804 1834 Sue Thomas
ISBN 978-1-349-49468-2 DOI 10.1057/9781137441034 ISBN 978-1-137-44103-4 (ebook) telling west indian lives Copyright Sue Thomas, 2014. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-44102-7 All rights reserved. First published in 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the World, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thomas, Sue, 1955 Telling West Indian lives : life narrative and the reform of plantation slavery cultures 1804 1834 / Sue Thomas. pages cm. (New Caribbean studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Slavery West Indies, British History. 2. Slave narratives West Indies, British History and criticism. 3. West Indians History 19th century. I. Title. HT1091.T46 2014 306.3 6209729 dc23 2014003102 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Integra Software Services First edition: July 2014 10987654321
for my grandsons Nathaniel and Sebastian
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Contents List of Abbreviations Acknowledgments Introduction 1 1 Anne Hart Gilbert and John Gilbert: Creole Benevolence and Antislavery, 1815 1834 11 2 William Dawes in Antigua 47 3 Methodist Life Narrative 65 4 Robert Wedderburn and the cause of humanity 97 5 The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself 119 Conclusion 167 Notes 171 Select Bibliography 217 Index 231 ix xi
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Abbreviations CMS E H HS HSOW M MMG N NA NLS OED SAPP SMl SMGGH Church Missionary Society Mary Gilbert, An Extract of Miss Mary Gilbert s Journal, ed.johnwesley Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself, ed. Sara Salih The Hart Sisters: Early African Caribbean Writers, Evangelicals, and Radicals, ed. Moira Ferguson Robert Wedderburn, The Horrors of Slavery and Other Writings, ed. Iain McCalman John Gilbert et al., Memoir of John Gilbert, Esq. Late Naval Storekeeper at Antigua. To Which Are Appended, A Brief Sketch of His Relic, Mrs. Anne Gilbert, by the Rev. William Box, Wesleyan Missionary. And a Few Additional Remarks by a Christian Friend Henrietta F. Gilbert, Memoirs of the Late Mrs. Mary Gilbert, with Some Account of Mr. Francis Gilbert, in a Letter to the Rev. Mr. Benson Susanna Strickland, ed. Negro Slavery Described by a Negro: Being the Narrative of Ashton Warner, A Native of St Vincent s National Archives (U.K.) National Library of Scotland Oxford English Dictionary Online Anne Gilbert, A Short Account of Peregrine Pickle (Now Baptised Peter) a Negro Belonging to His Majesty and Employed in the Naval Yard at English Harbour, Antigua Sarah Moore, Jr., letter to Richard Pattison Anne Gilbert, A Short Memoir of Grace Gilbert Hart, a Child Belonging to the English Harbour Sunday School
x List of Abbreviations WI West Indies, Methodist Magazine 44 (1821), 947 949 WMMS Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society/West Indies/Correspondence, School of Oriental and African Studies Library, London
Acknowledgments Telling West Indian Lives: Life Narrative and the Reform of Plantation Slavery Cultures 1804 1834 represents the culmination of research generously funded by the Australian Research Council (DP0987125), La Trobe University, and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe. The School of Communication, Arts and Critical Enquiry at La Trobe and the British Academy have funded research on projects that have seeded this book. The Centre for Caribbean Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, funded a keynote address at Writing, Diaspora and the Legacy of Slavery in 2007. The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, financially supported a public lecture on Mary Prince in 2011. I particularly want to thank Joan Anim-Addo and Evelyn O Callaghan for these occasions to speak, and the warmth of their hospitality. Julie Deblaquiere, Liz Dimock, Tom Crosbie, Raita Merivirta, and Caryn Rae Adams have provided fine research assistance over the duration of several interrelated projects. Liz s own research on nineteenth-century historical sources on gender and Anglo-imperialism in Africa has generated productive dialogues over a decade. Archivists in Antigua and Barbuda and St Vincent, and librarians at La Trobe University, the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester, the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, the University of Bristol, and the Moravian Church Library and Archive in London have provided valuable assistance. The electronic resources of the Australian National Library have been indispensable. The pleasures of working in a very collegial English Program at La Trobe have been sustaining during what have been challenging periods of transition in Australian universities. The Australian Association for Caribbean Studies, the conference series on Caribbean Women s Writing at Goldsmiths, and the meetings of the Early Caribbean Society have provided welcoming collegial environments. Special thanks are due to Barry Higman, Anne Collett, Karina Smith, Anne Hickling Hudson, Brian Hudson, Rhona Hammond, and Helen Tiffin from the Australian Association for Caribbean Studies, to
xii Acknowledgments Joan Anim-Addo, Helen Carr, and Marl ene Edwin at Goldsmiths, and to Tom Krise, who has done so much to bring together the Early Caribbean Society. Barry kindly read an advanced version of Chapter 4. Peter Hulme and Susan Forsyth have been gracious hosts of visits to the University of Essex. Paul Cheshire has generously shared his research on William Gilbert and the Gilbert family. Ann Phillips has kindly shared research on Joseph Phillips and Randolph Vigne on Thomas Pringle. In the final stages of writing the book I have much enjoyed conversations with Kate Grenville about William Dawes. I would like to thank the editors and readers of journals in which earlier work from the project has been published: Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Feminist Review, History Australia and Notes and Queries. I appreciate the conversations facilitated by the organizers of the conferences and meetings at which I have presented research in progress: Early Caribbean Society seminar, Old San Juan, 2012; The Islands in Between, 14th Annual Eastern Caribbean Islands Cultures Conference, St George s, Grenada, 2011; Early Caribbean Society seminar, Barbados, 2011; Comparative Critical Conversations: 6th International Conference of Caribbean Women s Writing, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2011; Caribbean Narratives of Race, Place and Migration, 9th Biennial Conference of the Australian Association for Caribbean Studies, 2011; Never the Twain? East and West Cultural Self- Images in Auto/Biography, Australian National University, 2010; Dissenting Voices: Lifewriting Symposium, University of Wollongong, 2009; American Tropics: Towards a Literary Geography, University of Essex, 2009; Diversity in Caribbean Research, 8th Biennial Australian Association for Caribbean Studies Conference, Queensland University of Technology, 2009; Writing, Diaspora and the Legacy of Slavery, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2007; Mo(ve)ments: Local, National and Global in Caribbean Popular Culture, 7th Biennial Australian Association for Caribbean Studies Conference, Victoria University, Melbourne, 2007; Irresponsibility, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 2006; and Landscapes of Exile, Universitat de Barcelona, 2004. Quotation from manuscript materials in the Methodist Missionary Society (MMS) Archive held by the School of Oriental and African Studies is by permission of the Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes (TMCP). Quotations from manuscript materials in the Church Missionary Society archive have been used by permission of the Church Mission Society. Chapter 1 is a much longer and revised version of Anne Hart Gilbert, Creole Benevolence and Anti-Slavery, 1815 1834, Nineteenth-Century Contexts 33 no. 3 (July 2011), 227 245, material from which has been reproduced with the permission of
Acknowledgments xiii Taylor & Francis. A very small amount of material from Affective Dynamics of Colonial Reform and Modernisation in Antigua, 1816 1835, Affect and Creolisation, Feminist Review special issue No. 103 (July 2013), ed. Joan Anim-Addo and Suzanne Scafe, 24 41 has been threaded through the Introduction and Chapter 1. Chapter 2 is a revised and shorter version of William Dawes in Antigua, copyright 2011 Sue Thomas and Johns Hopkins University Press. This article was first published in Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 12 no. 1 (Spring 2011). Reprinted with permission of Johns Hopkins University Press. A few sentences from page 203 of A Transnational Perspective on William Dawes s Treatment of Women, History Australia 10 no. 1 (April 2013): 187 204 are reused in Chapter 3 with the permission of Monash University Publishing and the Australian Historical Association. The section of Chapter 5 The Libel Cases over The History of Mary Prince isa revised and considerably shorter version of Pringle v. Cadell and Wood v. Pringle: The Libel Trials over The History of Mary Prince, Sage Publications, first published in Journal of Commonwealth Literature 40, no. 1 (2005): 113 135. At Palgrave Macmillan USA I would like to thank commissioning editor Brigitte Shull, editorial assistant Ryan Jenkins, production assistant Rachel Taenzler, and cover designer Will Speed. Integra Software Services provided a smooth and efficient production process. In Melbourne Richard McGregor developed a fine index. As ever, my greatest debt is to my family, Brendan, Anne, Nathaniel, and Sebastian Thomas in Melbourne, and Hazel and Ray Smith, Christine, Greg, Jennifer and Malcolm Bartlett, and Robyn, Peter, Andrew and Georgina Kinne in Brisbane. Brendan, Anne, Nathaniel and Sebastian have been wonderful, enriching company on my journey through researching and writing the book.