The easing of lockdown restrictions in April and May has allowed me to tick off some long-overdue archival work at the British Library, the National Archives, and at the National Library of Scotland. Over a series of sessions at the BL, in particular, I have worked through a range of material from the 1770s, 1780s, and 1790s concerning Macintosh’s time, respectively, in Grenada, India, and Switzerland. These sessions have thrown up lots of interesting material that will help fuel the next few months of writing.

Although archival work has taken priority this month, I have finally manage to finish a first draft of the book’s second empirical chapter, which covers the period (roughly from 1768 to 1770) when the centre of the debate over the governance of Grenada shifted from the island itself to London and sparked a pamphlet war, much of which was coordinated by Thomas Hollis. This is also the period during which Macintosh brought legal proceedings against Richard Burke over the disputed 4 ½ percent duty on Grenada’s exports and when Alexander Johnstone’s complaints against Robert Melvill were heard by the Privy Council (a hearing during which Macintosh should have served as a star witness, but didn’t). This was a complicated chapter and it has taken many months of reading and research to figure out the basic details of what actually happened, who did what, and what effects those actions had. I am, in the end, quite happy with the way the chapter has shaped up and think it offers some genuinely new insights, particularly with respect to Thomas Hollis’s role in coordinating the anti-Catholic lobby over Grenada’s governance.

One of the real highlights of this month has been reading others’ contributions on Macintosh. Emily Hayes, on the basis of some translation work she undertook on my behalf in April, wrote three fascinating guest blog posts this month. Inspired by her engagement with Macintosh’s domestic ephemera from 1780s and 1790s Provence, Emily has written wonderfully on the themes of identity, food and consumption, and transnationality. Elsewhere, Emma Rothschild has uncovered, from her own archival investigations, a particular moment of Macintosh’s Caribbean experience of which I was totally unaware. Rothschild’s work, of which I am a huge admirer, casts a long shadow over my investigation of Macintosh and it was a real thrill to read her contribution.

Looking ahead to June, I am planning to wrap up archival work at the National Records of Scotland and the British Library before moving on to tackle the book’s third empirical chapter, which will finally follow Macintosh from the Caribbean to India.