Today marks the eleventh birthday of On the archival trail of William Macintosh. If I had known when I began the blog in 2012 that, more than a decade later, I would still be deeply engaged in the same research project, I might never have started it. The logics of the neoliberal academy tend not to encourage or reward long-term activity, particularly so when the ultimate output—a book that might have taken fifteen years to write—will, in the great REF balance, equate to two journal articles at most. At the same time, I have been supremely fortunate to have been able to pursue this project without ever having come under institutional pressure to do otherwise; the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway has, in this respect, been an infinitely patient and encouraging home for this work. Increasing casualisation and precarity across the sector does mean, however, that the opportunity to pursue long-term and slow scholarship has become a privilege, rather than the necessary condition of deep and insightful inquiry.

The anniversary of the blog does, also, prompt me to reflect on my goals for the next twelve months and the pace of my writing. As far as the narrative chronology of the book goes, I am now dealing with perhaps the most interesting and consequential period of Macintosh’s life: the nine-or-so months that he spent in India between 1779 and 1780. Macintosh arrived in India after an incredibly convoluted journey from France that had taken nearly a year and a half and which had seen him held as a prisoner of war. His initial intention to establish himself as a private trader had failed when he lost his cargo of tradable goods during the siege of Pondicherry in 1778. When he finally arrived in India in July 1779, he had lost everything and found that his two on-the-ground contacts—Lauchlin Macleane and Alexander Elliot—were dead. Although a despondent Macintosh tried initially to arrange for an immediate return to Europe, he quickly developed new friendships in Madras and Calcutta, particularly so with Philip Francis, whose combative relationship with Warren Hastings had a significant influence on Macintosh’s political analysis of British India.

One of the first things Macintosh did on arrival in India, however, was to write a long and heartfelt letter to his son, William, setting out a series of life lessons and maxims that he had been unable to impart in person due to their long separation. Inspired by Lord Chesterfield’s recently published book of letters to his own son, Macintosh’s letter to William set out his views on what William should be reading, what he should be eating, which sports and activities he should be pursuing, and how, more generally, he should be conducting himself in society. William would have then been 14 years old when the letter was written and it is difficult to read it without thinking about how little time William would have had to put any of this advice into practice; within five short years, his life would end tragically in a lonely hotel room in Covent Garden.

As things currently stand, my plan for the spring and summer is to advance the book to the point at which Macintosh returns to Britain from India and begins to publish his findings. Although his views on British India were most fully articulated in his 1782 travel narrative, he actually published two earlier pamphlets in London, neither of which has previously been attributed to him. At the same time as he was working up his narrative—a task largely completed by the Grub Street writer for hire William Thomson—Macintosh was busily engaged in London and Paris dealing with the personal-cum-financial concerns of Thomas Lewin and John Whitehill—friends he had acquired in India in 1779, whose complex and disputatious affairs consumed much of Macintosh’s attention in the months following his return to Britain.

I also hope to put in an application this summer for a recently launched grant scheme from the Royal Historical Society, that would potentially provide funding for a one-day workshop in 2024 focusing on the draft book manuscript. The scheme is an interesting one in that it is aimed at mid-career scholars who might otherwise rely only on informal peer networks for support in the writing of a book. The scheme acts to formalise and recognise those informal support structures by providing funds to cover participants’ expenses and a small honorarium. The reason the scheme appeals to me—notwithstanding the slightly terrifying thought of a day-long critique from up to six expert readers—is the benefit of having the perspective of area specialists. Following Macintosh’s global life has necessarily meant following him through and between what are often geographically distinct areas of historiographical specialism, such as the Caribbean, British India, and Europe during the French Revolution. Being able to feel confident about the contribution that I am making to each of these fields, whilst drawing appropriate connections between them, would be a real boon. More prosaically, the workshop would act as a helpful spur to the completion of the next two chapters of the book; it would be a hard deadline that I could not miss!