Having recently completed the transcription of Macintosh’s Caribbean letterbook (a task that began more than three years ago), I am now working through it in chronological order to begin filling in the details of Macintosh’s life and his commercial and political activities. The letterbook begins in 1763, which was something of a watershed moment for Macintosh as he shifted his commercial activities and geographical location, going from being a merchant in Antigua to a planter in Grenada. Central to this shift were two things: first, the cessation of the Seven Years’ War, which brought Grenada under British control and, second, the personal friendship and business relationship Macintosh developed with the owner of the Grenadian estate which he purchased, Post Royal.
Much of Macintosh’s correspondence in early 1763 concerned his purchase (for £3,333) of Post Royal from William Fouray de la Grandrie. I had, until today, struggled to find much information on Fouray but, thanks to Google Books, I found a listing in a nineteenth-century catalogue of the Nantes public library for a manuscript travel account of a journey by William and his wife to and from Grenada. Happily the same manuscript has been digitised. More happily still, it contains several references to Macintosh, most relating to the Fourays’ visit to Antigua.
On completing the purchase of the estate, Macintosh wrote to a number of friends (clearly in high spirits) to let them know that “I am commenc’d a Grenada Planter having made a very advantageous & easy purchase”. Far from suffering buyer’s remorse, Macintosh was convinced he had grabbed a bargain that would, in effect, pay for itself. Writing to one correspondent, Macintosh explained his vision thus:
I have deposited bills in the hands of a third person for 3333£ Stg to be deliverd [sic] on the 1st. of June next at 4, 6, & 8 months Sight on London, in equal proportion, & this Crop will I expect answer £1300 Stg. of which, the next payment of £1500 becomes due in London the 1st. November 1764, & 1st. January 1765, by equal halves & each Succeeding payment at equal periods untill [sic] January 1769, neither of which bear interest untill [sic] they become due; so that you may conceive each Crop will more than pay for each Successive payment
Bibliothèque municipale d’Avignon, MS.1297, Macintosh to Michael White, 6 April 1763, fo. 25.
What particularly excited Macintosh was that the estate incorporated “the Town of Marque [i.e., Grand Marquis], which is expected to be made the Seat of trade…[and that] every House that can be built for the future therein must be built on this Land”. The subsequent history of Grand Marquis (it became St Andrew under British rule) did not quite live up to Macintosh’s expectations; the port of Grenville a few miles further north emerged as the main trading hub. The town itself has, however, been the subject recently of a fascinating blog post from the Heritage Research Group Caribbean.
The longer history of Post Royal has been documented in great detail by UCL’s incredible Legacies of British Slave-ownership project.