{"id":1146,"date":"2022-06-22T17:04:26","date_gmt":"2022-06-22T16:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/?p=1146"},"modified":"2022-06-22T17:04:26","modified_gmt":"2022-06-22T16:04:26","slug":"hope-co-and-the-legacies-of-slavery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/?p=1146","title":{"rendered":"Hope & Co. and the legacies of slavery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In April, a team of researches at the International Institute of Social History<\/a> in Amsterdam published a fascinating report for the Dutch bank ABN AMRO on its historical links, by way of predecessor institutions, to slavery. The report\u2014The slavery history of historical predecessors of ABN AMRO: An investigation into Hope & Co. and R. Mees & Zoonen<\/a><\/em>\u2014caused something of a stir on its publication, prompting media coverage<\/a> and an apology<\/a> from ABN AMRO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
The report from the International Institute of Social History.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The report addresses a significant gap in the literature. While it was well known that ABN AMRO’s predecessors\u2014particularly Hope & Co.<\/a>\u2014were significantly invested in Caribbean slavery through the provision of plantation loans, among other activities, existing literature, like Marten Buist’s 1974 company history At spes non fracta<\/a><\/em>, was insufficiently critical and failed to address properly the firm’s role in bankrolling the slave economy in the Caribbean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new report resolves this significant omission by placing these links at the centre of its focus. As a consequence of this attention, the report brings to the fore Macintosh’s 1770 plantation loan. From a narrative and explanatory perspective, the 1770 loan is something of a turning point in my study of Macintosh\u2014it laid the foundation to his (doomed) partnership with William Pulteney<\/a>, it cemented his friendship with Alexander Fordyce<\/a>, and it became a complex financial burden which cast a long shadow over the next 15 or so years of Macintosh’s life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My existing research on the loan drew from Macintosh’s own papers as well as notarial records in Amsterdam, but\u2014due to the pandemic\u2014I hadn’t been able to explore the issue from the side of Hope & Co. directly. The new report is, therefore, extremely helpful in allowing me to check the validity of what I have already written and to identify additional material in the Hope & Co. papers that might prove helpful by way of further context. Two of the reports researchers\u2014Gerhard de Kok and Patrick van der Geest\u2014have been kind enough to respond helpfully to my inquiries and with their help I should be able to cover all the archival bases of the 1770 loan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last summer Patrick also completed a master’s thesis examining the links between Hope & Co. and the 1772 financial crisis (“The banker’s banker: Hope & Co. and the credit crisis of 1772-1773<\/a>“). Patrick has argued<\/a> that rather than look solely to Alexander Fordyce to explain the crisis, we would be well placed to consider the economic consequences of Caribbean plantation loans, particularly those\u2014like Macintosh’s\u2014issued by Hope & Co. By coincidence, I was also contacted this week by another Dutch researcher\u2014the historical geographer Taco Tichelaar<\/a>\u2014who is working on the 1772 crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year I felt like I was ploughing something of a lonely (albeit important) furrow in writing about Macintosh’s loan, but this new report, alongside Patrick’s thesis, helps to provide a wider context in which to situate Macintosh and his significance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In April, a team of researches at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam published a fascinating report for the Dutch bank ABN AMRO on its historical links, by way of predecessor institutions, to slavery. The report\u2014The slavery history of historical predecessors of ABN AMRO: An investigation into Hope & Co. and R. Mees […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1148,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1146\/revisions\/1148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}