{"id":333,"date":"2015-07-16T14:03:12","date_gmt":"2015-07-16T13:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/?p=333"},"modified":"2015-07-16T14:11:05","modified_gmt":"2015-07-16T13:11:05","slug":"macintosh-slave-owner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/?p=333","title":{"rendered":"Macintosh, slave owner"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Extract<\/a>

Extract from Macintosh’s “state of affairs”. 18 December 1775. Archives d\u00e9partementales de Vaucluse, 2 E Titres de famille 84, \u201cCharles Wilson \/ et autres de Grenade \/ 1767\u20131776″.<\/p><\/div>\n

Last night BBC Two screened the first part of “Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners<\/a>“\u2014a superb documentary examining the stories of slave ownership revealed by the recent Legacies of British Slave-ownership<\/a>\u00a0project.<\/p>\n

Macintosh was, of course, long dead by the time the\u00a0Slave Compensation Commission<\/a>\u00a0was established to reimburse\u00a0slave holders following the 1833\u00a0Slavery Abolition Act. Given, moreover,\u00a0that Macintosh\u00a0left the Caribbean in a state of financial precarity (if not outright bankruptcy),\u00a0there was no “legacy”\u00a0of enslaved people for him to leave and thus his descendants do not feature in the\u00a0Legacies of British Slave-ownership<\/a>\u00a0database. Many of those with whom Macintosh did business and co-owned plantations are present, however, and include\u00a0James Laing<\/a>\u00a0and William Pulteney<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Macintosh’s papers bear witness, however, to his role as a slave owner (and certainly not a benevolent one). There is evidence to suggest that on more than one occasion he branded runaway slaves on their recapture. Whilst it will take further work\u00a0to fully determine the extent of Macintosh’s holdings, there is evidence that by the end of 1775 he owned 50 enslaved people. These he described as “not attached to any plantation, being tradesmen, sailors, & domestics”. He reckoned their value at \u00a33,000 (ten times his annual salary as\u00a0Comptroller of His Majesty’s Customs).<\/p>\n

Macintosh’s status as a slave owner was not unusual in this period, but it does sit somewhat uneasily alongside his later promotion of\u00a0egalitarianism and individual rights in the context of British India. Whether he experienced a Damascene conversion, or for reasons of pragmatism simply believed a different means of colonial management were required there, is not yet clear. Further digging is, as ever, required.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night BBC Two screened the first part of “Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners“\u2014a superb documentary examining the stories of slave ownership revealed by the recent Legacies of British Slave-ownership\u00a0project. Macintosh was, of course, long dead by the time the\u00a0Slave Compensation Commission\u00a0was established to reimburse\u00a0slave holders following the 1833\u00a0Slavery Abolition Act. Given, moreover,\u00a0that Macintosh\u00a0left the Caribbean […]<\/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-333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333","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=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":337,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions\/337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}