3. A Glasgow-West India house

After the death of his elder brother James in 1815, Archibald Smith looked back on their respective commercial careers during Glasgow’s sugar era:

I had a good right to expect a fair proportion of the money I had been the means of makeing, and I may almost say against his will, he was so extreemly cautious & timid that had I been in the least guided by his advice or followed his views, there would be little to divide… he considered me allways too venturesome, perhaps this was one reason why he entrusted me with so little of his fortune, which I suppose he thought I could not keep.1

The merchant firm in which they were co-partners, Leitch & Smith, had brought the family great wealth. James was the owner of Craighead estate in Lanarkshire and worth c.£71,000 on death, ranking him among the wealthiest 20 per cent of Glasgow’s West India elite. Having purchased Jordanhill estate in 1800, Archibald was also a successful West India proprietor. The correspondence revealed, from Archibald’s point of view, that the wealth was based upon high-risk colonial ventures which, as this chapter will show, involved dealings with sugar and cotton planters in the British West Indies. As far as Archibald was concerned, the merchant firm he had established, Leitch & Smith, which operated in Jamaica and Grenada between 1779 and 1824 – and its successor firm up to 1867 – was the main conduit of the family fortune.

In one important way, these merchants were untypical of Glasgow’s West India elite: the family were tenant farmers who then improved their standing via the colonial trades. This was a new fortune begotten from the Caribbean. As Archibald Smith’s grandson, John Guthrie Smith, revealed, ‘when the great West India sugar trade gained a footing in Scotland’, the family ‘took an early part in it, and prospered exceedingly…principally through the energy of a younger son, Archibald’.2 In contrast to ‘gentry capitalist’ landed families such as the Stirlings of Keir, therefore, the Smiths were arriviste.3 The spectacular transformation into elite landowners with multiple estates coincided with the involvement of family members in the West India trades across two generations. Robert Smith acquired Craigend in 1660 although the estate was improved in 1734 when Archibald’s father James Smith, third laird of Craigend (1708–86), extended what had previously been a minor farm holding.4 Archibald Smith senior (1749–1821) was thus born into a minor landed family on Craigend estate in Strathblane, just outside Glasgow.5 As the fourth son, without prospects of landed inheritance, he travelled to Virginia in search of fortune with his three cousins in 1768 and worked as manager of a tobacco store.6 However, as a large landowner loyal to the crown at the outbreak of the American War of Independence in 1775, he fled and was expropriated. This was a timely return and Smith became a junior partner in Leitch & Smith.7 The profits acquired by the family’s West India pioneers eased the next generation into commerce and underwrote domestic investments. In order to understand this process better, this case study of Leitch & Smith and its commercial successor adopts a transatlantic approach. Colonial deeds, official sources and adventurers’ letters illuminate commercial activities and networks in the West Indies, while sources such as wills and confirmation inventories reveal wealth accumulation, investments and dispersal. In doing so, this study reveals an integrated Atlantic economy which facilitated an influx of capital into the west of Scotland.

The family firms: Leitch & Smith (1779–1824) and Jas. & Arch. Smith & Co. (1824–67)

Archibald Smith enjoyed nominal paternal support when establishing Leitch & Smith. On 10 March 1779, his father, James Smith, third laird of Craigend, purchased a Burgess and Guild ticket in Glasgow which helped his son to embark on a mercantile career. As son of a registered burgess, Archibald – alongside his trading partner John Leitch – registered Burgess and Guild brethren the next day.8 Evidence of start-up capital in 1779 is elusive, although given his father’s initial involvement it is possible he chose to assist his ambitious younger son. Within four years of its foundation in 1779, Leitch & Smith was based in the commercial centre of Glasgow at the Trongate.9 Around a decade later, the firm owned a counting house and merchant lodgings, and had access to a fleet of ships, including the Pomona, Nestor, Alfred and Isabella, which allowed the transfer of goods and produce across the Atlantic.10 The counting house itself enabled transatlantic credit exchanges and functioned as a mercantile academy to train the next generation of merchants.

With the establishment of Leitch & Smith, Archibald Smith created a mercantile dynasty that lasted nearly a century. This became the quintessential family firm. John Leitch died around 1805, by which point the Smith family dominated.11 In October 1807, the co-partners were Archibald Smith senior, John Smith, James Smith, James Smith junior, John Ryburn, John Guthrie, Andrew Ranken and Adam Crooks. Evidently, Archibald’s two brothers, John Smith, fourth laird of Craigend (1739–1816), and James Smith of Craighead (d. 1815) had been recruited into the firm by then. John Smith’s son, James Smith junior (d. 1836), who inherited Craigend on his father’s death, also became a partner. By 1818, John Smith’s younger son, Archibald Smith junior (d. 1823), was a co-partner too. His son-in-law, Andrew Ranken, married Hannah Smith in 1809 and was afterwards recruited and loaned money. John Guthrie, a nephew of the Smith family, operated Guthrie & Ryburn, a sister firm in Grenada, which will be discussed below.12 The partnership structure illustrates the importance of kinship and marital connections to the workings of West India firms, and these relationships underpinned the extension of capital over successive generations.

In time, Archibald Smith senior would also pass on capital and skills to his sons, James (described here as ‘youngest’), William and Archibald (described here as ‘youngest’) who went on to become West India merchants. In contrast to their father’s colonial sojourn, the sons followed a typically middling educational path.13 James attended Glasgow High School and matriculated at the University of Glasgow in 1795. William and Archibald followed in 1798 and 1807.14 James and Archibald later registered as merchant burgesses in Glasgow in 1810 and 1817 respectively before they were given shares.15 In 1814, Archibald Smith senior gifted his son James £3,000 to ‘make up his stock [£8,000] in Leitch & Smith’, while Archibald youngest was given a present of over £5,000 on 31 March 1817, consisting of two shares in the West India firm (at £2,000 each) and the rest in profits.16 James Smith of Craighead was the highest lender of capital to West India merchants and firms in Glasgow, especially within a close kinship matrix. In 1808, William Smith borrowed £2,000 on bond from his uncle. In 1814, James Smith youngest also borrowed £3,000 on bond.17 There were various other gifts and loans between the partners to younger partners, including to John Guthrie, Andrew Ranken and associated firms, Smith & Browns, and Smith, Hutchison and Co.18 The extension of capital and credit among the wider kinship group – especially father to son – was a common practice among the firm’s co-partners.

The wider Smith family capitalized Leitch & Smith, holding large-scale wealth in shares and stock as well as providing loans to the firm and the younger generation. When John Smith fourth laird of Craigend died in 1816, his inventory listed £46,168 in movable property, with over £37,000 – 81 per cent of his personal wealth – held in stock and profits in Leitch & Smith.19 When his brother Archibald Smith senior died in 1821, over £42,000 – 90 per cent of his personal wealth – was held in stock and profits.20 Upon his death in 1815, James Smith of Craighead held £24,000 – a third of his personal wealth – in the firm.21 The percentage of personal wealth held in the firm by these senior partners was higher than the average held by their peers in this study.22 Moreover, James Smith loaned £20,000 to Leitch & Smith, which – as noted in the last chapter –was the single largest loan from a merchant to a West India firm identified in this study. Given smaller provincial banks in Scotland worked from paid capital as low as £8,000 (and the average starting capital for provincial banks in England was estimated at £10,000), it is no exaggeration to state the success of Leitch & Smith was based upon the collectivization of the wealth of co-partners as rich as several provincial banks.23 Reinvestment of the colonial fortunes was a key factor in the firm’s rise.

The death of Leitch & Smith’s senior co-partners – James Smith of Craighead in 1815, John Smith of Craigend in 1816 and Archibald Smith senior in 1821 – removed the firm’s main funding sources. The inheritance of James Smith of Craighead’s fortune after 1815 was the main cause of the dispute discussed at the opening of this chapter, while Archibald Smith senior’s death in 1821 marked the end for Leitch & Smith (disbanded three years after his death).24 However, Archibald Smith’s settlement secured his immediate family’s future. James Smith youngest was nominated heir (as was common practice), with £8,000 each to William and Archibald youngest. He left an annuity of £700 to his wife, Isabella (who was also guaranteed the use of Jordanhill mansion in a practice known as ‘liferenting’) which became a major outlay, since she lived until 1855.25 With considerable start-up capital and experience of West India commerce, Archibald Smith’s first and third sons formed the successor firm of James & Archibald Smith & Co. (hereafter Jas. & Arch. Smith & Co.) in 1824. Second son William established Smith & Browns, which focused on Trinidad. In order to understand how firms generated profits for individuals, this chapter now turns to the colonial end of Leitch & Smith’s operations.

Leitch & Smith: Grenada and Carriacou, 1779–1823

After Grenada was subsumed into the British empire under the terms of the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the south-eastern Caribbean island was a prime destination for Scottish adventurers (as will be explored in Chapter 6). One of the early partners of the firm, John Leitch, was in the West Indies in 1781 and Leitch & Smith developed a trade network soon after.26 The Isabella sailed from Glasgow in January 1791 and a specialist trade house, Guthrie & Ryburn, was formed afterwards which became the largest firm on the island by the end of the century.27 The merchant firm was dominated by a close nexus of family in both Glasgow and the colonies. Guthrie & Ryburn was led by co-partners, John Ryburn and John Guthrie. In 1799, they were respected members of the island community as ‘guardians of slaves’ in St George’s.28 However, Guthrie returned home in 1800. His colonial partner, Ryburn, brought assets to the firm; he owned land in St George’s in 1807,29 as well as the Nancy of Greenock, and had shares in two other ships, the Pomona and the Alfred.30 The colonial base in St George’s, the commercial centre of Grenada, allowed them to take advantage of the Free Port Acts, legislation which relaxed the strict navigation laws after 1766 and enabled lucrative trade with neighbouring colonies of other European powers. The free ports in the British West Indies allowed foreigners to trade goods which would normally be prohibited. In fact, this was an elaboration of the Navigation Acts, as free ports only accepted foreign imports not in competition with goods produced in Britain or her colonies, while exports were limited to high-value manufactured goods. Thus, in free ports, French and Spanish merchants purchased manufactured goods and paid in bullion or plantation produce. This positive balance of trade created huge profits for British merchants in Grenada.31

According to Frances Armytage, Kingston in Jamaica and St George’s in Grenada were the ‘most flourishing’ free ports in 1791, despite the latter only being awarded full privileges after a revision of the system four years earlier.32 A petition to the Colonial Office reveals Leitch & Smith were pioneers of the Glasgow-Grenada free port trade after the American Revolution. Prior to the revised legislation in 1787, they conducted an informally accepted trade ‘chiefly of cotton’ with merchants in adjoining Spanish settlements, particularly Trinidad.33 This was highly lucrative for the Glasgow firm. In 1799, John Guthrie was said to have ‘publickally declared’ to the collector of customs that profits from a cargo contained in a ‘Vessel with Merchandize from home’ would be ‘five thousand pounds’.34 However, while Guthrie later admitted the trade was ‘very advantageous’, he disputed the profit level and stated it was £5,000 Grenada currency (around £3,250 stg.).35 In any case, the profitable trade with slave-based economies in Spanish America provided markets for Glasgow merchants as well as payments in bullion.

The partners of Leitch & Smith concurrently developed a portfolio of investments in Scotland that effectively connected colonies with the metropole. In 1799, Leitch & Smith joined with a group of merchants in Glasgow to fund a ‘cotton wool adventure’ which paid annual dividends.36 This involved the purchase of new world cotton for import to Glasgow. This was part of a longer-term strategy. Leitch & Smith were trading cotton with the Spanish in Grenada before 1786 and were still importing cotton into Glasgow from Jamaica and Grenada in the 1820s.37 The organization used English ports to land produce, particularly Liverpool. The Diana arrived from Berbice on 19 April 1810 and the Caesar arrived from Demerara in July 1813.38 By the early nineteenth century, then, Archibald Smith senior was one of the most influential cotton merchants in Glasgow. At an exclusive meeting on 10 February 1803, he was present alongside other luminaries such as Archibald Campbell, Kirkman Finlay and James Dennistoun. According to them, cotton required for the Glasgow manufactures was ‘chiefly the product of foreign independent Countries, or of Colonies of other European powers’, and the high duty on such imports created an ‘artificial scarcity’. Subsequently, they sought the repeal of the government duty in order to enhance industry and increase ‘the productive power and wealth’ of Scotland.39 Thus, the Glasgow merchant rhetoric demanded a relaxation of the monopoly conditions which had initially allowed them to flourish in favour of boosting profits from cotton manufacturing.

While this was not clarion call for Adam Smith’s free trade, the move was consistent with Eric Williams’ view that merchant-manufacturers sought to undermine orthodox mercantilism in the nineteenth century once the profits from trade with British West India colonies were in decline.40 The firm also invested in cotton firms. James Finlay & Co. was the largest producer of textiles in Scotland in the early nineteenth century, with three cotton mills at Ballindalloch, Catrine and Deanston. Leitch & Smith were partners from 1792 until 1823, while Archibald was involved on his own account.41 In 1797, the capital stock was valued at £30,000, with Leitch & Smith holding £5,000 and Archibald Smith £1,000 of the total. This made Leitch & Smith the second largest shareholder and their account current suggests they bought and sold produce and finished goods.42 By investing in cotton manufactories, the firm and its partners connected the ‘forward linkages’ under the staple theory of economic growth which Richard Sheridan argued fuelled the British Industrial Revolution.43 Alongside John Campbell senior & Co., Leitch & Smith were the major mercantile shippers from Clyde ports (see Chapter 4), and both firms’ cotton enterprise underpinned the Scottish Industrial Revolution.

The gains were not without risk, however, as the Scots were residents of a colony in a state of growing turmoil. Among the wave of rebellions that swept the Caribbean in the aftermath of the uprising on Saint Domingue in 1791, the Franco-Grenadian free people of colour led by Julien Fedon joined forces with their black slaves to overthrow the British regime in favour of revolutionary France. The violent uprising began on 2 March 1795 and continued for sixteen months; around 7,000 enslaved people were killed as well as forty-eight British hostages, including Alexander Campbell. The sugar mills, buildings and rum works were obliterated on 100 estates and the total loss to the island’s economy was £2.5 million sterling between 1795 and 1798.44 In order to rebuild the colony, the British government passed two acts that provided £1,500,000 ‘for the purpose of making Loans to persons with or trading to the Islands of Grenada and St Vincent’.45 Although they were eligible, Leitch & Smith did not take loans, suggesting that even if the firm owned any property, it remained undamaged.46 More importantly for the firm, their associates were present during the lucrative restoration of the plantation economy.

In 1817, the speaker of the House of Assembly in Grenada, George Munro, pleaded with the British government and condemned the merchants who had taken advantage of ruined planters:

A bill indeed was passed, and an issue of exchequer bills was made in May 1795 intituled ‘For Relief of the Grenada Planters and Merchants connected with that Island and St Vincents’. But to the latter only, it was a boon; to the former it was the reverse; it was calculated to save the merchant; to save merchants who must thus have become bankrupts if no such insurrection had happened; but more completely to subjugate them the planters. The merchant, supported by his numerous creditors and connections in Great Britain, only could command the personal security there the act required, and to them it was granted; and in respect to a few individuals, to a most enormous amount; but the ruined planter was stripped of his counter security by the same hand that held out this impotent relief. If any benefit had been meant to him, even by way of loan, Government was well aware his estate, in the plight it stood, was the only security he could give, and none other should have been exacted of him. The estates of course became more deeply encumbered than they had previously been and fell very generally into the hands of the mortgagees, merchants in England.47

Munro’s testimony points to vast profiteering in Grenada, and although evidence of Leitch & Smith’s participation in such activities in the late eighteenth century remains elusive, the firm operated in Grenada throughout these years. In 1807, the co-partners initiated a policy designed to consolidate their interests in the West Indies. At a meeting in October that year, they agreed on a transatlantic ‘house of trade’ system to lease sundry land and slaves, which was probably a renewal of a previous agreement. Across the Atlantic, the colonial business in Grenada was regulated by nominating power of attorney to John Lindsay, Daniel Brady and William Mitchell. By this point, the firm had expanded into Jamaica (as discussed below) and nominated Robert Smith and Thomas Huie of Kingston as representatives.48 In the same period, several co-partners of Leitch & Smith were founder members of the influential pro-slavery lobbying group the Glasgow West India Association in 1807 and were among the top seven company subscribers, indicating its elite status. The mercantile strategy of Leitch & Smith strengthened their connections with the West Indies just as the Glasgow-West India interest reacted to the abolition of the slave trade in 1807.

With increasing prominence in Glasgow, the co-partners of Leitch & Smith expanded in the West Indies and minimized risk by recruiting known employees. Newspapers in Glasgow in this period listed various employment opportunities in Grenada. As will be argued in Chapter 4, the recruitment and shipping of young Scots was a commercial business. However, Leitch & Smith only recruited a small number of employees via public advertisement in Glasgow for plantations in the West Indies.49 Instead, they recruited adventurers of the correct sort based on established networks, essentially adopting a closed recruitment policy. As well as John Guthrie, Archibald also secured employment for his elder brother James Smith (later of Craighead). Crucially, he was entrusted with conveying profits to Glasgow:

I took him into the concern four years after its commencement [ie 1783] when he was idle, merely to give him employment. The business in Grenada was begun before he went there & which he rather check’d than promoted the only good he did was remitting the money regularly.50

The senior co-partners of the firm also handpicked young merchants from outside the Smith family circle and trained them prior to departure. A series of letters that travelled by the packet on the ships Pomona, Ardent and Nestor illustrates the working of the trade house in St George’s and the preparation of young adventurers in Glasgow. The Kirk family of Kilmarnock were kin of Adam Crooks, a co-partner in Leitch & Smith. This connection allowed two brothers, Robert and Adam Kirk, to embark on a colonial career. A commercial handbook published for use by ‘men of business’ in commercial Glasgow suggested firms employed groups of individuals as a risk-averse policy:

In the West Indies…merchants who establish factors there, find it necessary to settle two, three or more, in the same house, that, on the case of the death of one, there may still be a sufficient number known to their business, to carry on the affairs of the house till the vacancy is supplied.51

By training and employing the Kirk brothers simultaneously, Leitch & Smith adopted a similar risk-averse policy and one that was to prove a wise decision.

Adam travelled to Grenada in 1811 into the care of Guthrie and Ryburn and immediately connected with an established network of Scots: ‘there is so many young men…for here you have a general acquaintance with every Body’. Thomas Gregory and Adam Pringle from Ayr were ‘kind of cronies’, while John Todd from Kilmarnock travelled from Carriacou to see Adam Kirk soon after his arrival.52 While Adam began his career in Grenada, his brother Robert remained in Glasgow for commercial education prior to embarkation. In the counting house in 1812 he was ‘keept very close at work attending French and Spanish classes’.53 These classes were international in focus and the practical skills allowed transactions with the resident French plantation owners on Grenada as well as the Spanish cotton merchants of Trinidad. The Glasgow merchant house took full advantage of the increase in free port trade from St George’s from 1808 to 1815. Indeed, the value of Guthrie & Ryburn’s exports in the first eight months of 1813 was $144,240, which was seven times greater than every other trade house in Grenada together. Some of the export goods had been sourced from the East Indies and Manchester, although almost half by value ($71,250, or £16,047) were sourced in Glasgow.54 Perhaps to assist with the increasing business, the parent firm Leitch & Smith purchased over one acre of ‘land covered with water’ in the Carenage harbour area in St George’s sometime between 1807 and 1814, allowing the transfer of stock and refitting of ships. The land was acquired at auction from the trustees of Alexander Houston and Co. for £290 sterling.55 This was to prove a canny investment and was sold in 1830 to Kirk & Todd in Grenada for £1,500.56 The merchant firm connected metropole and colony in various ways, extracting wealth and encouraging the Scottish economy.

A ship captain, Mr Mcilven, recounted to Adam Kirk’s father in January 1812 how his son was ‘Commander in Chief in the shop’ in St George’s and ‘had entirely put down flogging’ to an extent that ‘the poor black fellows’ were ‘extraordinary taken’ with him.57 Adam’s brother Robert, eventually a key part of the Glasgow enterprise, served a longer apprenticeship and in 1814 was still working in the store.58 On 22 February 1812, Leitch & Smith purchased enslaved men Louis, Alexis Brutus and Sampiere from Walter McInnes of the island of Martinique, a French colony, although under British control in 1812.59 They probably became workers attached to the store, or crew on the firm’s schooner Betsy that traded along the Spanish Main.60 They also released at least two enslaved people from their chattel status in this period. In 1817, a ‘Negro woman slave named Mary with her infant mulatto son James’ were freed for the ‘good Causes and Considerations’ of Leitch & Smith.61 While it is possible they sold enslaved people in the free port prior to 1807, the purchase and manumission described here represent the only direct trafficking in the available evidence concerning Grenada. Instead, Leitch & Smith primarily advanced capital to planters although, as was common practice, the firm accepted estates as security with literally hundreds of enslaved people (including infants only days old) as human collateral in such business dealings.

There is, however, no evidence the co-partners of Leitch & Smith took direct ownership of plantations in Grenada. Nevertheless, they extended capital and export supplies on credit which sustained the system and tied resident planters to long-term consignment plans under the commission system. A series of indentures from 1810 illustrate the process which allowed absentee Scottish merchants in Grenada to gain a stranglehold of the plantation economy. Leitch & Smith advanced Ferdinand De Creeft and his wife a mortgage on 9 October 1810. The repayment of the principal loan was made annually over the next three years with interest, which was typically 5 per cent. The credit agreement tied the plantations to Leitch & Smith for the duration of the mortgage and permitted future loans and advance of stock, while the sugar and all produce (except cocoa and molasses) were consigned to Scotland. As collateral, the De Creefts put up Columbia, a sugar plantation with sixty-six slaves, as well as a coffee and cocoa estate named Pyrrhenees, both in the parish of St Andrew.62 Leitch and Smith were repaid with interest by 1819.63 A reprinted Reference to the Plan of the Island of Grenada listed F. De Creft as the proprietor of Columbia in St Andrew in 1824, indicating he was a successful plantation owner over the long term.64

As well as mortgages secured on plantations, Leitch & Smith also advanced short-term credit in the form of bond loans and bills of exchange. The extension of credit brought more consignments of produce to Glasgow and in order to deal with the increasing business they appointed three new attorneys in October 1816.65 John Lindsay was retained while resident merchants, William Kirkland and Robert Kirk, were added to the Smith payroll. The two Kirk brothers had contrasting fortunes. Adam died on Grenada on 8 December 1816, while Robert, after completing a five-year apprenticeship, was promoted to a senior position, which he held for over twenty years.66 A subsequent power of attorney in April 1818 recruited more individuals; Lindsay, Kirk and William Mitchell, a resident planter, were nominated, with a further six persons required. The colonial remit had shifted since 1807. In order to pursue outlying debts, attorneys were instructed not only to manage ‘mercantile affairs and Business’, but also to supervise with the ‘collecting and receiving debts’ as well as ‘carrying in suits at Law or in Equity’.67 Thus, the organization broadened their trading operations and reinforced an efficient debt recovery strategy. Just as the Grenada business developed from 1779, the firm’s metropolitan operations had expanded too: the extension of capital to another merchant firm in Glasgow in 1800 initiated further trade and commerce with planters, although with less lucrative returns.

‘The Jamaica business’, 1800–67

This section traces the relationship between the Glasgow-West India house of Robert Mackay and Co., the absentee owners of two Jamaica plantations, and their preferred financiers, Leitch & Smith. The Caribbean economy was based on the extension of credit from Great Britain and there were frequent court cases, bankruptcies and foreclosures leading to merchants assuming control upon default on debts. Leitch & Smith and their mercantile successors were involved in at least five court cases in the 1820s and 1830s concerning debts in the Caribbean, most of which concerned Iter Boreale and Heywood Hall. The two estates, located in the northern parishes of St George and St Mary, were acquired after Robert Mackay and Co. foreclosed mortgages with previous proprietors. In 1800, Archibald Smith senior advanced £25,000 to Mackay and Co., secured with a bond agreement. The loan ensured all plantation produce was consigned to Leitch & Smith, who took 2.5 per cent commission on sales of sugar imported from the estate.68 The capital injection also marked the decline of one Glasgow-West India merchant house and the rise of another. The estates remained heavily encumbered with annuities paid in London, however, and Henry Glassford (son of ‘tobacco lord’ John Glassford) was appointed trustee around 1790.69 Part of his remit involved the regulation of operations, which included attracting investment capital.

A legal document based on the estate accounts of Iter Boreale and Heywood Hall outlines the practicalities of the Glasgow-West India trade.70 Sugar was the most valuable commodity and Iter Boreale was the more productive plantation of the two. The produce was transported in two ships on bi-annual journeys: 383 hogsheads of sugar were shipped from both plantations in 1820. Leitch & Smith sold the sugar to local refiners, such as James McNair, who purchased part of the July shipment on the Pomona.71 The raw muscovado was refined in Glasgow sugar houses and sold in local shops or re-exported to Europe. The provisions of the initial loan also guaranteed imports of high-quality Jamaica OP (over-proof) rum, and ninety-four puncheons were sent in 1820. That triple-distilled Jamaican rum was high quality was reflected in the price, which was 4s 9d a gallon compared to 3s 5d for the Leeward Island version in 1810.72 Leitch & Smith imported rum from Jamaica at least from 1801, when it was sold to Hugh Milliken and Co. in Glasgow.73 Manufactured goods were exported to Jamaica in 1820, adding a level of integration with their manufacturing interests. Commission at 0.5 per cent interest was charged on drafts and payments.

The trading privileges were protected by provisions of the loan, which placed the burden of risk on the absentee owners. However, the available evidence suggests this became a costly investment that was not repaid. After Robert Mackay and Co. went bankrupt around 1818, Leitch & Smith provided working capital at the behest of Henry Glassford. While it was in the interests of attorneys of the plantations to maintain accurate accounts and maximize profits, the highest costs in the next two years were for draft bills drawn in Jamaica.74 The purchase of island provisions, lumber, salaries for bookkeepers and carpenters as well as the hiring of slave labour constituted the highest costs. Indeed, correspondence in 1820 between Leitch & Smith and Patrick Cockburn, an accountant in Edinburgh in charge of the Mackay estate, suggests the plantations required more resident slaves to produce large sugar crops.75 There was also a high level of legacies served on the plantations, some of which were only cleared in 1856. The Iter Boreale annuities were historic debts paid in London, sometimes to family members of past owners.76 In 1819, the costs of attorney drafts and annuities alone were over £1,000 more than the total proceeds from both estates in 1820.

The activities in Grenada were evidently rewarding to Leitch & Smith, and initially so too was the business in Jamaica: ‘the agency of these estates was very profitable for many years, indeed was the best account in their books’.77 However, in 1818 they assumed de facto ownership of the Jamaican plantations – in contrast to Grenada – and in the next two years a balance of over £18,000 became due.78 As trustee of the estate of Robert Mackay & Co., Henry Glassford assumed legal responsibility for outstanding debts, including the outstanding balance and the initial investment of £25,000.79 A business history of the Jamaican plantations – written in 1867, perhaps by Archibald Smith youngest – described how the Glasgow firm had sunk all ‘proceeds of these estates’ from 1800 back into them, as well as a ‘large additional sum’. When Henry Glassford died on 14 May 1819, Leitch & Smith were ranked on his estate for debts upwards of £45,000.80 After his death, trusteeship was transferred to accountants Patrick Cockburn and Charles Selkrig, although Leitch & Smith retained trading privileges and ownership. They eventually raised a court case in order to pursue over £50,000.81 The account was passed on to James and Archibald Smith, who were paid a dividend of £15,572 and concurrently took ownership of both plantations before slavery was finally abolished in the British West Indies in 1834.82 This chapter now turns to James and Archibald Smith youngest: the inheritors of the family business towards the end of Caribbean slavery.

The transfer of power: Jas. & Arch. Smith & Co., 1824–67

In July 1822, Robert Kirk closed the business of Leitch & Smith in Grenada and mooted travelling to another island.83 Instead, he remained on the island under the employment of successor firm, Jas. & Arch. Smith & Co., which was formally established on 5 April 1824. The firm subsequently became significant merchant financiers, investing a minimum of £61,175 across the Caribbean, mainly in Grenada between 1829 and 1832. While Jas. & Arch. Smith & Co. consisted of only three co-partners, the personnel and strategy in Grenada remained unchanged. They inherited the business interests of Leitch & Smith and the smaller structure streamlined profits into fewer hands. At a meeting in Glasgow on 12 February 1827, James and Archibald Smith and Robert McCunn made an agreement to trade in Grenada and ‘all foreign West India islands except the Islands of Jamaica’. Taking advantage of established networks in Scotland and Grenada, the Smiths appointed the Kilmarnock adventurers John Todd and Robert Kirk as attorneys alongside William Scott Kirkland to support operations in Carriacou.84 Todd temporarily returned to Glasgow in 1827, perhaps to meet with the Smiths to receive instructions for the next investment cycle.

As the abolitionist movement gathered pace, the Smiths increased the extension of credit and laid out over £54,000 in a five-year period after 1827. This level of credit is comparable to the top lenders in Barbados between 1823 and 1843, the merchant house of Daniel, a ‘major force’ who provided £62,694 in mortgages to planters.85 The Smith investment cycle was large-scale and ambitious in a period which Richard Pares suggested abolition provided an ideal excuse for merchants to decline credit.86 In the years leading up to emancipation, many West India merchant houses across Great Britain were threatened with insolvency. Foreign competition and overproduction of sugar meant fluctuating prices, and uncertainty over debt repayment made conditions increasingly volatile. Ten merchant firms across Great Britain went bankrupt in 1831 alone.87

The Smith strategy would therefore seem at first to be high risk. However, all loans after 1827 were secured with mortgages on plantations and they added security after 1829 by strictly limiting credit to British planters. In the post-1829 sample, the Glasgow-West India merchant house set mortgages at 5 per cent interest, which was the legal British rate up to 1854. By adhering to the usury regulations and by demanding payment in sterling in London and Glasgow, they placed the terms of credit in the British system which meant disputes could be settled in metropolis courts with greater prospects of success.88 Furthermore, they had the option of legal action against executors of individuals resident in the West Indies but whose wills were proved in Scotland. Leitch & Smith had previously raised a court case in Edinburgh in 1821 against the executors of the will of Andrew Rome, a Scottish merchant-planter resident in Carriacou. Rome was ‘in the practice of sending home to them rum and sugar, the produce of his estate to be sold on commission by them and he drew bills on them from time to time’.89

The Smiths had a long-term trading relationship with another Scot, William Stuart from Inverugie in Aberdeenshire. Stuart was a resident planter in Grenada in 1816, although he returned to Scotland and eventually entered into mortgage agreements with Jas. & Arch. Smith & Co. in 1829. They took over his extensive debts and Stuart put up three estates, Mount Hardman, Grande Ance and Morne Delice, as well as 430 enslaved people as security. Some of the enslaved people that were placed as collateral were registered to Stuart’s other plantations, Mount Moritz in St George, and Diamond in St Mark. This was to prove important on emancipation in 1834. The interest on the mortgage was charged at 5 per cent,90 and they gained supply privileges and consignment rights to Grand Ance, the largest sugar and cotton estate in Grenada, spread over 1,237 acres.91 The principal loan was scheduled to be paid in stages at the Royal Exchange in London by 1834, as well as an additional advance which took the outstanding Stuart debt to over £24,000.92

The Glasgow merchant house continued to loan large sums in Grenada, including to their Scottish representatives, Kirk & Todd, who started business on their own account. They sold the merchant store at Carenage to their former attorneys in April 1830,93 marking the beginning of a new relationship. Kirk and Todd subsequently borrowed capital from the Smiths in June 1830, which allowed them to take over the mortgage of David McEwan.94 Jas. & Arch. Smith & Co. also continued with company policy of increasing sugar imports through large mortgages. The honourable George Paterson – originally from Old Rayne, Aberdeen – was a former governor of Grenada. By 1832, he was a resident planter who owned two plantations, Marli and Union, in the parish of St Patrick. He transferred a large mortgage to Jas. & Arch. Smith & Co. and, as part of the repayment agreement, he consigned sugar bi-annually each March and August. In a profitable arrangement, Jas. & Arch. Smith & Co. charged for shipping and organized the export of ‘stores, supplies, goods, wares and merchandize’. While they also promised to pay bills of exchange drawn in the colonies and assumed responsibility for the disposal of the sugar in Glasgow, the burden of risk was firmly on Paterson until it arrived, as ‘the dangers of the seas and the Kings enemies only and always expected’.95

In the absence of merchant correspondence or company ledgers, it is impossible to reach definitive conclusions on the extent of their commission business or the profits emanating from them. However, although it is a small dataset of loans, it is useful to make some observations, especially as ‘much remains to be learned about plantation finance…during the years leading up to Emancipation in 1834’.96 Indeed, there is no comparative sample of loans provided by Scottish firms in the West Indies. This study identifies Leitch & Smith and their successors as significant merchant financiers in Grenada, with loans of over £84,000 in both short- and long-term credit to individual planters. They also loaned to their own merchant attorneys, Kirk & Todd. The Glasgow merchant house was well situated to take advantage of restoration of Grenada: they operated in the colony, before 1783 (although the sample of loans analysed here begins in 1810) and were pioneers of the free port trade. Their trade house was the largest on the island, and the Guthrie declaration suggests they acquired large-scale capital from this. However, the peak years were before 1793, and the British capture of Trinidad in 1797 marked an exodus of free port traders to the new colony, as it was closer to the Spanish Main. The decline in the Grenada free port trade was dramatic after 1816.97 Thus, the mortgage agreements were part of a diversification strategy designed to increase the commission business within Grenada.

The evidence suggests the Smiths preferred to undertake colonial business with Scottish compatriots. Indeed, they utilized known networks not only for recruitment in Glasgow and the Caribbean, but also for business opportunities. The mortgages secured on Jamaican plantations were loaned to Scots, including a Glasgow-West India merchant house. Of the twelve transactions in Grenada and Carriacou, the majority were with individuals with Scottish surnames and six individuals or trustees have been identified as Scots. The Smiths were specialists in acquiring trade rights from plantations through the extension of long-term loans. Significantly, the six mortgages and largest bill of exchange in Grenada were not intended to consolidate existing debt, but instead were the lure that attracted new correspondents. For example, in 1817 a loan was provided to James Bain, who purchased Belmont plantation from Thomas Townsend. Most of the Smith loans were to planters indebted to other lenders, a strategy in sharp contrast to the merchant house of Pinney based in Bristol, who stopped taking on clients with outstanding mortgage debt in 1815 due to the depressed conditions.98 The strategy allowed the Smiths to increase their share of the sugar trade, which they consolidated through monopolistic practices.

The Smiths controlled planter debt by imposing strict demands that tied the import of plantation produce to the repayment of mortgages, thus increasing their consignment business. Although these conditions of trade were not legally enforceable, similar agreements were written into the deeds of at least four planters with mortgages secured on multiple large sugar plantations. The Glasgow house maintained control of outstanding loans and account current through sales of sugar and cotton, which were imported in regular shipping runs. While the merchant house of Pinney in Bristol struggled to undertake two voyages per year in the 1790s,99 Leitch & Smith insisted on bi-annual voyages in at least one mortgage in Grenada (and the bond agreement in Jamaica). It is significant that the Smiths did not foreclose any mortgages in Grenada. Three of the six planter mortgages were fully repaid. Another was reduced through compensation and the largest bill of exchange was also cleared. Although it is certain they had bad debts in Grenada, it is impossible to identify them through the available sources. Nonetheless, the evidence suggests they maintained an efficient approach to debt recovery, enforced by trusted attorneys primed for lawsuits in the colonies and supported by the threat of court action in the metropolis.

When plantation slavery was abolished in the British West Indies on 1 August 1834, the British government compensated enslavers for the loss of their chattel property – that is, the lives of men, women and children. A fuller discussion will be undertaken in the final chapter, but this section reveals the Smith family were involved in at least nine compensation claims for enslaved people in the West Indies, most of which arose from the outlying debt in Jamaica and Grenada. However, as merchant financiers advancing capital, this was a complex process. Jas. & Arch. Smith & Co. remained the main creditor of the bankrupt estate of Robert Mackay and Co. in 1834. John Ryburn, previously of Grenada, was involved as a trustee, suggesting he had been appointed as an agent by Jas. & Arch. Smith & Co. A deal was struck in 1836 between Edinburgh accountants and trustees Charles Selkrig, Patrick Cockburn and John Bell, who claimed the compensation for the slaves on Heywood Hall and Iter Boreale. The compensation was intended for creditors of the bankrupted Robert Mackay and Co. while the Smiths assumed ownership of the two plantations, which were valued at £23,550.100

In Grenada, the co-partners of Jas. & Arch. Smith & Co. made six compensation claims and received £12,573 for 480 enslaved people.101 The first two claims were small (four and seven slaves), perhaps for the workers attached to the store and the ship. However, the four largest claims were for slaves on Mount Moritz, Morne Delice, Mount Hardman and Grand Ance, plantations owned by William Stuart, a mortgagee since 1829. It is very likely that Stuart reached an agreement to take this total from his outstanding mortgage, and the partners of Jas. & Arch. Smith & Co. claimed compensation on the human property which formed the collateral of the credit agreements. The family of Archibald Smith claimed around £15,000 in slave compensation, placing them among the elite West India families who received large-scale awards, such as the Campbells and the Bogles of Gilmorehill.102

As will be outlined in the final chapter, there was a large-scale exodus of Glasgow-West India merchants from the Caribbean after 1834, but in this case, the Smiths were only able to partially extricate the firm. The co-partners tried, and failed, to auction Iter Boreale and Heywood Hall ‘with the services of the Apprentices’ in the Royal Exchange sales rooms in Glasgow in early 1837.103 However, they advanced credit secured with a mortgage on Eden estate in Jamaica from James Geddes in 1845,104 and were still importing sugar to Glasgow a year later.105 Power of attorney on Iter Boreale and Heywood Hall was subsequently devolved to several individuals, and Iter Boreale was eventually offered to William Hosack as a cattle pen for £1,000 in 1853. The Smiths also assumed control of Eden estate after the previous owner, James Geddes, died in 1846 but lamented the fact that it had provided no profits, unlike Iter Boreale in the past.106 Two of the estates in Jamaica were still in their possession in 1867, revealing the Smith family were connected to the Caribbean for over eighty-five years, during which time a flow of profits underwrote investments across the west of Scotland.

Investing slavery’s profits

In the antiquarian text The Parish of Strathblane (1886), John Guthrie Smith pointed to the decline of his paternal family’s wealth: ‘the fortune, and for those times it was a very large one, gradually melted away till it finally disappeared’, noting the Smith family’s seat, Craigend Castle, was sold in 1851.107 The evidence here supports the view of a rise and fall in a family fortune, although John Guthrie Smith’s views probably would have been skewed by his father William’s relatively small fortune (see Table 3.1). On death, the co-partners of Leitch & Smith and Jas. & Arch. Smith owned personal wealth valued at around £269,449, with average holdings (£29,944) over a third lower than the average wealth of the Glasgow-West India elite.108 Yet, these averages obscure the considerable differential between the first- and second-generation merchants. The initial partners left the largest fortunes. James Smith of Craighead died in 1815 worth over £71,000.109 John Smith of Craigend left a fortune of over £46,000 in 1816.110 Archibald Smith senior’s personal fortune was valued at £47,000 on his death in May 1821.111 Yet their sons left, on average, much less (£19,262). Although this level of wealth placed them comfortably over the average wealth of the Scottish middling ranks in the 1820s, the downwards pattern can be contrasted with the firm of John Campbell senior & Co.112 The direct paternal line of John Campbell senior left increasingly large fortunes as profits were retained, diversified and reinvested, culminating in one of the largest fortunes of Scotland in the colonial period. By compiling biographies and tracing investments in life (where possible) and inventories on death, this section explains factors underpinning the relative decline of the Smiths of Jordanhill.113

All senior partners of Leitch & Smith inherited or purchased landed estates in Scotland. As eldest son of the laird of Craigend, John Smith inherited the estate from his father in 1786, afterwards building a new house on the land. On his death in 1816, his son James Smith junior set about constructing Craigend Castle, a country pile more befitting a West India merchant.114 The Atlantic trades also propelled younger sons into the landed ranks. James Smith purchased Craighead in 1800, the same year as his younger brother Archibald also bought an estate. After the commercial demise of Alexander Houston & Co., the pre-eminent sugar merchants in Scotland, the estate of Jordanhill, including a mansion house and 285 English acres of land, was sold by auction at the Tontine Coffee House on 7 May 1800.115 On 10 September 1800, Archibald Smith paid £16,500 for the estate.116 He later estimated that Jordanhill had cost almost £30,000 including improvements.117 In order to announce his rise from merchant to laird, he modestly commissioned a coat of arms adorned with the Latin motto ‘Macte’ (‘well done’).118 Archibald Smith senior’s estate on death, however, reveals the shortcomings of using confirmation inventories as sole indicators of commercial success. His personal property was valued at £47,000. However, his overall estate (that is, movable and heritable property, the latter consisting of land and buildings) was valued that same year at £81,494. The estates of Jordanhill (£22,000) and Whiteinch Farm (£13,000) were the most valuable assets.119 Thus, with a total estate (including heritable property) of over £80,000, Archibald Smith epitomized the very successful – although not the wealthiest – Glasgow-West India elite.

Other partners invested in land too. On his return from Grenada in 1800, John Guthrie purchased the estate of Carbeth in Strathblane. He improved so much of the surrounding area that he was described as ‘the maker’ of the village of Carbeth.120 This ultimately passed to William Smith. Another partner, Andrew Ranken, purchased Ashburn in Gourock (although he was bankrupted before he died in 1851). Thus, West India profits improved the Smith family seat of Craigend while two younger sons, a nephew and the son-in-law of the firm’s senior partner joined the landed ranks. The co-partners of Leitch & Smith thus operated at the pinnacle of the regional economy, accumulating extensive wealth, and investing across the west of Scotland. Like their contemporaries, the ‘tobacco lords’, the partners based their success on exploitative methods of trade in the colonies which created vast profits to be invested in landed enterprise and industry in Scotland.

Table 3.1 The Smith family, wealth on death 1815–83.

Source: National Records of Scotland: Wills, Testaments and Confirmation Inventories (see Bibliography).

None of the first generation of the family owned industrial investments on death, although it is certain they disposed of some as they aged. John Smith inherited the family seat of Craigend but held considerable capital in the firm and was owed up to £9,000 in bond loans.121 He can be described as a West India proprietor lender. The origins of his brother James Smith of Craighead’s fortune lay in employment in Grenada from 1783. He also became a West India proprietor lender whose colonial wealth was invested in the firm and landed enterprise in Scotland. His inventory on death reveals – in addition to loans to Leitch & Smith – other loans mainly on bond to various individuals between 1803 and 1814.122 The interest on major outlying loans in Scotland – the rates of which are not defined in the sources – was a supplementary source of income. According to his brother Archibald, he was averse to risk-taking, which explains his preference for supplying credit within the family.

Archibald Smith senior was a speculative West India mercantile investor. Having arrived back in Glasgow in 1779 – more likely penniless but with commercial knowledge – he founded Leitch & Smith, which became the source of the family wealth. Throughout his life, he continued with risky investments in Scotland. Glasgow’s first banks were established by tobacco merchants and, similarly, Archibald Smith sunk investment into savings banks and insurance schemes. He bought four shares for a total of £1,000 in Glasgow Fire Insurance Society in 1803 and was voted a director.123 With James Ewing, Smith was involved with the establishment of the first Provident Bank in Glasgow in 1815 and the family still had outstanding subscriptions on its winding up in 1851.124 As noted above, Smith held investments in cotton firm James Finlay & Co. in 1797. He also expanded into textile production by employing handloom weavers.125 In 1799, he established Smith, Hutchison and Co., which became one of the great Glasgow linen houses.126 On Archibald’s death in 1821, he held no shares in insurance, banking or manufacturing firms, but had provided credit to his son’s firm, Smith & Browns, among others.127

Case study comparisons thus reveal Glasgow-West India merchants were involved in a range of activities across the Scottish-Atlantic world, drawing capital from the colonies for speculative investment at home, which was governed by the entrepreneurial tendencies of each individual. The accumulation of colonial wealth improved the co-partners’ social standing, while local political appointments publicly affirmed their elite status. Archibald Smith senior was one of the original subscribers of the Chamber of Commerce in 1783, and chairman in 1815. He was also the dean of guild of the Merchants House, 1799–1800. John Guthrie was dean of guild of the Merchants House in 1814–15 and Adam Crooks was deputy chairman of the Chamber of Commerce in 1829. Archibald Smith, John Guthrie and Adam Crooks were founder members of the influential lobbying group the Glasgow West India Association in 1807. In time, both Archibald Smith senior and youngest were appointed director and chairman. As discussed in Chapter 1, influential positions consolidated elite reputations in the city.

In financial terms alone, the next generation were not as successful. When Archibald Smith junior, the son of John Smith of Craigend, died in 1823, he was worth over £20,000 (the vast majority of which was held in the merchant firm) but more still was held in mortgages secured on enslaved people:

At the time of his decease, his share of certain sums of money secured over certain plantations in the colonies…by mortgages or otherwise and held by the said concern of Leitch and Smith which it is impossible to value at present…being heritable Colonial property.128

When his brother James Smith junior (who had inherited Craigend from his father) died in 1836, he was worth over £19,500. Leitch & Smith had been disbanded by then and Smith had moved away from the West India trades. Instead, his inventory revealed significant cash in the bank, as well as outstanding bond loans to firms associated with cousins, Smith, Hutchison & Co., and Jas. & Arch. Smith & Co. He had also invested in Glasgow Waterworks. With no direct investments in West India trades, James Smith junior of Craigend symbolizes the wider family’s movement away from colonial to domestic enterprise.129

Archibald’s Smith’s three sons, however, retained interests in the West Indies. The glorious histories of Glasgow portray James Smith youngest of Jordanhill as having limited involvement in the family West India business.130 However, James had a major financial interest in Leitch & Smith and was a leading influence in the successor firm. He might be described as a West India merchant dilletante, utilizing profits to support an elite lifestyle centred around cultural pursuits in the west of Scotland. James Smith ostensibly devoted himself to science, literature and gentrified activities. A statement of his wealth in April 1832 confirmed he was part of the ‘very wealthy merchant elite’ who maintained an estate and townhouse. Yet in 1832, he held £7,800 in Leitch & Smith – suggesting it was still owed debts – and £15,200 in Jas. & Arch. Smith & Co. Smith’s main income came from West India shares and stock. The most valuable investments were Jordanhill and Whiteinch – which he had inherited from his father – as well as his library and house in George Square.131 His pastimes were symbolic of his gentrified lifestyle. As the ‘father of yachting on the Clyde’, he owned sailing ships from 1806.132 From 1830 until 1839 he was president of Anderson’s University (now the University of Strathclyde) and was a significant donor to the Andersonian Museum. As president of the Glasgow Dilettanti Society, he had a keen interest in fine arts, exemplified by his extensive painting collection at Jordanhill, which was valued (with furniture) at £3,000.133 James had no industrial investments on his death in 1867 or in two subsequent inventories which revised his estate.134 In 1867, his interests in the organization including two Jamaica plantations were deemed to be of ‘no value’.135 It is very likely the costs of an elite lifestyle drained the fortune to the extent he left much less than his brother Archibald. Neither was able to extricate the firm from the West Indies. Instead, on James Smith’s death in 1867, they were left with the shell of a merchant firm whose only assets were plantations in Jamaica that could not be disposed of after years of unprofitability. Moreover, James inherited Jordanhill, and with that came the responsibility for the upkeep of his mother, Isabella Smith, who died in 1855, having lived to the grand old age of 100.136 James Smith’s high-consumption lifestyle was entirely based upon the family West India fortune and his successor firm, the profits from which declined after emancipation. The firm, Jas and Arch. Smith & Co., disbanded soon after the death of James Smith. Unlike the Campbells of Possil, the Smiths of Jordanhill’s fortune declined in two generations.

The third son of Archibald Smith senior, however, inherited his father’s business acumen and was the exception to this pattern of relative failure. Indeed, Victorian histories of Glasgow describe Archibald Smith youngest as an ‘excellent man of business’.137 He was the most successful financially of his siblings and can be considered a second-generation West India speculator who invested West India profits across Victorian Scotland. In the 1820s and 1830s he was the senior partner in Jas. & Arch. Smith & Co. and made commercial investments much like his father; he was named as a director of Beacon Fire Insurance Company of London and Edinburgh in 1826.138 On his brother’s death in 1867, Archibald Smith youngest inherited the family interests and the estate income was £5,899 per annum. Although the estate was heavily burdened, the main annual source was £3,000 from the Monkland Iron and Steel Company who mined Jordanhill estate. The investment in land from the initial fortune meant the family profited from successive stages of industrialization in Scotland.139 He speculated in railway shares and left personal wealth of over £33,000 when he died. Owning shares in Scottish railways as well as in banks in Scotland and England, his holdings were typical of the West India elite who lived into the latter half of the nineteenth century.140 As one of the oldest surviving members of the Chamber of Commerce, Archibald Smith maintained a public role before he died aged eighty-eight in 1883. Thus, as one of the last remaining elite Glasgow-West India merchants, he ensured the Smiths of Jordanhill saw out the city’s sugar era.

Conclusion

In An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith was unequivocal that credit from the metropolis overflowed to the British West Indies, which drained the mother country. At the end of a pre-eminent research career examining the private papers of merchants and planters, including the Lascelles and the Pinneys, Richard Pares (after initially agreeing with Adam Smith) radically shifted position:

The money came, in the last resort, from the planters themselves. The factors charged high interest – even, on occasion, compound interest. They paid it to themselves on the planters behalf, without any order from him, and they made sure of having it, whoever else went short. The money which was received from one planter was lent again, either to him or another planter… Thus, it was the planter who was paying, so to speak, for his own enslavement. The profits of the plantations were the source which fed the indebtedness charged upon the plantations themselves. In this sense, Adam Smith was wrong: the wealth of the British West Indies did not all proceed from the mother country; after some initial loans in the earliest period which merely primed the pump, the wealth of the West Indies was created out of the profits of the West Indies themselves, and, with some assistance from the British taxpayer, much of it found a permanent home in Great Britain.141

Thus, for Pares, the merchants ensured the profits of the sugar trade were repatriated through monopolistic practices which subsequently assisted the development of Great Britain. Richard Sheridan, also citing the Lascelles accounts, argued that surplus in the account current of planters managed by metropolis merchants was invested in Great Britain, indicating a ‘capital in-flow’.142 More recently, after detailed analysis of the remaining material concerning the Lascelles, S. D. Smith suggested that ‘Adam Smith’s image of an overflowing of British riches into the Caribbean was closer to the truth’.143 The sources sampled here do not allow detailed tracing of the ‘ontogeny of debt’,144 but in their own words, the Smiths provide evidence that reveals their family fortune originated in the West Indies. The Smith fortunes came from West India planters themselves – in Grenada especially, although less wealth flowed from Jamaica – which was ploughed back into the firm, providing the capital that was ultimately invested (and lost) in Scotland.

This study has examined Leitch & Smith and their commercial successors and illuminated the operations that connected Scotland and the West Indies. Between 1800 and 1866, over £149,000 was extended to a merchant house in Grenada (4 per cent of the total), a Glasgow-West India merchant house for working capital on Jamaica plantations (35 per cent) and individual planters across both colonies (61 per cent). Clearly, the Smiths were powerful merchant financiers who operated a long-term commission system based on the extension of capital, similar to the English-West India merchant houses like the Pinneys, who had £80,000 of outstanding debt in the Caribbean in 1819.145 Indeed, the Smiths were exceptions to the view that merchants in Glasgow were less inclined to become bankers to plantation owners, in contrast to those in London.146 In fact, the opposite was true: the elite West India houses of Glasgow also took on a de facto role as bankers with mainly Scottish planters in the West Indies. This adds a new dimension to the vision of British credit flowing into the colonies.

On the other hand, in Archibald Smith senior’s own words in 1815, he ‘had been the means of making’ the fortune.147 Indeed, he fashioned a family dynasty based initially on the Grenada business, as Leitch & Smith dominated the profitable free port trade on the island. Based on John Guthrie’s statement, this seems to have been the most profitable branch of the business. The firm supplied credit to planters after 1800 and maintained an efficient system protected by a series of risk-averse methods based on established networks of kith and kin. In Jamaica, the firm acquired the trade from plantations which was their most valuable account up to 1818. Thus, the sugar and cotton plantations of the Caribbean primed the pump and – with support from Scottish banks – allowed the accumulation of capital for investment and diversification in Scottish land, industry and commerce. This boom time coincided with the purchase of the estates of Jordanhill, Craighead and Carbeth, while the family seat of Craigend was much improved. Moreover, capital was sunk into textiles, banking, insurance and eventually heavy industry. Thus, the Smiths converted the profits from commodity trades to property in Scotland and collected the imperial dividend where others – such as Alexander Houston & Co. – ultimately failed. When considering the long-term solvency of the firm and the investments of merchants in life and wealth on death, it seems a profitable business underpinned high personal incomes and wealth of co-partners, up to a point.

The study also reveals different types of mercantile spenders: investors in land, speculators in commerce, lenders of large-scale credit and high-consumption lifestyles. The senior partners left the largest fortunes, loaned regularly and invested wisely. The sons who inherited business interests bequeathed lesser personal wealth. However, by contrasting the investment patterns of Archibald Smith’s sons, explanations for the decline in the family fortunes become apparent. James Smith youngest of Jordanhill spent freely on non-entrepreneurial investments in Scotland, while Archibald youngest diversified into Scottish industry such as railways. Thus, while the Jamaica business seemingly took some of the family fortune back, by diversifying his investments, Archibald Smith youngest was able to grow his inheritance and acquire substantial personal wealth. In this way, despite a relative decline, the accumulation of West India fortunes boosted the family’s status and, in the process, reshaped the Scottish economy and society throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.