7. Trinidad

In January 1833, James MacQueen, the chief propagandist of the British West India interest, arrived to a great welcome in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Hailing from Lanarkshire in west-central Scotland, the south-east Caribbean was familiar territory for him, as he had spent many years as an overseer in Grenada before returning to Glasgow around 1810 as editor of the pro-slavery Glasgow Courier. Given his transatlantic prominence, it was natural for the merchants and planters of Trinidad to honour MacQueen at a dinner that celebrated the British empire. An English-born artist resident in Trinidad, Richard Bridgens, produced decorations that included a wreath of intertwined banana and cocoa trees, sugar cane and coffee plant, thus symbolizing the slave-grown produce from which the planters’ fortunes were derived. Bridgens also painted the lion rampant of Scotland adjoined to Ireland’s harp and England’s St George and the dragon. This shared commitment to empire, especially among Scots and English, cultivated a sense of Britishness in Trinidad.

At the dinner – attended by fellow Scots such as prominent merchant John Losh – the health of the king, queen and royal family was toasted amid loud celebration of MacQueen’s homeland. Before his speech, in which he described Great Britain as the ‘mistress of nations and arbitress of the world’, the band played Robert Burns’ radical anthem ‘Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled’. MacQueen’s reaction was not recorded, but surely this educated propagandist would have understood the irony in Burns’ stanzas that alluded to English subjugation of the Scots (‘Who’s sae base as be a slave? – let him turn, and flee’), while he defended his own compatriots’ right to hold men, women and children as enslaved property.1 MacQueen’s visit to Trinidad is symbolic not only of an increasingly unified British-West India interest towards the end of the slavery period,2 but also underlines just how much the Scots were fully integrated across frontier colonies in the British Caribbean. Nevertheless, historians have underestimated the Scottish involvement in a period of dramatic change on the island. Bridget Brereton’s classic history of modern Trinidad suggests that Scottish merchants, planters and professionals only became part of the white ruling elite after 1838. Kit Candlin’s more recent book on the free coloured population in the Caribbean’s last frontier – Grenada, Trinidad and British Guyana – alludes to Scots in Trinidad but does not trace their standing in colonial society. Trinidad is also absent from seminal histories of Scotland and the Caribbean in the slavery period.3 This chapter, therefore, seeks to understand more about Scottish involvement in the settlement and implementation of a plantation system in Trinidad, tracing connections with Glasgow via interconnected case studies of transatlantic Scots. This chapter has a simple premise: to identify Scots commercially associated with Trinidad and trace economic success, or lack thereof, towards the end of Caribbean slavery.

The settlement of British Trinidad: merchants and migration

Taken from the Spanish with ease in 1797, Trinidad was formally ceded to Great Britain under a secret clause of the Treaty of Amiens in March 1802. Alongside other third-phase colonies Demerara, Essequibo and Berbice, Trinidad represented, in Candlin’s phrase, the ‘last frontier’ of the British West Indies.4 According to the Scottish adjutant-general to the West Indies, General Sir George Murray, the island was of some commercial importance at this time:

Its extent, the greatest proportion of land which is capable of Cultivation, the variety of its productions, the fertility of the soil, and…its favourable situation…entitle the colony of Trinidad to rank under Jamaica alone in all the British dependencies in the West Indies.5

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the British state continued to pursue expansionist policies in the Caribbean and on the South American mainland, although, according to Lowell Ragatz and others, the West Indian economy had already entered economic decline.6 While it had considerable agricultural potential, the acquisition of Trinidad presented a unique series of challenges for the British imperial state. First, the island was underdeveloped, having been neglected by its previous imperial possessors, Spain. In October 1802, orders from Lord Hobart, secretary of state for the colonies, to the commissioners for the governing of the island noted that its resident population was limited and ‘composed of various Nations’, yet a considerable part of the island’s fertile countryside was yet to be cultivated in a ‘climate unfavourable to European industry’.7 Second, the resident plantocracy, mainly Spanish and especially French, possessed a small enslaved labour force, although the British demanded higher numbers of enslaved people from Africa to facilitate large-scale cultivation. But Trinidad was subsumed into the British empire five years after the House of Commons committed to Henry Dundas’ policy of ‘gradual abolition’ in April 1792.8 A series of acts in the spirit of abolition after 1799 meant that Trinidad planters never acquired the extensive enslaved workforce of more mature slave economies before the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. As Gelien Matthews notes, the island subsequently became as a ‘model colony in the grand scheme of British abolition’ as reforms and regulations were introduced in the crown colony – by parliament, as the island did not have an assembly dominated by planters.9 While Trinidad was subject to British slavery for only thirty-seven years, and was an idiosyncratic colony, studying the settlement of the island offers historians the opportunity to examine the activities of individuals on the island during the transition from Spanish to British control in the final decades of Caribbean slavery.

Trinidad is fifty-four miles long and, at its broadest, stretched to around forty-four miles, much of which was uncultivated. To remedy this situation, in the late eighteenth century various attempts were made to attract settlers. In November 1776, the Spanish Crown’s Cédula de población offered land grants and trading concessions to Catholic foreigners – especially from Grenada, Tobago, St Vincent and Dominica – in an attempt to attract settlers and boost the economy. Another cédula in November 1783 extended this concession to all settlers of the Roman Catholic faith. Migrants, including many free coloured people, arrived from French Caribbean islands, especially Grenada.10 Records generated by the Spanish government following this edict suggest that it was unlikely that many Scots were prominent in Spanish Trinidad.11 Land grants reveal a few names of Scottish origin, although some, such as William McNeill, took up land in Naparima (in the western-south of the island) to be used for sugar estates: he later operated as a merchant between Glasgow and Trinidad.12 Since they hailed from a majority Presbyterian country, it seems unlikely that Scots infiltrated Spanish Trinidad immediately after both cédulas. However, this changed with British rule.

Trinidad was governed as a crown colony, which, according to Eric Williams, allowed the British government to retain complete control rather than devolve any power to a colonial legislature (which would likely have been dominated by slave-owning planters and free coloured people).13 In December 1802, the secretary of state for the colonies advised the newly appointed commissioners of Trinidad that, alongside other incentives, employing ministers would encourage the settlement of Protestant dissenters from Scotland and Ireland. Indentures of five years included parcels of land as an inducement, with wages offered on an incremental scale dependent on skills.14 In other words, developing the socio-religious environment on the island would encourage British settlers. In 1803, one such scheme was attempted by Alexander Macdonell, Chaplain to the Glengarry Fencibles, who tried to relocate 500 Highland military families to Trinidad, their loyalty to the British empire by then no longer in question after fighting in Ireland in 1798. Highland Scots were deemed particularly suitable as pioneering settlers. Families were to be provided with 100 acres of land in a specially constructed village, while plans were made to introduce a Gaelic-speaking chaplain of the Catholic Church and a Church of Scotland minister to service the religious needs of the families.15 Scots of any faith were envisioned as the ideal settlers for British Trinidad, and while this scheme was abandoned, many travelled there of their own accord.

In 1801, Scottish newspapers enticed young men to Trinidad by describing a colony of ‘great extent, of uncommon fertility, the most healthy of West India islands, neither exposed to fevers or hurricane, capable of immense improvement in British hands, already adding considerably to our revenue’.16 Trinidad certainly was a sugar planter’s dream: the soil was rich and fertile, unlike that of older colonies such as Jamaica, and the land was offered at low cost to pioneering settlers.17 Spanish under development presented imperial challenges and opportunities. With British rule came increased imports of enslaved people and commodity production. Trinidad and neighbouring Tobago are estimated to have received over 25,000 African enslaved people on British ships between 1797 and 1808, the third-highest number in the British West Indies after Jamaica and the colonies that became British Guiana.18 In 1796, there were over 450 estates in Trinidad: coffee (130), cocoa (60), cotton (103) and especially sugar (159), increasing to 479 by 1802. While the numbers of coffee, cocoa and cotton estates remained broadly similar, the overall numbers of sugar estates increased by 20 per cent. Export statistics are even more impressive. Slight increases were noted in exports of cocoa and cotton between 1799 and 1803, coffee exports almost halved, while cotton outputs increased by a third and sugar exports almost doubled to 16 million lbs.19 According to one contemporary commentator, there were over 210 sugar estates on Trinidad by 1807, and while several large plantations were increasingly productive, output was limited ‘from want of hands’.20 While sugar production quickly dominated in Trinidad, it never developed as a monocultural economy and the perennial shortage of labour prohibited larger-scale production.

Voyages from Clyde ports dramatically increased as the nineteenth century progressed, supporting the view of developing mercantile activity between Scotland and Trinidad. Ships departed from Glasgow ports for Trinidad in 1795 – even before it was subsumed into the British empire, which suggests that trade could have been well-established by the Treaty of Amiens in 1802.21 In the years 1806 to 1834, shipping advertisements in the Glasgow Herald suggest just over 200 ships departed from Clyde ports for Trinidad. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, there was around one voyage every year, although this increased to an average of twelve a year by the 1830s (see Table 4.1). Thus, Trinidad became the third most important destination for ships departing from Clyde ports, after Jamaica and Demerara, up to the end of Caribbean slavery. The merchant firms of Glasgow such as Dennistoun, McGregor & Co., George Cole, Campbell, Rivers & Co., Wighton, Gray & Co., operated many of the ships, although the elite firm Robert Eccles & Co. was the most prolific of all. West India firms acted as shippers but also as recruiters offering assisted passage. The firm Campbell, Rivers & Co. advertised in the Glasgow Herald looking for ‘A YOUNG MAN as an OVERSEER for an Estate in a healthy situation in Trinidad’ who was offered ‘freight and passage’ from Port Glasgow.22 Robert Eccles & Co. advertised in the Glasgow Herald in September 1828 looking for ‘A HOUSE CARPENTER, to serve under Indenture for three years’ on a healthy estate with ‘good encouragement’ on offer, if candidates came well-recommended.23 The ships that arrived in Trinidad from Glasgow therefore not only serviced the planters’ requirements but also brought many young Scotsmen as skilled tradesmen or labourers. Based on the over 200 Glasgow Herald advertisements of ships departing from Clyde ports for Trinidad (with between five and nine individuals per ship), it is possible between 1,000 and 1,900 Scots travelled on these ships between 1806 and 1834. Not all of these remained, and many likely went on to Tobago, twenty miles north-east, an island which was regarded as a ‘Scotch colony’ in this period.24

Contemporary newspapers referred to Scots as the most ‘numerous of the natives of the British Islands residing in Trinidad’ in 1838.25 Even so, they were unlikely to have reached the sheer numbers of Jamaica, or the relatively high proportion within Grenadian white society. A census in 1808 documented 31,478 persons in Trinidad, the vast majority black enslaved people (21,895) and Amerindians (1,635). Free people of colour numbered 5,450, double the white population. Of the white population of 2,476, the French and Spanish outnumbered the British, who comprised just under half.26 The demographics shifted by 1825: the enslaved population slightly increased to 23,230, the free people of colour to 14,983, while indigenous Amerindians decreased to around 700. The white population of Trinidad was 3,310, yet those from the ‘United Kingdom’ almost halved to just over 600, of whom three-quarters were men.27 This return suggests British men in Trinidad numbered 450 at most in 1825, no more than 14 per cent of the white population, and the Scottish proportion must have been lower, given the prevalence of English merchants on the island.

Figure 7.1 Richard Bridgens, active 1838, British, Protector of Slaves Office (Trinidad), c.1833, Graphite on medium, slightly textured, beige wove paper. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1981.25.2403. Public Domain.

Many Scots were, however, prominent in island society. The ill-fated Robert McGregor Stirling – a Scot on the island who will be discussed below – described the partners of the Glasgow firm, Burnley, Gray & Co. – including John Losh – as the ‘Bigwigs’ of Trinidad.28 By the 1830s, Scots were established enough to host regular events that publicly expressed patriotism, including St Andrew’s Day dinners in Port of Spain and the event for James MacQueen described above.29 Yet, Scots were part of a diverse Trinidadian society, initially outnumbered by the French, Spanish and free people of colour. Fewer in number than their counterparts in Jamaica and with nowhere near the relative importance of the Scots in Grenada, the Scots in Trinidadian society were a less pervasive presence in a colony in which chattel slavery was being brutally imposed. Nevertheless, as the overall British population of Trinidad declined between 1808 and 1825, many Scots rose to positions of some prominence, often expressing their national heritage in public spaces while extracting fortunes derived from slavery.

The ‘Trinidad people’ of Glasgow

The British settlement of Trinidad during Glasgow’s sugar era ostensibly presented a prime opportunity for the city’s mercantile speculators. However, the potential funders were less convinced. In February 1802, staff at the Glasgow branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland commented on the preliminary negotiations in the Treaty of Amiens (when it was assumed Trinidad would be returned to Spain) and speculated about the assumed negative impact on the fortunes of merchants described as the ‘Trinidad people’ in Glasgow.30 The final cession of Trinidad in March 1802 attracted immediate speculative investment from the opportunistic West India merchants of Glasgow. Royal Bank correspondence in May that year suggested the mercantile community – to many of whom the bank provided short-term credit facilities – was investing in Trinidad, although Glasgow joint agent Robert Scott Moncrieff expressed concern at what were still regarded as high-risk ventures:

I wish some of our young West Indians may not follow [in speculation] – A number of them I hear are buying Estates in Trinidad – I know not a more hazardous ruinous business – I would not take a complement of the best estate in the island.31

Although Royal Bank staff viewed this new generation as ‘West India youths’ whose ambition and desire for capital was limitless, some were successful in applications for credit.32 But this was a risky business even for well-known firms. Unlike other West India novices in the city, the Eccles were long-established, having been present in Spanish Trinidad since 1783, when they were listed as ‘actual proprietors’ of land used for the cultivation of sugar cane in Oropouche. The Eccles were based in Glasgow but, unusually for the time, were of Irish descent. It is likely that the patriarch of the family, William Eccles, became successful in Trinidad – his Roman Catholic faith providing access to land under cédula – and chose Glasgow as a metropolitan base for sugar imports. His son George Eccles died on the island in 1799, and his will, written in Spanish, revealed both his adherence to the Catholic faith and his connection to Glasgow. He nominated his three brothers, Robert, William and James, as executors.33 The surviving brothers established an elite mercantile business, Robert Eccles & Co., located on Buchanan Street, around 1801.34 The co-partners quickly mixed among the upper echelons of the city’s elite West India interest. William Eccles and the firm were founding subscribers to the Glasgow West India Association in 1807. By 1820, a sister firm, William & James Eccles & Co., was established. The separate firms were established to manage discrete interests in separate colonies: Robert Eccles & Co. shipped mainly to Trinidad (indeed, they were the top shippers from the Clyde to the island between 1806 and 1834), whereas Wm. & Jas. Eccles & Co. shipped mainly to Demerara. By the 1820s, therefore, the Eccles were of considerable importance in mercantile Glasgow, with multiple firms importing sugar from third-phase colonies of the British West Indies.

Three generations of the Eccles were resident in Trinidad, and they had considerable standing in the island towards the end of the slavery era. In 1838, Rosina Eccles, daughter of James, married William Frederick Burnley, who moved to Glasgow to take up commercial pursuits. He was the son of William Hardin Burnley, owner of fourteen sugar estates and described by Trinidadian historian Selwyn Cudjoe as the ‘wealthiest man and largest slave owner in Trinidad during the first half of the nineteenth century’.35 Thus, the children of the most prominent mercantile and planting families on the island were paired, consolidating connections with Port of Spain and Glasgow. However, the high-status and prosperous business over the long term did not translate into large-scale mercantile fortunes. As noted by Selwyn Cudjoe, the Eccles and Burnley businesses were ultimately combined but were not efficiently managed.36 The firm Eccles, Burnley & Co. was made bankrupt in 1847. On his death a year earlier, William Eccles’ estate was initially valued at over £56,000, the majority of which was held in associated merchant firms in Glasgow, Trinidad and Demerara. With the bankruptcy of the firms, his holdings were deemed ‘utterly worthless’ three years later.37 The family did maintain control of sugar estates in Trinidad through James’s son, William Eccles junior, who was resident on the island for many years as proprietor of over ten estates. His death in 1859 was announced in Trinidad and Scotland as a ‘public calamity…an irreparable loss to the whole colony’.38 As will be shown, few Scottish adventurers generated major fortunes in Trinidad, although there were exceptional cases.

John Lamont of Cedar Grove

On the death of planter John Lamont on 21 November 1850, his obituary in the San Fernando Gazette was as follows:

Mr Lamont had arrived at the age of 65 years, the greater part of his life which he passed in this Island [of Trinidad]: where he had accumulated a very large fortune, by care, perseverance, and intelligence, accompanied by the strictest integrity, and marked by honour in all his transactions. He was never married; and we believe it is not known who will become the possessors of his fine estates in Diego Martin and in Naparima. His body was attended from his residence to Cocorite by a numerous cortege of friends; and it was there placed on board the steamer, and brought to San Fernando – from thence it was conveyed (attended by his friends who are resident in Naparima) to the family burial ground at Canaan Estate, where it was finally deposited next to the grave of his late brother, Boyden Lamont Esq.39

Lamont hailed from Argyllshire in the Western Highlands of Scotland, and his trajectory makes him worthy of detailed study: the fortune he acquired was among the largest accumulated across the British West Indies towards the end of Caribbean slavery.

John Lamont was born in Argyllshire, Scotland, in 1782, the son of a local gentry laird and a woman of ‘inferior station’, whose lower social rank prohibited marriage between them.40 Lamont was registered and baptised the same year as the ‘natural son’ (that is, a recognized child born out of wedlock) of James Lamont of Knockdow and Isabel Clerk, daughter of Duncan Clerk (or Clark).41 While acknowledged illegitimacy was not unknown in the Western Highlands in the late eighteenth century, it was less common than in many urban centres of Scotland, perhaps due to the influence of Church discipline.42 There were implications for John Lamont as he grew into manhood. As a shunned illegitimate without the appropriate respectability of descent, he had no legal claim to the family estate and would not have been accepted into the same social circles his paternal family frequented. Although the eldest son, there seems to have been no support from his father during childhood. Lamont’s far-from-privileged start in life provided ample motivation to pursue fortune in the West Indies. Correspondence printed in a family history suggests this was an elective migration due to economic hardship. ‘I had no other choice at the time circumstances favoured me. I only aimed at frugal independence’, he later revealed.43 Aged twenty in 1802, he departed from Scotland, most likely from Port Glasgow or Greenock, and was among the first influx of Scots in Trinidad after the Peace of Amiens.44

Lamont began as an overseer on the estates of Glasgow firm Eccles & Co. and within seven years became the owner of a 360-acre sugar plantation, Cedar Grove in South Naparima on the south-west coast of Trinidad.45 According to William Hardin Burnley, the quarter in which it was situated was the most fertile on the island: ‘there is no soil in any part of the world equal to the black sugar soil of South Naparima’.46 The capital required to settle new plantations in Trinidad was immense. In 1799, the governor of Trinidad, Thomas Picton, estimated the smallest class of sugar plantation should consist of 200 acres of fertile land, fifty acres for pasture and fifty acres for enslaved people. The cost was £8,000 sterling, over twice that of a small estate in Jamaica in the same period.47 With John Corrie, Lamont was initially part-owner of Cedar Grove and resident enslaved people.48 The Trinidad Land Register suggests that Corrie’s part share was transferred to Lamont on 23 November 1819, reputedly for £28,750.49 There is no record of how Lamont managed to raise such remarkable start-up capital, but it is likely he borrowed from the Eccles to finance the half-share, which became profitable enough to purchase the other.

Although he was the son of a laird, John Lamont’s illegitimacy meant there was no privileged start in life, in contrast to William Hardin Burnley’s schooling at Harrow.50 The vastly differing starts in life perhaps help to explain why Burnley became a noted public commentator on slavery in Trinidad, while the latter seems to have been silent, at least in print, on these issues. Nevertheless, in March 1825 Lamont testified before a Committee of Council in Trinidad appointed ‘for the purpose of obtaining a more correct knowledge of the Negro Character’. While he was not a learned man, Lamont recounted a spectacular rise in the planting business: first as overseer, then as manager (or attorney) and eventually as a plantation owner in his own right. By 1825, Lamont was proprietor of two sugar estates: Cedar Grove and the 320-acre estate Canaan, which he purchased in 1821. He later speculated in land and purchased the 120-acre La Grenade for £13,000 in 1829.51 Lamont worked simultaneously as an attorney on sugar plantations, including Otaheite, located in Oropouche, southern Trinidad, which he managed for the Eccles firm.52

By 1825, Lamont was an experienced planter who had worked on sugar plantations for over twenty years. His testimony to the Committee of Council illustrates his prejudices towards enslaved people and his personal experiences of plantation management and general agricultural practices in Trinidad.53 In terms of plantation management, Lamont operated a sugar monoculture system on his estates simply because ‘no crops…pay so well as sugar, even in these times’. He employed Scots on his plantations, although not always in a mutually agreeable manner. As discussed below, the ill-fated Robert Stirling was appointed as an attorney on one of Lamont’s smaller estates but left his employment ‘inconsequence of the bad behaviour of that personage’.54 He also employed free labourers such as peons – unfree labourers whom he described as ‘very expert axemen’ – to cut trees and clear land. Lamont divided his gangs of field-slaves into three classes which apportioned labour to the strength of individuals. He implemented a task system for fieldwork on his plantation, a practice typical of Trinidad, Demerara-Essequibo and Berbice in the 1820s and 1830s. According to Lamont, the task system meant the work was finished sooner as it afforded the ‘industrious part of the gang more time to themselves’, although it required more supervision than the alternative gang-work, as there was a natural tendency ‘to hurry over the work as quickly as possible’. He also deployed gangs of enslaved people to cut sugar canes during harvest. The enslaved people’s careful work ensured a second growth of canes after the first harvest, a process known as ratooning. In his testimony, he stated it was ‘most advantageous’ for a sugar planter to operate two cattle mills and two small sets of sugar works on different parts of the estate. The cane was carried from the fields by mule to the mill to be processed. Ideally, in his view, a distillery should have adjoined one of the sugar works as it saved labour in the transportation of cane refuse and distilled cane juice. Lamont retained the cattle mill, a traditional method he viewed as more efficient and cost-effective than the steam engine, which had been introduced to Trinidad in 1804. The older method, however, was more labour-intensive for cattle, as well as for free and enslaved labourers.55

While John Lamont’s obituary attributed his fortune to his ‘care, perseverance, and intelligence, accompanied by the strictest integrity, and marked by honour’, the wealth was, of course, based on the exploitation of enslaved people. The conditions suffered by Lamont’s labour force can be delineated from the slave registers which were first taken six years after the British parliament abolished the slave trade. Lives of the enslaved, and subsequent changes such as births, deaths and manumissions, were systematically documented. Abolitionists hoped to prevent the illegal importation and ill-treatment of enslaved people, yet planters and their allies were able to circumnavigate the system to increase the enslaved labour force.56 In 1813, John Lamont’s Cedar Grove estate held twenty-four enslaved people, of whom fourteen were male and ten were female. The eldest on the plantation was thirty-two, the youngest four months. Five children under the age of ten were held on the plantation. Fourteen enslaved people were African born, while another ten were described as Creoles, mainly from Trinidad, with some born in Grenada, Barbados or Guadeloupe. The register listed the enslaved by household and the remainder by sex. One family of prominence was the Taylor family. Assante Taylor was described as a thirty-year-old African Moco, likely hailing from modern-day Nigeria, who lived with his daughter. Assante’s role as driver was a high-status position. A recent study of enslaved drivers in the nearby British colony of Berbice described them as the ‘life and soul of the estate’ with responsibility to keep production going and discipline other enslaved people.57 The other members of the enslaved workforce were categorized based on their skills and the tasks on the estate. Most of the resident enslaved people on Cedar Grove worked in the fields, the duties split between eight males and eight females. Three children aged between six and thirteen, including Assante Taylor’s daughter, worked in the small weeding gang into which they would have been forced from around the age of four.58

The work was both physically demanding and arduous, starting at 6am and often lasting until 11pm. Mothers of toddlers and those nursing infants were offered a little respite, starting later in the morning. During crop time, a half-hour was allowed for breakfast and an hour for dinner. Daily labour varied across the lifecycle of the sugar cane, and Lamont’s preference for the task system meant he typically assigned tasks each morning, cutting wood for fuel, draining and lining the land, holing and embanking, planting the canes, weeding and when ripe cutting the cane, then stripping. If women were assigned weeding tasks, then Basil Dean, a seventeen-year-old Creole born in Trinidad, would have been expected to weed up to 300 holes per day with a hoe. A healthy adult male, such as François Clark, a thirty-two-year-old African Ibo, would have been expected to dig up to 300 holes per day, or plant 400 canes per day, or fill four to five cart loads of sugar cane on a daily basis. During harvest, mills and boilers worked twenty-four hours a day. It would not have been unusual for John Harris, a twenty-five-year-old Barbados-born boiler, to work thirty-hour shifts during this time. In terms of provisions, the enslaved were provided with three-and-a-half pounds of saltfish per week, although the head slave, Assante Taylor, received double. The task system supposedly offered some flexibility for those who had finished their tasks to undertake work on their own provision grounds. The provided clothing seems to have been wholly insufficient for arduous labour in such a climate. Males were provided with two shirts and trousers, a cloth jacket, a hat or cap and one blanket every two years. Females were provided with an Osnaburg petticoat, two shirts, a Kilmarnock cap and a blanket in the same period.59

Life was treacherous for the enslaved residents of Trinidad’s plantations, and especially for those born on British-owned small sugar estates like John Lamont’s Cedar Grove. In 1800, the British replaced the Spanish Code Noir, which had governed the lives of Trinidad’s enslaved since 1798, with a slave code that led to a sharp deterioration of their conditions. Based on data from over 17,000 enslaved people in the 1813 and 1816 slave registries, historian J. A. Meredith estimated that the average life expectancy for an enslaved person born in Trinidad and working in a plantation in 1813 was seventeen years. The high incidence of disease and harsh working regimes in a colony under cultivation with limited labour led to a remarkably short life expectancy. One-third of the children born into plantation slavery in Trinidad died before their first birthday. Fewer than half reached the age of five, and few new-borns lived to be adults. Enslaved people working on smaller sugar estates with fewer than 200 enslaved people had a decreased chance of survival compared to those working on coffee plantations. The nationality of proprietors was a significant factor in deciding mortality rates of African male slaves. The (Catholic) French and Spanish planters treated enslaved people more humanely than the (Protestant) English and Scottish, who regarded enslaved people as chattel property, with cataclysmic results.60 With good reason, the plight of Trinidad’s plantation slaves has been described as possibly the ‘most dismal known for any reliably reported population, save in time of natural disaster’, although death rates of the enslaved in Jamaica and Grenada were not far behind.61 This perpetual cycle of labour and death contributed to British economic development.

Fragmentary sources, albeit through second-hand accounts, provide the enslaved with a voice. The history of Maria Jones offers a rare perspective of the life and experience of an enslaved woman in Africa and the West Indies.62 Maria was forcibly trafficked from Africa to St Vincent in the West Indies at the age of seven, before she was sold to a planter in Trinidad. She was subsequently put to work on Palmiste estate in South Naparima, which was supervised by a Scots attorney. According to Brinsley Samaroo, the attorney was none other than John Lamont, and evidence from slave registers seems to support this claim.63 The register of slaves for John Lamont’s Cedar Grove estate in 1813 lists a thirty-year-old African-born enslaved woman from the Gold Coast named Mary Jones, a labourer on the plantation with her infant son Robert, aged three, born in Trinidad. It is possible this was the same Maria Jones.64 Maria recounted how this ‘young Scotchman’ was ‘just commencing his career as a planter’, having risen ‘from the humblest beginning…to possess several valuable sugar plantations’. This attorney saw in Maria a ‘noble independence of character not often found in oppressed slaves’, and she felt he ‘was not very cruel’. However, she contrasted her position in life with that of Lamont’s: ‘I am more rich than he for a’ dat; he, poor, blind buckra sinner, while Father make me rich for ever’.65. Around 1816, Lamont was accused of ‘violating the person of a young enslaved girl’ on the Diamond estate. Thus, we catch a rare glimpse of the Scots planter’s character: supposedly compassionate to one enslaved woman, the rapist of another. Although ‘the evidence of a medical man proved the injury’, the public authorities ‘took no notice’ of Lamont, who was by then deputy commandant of South Naparima.66 After a complaint by the free people of colour on Trinidad, the governor Ralph J. Woodward refused to believe the ‘contradictory statements’ of the enslaved woman and exonerated Lamont, describing the episode as a most ‘improbable tale’.67 As governor, Woodford implemented notorious policies that discriminated against Trinidad’s free coloured population. However, Dr Jean Baptiste Philippe, son of a free coloured sugar planter in the Naparimas educated at the University of Edinburgh, later addressed the secretary of state for the colonies, Lord Bathurst, under the pseudonym ‘a free mulatto’.68 Philippe’s searing critique perceptively described how ‘every species of criminality is lost in the blaze and glare of whiteness’, although there were reputational consequences for Lamont. His peers refused to serve with him in the local militia due to his crime, and he subsequently challenged one of the ‘men in buckram suits’ to a duel for supposedly slighting his honour.69 In a public endorsement of British imperial rule, or perhaps as a simple thanks for disregarding due process, John Lamont provided the third largest donation in Trinidad to the subscription campaign to erect a monument to Governor Woodford after his death in 1828.70 Trinidadian society was not one that was generally sympathetic to enslaved women’s claims of physical and sexual abuse.71

By 1825, John Lamont was one of the most prominent planters on the island. When Dr James McTear arrived in the south-east Caribbean that year, he spent some time in Trinidad before his relocation to Tobago. In Port of Spain, McTear dined with Lamont, describing him as the ‘upper class of company’ on the island.72 Lamont’s success was based upon a strategy of acquiring enslaved people in the 1820s. This was set against the backdrop of legislation that prohibited the import of enslaved people from neighbouring colonies to Trinidad, exemplified by an 1824 act which became effective the next year.73 In 1822, Lamont owned ten personal slaves (eight male, two female) not attached to any of his estates. He purchased them in Trinidad or imported from nearby islands such as Grenada.74 The increase of his ‘personal slaves, being his property’ to ninety-one in the triennial return of 1825 suggests that he had embarked on a slave acquisition policy in the preceding three years. Abuse of the inter-colonial slave trade offered one route for planters to increase their workforce; visitors from other islands arrived with ‘domestic slaves’ who were quickly sold into plantation slavery.75 It is unclear what proportion of Trinidad’s enslaved population Lamont owned in the mid-1820s, but it must have been substantial. For comparison, there were 23,230 enslaved people on Trinidad in 1825, of which 16,927 were on plantations. South Naparima held 1,319 plantation slaves, the highest concentration on Trinidad (approx. 8 per cent of island’s total).76 After abolition, John Lamont collected around £17,000 for almost 400 enslaved people.77 This compares to William Hardin Burnley, the largest slave-owner on the island, who owned over 900 enslaved.78 The average enslaver in Trinidad owned seven enslaved people in 1834, while only 1 per cent owned more than one hundred.79 Lamont was therefore one of the most significant enslavers on Trinidad, perhaps second only to W. H. Burnley. Both were to remain on the island as residents post-Emancipation.

In 1841, John Lamont wrote to his half-brother Alexander, the laird of Knockdow in Argyll, Scotland:

I think of making a short visit [to Scotland]…and returning [early to Trinidad], to endeavour to stem the downward tendency of things here. I find my absence very prejudicial, and that I am looked on as an absentee by all parties, from the Governor to the humblest labourer who works for us. This won’t do, and I must act again as an every-day planter.80

Yet in late 1848 Lamont made plans to purchase the Highland estate of Benmore, near Dunoon, set in over 3,000 imperial acres of arable and grazing land.81 The purchase for £13,000 was finally completed in January 1849, and although the existing house was said to be in good repair, Lamont began construction of a new mansion that befitted his wealth and status.82 Despite the purchase, Lamont revealed he had no intention of retirement in Scotland, writing that ‘you will never make me a Scotch laird’ and it was instead bequeathed to a nephew.83 The almost sixty-year-old Highland migrant had no desire to become an absentee in Scotland. Lamont’s correspondence reveals he was unusual in one other important way: unlike many other Scots in Jamaica and Grenada, he chose to remain as a resident planter after he acquired a fortune. He died on the island in 1850, and while typical of British settlers in Trinidad, he was an exception to the sojourning mentality said to be a defining feature of the Scots mentalité in the West Indies.

John Lamont remained on Trinidad post-emancipation and managed the transition by importing indentured labourers to work on his estates. With his friend William Hardin Burnley, an active promoter of immigrant labour, he imported African labourers from Sierra Leone, which had been established as a British settlement for free black people and former enslaved people in 1787. In a letter to his brother in 1841, Lamont described these African labourers as ‘the most valuable lot of immigrants…yet received’. After 1845, Lamont also took advantage of ‘coolie’ labour imported from India. In November that year, he described his workers on Cedar Grove estates as ‘steady’, although he was unimpressed with such labour in general as they wandered about ‘neglecting their work’.84 Thus, the Lamont fortune that arrived in Scotland, as discussed below, was built on successive eras of exploitation of labour from across the globe: African, Creole and Indian. Other Scots operated in Trinidad, including workers on elite planter John Lamont’s estates, but were unable to exploit the island’s resources and people in quite the same manner.

Robert Stirling: from Old College to Naparima

Robert McGregor Stirling was of a middling background. He was the son of William McGregor Stirling, a minister in Port of Menteith, and nephew of Duncan Macfarlan, the principal of Old College (now the University of Glasgow) from 1823 until 1857. Robert enjoyed a good education at Old College, taking an MA in 1820 and afterwards studying theology in 1823–4.85 After a period of idleness, a military career was suggested, or a position as a clerk in Register House in Edinburgh. But ‘conscious of being a deadweight’, he decided that his future lay in the West Indies.86 Through family, he had impeccable connections. In late 1828, word arrived from General David Stewart of Garth, a Scottish military commander and governor of St Lucia, that he had secured Robert a position in St Lucia.87 Stirling departed soon after in January 1829.88

By early 1830, Robert McGregor Stirling was in Trinidad under the patronage of General Stewart’s brother, John Stewart, who owned Garth estate in Savanna Grande in the south-west of the island. Indeed, he provided Stirling with ‘the greatest attention’ and an assurance he would better his circumstances.89 Unfortunately for Stirling, John Stewart died on 28 March 1830.90 Lacking kinship connections to open the door with the resident Scottish plantocracy, Stirling afterwards worked on several estates in what became an increasingly desperate quest for advancement on the island. First, Stirling was recommended as an overseer to a Mr Bell of Camden estate in Couva, which was owned by Alexander Fraser of Inchcoulter in Rosshire. Stirling hoped ‘to be comfortable, learn wonders and get promoted’, although he left within three months, due to Bell’s ‘impertinence’. Within two days of leaving Camden, Stirling was recommended to Archibald Colquhoun, and although he felt he was ready to manage an estate, he accepted an overseer’s position on Vista Bella estate in North Naparima, formerly the property of Alexander MacMillan.91

In October 1830, Vista Bella was sold to French owners and Stirling was unemployed. Although his health was good, having recovered from serious illness, former employers delayed paying wages, which obviously exacerbated his financial troubles. He lived with another Scot, Daniel McAlpine, and travelled around Trinidad chasing payment. Waiting desperately on £10 from the owners of Vista Bella, Stirling resided in a tavern, in the process incurring costs equal to two-thirds of the wages. He bemoaned his lot as a struggling overseer:

Had Garth been alive this would not have been but such a miserably poor place. You can form little conception of and before accepting of a situation: one in my place would do well to calculate whether years becoming a slave for his victuals or for any chance of getting a farthing.92

Diasporic networks were crucial but were dependent upon the personal recommendations that provided opportunities. After two months of unemployment, he begged his uncle in Glasgow, Duncan Macfarlan, to enquire if ‘anything could be done for my advancement’ by speaking to representatives of Eccles and Co., the prominent Glasgow merchant firm. Stirling was also strategic in his employment choices, refusing several offers while unemployed as they offered too few prospects of progression. It was at this stage that he considered departing for Demerara.93

On 10 January 1831, Stirling was appointed overseer on one of the three estates managed by Duncan McAlpine. In May that year, he was subsequently promoted to attorney of John Lamont’s cattle pen (simply titled ‘25’). In charge of sickly mules and some enslaved people, he felt he had secured a position that offered ‘prospects of advancement…feasible enough to prevent my immediate departure from the island’. In his mind, he weighed up his prospects on Trinidad against travelling to Demerara, where his brother Archibald was a medical doctor. As attorney for Lamont, Robert Stirling was on a generous wage of $500 Trinidad Dollars (c.£104 stg.) and some perquisites. After five failed overseer’s positions on Trinidad, however, he was not keen on a similar trajectory in Demerara. While wages were smaller in Trinidad, Stirling decided to stay put, as he did not fancy a ‘subordinate situation in Demerara with a much larger income’.94

As it turned out, Robert Stirling was under the employment of John Lamont for just six months. He left Lamont in January 1832 ‘inconsequence of the bad behaviour of that personage’ and his prospects remained ‘sufficiently gloomy’ until the summer. There was little recruitment during the crop-season (generally January–June) and the few jobs on offer paid little or were deemed to be reputationally damaging. By June, just as vacancies were becoming available, Stirling was forced to borrow £30 from his father, which he notified his uncle of in case of ‘sudden or unforeseen accidents’.95 Sometime after the summer, Stirling was appointed attorney of Santa Margarita estate in North Naparima. However, his charge was to be short-lived. On 5 October 1832, after five days of a putrid fever, he died in the residence of Campbell Colquhoun, although in ‘very little pain and…sensible almost to the last’.96 His father in Scotland took his son’s death very badly and was said to be exhibiting symptoms of mental illness soon afterwards.97

The Stirling letters are unusual: they reveal the mentalité of a white Scottish overseer before and during his time in the West Indies, the impact of his stay in Trinidad upon his financial, physical and mental health, and on that of family in Scotland after his decease. This was a rare glimpse into the human condition during a failed economic sojourn to the British West Indies. Like many other Scots searching a fortune derived from slavery, Robert Stirling was highly mobile across the Atlantic world, travelling first to St Lucia, then Trinidad, and he afterwards considered Demerara. But Stirling was not a typical Scottish adventurer. As a privileged son of the manse, he enjoyed an excellent standard of education in Glasgow, and although highly literate, there is no indication he had the appropriate commercial skills suitable for work as a budding planter in the south-eastern Caribbean. He had impeccable connections in Glasgow and the West Indies, enjoying the patronage of David Stewart, governor of St Lucia, although the death of John Stewart of Garth left him somewhat isolated. His increasingly desperate correspondence reveals the mindset of a troubled young man worried about failure in life: settling on a lowly overseer’s position in the West Indies but always imagining he was worth more. Even in the abolition era, this well-connected alumnus of Old College seemed to have no issues about the immorality of work in slavery economies.

Stirling operated within a tight group of Scots on Trinidad, and while he was not short of offers, the smaller community of planters did not provide well-remunerated positions. He benefited from access to jobs, but these positions did not confer automatic economic advancement and diasporic networks did not always generate positive outcomes. Overseers clearly lived on the edge in the Trinidad of the 1830s, dependent on the appropriate seasonal employment becoming available and employers paying wages on time. Stirling seemed happiest when in charge of John Lamont’s small cattle pen with enslaved people, but had issues with authority, twice removing himself from employment, allegedly because of the behaviour of others, which left him in near poverty. This example underlines that acquiring a fortune in the West Indies was far from certain. With his privileged start in life, Stirling had more chances than most. But he was very typical in one important way: after seven positions in less than two years on Trinidad, and indebted to his father for £30, his story ended with premature death via disease aged just thirty. After 1775, most Scots in the West Indies met their end in a similar fashion: penniless and dying among near strangers in slavery societies that were increasingly viewed by many in British society as evil anachronisms.

Scots and their Trinidad fortunes

In 1838, the Trinidad Standard newspaper surveyed the success of adventurers in the West Indies, painting a gloomy picture of penniless Scots dying abroad with no prospects of a return:

The fate of the English or Scotch agricultural adventurer, emigrating to distant shores…in a strange and distant land, has to struggle with a climate different from his own, and a mode of agriculture to which he is a stranger – and separated by thousands of miles from the land he emigrated from, if he fails as alas! Too many have done, altho’ prudent and industrious he has only to lay down and die [as] return to his native home is impossible.98

Although this commentary was part of a wider effort to attract free black labour in the post-emancipation period by suggesting their conditions would be better than they were for white workers, this chapter queries this claim by surveying the fortunes and trajectories of Scots fortunes on the island. This is undertaken by examining the inventories of a group of twenty Scots known to have been in Trinidad between 1800 and 1838 with inventoried property in Scotland. Although this is a small group, some of the findings are startling when compared to other islands.

Major slavery fortunes were rare on Trinidad and were mainly restricted to planters. Planting was the most popular occupation for this group of Scots, followed by the mercantile line.99 Overall, the average fortunes (£6,481) were on a par with those in Jamaica and Grenada, although the Lamont planting wealth (see below) skews these conclusions. Of the overall wealth of £129,639, around 80 per cent was held by elite sibling planters, John and Boyden Lamont (see Table 7.1 and Table 7.2). If these two fortunes were removed, the average falls to £1,472 per person. Overall, however, planters were the wealthiest, on average, with £17,103 per person, followed by a surgeon (£1,752), a physician (£1,230), merchants (average of £744), an attorney (£705) and a millwright (£32). Some were able to accumulate modest capital, although not sums that would have made them independently wealthy. Dougald Dawson, attorney of Jordanhill estate (owned by William Smith, son of Archibald Smith senior, as described in Chapter 3) was worth over £700 in 1841. Having lodged over 95 per cent of his earnings with the Glasgow firm Smith & Browns, he died on the way home to Scotland.100 Thus, planters represented the real financial power on Trinidad, at least among propertied Scots on the island, in contrast to Jamaica and Grenada, where merchants reigned supreme.

Table 7.1 Wealth on death of Scots in Trinidad in the late slavery era (1797–1838) who died between 1799 and 1850.

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

Table 7.2 Range of wealth on death of Scots in Trinidad in the late slavery era (1797–1838) who died between 1799 and 1850.

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

Trinidad, moreover, was not a sojourning island for Scots in the manner of Jamaica and Grenada. Based on the compensation awards at the emancipation of slavery in 1834, Nicholas Draper has noted the percentage of absentee claimants was lower in Trinidad than it was in other British West India colonies, particularly British Guiana and Jamaica, in 1834. In other words, planters were more likely to remain residents on Trinidad than they were elsewhere.101 Places of death of inventoried Scots underline that this was not just restricted to enslavers. Around two-thirds of this group of Scots died in Trinidad (65 per cent),102 compared to the proportions of the same groups who died in Jamaica (46 per cent) and the Scots who died on Grenada (36 per cent). Remarkably, Scots with assets in Scotland were almost twice as likely to die in Trinidad compared to nearby Grenada. The explanation is three-fold; first, it took more time and capital to establish as planters in Trinidad, especially with the shortage of enslaved labour. Second, the Scottish community was not as well-established on Trinidad, which meant fewer supervisory and managerial positions on the island. Third, the wage levels for these positions in Trinidad seem to have been lesser than, for example, Demerara. In short, the common trajectory for Scots to progress from overseer, to attorney, to planter was disrupted in Trinidad, and they had to remain longer hoping to develop large planting fortunes. A select few, like John Lamont, enjoyed the status afforded to white planters in the island’s nefarious slavery society.

This era was reminiscent of the earlier settler-colonization period in the first-phase colonies of the British West Indies, albeit with lower profits, which had implications for wealth repatriation strategies. Except from the Lamonts’ major planting fortunes (see below), the wealth tended to be held in merchant firms in Trinidad with branches in Scotland (five holdings worth a total of £5,585). One merchant, John Campbell, a partner in Glasgow firm Campbell Rivers & Co., had £2,000 held in the merchant house on his death in Trinidad in 1817.103 The holdings in Scottish banks tended to be small-scale and below £500. George Mackay, a planter of Savanna Grande, died on 3 September 1837 with just over £300 in the British Linen Bank.104 There was no identifiable large-scale transfer of slavery wealth from Trinidad into the Scottish countryside. Although John Munro owned urban property in Edinburgh, and James Coulter Graham and Alexander Duncanson in Glasgow, John Lamont is the only known Scot in Trinidad to purchase a landed estate.105 And, as will be explained below, John Lamont was the solitary owner of a country estate, yet never intended to return home. There were no identified investments in industry in Scotland. And, although last testaments do not exist for all of this group, it seems few had philanthropic concerns in mind. John Campbell did bequeath £50 to the poor of Port Glasgow.106 Why should Trinidad Scots invest in their homeland if they had no intention to return, at least not in the short term?, Scots tended to stick around longer in Trinidad compared to other islands, hoping to acquire enough wealth to lodge in Scottish merchant firms and banks. Those with modest property in Scotland were more likely to remain on the island rather than return home. This model, however, fails to explain why two individuals did not depart for Scotland, despite possessing huge fortunes that should have allowed them to live in style there.

Repatriating planting wealth

Examining the Lamont planting fortunes in comparative context is important for two reasons. First, the fortunes of the brothers represented 80 per cent of the total wealth in this group of Scots in Trinidad. Second, the brothers were long-term residents on Trinidad, in contrast to the sojourning lifestyle favoured by many Scots across the West Indies. As noted above, this was not unusual for Scots in Trinidad, although it is unknown how many considered themselves permanent like John Lamont. It can only be presumed that the illegitimate son enjoyed the lifestyle, social rank and status in Trinidad more than he did in Scotland. The case of Boyden Lamont’s residence is harder to explain, since he could have returned and lived an independent lifestyle in Scotland. Perhaps he did not consider the fortune to be enough. Crucially, even for those who were long-term and even permanent residents of Trinidad, the importance of kinship ties meant the slavery fortunes returned to Scotland. This section, therefore, offers fresh insights into elite strategies of wealth repatriation during the era of decline among the sugar islands.

John Lamont, as noted above, was an illegitimate son of the Lamonts of Knockdow. This gentry family took notice of his planting success, reaching out after fourteen years, and he subsequently promoted their interests on Trinidad. In 1816, John Lamont offered to provide his sibling born legitimately in the family, Boyden Lamont, with a start in the process, revealing the privileged route enjoyed by Scots with the appropriate connections on the island:

If [our brother] Boyden is inclined to try his fortune here, I can be of service to him by placing him in one of the most respectable [merchant] houses here, and where I could obtain for him a share of an extensive and lucrative concern after twelve months, which is necessary to understand things here.107

Boyden Lamont travelled to Trinidad around 1817, and rather than choosing the mercantile route he took up planting. His brother John purchased the 320-acre Canaan estate on 1821 and, no doubt after his younger brother had completed an apprenticeship, transferred legal ownership to Boyden on 1 March 1823.108 Boyden Lamont also collected compensation, but his planting career was cut short. On 21 March 1836, he was awarded almost £4,000 for seventy-eight enslaved people on Canaan estate, although he died soon afterwards in August 1837 on Trinidad.109 Boyden Lamont’s last will – lodged in Scotland – reveals a sophisticated risk management strategy implemented by elite Scots in the Caribbean, while his confirmation inventory outlines the extent and nature of his wealth.

The Lamont examples demonstrate how wealthy planters crossed the Atlantic in order to settle their affairs to ensure the smooth transition of property in Scotland. In late 1832, having been in Trinidad for around fifteen years, Boyden Lamont returned to Scotland to lodge his will in order to settle his affairs and ‘to prevent misunderstandings’ on the event of his decease. His will prioritized certain family members and allocated landed property and wealth. First, he ensured that the Canaan estate would be transferred back to John Lamont. Second, as executors, he named his brothers John Lamont, Alexander Lamont, Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh, James Lamont of the Royal Navy, and George Cole (although the latter eventually refused the role). Executors in the colonies were notoriously dishonest, and by choosing executors from the direct family matrix based in Scotland and Trinidad, Boyden increased the chances of a smooth post-mortem transmission of property across the Atlantic.110 John Lamont stood to inherit or dispose of his brother’s colonial property, including land, enslaved people and ships. In Glasgow, Lamont’s preferred West India merchant, George Cole, would disperse funds held in the merchant house. His other brother, Alexander Lamont, a prominent lawyer, would supervise all of this in Edinburgh. Thus, by lodging the will in Scotland (instead of dying intestate abroad) Boyden Lamont ensured the fortune and executors came under the jurisdiction of the Scottish legal system. As succession and legacy was governed by the ‘law of the domicile’, by settling his affairs in Scotland Boyden Lamont seemingly affirmed his status as a temporary economic migrant to the Caribbean (although his brother’s case – which will be examined in turn – led to a legal challenge).111 In practical terms, this meant court proceedings could be lodged in Scotland against executors (in the event of dishonesty, for example), and the crown was also entitled to legacy duty from the deceased’s estate. Boyden Lamont left a personal fortune of over £26,000 in Great Britain, including almost £20,000 in the Ship Bank of Glasgow.112 As sugar planting had been his principal source of income since 1817, this allows a tentative estimate of the level of profits acquired by an elite Scottish planter in twenty years in the plantation economy of Trinidad: it was possible to accumulate c.£1,000 per annum from sugar planting and compensation. John Lamont’s fortune was much greater.

In life, John Lamont made ‘constant and large remittances’ from Trinidad to agents in Glasgow, probably via bills of exchange to be lodged in the Western and Union Banks in Scotland.113 This practice contrasted with methods employed by Scots in the East Indies, who remitted capital via the London-based English East India Company and through the exportation of valuables such as jewels to Scotland.114 Thus, banks in Glasgow were recipients of large personal sums accrued from slavery, which could be used as interest-bearing capital in loans to manufacturers and merchants across the West of Scotland. Lamont prepared a post-mortem transmission strategy designed to bequeath and dispose of his heritable and moveable property on either side of the Atlantic. While in Glasgow on 10 October 1849, John Lamont had a will written up which appointed his brother Alexander Lamont, Writer to the Signet, his nephew James Lamont and the agent James Newton as trustees and executors in Scotland. He appointed Alexander Stewart and William Eccles in Trinidad.115 These trustees also had special power:

To appoint an attorney or attornies in the Island of Trinidad for realizing and managing such parts of my Estates and effects as may be situated in that island…to sue for uplift and receive the principal sums of the debts…[and] also to sell…any part of the said Estates and Effects and that by Private Sale or Public Auction or Bargain upon Advertisements and such way and manner as may appear to them most advantageous.116

Lamont evidently maintained a close relationship with Alexander Stewart and William Eccles in life, which meant he entrusted them to undertake the dispersal of his estate in Trinidad after his death. Despite his residence in Trinidad, the family retained his interests afterwards.

John Lamont died aged sixty-nine in his home at Casa de Diego Martin on 21 November 1850, thus fulfilling his wish to ‘die in harness’ in Trinidad.117 He was buried next to his brother Boyden at Canaan estate, San Fernando. Although there is some debate about the true extent of his fortune, by all accounts it was substantial, and this is remembered in modern Trinidad.118 In a recent work, Father Anthony de Verteuil memorably described Lamont as a ‘billionaire bastard’.119 Lamont’s confirmation inventory on death suggests his moveable property (that is, his wealth less the value of land in Scotland and Trinidad) was worth just over £76,000.120 This sum was on a par with moderate Glasgow-West India mercantile fortunes of the same period (see Chapter 8) and other great West India planting fortunes in this study, such as those of John Shand and William Rae in Jamaica. For comparison, Lamont’s £76,291 in 1850 is equivalent to £64m (relative to the worth of average earnings in 2020).121

While the extent of the fortune was exceptional, Lamont’s personal holdings were also distinctive. His confirmation inventory of 1851 outlined most of the fortune (£71,000 or over 90 per cent) was held in bank accounts, Exchequer bills and shares in banks.122 Unlike many Glaswegian merchants, he held no industrial investments in Scotland. In other words, Lamont had extricated vast profits solely from one source: the sugar plantations of Trinidad via his occupation, in his own words, as an every-day planter. Thus, while it is conceivable some of the fortune came from other sources, the majority came directly from the expropriation of enslaved labour.

Following John Lamont’s death, the crown raised a court case against the executors of his estate, as they disputed that Lamont’s permanent place of domicile was Trinidad, which had implications for the level of legacy duty to be paid. Succession duty was paid at the rate of 7 per cent to the Treasury of Trinidad, while the Imperial Exchequer could demand 10 per cent.123 The resulting court case found in favour of the family and decided that Lamont had willingly cut ties with Scotland, not least because he was an ‘illegitimate son [and] the domicile of origin was not marked by those family ties and associations which tend to give it so much weight and importance’.124 The irony, then, is that the Lamonts of Knockdow – who likely shunned the eldest son born out of wedlock – received the bulk of the West India fortune as well as his landed estates in Scotland and the Caribbean, which allowed them to improve their own status at home. John Lamont’s moveable and heritable property passed directly to family members. He had previously supported his mother’s family in Argyll and after death bequeathed to relatives ‘of the name of Clark…the sums for which they have credit on my Guarantee in the Western Bank’.125 Thus, Caribbean wealth allowed a lower-order family to maintain an existence in the Highlands, although he prioritized his father’s family and they received most of the fortune, particularly his brother Alexander and nephew James Lamont. Father and son were also named residuary legatees of John Lamont’s fortune and inherited two-thirds of the fortune after all bequests and bills had been paid. The Caribbean’s legacy to the Scottish Highlands did not end with emancipation in 1834. As late as 1861, sales of sugar, rum and molasses from the family estates in Trinidad attracted annual profits of almost £5,000, which passed to Alexander Lamont.126

The trajectory of both John and Boyden Lamont can be contrasted with Robert McGregor Stirling’s experience on the island. After his arrival in 1802, John Lamont had some connection with the prominent Glasgow firm Robert, William & James Eccles and worked irregularly with them as an attorney. In turn, John Lamont integrated his brother Boyden into the plantation economy by providing capital and opportunities for experience. Boyden Lamont subsequently became part of the plantocracy when John Lamont transferred legal ownership of Canaan estate on 1 March 1823. By contrast, Robert Stirling was without capital or connections, instead relying on ad hoc opportunities with strangers within the Scottish diasporic community. The rise of the Lamont brothers can ultimately be measured in respective property-ownership and wealth levels, while the economic failure of Stirling is exemplified by the debts owed to his father at his time of death. The figures suggest that planters in Trinidad – in a period of perceived decline – were able to accumulate fortunes during a planting career commensurate with those made by elite adventurers and merchants in the metropolis in the same period. However, the Lamonts were especially unrepresentative of the sample identified here. Most Scots, if they survived at all, earned relatively meagre fortunes in thirty-seven years of British slavery in Trinidad. The early demise of the penniless Robert McGregor Stirling was more representative of the Scottish experience than was the prosperous lifestyle of John Lamont. Even so, the minority who did return wealth from the British West Indies had a significant impact on personal fortunes in Scotland.

The influx of West India fortunes to Scotland: a regional approach

This section summarizes the influx of West India fortunes to Scotland in a regional framework.127 There are contrasting positions about the impact of Scottish-West India fortunes. R. H. Campbell envisioned a ‘few Scots’ profiting from the colonial trades and sojourns. In this view, repatriated capital increased the influence of a few gentry families but did little for the wider economy, since the impact was confined to great estates.128 On the other hand, Andrew Mackillop claimed Scots in the West Indies secured one of the greatest per capita returns and that slavery wealth ‘percolated widely through Scottish society’.129

This study explores the fortunes of the 138 Scots known to be in the British West Indies between 1775 and 1838, identified through confirmation inventories in Scottish courts (hereafter known as ‘Scottish inventories’).130 This group died between 1784 and 1858; for all intents and purposes this was a nineteenth-century cohort, with the vast majority of wealth inventoried post-1800. These legal sources provide information about wealth at the end of life. Scots in the West Indies also made investments throughout their lifetimes, a figure that cannot be gauged from Scottish inventories. And many did not leave wills and testaments at all, making any estimation of how they transmitted such wealth in death more difficult. However, some conclusions can be reached. First, this group left property valued at £1.044m in Scotland on death, an average of £7,569 per person (see Table 7.3). Second, this means that Scots-West India fortunes were worth less than half of the wealth held by Scottish returnees from the East Indies. Andrew Mackillop’s most recent work confirms the highest per capita returns were, in fact, made by Scots in the East Indies.131 Third, compared to modern equivalents, however, the influx of Scottish-West India fortunes was enormous over a half-century. The average of £7,569 in 1821 – a mid-point of all dates of death – is equivalent to £6.76m (relative to the worth of average earnings in 2020).132 The £1.044m repatriated to Scotland between 1784 and 1858 is equivalent to £894.93m in modern values (relative to the worth of average earnings in 2020).133 As Scotland rapidly industrialized, Scots in the West Indies repatriated the equivalent of hundreds of millions of pounds homewards, especially in the 1820s and 1830s.

But there was great inequality in the wealth holding. As Table 7.4 shows, just two individuals acquired the nationally significant fortune of £100,000. And just four individuals (c.3 per cent of sample) held £410,425 (c.40 per cent of the assets). Only twenty-three people left estates worth £10,000 and over, a figure generally regarded as allowing an independent, elite lifestyle in Scotland. Thus, in the British West Indies after 1780, nationally significant fortunes were a rarity. Moreover, although there were remarkably high levels of absenteeism among this group (47 per cent), the reality is that for even successful Scots in the West Indies, the majority died there.134 The dream of many young men returning to Scotland to live out their days in salubrious estates purchased with West India fortunes remained just that.

Scottish-West India fortunes tended to be held in merchant firms, banks, shares and government consols.135 The large sums provided merchant firms with large sums to loan to other planters, while the monies in Scottish banks added an external injection of capital to a system that was the most developed in Europe in 1772. The banks helped satisfy the demands of industrialization.136 At first glance, the sojourning mindset seems to have had a profound influence on Scottish economic development, especially agriculture.137 Indeed, T. M. Devine suggested returned West India capital was a ‘prime source’ for Scotland’s eighteenth-century agricultural improvement.138 While this study here relates mostly to the period at the end of, and after, the classic phase of the agricultural revolution (1760–1800), the evidence suggests that the impact was a little less dramatic. Based on the 138 Scottish inventories in this study, it was common for successfully returned adventurers (around a quarter) to be involved in the ownership of some form of heritable property. Some individuals possessed urban properties and smaller rural farms (17 in Jamaica, 3 from Grenada, 3 from Trinidad). In terms of achieving the dream – purchasing and returning to large estates in Scotland – nineteen individuals owned, resided in or purchased landed estates (13 from Jamaica, 5 in Grenada, 1 in Trinidad). Of this group, around a third (6) died before they got home. Yet, some super-successful returnees owned both urban property and estate. John Miller, a merchant in Kingston, Jamaica, purchased the Muirshiel estate on his return to Scotland, as well as a property in St Vincent Street, Glasgow, where he died on 20 December 1854.139 But at least two others were renting, and another had property that was already in his possession prior to departure. Thus, only around 10 per cent of the group of Scots were successful enough to purchase outright. If this figure is extrapolated to the estimates of Scots travelling to the Caribbean after 1750, this movement of capital from the minority who survived could have had a significant effect on Scottish agricultural development, although this requires further research. While the vision of Scots returning with enough Caribbean wealth to invest in idyllic country estates was wishful thinking for even the most successful of returnees, ownership of smaller properties, often in urban areas, was more realistic.

Table 7.3 Scottish West India fortunes, by region (Scots in West Indies who died between 1784 and 1858).

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

Table 7.4 Range of Scottish West India fortunes (Scots in the West Indies who died between 1784 and 1858).

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

Wider investments to improve Scottish economic development and social provision were even rarer. No Scots in Grenada or Trinidad seem to have invested in industrial enterprise in Scotland, although nearly ten individuals resident in Jamaica did, investing a total of c.£43,000. The available evidence also suggests that the transfer of post-mortem capital from the West Indies for social provision in Scotland was slight. As noted in the Grenada chapter, few invested in philanthropic enterprise, although James Buchanan’s bequest was invested in the city of Glasgow. Just one Scot in Trinidad, John Campbell, sent a paltry sum home to the poor of Port Glasgow, and a handful in Jamaica bequeathed wealth to improve Scotland. Only a few Scots wealthy from Caribbean sojourns invested in industrial enterprise and philanthropic provision, although these investments were sometimes large enough to reshape lives in rural and urban communities. Instead, Caribbean slavery’s greatest legacy to Scotland was the capital disbursed among families across the country, mainly to the non-landed ranks. As noted by Douglas Hamilton, many Scots in the West Indies were ‘scions of noble or gentry families, or drawn from the aspiring middling sort’, inferring that the profits were contained within these social ranks.140 However, in 1770, there were just over 8,100 landowning families in Scotland, a group which had decreased by around 5 per cent by 1814.141 There is no question that such a sizeable, privileged community in Scotland sent many sons to the West Indies, but they were only a small proportion of the population. The previous chapters illustrate that those of lower rank, including many tradesmen, were desired in the plantation economy and some acquired and repatriated fortunes. And the landed ranks are but a small proportion of this group examined here.

Ascertaining the regional flow of labour and capital is made possible by comparing outward shipping lists with the wealth in these inventories, facilitating comparison from whence the Scots left and the influx of West India fortunes in return. The only available shipping lists concern two ports, Port Glasgow and Greenock, and two destinations, Jamaica and Antigua, in late 1774 and the summer of 1775. There are issues with extrapolating from such a small group. While not all Scottish migrants destined for the West Indies left from Clyde ports, official records suggest as many as three-quarters did (with smaller numbers departing from Aberdeen and Leith).142 The lists here, therefore, likely underestimate the proportions of those who departed from the north of Scotland and the Highlands. Moreover, while Scots were spread further than these two islands, as noted in Chapter 4, Jamaica was the premier destination for most Scots travelling to the West Indies: the social characteristics and backgrounds of those on board these ships were likely to be a good indicator of the average Scot who departed.

In September 1774, the ship Jamaica departed from Port Glasgow destined for the island of the same name, with ten clerks aboard hoping for ‘better encouragement’. In July 1775, twenty-seven people in the Isabella cleared Greenock for Jamaica. Another ship, the Chance, cleared Greenock for Antigua, with some on board intent on pursuing mercantile careers. It cannot be understood exactly how the outward bound felt as they left the firth of Clyde, but we do know where the majority resided prior to departure (Table 4.4). Of the forty-one individuals on these ships, residences were provided for thirty-four Scots (a small minority on these ships were English and some Irish).143 Forty per cent of this group hailed from the Western Lowlands, which was much more than expected, given that the region was home to a small proportion of the Scottish population. In 1801, the overall Scottish population was 1,599,000, with the Western Lowlands home to some 329,000 people (20 per cent).144 By contrast, just under 10 per cent of the outward bound hailed from the Eastern Lowlands and 5 per cent hailed from the Borders. This compares with over a third of the Scottish population who resided in the Eastern Lowlands (584,777), and over 10 per cent in the Borders (184,834). In other words, both regions were under-represented in the outward bound relative to their population size. Almost half of the outward bound departed from the Highlands (20 per cent), the north-east of Scotland (20 per cent), and Caithness (2 per cent) in the far north of Scotland combined. This compares favourably to actual population sizes in those areas: Highlands-Hebrides (17.7 per cent of Scottish population), north-east (12 per cent) and far north (1 per cent). In other words, while the Western Lowlands provided more of the outward bound than any other single region, disproportionately large numbers of Scots are likely to have departed for the West Indies from the Highlands, the north-east and northern Scotland.

Families in the Western Lowlands were the main beneficiaries of wealth returning to Scotland from the West Indies. The over-representation of departees from this region among the outward bound is also reflected in the Scottish inventories: over a third (£384,873) of the overall West India fortunes in this study were repatriated to family residences in the Western Lowlands (see Table 7.3). Mothers and fathers living around Glasgow and its hinterlands were well accustomed to their sons leaving for the West Indies and, less often, to the return of wealth. The dynamics of sojourning shaped everyday life in west-central Scotland more than any other region, in terms of the outward bound and return of capital.

The Eastern Lowlands, holding a larger population, shipped out around 10 per cent of the outward bound but took around a quarter of the wealth in return (£279,946). The north-east and far north were especially under-represented in terms of a return of wealth, shipping almost a quarter of the outward bound, but took less than 5 per cent of the wealth (£46,015) in total. Combined, the north-east and Caithness seem to have shipped out five times more men than fortunes returned. The Borders shipped out around 5 per cent of the outward bound yet received nearly 10 per cent of the wealth (£94,607). According to the rare emigration lists, Highlanders likely comprised one-fifth (20 per cent) of departing Scots to the West Indies, when the Highlands held 18 per cent of the Scottish population in 1801. The repatriation of wealth in the Scottish inventories was less than might be expected, with around 14 per cent of the wealth being taken in return (£150,140). Further explanation is required.

The Scottish Highlands had a unique relationship with British imperialism, outlined in Iain Mackinnon’s analysis of the Highlands as colonized, or its people, the Gàidhealtachd, as colonizers.145 The Caribbean was a major arena in which these shared histories (which are not mutually exclusive narratives) played out, with some Highlanders who were banished from Scotland going on to become enslavers. Allan Macinnes has described the post-1745 period as the ‘first phase of clearance’ for the Highlands of Scotland, arguing that Scottish Gaeldom exported raw materials and manpower, thus becoming an ‘internal colony [of Britain], rather than a beneficiary of Empire like the industrialized Lowlands’.146 Yet, Macinnes’ study of the lucrative activities of the Malcolms of Poltalloch established the view of Highland landlords as ‘active members of the imperial exploiting classes as planters, slave traders, colonial officials, military commanders and merchant adventurers’.147 The work of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership project reveals many more enslavers of Highland descent.148 Subsequent studies have assumed absentee slave-ownership had a powerful effect on the economic development of the Highlands, yet without the qualification that absentees did not develop local economies to the same extent as colonial merchants.149

Questions of representativeness also remain, and it may be that the typical Highland absentee was Lord Seaforth, whose estates in Berbice were economic failures, rather than the London-based merchant-proprietors Malcolms of Poltalloch.150 Moreover, even successful Highland absentee planters may have had a detrimental effect on local economies. Beneficiaries of slavery purchased over sixty estates in the west Highlands and Islands of Scotland between 1726 and 1939, totalling over a million acres. As the wealth created a new slavery elite, some contributed to a period of rural transformation that has become known as the ‘Highland Clearances’ (during which landowners cleared tenants from land, often to introduce sheep farming). New slavery elites often had little or no ancestral connection to traditional, communal forms of micro-economy, and these were quickly abandoned, which destroyed local ways of life and resilience. While many Highlanders were complicit in Caribbean slavery, ‘the wealth it generated also impacted upon the region in ways that worked against many of its already vulnerable communities’.151 It is, therefore, now being contested that Atlantic slavery and its commerce were uniformly beneficial to the development of the Scottish Highlands or permeated equally throughout its society.

David Alston recently advanced the view that slavery and the Atlantic trades were significant contributors to the economic development of the Scottish Highlands. In Slaves and Highlanders (2021), Alston provided a regional analysis supporting the view that slavery was central to the regional economy, with major trickle-down effects throughout society (thus, ostensibly adding support to Eric Williams’ claims in Capitalism and Slavery). However, there was no evidence provided that mercantile commerce – or its multiplier effects via merchant capital or manufacturing processes – was of much importance. Moreover, Alston’s descriptive case studies of slavery-derived investments rarely quantified scale and significance. The lack of analytical context means it remains unclear if the Atlantic slavery economy was a significant factor in the overall development of the Scottish Highlands, that slavery-profits were widespread or decisive in developing enterprise or that ancillary manufacturing employed large sectors of society.152

Recent historiography centred around Highlanders in South America addressed the question of slavery fortunes after 1790. David Alston retains a sceptical approach to the widespread accumulation of large fortunes by Highlanders in Guyana.153 However, the same historian’s earlier study, which questioned the possibility of ‘very rapid and splendid fortunes’, noted one speculator in Berbice was reputed to have made an astounding £40,000 in one trip, and returned adventurers were often characterized ‘as rich as a Demerary man’.154 Particularly in the absence of evidence about levels of West India fortunes, the grain of truth behind such stereotypes can be viewed as representative, but this wealth was not typical of the average Highland experience.

The evidence here suggests historians must be cautious when assessing the significance of the repatriation of sojourning wealth to the Scottish Highlands. John Lamont’s fortune, recounted above, infers ‘splendid fortunes’ were also available in the third-phase sugar islands, yet the return of that level of post-mortem wealth from the British West Indies to the Scottish Highlands was a rare occurrence indeed. Among those who travelled from Scotland to the West Indies with the aim of repatriating wealth, Highlanders likely comprised 20 per cent of Scots departing for the West Indies (Table 4.4). While around 14 per cent of the sojourning wealth (£150,140) in this study returned to the Highlands, this does not tell the full story. Only seven of 138 Scottish inventories (5 per cent) could be connected to Scots with family residences in the Highlands, yet, like John Lamont’s fortune, these were, on average, large-scale (Table 7.3). In fact, Highlanders acquired the highest average sojourning fortunes in this study, almost double the second wealthiest (individuals in the Borders region). In other words, disproportionately high numbers of young men (compared to population size) likely departed from the Highlands, yet very few post-mortem fortunes returned, although those that did were large-scale. While this evidence ostensibly adds to the ‘Highlanders as colonizers’ thesis, it should not be assumed this individual pursuit of colonialism represented a net gain for the Highland economy.

Most Highland families waiting for West India fortunes would have been disappointed. In addition to the high death rates, a key question remains to be answered: why would Highland sojourners wish to return when large swathes of their homelands, and their families, were being cleared? Between 1763 and 1815, many Highlanders migrated to western Canada instead. Others joined them, some already cash rich from Jamaica sojourns, and repatriated limited wealth to Scotland.155 S. Karly Kehoe, however, pointed to the wider impact of slavery fortunes on the Scottish Highlands via charitable enterprise, especially educational institutions and hospitals. In this view, fortunes accrued by adventurers from Caribbean slavery improved the status of those concerned and that of their families at home. On a broader scale, more substantial fortunes often reshaped regional economies and societies through social provision.156 However, it is problematic to assume unrepresentative examples of success were typical, while failing to contextualize the returns relative to the loss of skilled labour. Indeed, outward migration sometimes cleared local societies of adult male workers. When surveying Kiltarlity in Inverness in 1793, the Revd John Fraser noted the ‘decrease of adult males’ was not due to premature death but ‘owing to their leaving the parish’, including a ‘few’ to the West Indies.157 The loss of skilled young men contributed to the decline of local societies (as argued in Chapter 4), while the limited return of sojourning wealth went into few hands, which had a minimal effect on the development of local economies. Caribbean sojourning improved the living conditions of some families in the Scottish Highlands, but simultaneously contributed to the under development of the region.

Scotland’s national story of sojourning was defined by the loss of thousands of young men, and the repatriation of fortunes by a select few. For those that survived, the West India wealth they repatriated to Scotland was huge over a half-century – especially after 1800 – and this made Scottish families cash rich, especially in the central region. But this influx requires contextualization alongside the loss of labour. Young men departed from Scotland after 1775 in the hope of mainly unrealizable West India fortunes, and most never returned. Based on mortality estimates for Demerara, Jamaica and Tobago, it seems likely most would have been dead before they managed to repatriate wealth of any significance. The wealth holding was also unequal. The typical pattern was one of low-to-medium returns, and less than one-fifth of the minority – that is, those who actually lived – managed to accumulate fortunes that allowed them to live out independent lifestyles in Scotland. Instead, most Scots who travelled to the West Indies died among strangers, like Robert McGregor Stirling, in debt, having failed in their quest for riches based on the exploitation of enslaved labour. This group deserve no sympathy, but the likelihood is that Caribbean sojourning – and the departure of educated and skilled labour – contributed to the development of some Scottish regions and the under-development of others.

Conclusion

The opening of Trinidad during Glasgow’s sugar era ostensibly cleared the way for the city’s mercantile elite to accumulate great wealth from the British West Indies. With a well-established financial infrastructure and mercantile community, the city’s role as a metropolis should have facilitated large-scale involvement. However, Scottish banks were reluctant to support new entrants operating in a high-risk environment, a decision which was less to do with morals than with economics. The city’s economy was by then geared towards manufacturing and less reliant upon Atlantic commerce and slavery. Nevertheless, despite coming in the era of gradual abolition and West Indian economic decline, prominent merchant firms ensured a dramatic surge in commercial activity in the sugar islands. Yet, from the economic perspective, the banks were proven right: even the most successful firms did not generate major fortunes. The rise and fall of the Eccles mercantile dynasty is emblematic of the relative failure of the Glasgow-Trinidadian metropolitan elite. As noted above, this major mercantile fortune was built on weak foundations and folded in 1847. More broadly, based upon average wealth on death, this group was far less successful than merchants whose principal interests focused on Jamaica, Grenada or Demerara. As will be described in the next chapter, the ‘Trinidad People’ were the poor relations as far as Glasgow’s ‘sugar aristocracy’ were concerned. The paucity of finance and the relatively few Glasgow firms focused on Trinidad had implications for the success of Scots in the island. For every John Lamont, there were many more like Robert McGregor Stirling. In the era of decline, Scotland’s sugar and slavery boom was over.