6. Grenada and Carriacou

Some months after the abolition of plantation slavery in the British West Indies in 1834, Duncan Cameron contacted the colonial office in London to enquire of his brother’s circumstances. Exactly a half-century before, his brother Alexander had walked out of his local village in Fort William in Scotland and was never heard of again. Duncan, however, received news that someone of the same name had died in Grenada ‘leaving a considerable sum of money’ which was lodged in Chancery Court. Without the means to travel to Grenada, or any contacts to make enquiries, in desperation Cameron wrote to the authorities with several questions. First, could they confirm that an Alexander Cameron died in Grenada between 1814 and 1834? Was this person from Glenloy in Fort William? Was the deceased a seafarer and trader? The correspondence was marked with a blunt response: ‘this office is not in possession of the means of answering’.1 This was a typical story throughout the period of British slavery: untold numbers of young Scotsmen missing abroad with family members unaware of their fate but hoping for fortunes derived from slavery in return.

Since the south-east Caribbean was one of the most popular destinations for Scots after 1750, many hundreds of Scots ended their days in Grenada. In life, Douglas Hamilton illuminated the activities of Scottish sojourners in colonies such as Grenada. For Hamilton, commercial networks provided opportunities in the form of jobs and advancement, as well as economic security which facilitated credit through partnerships: ‘utilising the kinship and local connections, Scots on the plantations extended their links throughout the West Indies, purchasing land, engaging attorneys, managers, overseers and bookkeepers, and welcoming new arrivals…The networks almost uniformly, were based on pre-existing bonds.’2 Hamilton further illuminated the commercial networks in Grenada of both the Glasgow-West India merchant firm Alexander Houston and Co. and the Baillies of Dochfour, a model that evolved from Checkland’s work on the respective bankruptcies of Alexander Houston and Co. in 1801 and Evan Baillie and Co. in 1806.3 Hamilton followed up with a study of the Caribbean operations of Alexander Houston and Co. in Grenada. In 1796, the firm were owed as much as £343,935, probably from planters in the Windward Islands, although they went bankrupt in 1800 due to the illiquidity of their assets.4 Mark Quintanilla has detailed the trading network and commercial demise of Alexander Bartlet and Co. in 1778,5 and added understanding about the mercantile empire of Alexander Campbell prior to his murder during Fedon’s Rebellion in Grenada in early 1795.6 These studies have focused on individuals or firms that failed, sometimes violently.

Other historians have focused on individuals with more longevity. In a detailed micro-study of the Johnstones of Dumfriesshire and their imperial careers, Emma Rothschild documented the lifecycle of ownership of Westerhall plantation in Grenada across three generations. In an example of successful ‘economic lives’, Alexander Johnstone was the largest owner of slaves and most prosperous absentee landowner in Grenada in 1779, while ownership passed to his brother James in 1783.7 David Lambert’s historical geographical approach documented the imperial career of James MacQueen in Grenada from 1797, when he was employed as overseer on Westerhall the plantation owned by the Johnstones of Dumfries. MacQueen later became famous as the demagogic editor of the pro-slavery newspaper, the Glasgow Courier and chief propagandist of the British West India interest.8

That Scots were both pervasive and prominent across Grenada is now well-known, but questions remain: essentially, how advantageous was the Scots propensity to operate in networks in smaller islands towards the end of Caribbean slavery, a period of perceived decline? Cameron’s futile request for information, however, reflects the methodological challenges faced by historians of the British West Indies: what records exist – especially for non-elites – that allow the unravelling of profiteering in the slave economies? While the Camerons of Glenloy were never to hear of Alexander again, other families as well as merchant firms received both correspondence and wealth from the many Scots resident in Grenada. Moreover, many had already repatriated profits to Scotland which were inventoried on their death. This type of evidence makes the task of the historian a little easier. This chapter unravels the connections between Glasgow-West India merchant firms and individuals in Grenada and the adjoining island of Carriacou, revealing how long-term commercial links contributed to the accumulation and repatriation of fortunes, some of which were dispersed across Scotland.

Grenada: an island in ferment

Previously a minor French colony, Grenada eventually became the second most important sugar producer in the British West Indies. Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Years War in 1763, France formally ceded Grenada to Great Britain. But unlike other ceded islands like Tobago, for example, around half of Grenada’s acreage was already under cultivation by a resident French population.9 With scope for development and expansion, the subsequent economic change was complemented by Anglicization of the island: ownership of many estates transferred from resident French to British owners, with associated names of landmarks changed.10 With imperial restrictions removed after the Union of 1707, Scottish adventurers flooded into the region attracted by the prospect of wealth. According to Douglas Hamilton, up to 10,800 Scots travelled to the Windward Islands from 1750 to 1799.11

A British land grab followed in Grenada. In 1772, 334 estates – mainly sugar, but also coffee, indigo and cacao – were cultivated by over 26,000 enslaved people.12 That year, fifty-four Scots (57 per cent of all British estate owners and 21 per cent of overall owners) possessed 40 per cent of land cultivated as sugar and coffee estates.13 These Scots were resident in a thriving economy: Grenada was the wealthiest of the Leeward and Windward Islands – measured by exports to Great Britain – and second only to Jamaica in the British West Indies in 1774.14

The British takeover of Grenada, however, was delayed by a lack of credit and interrupted by invasion and revolt. With the collapse of many Scottish banks in 1772, ‘the great want of money’ almost brought cultivation in the ceded islands to a halt.15 The French took the opportunity to recapture Grenada during the American War of Independence, although it was returned under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles in 1783. During the four-year occupation, the attitude of British residents and imperial policymakers hardened towards French residents. Initially, significant concessions were made after 1763: some French property holders were allowed into the House of Assembly despite their adherence to Catholicism and transubstantiation, which normally would have prohibited political office.16 As Caitlin Anderson notes, French residents were defined as ‘loyal subjects’ in Grenada and granted privileges unprecedented among Catholics in any other part of the British empire. But after the French occupation, the Anglicization of Grenada intensified. There had been little interest in establishing an Anglican church in the island prior to the invasion, although afterwards the church’s role in generating loyalty was acknowledged and actively encouraged.17 At the same time, French Catholic churches were expropriated, and the resident population denied political rights.18 Many French residents simply migrated to Trinidad after the Spanish government opened up the island via the cédula of 1782, which offered land grants to Catholics. But many stayed in Grenada, and up to 1795, island society was split by divisions based upon nationality, race, religion and rank.19

In the aftermath of the uprising on Saint Domingue in 1791, therefore, Grenada was an island in ferment. The British and French were at almost constant war, and with residents of the latter nationality denied property rights, the island was ripe for revolutionary activity. As noted in Chapter 2, between March 1795 and September 1796, the Franco-Grenadian free people of colour – led by Julien Fedon – joined forces with the enslaved to overthrow the British regime in favour of Revolutionary France. The island was decimated, with losses to the economy between 1795 and 1798 estimated at £2.5 million.20 After the uprising, the British government supplied £1.5m to regenerate the system.21 Nicholas Draper noted a total of £1.37m was paid out in over sixty loans to merchants and planters in both St Vincent and Grenada. Of this state aid, Scottish firms and individuals (including those of Scots descent) associated with Grenada were over-represented. The firm George Baillie & Co. claimed £250,000 (Baillie was born in Scotland and operated a merchant firm in London). The brother of William Johnstone Pulteney, Alexander Johnstone, borrowed £10,000 in order to rebuild the family estate, Westerhall.22 Glasgow firms Alexander Houston & Co. and John Campbell senior & Co. collected £240,000 and £40,000 respectively from the fund.23 Overall, it seems Scots collected as much as 40 per cent of the loan, with Glasgow firms taking approximately half of the Scottish total.

In 1795, several Glasgow-West India firms focused on Grenada. Alexander Houston & Co. increased their trade connections between 1778 and 1796 before their bankruptcy in the early 1800s.24 By the nineteenth century, Glasgow Herald shipping advertisements suggest Grenada was the fifth most popular destination for the Clyde fleet, with around three or four voyages per year (see Table 4.1). Two merchant firms took over the Houston monopoly. During the period 1806–1834, John Campbell, senior, & Co. and Leitch & Smith controlled over 95 per cent of the advertised voyages between Glasgow and Grenada, and thus dominated the trade and the transportation of outward Scots. The capital St George’s was the principal destination for Clyde ships, although landfall was usually made first on Carriacou, explaining the large Scottish presence on this small cotton island twenty miles north-east of Grenada (as discussed below). Based on estimated shipping voyages, it is very likely that no more than 1,000 Scottish adventurers embarked for Grenada and Carriacou from Clyde ports between 1806 and 1834. While these figures seem slight compared to Jamaica, this consolidated a powerful Caledonian presence on the smaller islands.

In the late eighteenth century, the white population in Grenada totalled around 1,000. By 1835 it had declined to around 600. By contrast, the enslaved population was over 21,000 in the same year.25 St George’s, the commercial trade hub, was the main residence of the white population. On reaching this port, Scots would have entered almost familiar surroundings. The warehouses at Carenage – some occupied by Glasgow merchants – were just a short walk from the adjoining town, which sat on a rocky peninsula. Fort St George, home to the island military, was situated on the isthmus that overlooked the natural harbour.26 Indicative of the elevated status of Scots on the island, St Andrews Scots Kirk occupied a prominent spot next to the fort: the foundation stone was laid with full masonic honours in November 1831.27 St Andrews Scots Kirk in St George’s opened its doors on 14 July 1833 and catered for a significant Caledonian community on the island. According to its first chaplain, the Revd William Haig, the island’s Presbyterian kirk – and two court houses which acted as places of worship – offered space for 440 persons by January 1835. The pews of St Andrews Scots Kirk held 300 people, and all were let. But the average attendance of Presbyterian worshippers across the island was between 250 and 300, the irregular attendance explained by the numbers of pewholders resident in out-parishes who could not always travel.28 For comparison, in 1835 the white population of Grenada was around 600 (two-thirds of whom were male).29

Although not all Scots were Presbyterians, given a noted Scottish population specifically established a Presbyterian kirk on a small island, the above attendance figures likely provide relatively accurate estimates of the Caledonian contingent. It seems that Scots comprised around 30 to 50 per cent of the white population of Grenada towards the end of Caribbean slavery. As previously noted, Scots comprised around 14 per cent of the British population between 1801 and 1831.30 Like Jamaica, therefore, Scots were disproportionately over-represented in Grenada, although their absolute numbers on the island were much less. Except for Tobago, Grenada was the closest to a Scottish enclave in the British West Indies.31

Contemporary surveys also confirm a large Scottish presence on the neighbouring island of Carriacou. In the immediate aftermath of the return to British rule in 1783, Walter Fenner surveyed the island. This map suggests that while a significant French group were still present, Scots such as John Urquhart – who owned cotton estates Craigston and Meldrum – and William Todd owned four of the top five plantations on the island (including the largest single sugar and cotton estates).32 Indeed, Scots dominated land-ownership and very likely production of both commodities, particularly the latter; just fifteen Scots (26 per cent of proprietors) controlled over 2,800 acres of cotton-producing land (c.42 per cent of the overall total on the island).33 Although it seems very likely that Scots represented a relatively high proportion of Carriacou’s population (c.25 per cent) from the eighteenth century onwards, in absolute terms this remained a small group up to emancipation in 1834. Yet, they must have had a major impact on their homeland: Carriacou exported as much as 14 per cent of all cotton produced in the British West Indies in the late eighteenth century.34 A small number of Scottish planters on Carriacou sold cotton to Glasgow’s merchants, underpinning Scotland’s Industrial Revolution.

Legislation was in place to keep the numbers of white enslavers high, which had the effect of increasing Scottish migration to the Windward Islands. As the enslaved population increased with the development of the plantation system, colonial legislation encouraged Scottish arrivals. In 1790, an Act of the Grenada Assembly stipulated one white man must be present on each estate for every fifty slaves (known as deficiency laws).35 As this decree made it ‘absolutely necessary to have another white man upon the [Urquhart] Estate’ in Carriacou in 1791, William Arbuthnot, a nephew of the family, requested Glasgow merchant firm John Campbell & Co. send out skilled Scottish labourers.36 But it was difficult to retain white labourers on the island. In 1815, Adam Reid, manager on Dumfries estate, was paid £330 in local currency per annum (c.£214 stg.), per annum although this remuneration was lower than elsewhere: ‘wages given on the small estates here are so little, that most of the young men are leaving them and going to the sugar islands’.37 While the long-term trading connections between Glasgow merchants and Clyde ports meant Scots were widespread across Grenada and Carriacou, the opportunities and available wealth varied on each island. This chapter develops these themes through comparative case studies of a Scottish planter and merchant firm in Grenada up to Fedon’s Rebellion in 1795.

Ninian Home: a Scottish planter in Grenada, 1763–95

Hailing from Berwickshire in Scotland, Ninian Home (1732–95) was of a middling background. His paternal grandfather, the Revd Ninian Home of Billie, began to acquire estates around 1711, mainly in lieu of debts owed. The Revd’s son, Alexander Home of Jardinefield, married Isobel Home, and Ninian was one of three brothers. As the eldest, he travelled to Virginia (1749–51) to visit his uncle, George Hume of Culpeper County, and work in a store. He took up residence in the West Indies, first in St Kitts in 1759 and afterwards in Grenada in 1764, travelling back and forth to Scotland. He was appointed to several important civic positions on the island. In 1771, he was appointed judge of the Court of Common Pleas, in 1784 became a member of His Majesty’s Council, and was ultimately made lieutenant governor in 1792. He was captured during Fedon’s Rebellion in 1795 and was murdered on the island on 8 April of that year.38 Political influence in the West Indies was, of course, based upon wealth and the ownership of estates and enslaved people. In 1764, Ninian Home acquired Waltham in St Mark and a third share of Paraclete in St Andrew, both in the north of the island. Stretching to 500 acres, Waltham’s main crop was coffee and cocoa. Ninian Home was also involved with a Scottish commercial network in Grenada and with Alexander Campbell, also killed in 1795.39 Home’s correspondence – now held in the National Records of Scotland – survives from his early days as a planter until just before his death, and reveals the interconnections with Scottish planters and merchants in Great Britain.40

First, the correspondence reveals how young Scots were recruited for Grenada. Writing in January 1789 to Alexander Douglas – who owned land near Paraclete in St Andrew – Home illustrated how skilled Scottish labour was recruited for planters in the island economy:

I have engaged a ploughman for you that I think will do, he is a good looking young man between 19 & 20 years of age, & has from his infancy been brought up to the business, he writes tolerably well & has learned rithmetic, and…has constantly been in a Smiths Shop attending the making and laying of Plough Irons…we may be the better able to Instruct your Smiths to do things.41

Home recommended Alexander Houston & Co.’s ships as the best route out from Glasgow. By mid February, the ploughman was settling into island life. Home thought him a ‘good lad’ but reminded him about his ‘duty to behave well’ and to promote the interest of Douglas. Home reckoned his wages were high (£25 sterling for the first year of the indenture, rising to £30 in years two and three), although this was considered a good investment. Within twelve months the ploughman would be ‘just as good an overseer as you can get’ and had already started teaching enslaved workers how to plough the fields.42 Scottish planters recruited skilled tradesmen from Glasgow on relatively high wages, in the process improving the skills of tradesmen and transferring knowledge to the enslaved workforce.

The planter Ninian Home had an extensive transatlantic enterprise; he maintained an interest in America, on occasion shipping goods from Virginia to Simond & Hankey, and sugar from Grenada to Alexander Douglas, both London merchants. Home also had strong connections with Glasgow, shipping cotton to the Clyde via John Campbell, senior, & Co.43 Ninian Home’s correspondence with the latter firm in the 1780s reveals the unremarkable but essential financial operations that underpinned the connections between Glasgow and Grenada. On 3 May 1787, Home sent the firm ten bales of cotton which were insured by the Campbells, and at the same time he drew short-term credit on the firm’s account on the island.44 In return, the firm sent herrings to feed the enslaved workforce, although Ninian Home complained at times about both the price and quality.45 The commercial relationship endured after Home’s death in 1795, connecting the Berwickshire family’s interests in Grenada with the Glasgow firm for over thirty years.46 John Campbell senior & Co. maintained commercial relationships not only with resident Scottish planters in Grenada but also with absentees in Scotland, a commercial relationship which shall now be traced in more detail.

The great Glasgow firm of John Campbell, senior, & Co. and the Grenadines

John Campbell senior & Co. were one of the major Glasgow-West India firms of the slavery period. This short case study explores some aspects of their business as financiers and providers of credit in the Grenadines. Like Leitch & Smith, John Campbell senior & Co. were inextricably linked with Grenada from the 1780s up to abolition in 1834, as demonstrated by the interests of co-partners. The founder of the firm John Campbell senior (c.1735–1808) was the third son of Alexander Campbell of Kinloch. Other co-partners in 1790 included John’s brother Colin Campbell of Park and their cousin, Alexander Campbell of Hallyards (1768–1817), also known as ‘Business Sandy’ due to his work ethic. Other co-partners included John Campbell’s other brother Thomas, who was ‘present in Grenada’ in 1790 with their nephew, Alexander Campbell of Haylodge and Marran (d. 1835).47 Although not a partner in the firm, another brother, Mungo Campbell of Hundleshope and Kailzie (d. 1793), owned a sugar estate, Marran, in the parish of St John. His son Alexander Campbell of Haylodge, who later became a partner in the firm, inherited the plantation on his death and took the nickname ‘Marran’ from the estate on the island.

Figure 6.1 The buildings of Maran estate in the island of Grenada. The property of Thomas Duncan Esqr. Nov. 1822. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library. CC BY-SA 4.0.

John Campbell, senior & Co.’s operations and networks in Grenada and Carriacou can be traced through the papers of the Urquharts of Craigston and Meldrum, a landed family from the north-east of Scotland who owned plantations in Carriacou.48 Thomas Campbell, the brother of John Campbell, was the main influence on the early development of the merchant house across the Caribbean. Prior to the formal establishment of the firm in 1791, he was an imperial careerist with interests in Grenada, Bristol, London, Liverpool and Scotland.49 Although Campbell eventually viewed the West Indies as his home, he maintained a transient lifestyle which allowed him to cultivate transatlantic networks:

I must postpone my Northern jaunt till next summer…I promise myself, much pleasure in…a long summer among my friends in the west and north of Scotland, before I return to what I call my own country between the tropics which after long use I find agrees best with me, and where also I find more employment than in this country. 50

Thomas Campbell had connections in Scotland which created commercial opportunities in the Caribbean. In the summer of 1786, Campbell visited William Urquhart near Aberdeen with discussions evidently focused on the cotton market at Glasgow which was, by then, the epicentre of the Scottish Industrial Revolution. As Urquhart was looking for a merchant for the Glasgow market, Thomas recommended his brother John, who was working with their cousin Alexander at the counting house in Argyle Street.51 In order to make a formal connection, Thomas Campbell organized a letter of introduction for Urquhart, who agreed: ‘to establish a correspondence and to be connected with you for my Concerns in the West Indies...I believe your prices…were rather higher’.52 Thus, economics – not simply a shared Scottish heritage – was the motivation for the long-term relationship between cotton plantations in Carriacou, the absentee estate owner based in Aberdeen and the merchant firm in Glasgow.

John Campbell’s prompt reply outlined the terms of the commercial relationship. Campbell’s ship was scheduled to depart for Grenada in September 1786 with ‘Merchant Goods’ as well as a November ship with ‘Plantation Stores’. Essential goods destined for the Urquhart plantations were to be sent immediately by the first departure.53 Campbell also initiated a discussion regarding credit with the absentee planter: ‘Any accommodation in money matters that you may happen occasionally to want, will be at your service to the extent of my abilities.’54 He also kept Urquhart updated on ship departures as well as the movements of Thomas Campbell, who was in London by September 1786 preparing for a return to the West Indies.55 Their first account balance sheet demonstrates the practicalities of transatlantic commerce between the merchants in Glasgow and the planter in Carriacou. The firm’s exports included herrings to feed the resident enslaved people on the cotton plantation.56 It also charged Urquhart for goods sourced in Glasgow that were carted to the Broomielaw and then transported via lighter ships to large sea-going vessels docked at Port Glasgow.57 In return, the insured cotton was shipped to the Clyde at six-monthly intervals.58 On arrival, entry and landing charges were paid which allowed the unloading of the West India cargo. The cotton was subsequently carted to a nearby warehouse, which attracted further storage costs and delivery charges. At point of sale, the firm charged 2.5 per cent commission.

Thomas Campbell formally assumed co-partnership status in John Campbell, senior, & Co. around 1790 and requested the Urquhart trading account be officially transferred to his brothers’ firm.59 Thus, the informal arrangement among kinsmen that began with the Urquhart recommendation four years previously was ratified with a legal partnership. On 30 April 1791, William Urquhart was sent a printed letter stating the firm would hereafter be known as ‘John Campbell, senior, and Co.’ The letter further informed him the firm’s partnership structure had altered and included signatures of each partner.60 Thus, the firm went by its own social name and transacted on its terms in Scotland and the Caribbean.

After 1791, John Campbell, senior, & Co. embarked on an ambitious strategy of expansion across the West Indies which almost ended in bankruptcy. Much of their business at this point was based on financing plantations or individuals in the West Indies. Later correspondence from the firm suggested the level of finance could extend over long periods. In 1843, James Campbell described a fifty-year commercial relationship with the firm and one planter in St Vincent. According to Campbell, the firm acted in the ‘capacity of Friends [rather] than merchants’ and advanced over £50,000, which allowed the owners to reduce and work off debts with other merchants.61 A series of letters from William Arbuthnot – a nephew of the Urquhart family based in Grenada from 1787 – offers a detailed account of how credit was obtained from the firm in the colonies. In this period, he received: ‘every assurance of support, they [John Campbell, senior, & Co.] are well pleased with speculation’.62 One example illustrates how this worked on a practical level. In early 1790, Arbuthnot pondered over the purchase of a cotton estate in Carriacou from Messrs Robertson of Glasgow. Arbuthnot wrote to his uncle William Urquhart to request a loan, although he first consulted their preferred merchant whose firm were also prepared to finance the deal:

I would go down to Grenada & consult Mr Thomas Campbell whose knowledge in business & Experience in the World, as well as personal friendships I have upon all occasions found to be very great, & with which you are indeed well acquainted…Should it be inconvenient for you to advance any money, Mr Campbell is so good, as say, that he will interest his brother Mr John Campbell in the business...I should think it proper to give him full powers to make the bargain.63

On the same day, Thomas Campbell also wrote to William Urquhart outlining a detailed plan of the location of the plantation in Carriacou, as well as the character of Arbuthnot’s co-partner:

I esteem them both so much & have so much reliance on the solid judgement and previous success of Dr Bell, who is much the elder planter of the two, that I did not hesitate to promise them any support in my Brothers power, provided their plan shall meet your approbation without which you may well believe your nephew will not engage in it, & of that I can scarsely doubt, knowing as I do, your great regard for him & how well he merits it…On all these considerations it seems only necessary for me to make you acquainted with the universal good character of Dr Bell for probity, sound judgement and experience as a cotton planter of all which the best test is his success from very small beginnings. I think a connection with so good & safe a man in so distant a country a very fortunate circumstance for Mr Arbuthnot & his friends.64

Thomas Campbell also wrote to his brother John in Glasgow informing him of the Bell-Arbuthnot partnership and requesting he enter negotiations with Robertson. Thus, interaction between Campbell and Arbuthnot over several years in Grenada had engendered trust, while Dr Bell’s success in Grenada facilitated access to a commercial network. Campbell assessed the personal qualities of budding Scottish planters in Grenada and facilitated access to credit with merchant firms in Glasgow through personal recommendations. Although they were ultimately unsuccessful in the purchase (as Campbell expected), the correspondence illustrates how a transatlantic credit relationship was established through existing Scottish networks which could lead to the financing of Caribbean plantations.65

In the same period, Thomas Campbell established a foothold in the developing frontier colony of Demerara which was, at that stage, still under Dutch control. By late 1791, Campbell had made a ‘considerable purchase…in the Country where a great many people have bought estates’.66 He remained on the lookout for new opportunities and later compiled a dossier of commercial information on Cellsborough cotton plantation in Demerara, situated on the Windward seacoast. As well as information on soil fertility and the adjoining cotton house, he noted the existing credit agreements as well as the proposed payment plan, including the purchase price £10,500.67 This information was sent to William Urquhart, although he eventually acquired the plantation himself.

The risky nature of transatlantic commerce and life in the colonies was illustrated by a series of events that struck the firm in this period. In June of 1793, John Campbell, senior, & Co. had to stop payments to creditors. As noted in Chapter 2, this occurred due to a run on Glasgow banks amid concerns over the war with Revolutionary France.68 But this was simply an issue of short-term finance: William Urquhart, who owed several thousand pounds, was assured by the Campbells that all debts would be paid in full in the event of bankruptcy.69 This event must have hit the firm’s reputation in Glasgow, although they eventually recovered. While the firm avoided demise, their main colonial representative was not so lucky. By 1795, Thomas Campbell was part of the colonial council who took control of government at the outbreak of the Fedon Rebellion on 2 March that year. Thomas quickly fled but died in Demerara on 14 May 1795.70 By this point, he was a large-scale plantation owner, having acquired shares in three estates in both Grenada and Demerara, including Cellsborough and Taymouth Park.

Fedon’s Rebellion and Thomas Campbell’s death marked a change in fortunes for the firm. A power of attorney lodged in Grenada Register Office in 1793 ensured Campbell’s real and personal estate was divided among kinship networks in Scotland. His shares went to his brothers, John Campbell senior and Alexander Campbell, who afterwards appointed attorneys ‘in our names to manage the foresaid plantations…to the best advantage in Concert with the other proprietors’ in 1796.71 In addition to taking control of his plantations in Demerara, Thomas Campbell’s property was damaged during the uprising and his co-partners in Glasgow collected a loan of £40,000 on 24 July 1795, thus acquiring assets and injecting working capital into the firm.72 The events of the mid-1790s initiated a change of mercantile strategy for John Campbell, senior, & Co. First, they expanded from Grenada into the frontier colony, Demerara, and the business passed to the next generation of merchants. Second, the firm not only advanced credit to individuals and planters but also purchased estates in Demerara directly. But Grenada remained a favoured location for the firm. The relationship with the Urquharts of Craigston and Meldrum endured at least to 1814.73 Between 1806 and 1834, the firm sent out over forty voyages: these ships were scheduled to transport large groups of foremen and skilled tradesmen such as carpenters and brass-founders for their shipyards on the island.74

Tracing the Glasgow firm’s dealings with the resident Ninian Home and absentee William Urquhart underlines the city of Glasgow’s role as a commercial hub, connecting Grenada with Scotland over the long term. Home and Urquhart hailed from opposite ends of the country, Berwickshire and Aberdeen. Yet, both depended (albeit not exclusively) on the Glasgow firm for credit and goods and to sell their produce in Great Britain. In return, the Glasgow firm held their profits while sending out skilled young men to work their plantations. The increasing numbers of Scots in Grenada gradually reshaped island society, including the introduction of Presbyterianism to the island. Scotland received slave-grown cotton that powered the Industrial Revolution, alongside fortunes derived from Caribbean slavery that improved local societies.

Scots and their fortunes in Grenada and Carriacou

This section is based upon the inventories of twenty-eight individuals who had property in Scotland and were known to be in Grenada and Carriacou during the period 1775 to 1838. This group hailed from across Scotland, with around half from the central lowlands and others from the north.75 The total wealth held in these inventories was £213,393, and averaged £7,621 (see Table 6.1). Overall, the pattern was identical to Jamaica; few individuals held most of the wealth, whilst the majority were relatively poorer. In the case of Grenada, the outstanding fortune was held by the merchant James Buchanan (£124,000), which represented over half of the overall wealth in the group (see Table 6.2). As in Jamaica, merchants and planters were the most common occupation, and although there are fewer examples for Grenada than Jamaica, the evidence also suggests those in the mercantile line acquired the most wealth.76 Some of these fortunes improved Scotland. John Guthrie – the nephew of Archibald Smith of Jordanhill – was operating as a merchant in Grenada probably from 1792.77 As revealed in Chapter 3, he operated a house of trade, Guthrie & Co., in the free port St George’s as well as overseeing the Glasgow firm’s operations in Grenada. It seems he accumulated a large fortune in under a decade (£8,977) and made a successful return to Scotland in 1800.78 The impact of one exceptional mercantile fortune will be traced below.

Table 6.1 Wealth on death of Scots in Grenada in the late slavery era (1775–1838) who died between 1784 and 1858.

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

Table 6.2 Range of wealth on death of Scots in Grenada in the late slavery era (1775–1838) who died between 1784 and 1858.

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

While the fortunes acquired by planters in Grenada and nearby Carriacou were not as extensive as the wealth returned by their counterparts in Jamaica, some possessed substantial wealth.79 Walter Macinnes was a resident of Carriacou in the early part of the nineteenth century. In 1824, he owned a one-third share in the 374-acre sugar estate Mount Rich in the parish of St Patricks in Grenada.80 Back in Glasgow by 1826, he had accumulated a large fortune in long-term dealings with Glasgow firm John Campbell senior & Co., most likely from the proceeds of sugar imported to Glasgow. When he died in his landed estate in Dumbarton in January 1827, he was worth over £21,000, of which 80 per cent was held in accounts with the Glasgow firm.81 Of the nine Scottish-Grenada planters on the island in this study, two-thirds held accounts with John Campbell senior & Co. and Leitch & Smith. Thus, the merchants of Glasgow held substantial capital for Grenada planters in account current, which they probably used to fund other investments in Scotland and the Caribbean. It was practically essential for Scottish planters in Grenada to have commercial dealings with the West India firms of Glasgow.

Not only elite merchants and planters acquired wealth and repatriated it to Scotland. Like all plantation economies, the estates required skilled tradesmen to establish the infrastructure. Scottish tradesmen’s meagre fortunes were sometimes repatriated in person, a practically unquantifiable stream of capital that archival sources only sometimes reveal. Robert Fergusson, a mason who had ‘resided some years in Grenada’, died on the way home to Edinburgh in October 1793, possessing goods worth £57 sterling.82 Representing around eighteen months’ wages of a mason in Scotland in 1810, this would have been a considerable sum for his family in Edinburgh.83 Tradesmen could earn relatively major sums that reshaped lives. John Chapman, a carpenter, died at sea on the way from Grenada to Scotland in August 1825. He left an inventory of over £1,100, most of which ‘had been remitted home at different times’ and ‘directed to be applied…for the support of his mother’ in Banff.84 This vast sum represented over thirty-five years of wages of a carpenter in early nineteenth-century Glasgow.85 Evidently, large fortunes were available to merchants and planters in the West Indies, while tradesmen repatriated wealth to family at home. These were exceptional by the standards of nineteenth-century Scotland.

This group of Grenada adventurers were just as likely to make it back to Great Britain as to die in the West Indies, a high level of absenteeism (36 per cent) which explains the high proportion of landed investments in Scotland.86 Of the twenty-eight individuals, eight (35 per cent) owned urban property or landed estates in Scotland. Of the five who owned landed estates, at least one was very likely to have been a ‘gentry capitalist’ who already possessed landed property prior to departing for the West Indies.87 Indeed, Patrick MacDougall of Woodlands, who died in St Georges in 1829, owned a landed estate in Scotland but seemingly possessed a meagre fortune on death, with several bad debts in Grenada.88 Others were West India nouveau riche who used their spoils to transform their status back home. After around a decade in Grenada, John Guthrie returned to Scotland and purchased the 286-acre estate of Carbeth in the parish of Strathblane in Stirling around 1800. He immediately ‘began to improve his new acquisition’, building a grand mansion with ornamental gardens and pleasure grounds.89 Between 1808 and 1817, Guthrie further improved the appearance and extended the acreage of the estate but also transformed local transport connections.90 Newly rich adventurers from Grenada probably also purchased estates in Kincardine, Perth, Stirling and Dumbarton, including Walter Macinnes, the rich planter from Carriacou, who owned the estate of Auchenfroe on his death in January 1827. Some of the capital was invested in urban property too. James Buchanan – the second largest colonial fortune identified in this study – commissioned a house at Moray Place in Edinburgh’s New Town which was designed by leading Scottish architect James Gillespie Graham.91 In the same period, another Grenada returnee, James Stuart, lived at Hart Street, just one mile away.92 But there is little doubt it was only the select few who made it home from the West Indies and even fewer with major fortunes to invest in land.

Individuals implemented contrasting strategies to property dispersal and transmission, and, on occasion, the wealth generated by Scottish planters remained in the West Indies. One example reveals the process. John Brander, the planter from Aberdeen, died in May 1806. He owned the 101-acre cocoa and coffee estate named Cottage (formerly known by the name of Morne Français) located in St John in the north-east of the island.93 With wealth of over £3,000 sterling when he died in 1806 (most of which was held in ‘negroes and cattle’ on his estate), a large proportion had been remitted to Scotland and held in account current with John Campbell, senior, & Co.94 His will and testament reveals something of his life and where he intended his fortune should go. He bequeathed Cottage estate to Rosette (described as a ‘free cabresse’, someone whose parents were mixed-race and African) and her four ‘mulatto’ children, Alexander, John, Ann and Peggy Brander, evidently his partner and children.95 He also bequeathed to each of them enslaved people, thus securing his Grenadian family’s economic future. Rosette had once been enslaved too, and at least one of her children remained so. Brander left instructions after his decease to manumit her eldest daughter May Louisa and her mulatto granddaughter Sarah. Under colonial law and practice, May Louisa would have been born into the enslaved status of her mother, although as Rosette and her subsequent children were not described as slaves, it is very likely John Brander manumitted his mistress before she gave birth to his own children.96 This illustrated how the perverse dynamics of plantation society, as well as slavery and freedom, intersected across families. Rosette was manumitted due to her relationship with a Scottish planter, although her eldest daughter who was born into slavery passed the unfree status onto her own daughter. John Brander therefore owned both Rosette’s daughter and granddaughter. As he approached the end of his life, he sought to free his children’s eldest sister from slavery and secure their future as free people by gifting them property to become slave-owners themselves. As the Branders were still in ownership of Cottage estate in St John in the north-east of the island in 1824, it looks like he succeeded.97 But much of his wealth was destined for his two sisters in Scotland and, through executors in Scotland and Grenada, it is most likely the planter’s funds held in account current with the Glasgow merchant firm John Campbell senior & Co. were sent to his family in Aberdeen.98 The Brander property and associated fortune would have reshaped families in Scotland and the West Indies, although within the confines of the direct family matrix. On rare occasions, West India fortunes were gifted to public institutions to be disseminated for the public good, which continued to transform lives many years after slavery was abolished.

West India philanthropy: James Buchanan’s mortification

In January 1858, The Spectator reported on the ‘most munificent bequests for charitable objects’ by James Buchanan, formerly of Grenada (see Figure 8.1), and speculated as much as £200,000 was bequeathed to the city of Glasgow. While this figure was an exaggeration, the report accurately reported on Buchanan’s substantial bequests to the city of Glasgow via the Merchants House, the Trades House, the Royal Infirmary and for the establishment of an industrial school.99 Tracing Buchanan’s rise, and examining his last will and testament, reveals more about his social origins, as well as the extent, motives and dispersal of the largest single charitable bequest made by a returned West India adventurer in this study.

A hagiographical account of Buchanan’s early years is recounted in A Sketch of the Rise and Progress of the Trades’ House of Glasgow. He was the son of a farrier near the Trongate at Glasgow and often loitered around his father’s yard in the late eighteenth century. Moses Steven and James Buchanan (no relation), both co-partners in the prominent West India firm Buchanan, Steven & Co. (later Dennistoun, Buchanan & Co.), had their horses shod at this blacksmith, thus introducing the farrier’s younger son to the colonial elite of Glasgow. Aged around seventeen in 1800, James expressed a wish to travel to the West Indies and was fortunate enough to be provided with a letter of recommendation to George Wilson, partner of the firm in Grenada (as noted in Chapter 4).100 After a seven-year training period under Wilson in Grenada, James Buchanan sought new opportunities and became the firm’s managing partner in Kingston, Jamaica and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He was said to have retired aged thirty-three in 1816 and returned to Scotland and invested his fortune. Dennistoun, Buchanan & Co. accumulated a major portfolio of shares and investments in commerce and industry including Scottish and English railways and American banks and insurance companies. He also acquired urban property in Glasgow and a luxurious home in Moray Place in Edinburgh’s New Town. On his death in December 1857, Buchanan had a personal fortune worth over £124,000 (and more in heritable property).101 Based on Rubinstein’s value of a nationally significant fortune in nineteenth-century Great Britain (£100,000), Buchanan was among the ranks of the super-wealthy of his time.102 For comparison, Buchanan’s £124,604 in 1858 is equivalent to £95.3m (relative to the worth of average earnings in 2020).103

James Buchanan and his bequest were, however, untypical in several aspects. First, he was a successful, returned adventurer and, of course, most died prematurely or failed to accumulate the wealth he did. In fact, he was the second wealthiest of all Scots known to have been in the West Indies identified for this study after John Shand of Jamaica. Moreover, this example complicates what can be considered a fortune derived from slavery. Buchanan spent sixteen years in the West Indies (seven in Grenada, nine in Jamaica), some time in Brazil (where slavery was not abolished until 1888) and around forty-one years in Edinburgh, investing in commerce and industry across Scotland, England and America. He was involved with the West India firm Dennistoun, Buchanan & Co. for at least twenty-five years, most of the time as a co-partner. The wealth, therefore, came from multiple Atlantic world sources. While it is impossible to quantify the exact sum derived from slavery, the West Indies provided the initial source of capital, which was probably boosted by residence in Brazil, which allowed him to diversify his investments in Scotland and ultimately to bequeath capital to the city of Glasgow.

James Buchanan’s settlement (originally drawn up in 1852 and revised in 1857),104 provided his wife with a substantial annuity of £2,000 but, unusually, restricted major sums to his family. For Buchanan, ‘to give large sums of money to Relations is often times attended with mischievous results’.105 By deliberately excluding family to the direct benefit of the city of Glasgow, the dispersal of Buchanan’s West India fortune was unusual, even unique.106 Buchanan prioritized charitable bequests to public institutions to benefit the common good. A bequest of £10,000 was made to both the Merchants House of Glasgow and the Trades’ House of Glasgow – to be invested in Bank of England stock – for educational purposes, principally to educate sons of members who were not wealthy. The Royal Infirmary of Glasgow also received £10,000.107 the city of Glasgow was bequeathed £30,000 (paid over ten years) to be invested in an ‘Industrial Institution…for the maintenance and instruction of destitute children’ on condition the city provided a building, and if a success after ten years, annual payments were to continue.108 The extent of this bequest is on a par with that left by James Ewing (as described in the final chapter) and portions of these separate bequests were ultimately merged.

The impact of the Buchanan bequest is revealed by tracing two strands. As noted, James Buchanan bequeathed £10,000 to the Merchants House in trust ‘to be exclusively appropriated and expended towards the Education of the sons of decayed members: and granting Bursaries to such of them as give evidence of future eminence in such a manner as the Directors of the Merchants House may deem best’.109 However, by the early 1900s, fewer members were matriculating with the Merchants House, which meant that there were few candidates eligible for the bursary. In 1909, in legislation passed by the Secretary of State for Scotland, the Buchanan Bursary was merged with one of the three bequests made by James Ewing, an owner of a Jamaican estate. Titled the Merchants House of Glasgow (Buchanan and Ewing bequests) Order 1909, the order allowed for the repositioning of funds.110 The value of these joint bequests in 1909 was around £22,000 (this was invested in, for example, English railway stock).111 After an open application process, several institutions across Glasgow were awarded sums on an annual basis, mainly for student scholarships and staff costs. In 1914, the Royal Technical College (the main predecessor institution of the University of Strathclyde) received the highest proportion, followed by the Athenium Commercial College, the University of Glasgow, the Royal Infirmary, St Mungo’s College, Glasgow School of Art, the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders, and Andersons College of Medicine.112 The bequest is ongoing: in 2017, the Merchants House awarded £6,000 to educational institutions.113 There are no existing estimates available for other institutions, although a recent study by the University of Glasgow suggested its historical income from the Ewing-Buchanan bequest, which was historically used to pay staff costs since 1909 could be as high as £8.4m (2016 values).114

Second, by providing a building for the Buchanan Institution that opened in 1859, the powers that be in Glasgow took advantage of the offer of £30,000 in Buchanan’s settlement of 1857. Olive Checkland has described the institution as a ‘ragged school’ on a hybrid model, based on philanthropic donations and public money.115 As James Buchanan intended to extend ‘the hand of charity to the helpless of every sect and denomination’, religious instruction in the institution was unsectarian in nature.116 Buchanan laid out a specific curriculum: pupils were to reside with parents (usually widowed mothers, although they could reside within the school if required) and were provided with breakfast, lunch and supper. They were instructed in reading, writing and arithmetic, navigation, gymnastics, tailoring, shoemaking and carpentry to make them fit for the navy, army and merchant marine or to emigrate to the colonies.117 The school was specifically aimed at the urban poor. Children were only admitted if they were destitute (ie their father died or had deserted the family). On admission, the typical child was aged eight, and stayed for around four years. The average annual cost per boy was £5 10s, which would normally have excluded the local poor from attending. Buchanan’s Institution proved a major success and over 1,600 boys were admitted in the establishment’s first fourteen years.118 By 1913, 6,000 were said to have been through its doors. Buchanan boys were reckoned to be ‘heavier, healthier and stronger than the average Glasgow schoolboy’.119 Buchanan’s West India fortune, quite literally, fed the poor of the city into the twentieth century.

Buchanan’s bequest to the Merchants House was intended to regenerate the mercantile ranks (the interest from which ultimately passed to the University of Glasgow) but provision was also made for the workers of the city: for tradesmen, the Royal Infirmary and Buchanan’s Institution, which improved the health and educational standards of some of Glasgow’s poorest children. It is no exaggeration this fortune derived from slavery in the West Indies improved the lives of many thousands of people. In a neo-Weberian class model, Buchanan’s mortification, in theory and practice, enhanced the life chances of many, thus potentially lifting some from their economic order.120 In this way, the labour of many enslaved people in the Caribbean created profits which fell into the hands of the select few West India adventurers who, in rare philanthropic initiatives, ultimately improved the life chances of many thousands in Scotland.

Building on Douglas Hamilton’s chapter on wealth repatriation, S. Karly Kehoe traced the investments of Scots in the West Indies – mainly residents of Grenada and Carriacou – in charitable enterprise in the Highlands, especially educational academies and hospitals. Thus, according to Kehoe, the impact of individual Scots in the Caribbean can be measured using different levels of analysis. First, historians should examine Caribbean adventurers of modest means who improved their own status and that of their families at home. Second, the more substantial fortunes of new elites might be traced, and their wealth often reshaped regional economies and societies.121 Kehoe has noted educational establishments were favoured options for benefactors in Grenada and connected the wealth from Scots in the Caribbean to the opening of Fortrose Academy (1791), Inverness Royal Academy (1792) and Tain Royal Academy (1813). There were others too. In 1799, for example, the will of Mr James Wilson of Grenada bequeathed ‘the whole stock…to be drawn from the funds and remitted to the magistrates of Banff, North Britain, to be by them laid out as a charitable fund [c.£8,000] in the best manner possible’. The town magistrates of Banff settled on an educational establishment which included an infant school, classrooms, a library and museum to benefit the ‘most promising boys’.122 In similar fashion, James Buchanan’s bequest helped reshape Glasgow society from 1857 to the present day, yet it is distinctive in key aspects. The Buchanan Institution was a hybrid, part funded by the city of Glasgow to improve the conditions of destitute children. Schools come and go. However, the other Buchanan bequest (£10,000 to the Merchants House) was not intended to set up an institution; instead it educated learners in perpetuity. Capital derived from slavery underpinned the age of improvement, and this study shows that West India philanthropy improved the prospects and life chances of many across the lowlands, especially Glasgow, in a far more profound manner than it did for the Scottish Highlands.

Conclusion

This chapter traces Scottish involvement in the British takeover in Grenada after the island was ceded to Great Britain in 1763. The percentages are startling. Scots were quick to move onto the island and by 1772 possessed 40 per cent of land cultivated for sugar and cotton. Scottish merchants and planters collected 40 per cent of the loan provided by the British government after Fedon’s Rebellion in 1795. And by 1835, Scots probably comprised up to half the white population. The Scottish infiltration of nearby Carriacou was on a similar scale, forming one-fifth of the white population but owning 40 per cent of the land. The relatively high population of Scots on each island underpinned a self-perpetuating cycle of exploitation. Scottish planters and Glasgow merchants had a monopoly on Grenada, which attracted imports of sugar and cotton to the Clyde. In return, the monopoly promoted outward skilled migration via their shipping. Major profits were generated by the Glasgow merchants operating in Grenada (as revealed in the final chapter) but also by resident Scottish planters, merchants and tradesmen alike. Many skilled Scots were sent out, and a few fortunes came back in return. The mercantile networks were crucially important, therefore, to the advancement of Scots in the island, but also to the city of Glasgow and Scotland overall. The Camerons of Glenloy may not have benefited from their brother’s fortune, if it ever existed, but other fortunes were built and repatriated, allowing many in Scotland to benefit directly from the Atlantic slavery economy despite never setting foot in the West Indies. The Buchanan Institution provides a compelling example of how Caribbean slavery improved life chances of Scots with no prior connection to slavery, in this case the industrial working poor in Glasgow.