1. Emergence

Soon after arriving in Glasgow in February 1835, the newly appointed sheriff of Lanarkshire Sir Archibald Alison – himself a pro-slavery advocate – surveyed his fiefdom. Given he rented his residence Possil House from the eldest son of John Campbell senior, founder of the great West India house of the same name, Alison had an inside view of Glasgow’s mercantile elite.1 Connecting occupational status with rank and class, he placed the high-earning West India families at the pinnacle of high society:

The West India merchants then took the lead and considered themselves as the best society in the city: five or six families of that class lived almost exclusively with each other, and rigidly confined themselves to visiting within their own circle. They had in consequence acquired the sobriquet of the ‘Sugar Aristocracy’.

Cotton masters were next down the social hierarchy, followed by calico printers and iron and coal magnates. Astonished at the ‘absence of any old mercantile families in the city’, for Alison, the rapid accumulation of fortunes over a thirty-year period had created an unrefined yet socially mobile parvenu class. For him, equality in birth, education, accomplishments and especially manners compelled the landed aristocracy and gentry to associate together. But the acquisition of colonial wealth was so rapid that the ‘largest fortunes were in vulgar hands’, often those who were recently labouring ‘at the shuttle, the forge, or in the printfield’. In short, wealth transformed the social standing of some in one or two generations. Thus, according to Alison, while this newly acquired wealth afforded the ‘sugar aristocracy’ favours at the Royal Exchange and local banking houses, it did not translate into respectability of descent.2 But who were the ‘sugar aristocracy’? How did they come to be? How did they fit within the overall mercantile community in Glasgow? This chapter considers the appropriateness of the ‘sugar aristocracy’ sobriquet and, in doing so, broadens understandings about Glasgow’s West India merchants and planters during a period of dramatic economic and social change.

Glasgow’s sugar era

The inspector general’s returns of imports and exports for Scotland provided the estimated values of goods traded with other countries between 1755 and 1827.3 Table 1.1 provides import and export data for Scottish trade at equal points across the seventy-two-year period, revealing a dramatic upsurge in commerce with Scotland and the Americas in an era of rapid industrialization.4 Between 1755 and 1827, Scottish imports grew eightfold from £465,411 to £3,948,233 (official values). Incoming trade from the West Indies was the most dynamic force, accounting for 10 per cent of imports in 1755 and rising to over 40 per cent in 1808, an increase by a factor of four in terms of relative share of overall Scottish imports. The export trade, especially of textiles, was the real engine of Scotland’s economic growth. Between 1755 and 1827, Scottish exports rose eleven-fold from £535,576 to £6,059,502 (official values). In 1772, the West Indies took less than 4 per cent of Scotland’s export trade, rising to almost half by 1808, with exports to the foreign West Indies increasingly important by 1827. Across Scotland’s Industrial Revolution, the proportion of exports to Europe and America declined, while the West India trades were the most dynamic force. In some years, the Scottish share of the British export trade to the West Indies was substantial. In 1814, when European trades were restricted due to war, the West Indies received £3,453,979 of Scottish exports (official values). That same year, national exports to the British West Indies were valued at £6,315,000, meaning that over half of British West India commerce by value went through Scottish ports just after the mid-point of the Scottish Industrial Revolution.5

Clyde ports (Port Glasgow and Greenock) were the premier outlets in Scotland throughout this period. The American War of Independence (1775–83) dramatically transformed the national relationship with the Atlantic world. The traditional view is that the war initiated a mercantile shift from commodity trade (in tobacco) to manufacturing and export (especially cotton-based textiles) and was a watershed in Scottish economic history.6 Wartime conditions, at least temporarily, limited Scots’ access to markets and Glasgow’s tobacco monopoly ended as the Americans afterwards directly shipped tobacco to Europe. Trade in tobacco never again reached more than a quarter of pre-war levels. However, there was no economic collapse, and the West Indies quickly took centre stage in Scotland’s Atlantic commerce.7 Glasgow’s resident merchants refocused their Atlantic system to the British West Indies and to sugar, rum and cotton. In 1772, voyages departing from and arriving on the Clyde from the West Indies were around a quarter of all voyages from North America. By 1791, these voyages were almost equal.8 But this was not a steady increase. The activities of Glasgow’s merchants were restricted due to wartime hostilities, associated insurance and freight costs and an increase in privateering. At the end of the war in 1783, however, Glasgow’s West India merchants were able to take advantage of well-established mercantile networks, maritime routes and colonial operations, and the growth in commerce ushered in the ‘golden age of the Clyde-Caribbean trade’.9

Table 1.1 Scottish imports and exports, 1755–1827 (official values).

Source: UK National Archives, CUST 14.

Shipping tonnage further illustrates the dramatic rise of the Clyde-Caribbean trades. In 1790, more tonnage from the West Indies (especially Jamaica, Barbados and Grenada) was imported at Clyde ports than from either Europe or America. Examination of commodities landed between 1800 and 1805 underlines the sharp decline of the tobacco trade and the dramatic rise of sugar, coffee and cotton imports.10 By 1806, Clyde ports had overtaken Bristol as the third largest sugar importer in Great Britain, behind London and Liverpool.11 And while the tobacco trade was mainly a re-export business, proportionately more sugar reached the domestic market.12 In 1814 alone, 1,251,092 hundredweight (cwt) of sugar was imported at Port Glasgow and Greenock (an increase of 73 per cent over the 1805 figure); 167,927 cwt of coffee was imported (an increase of 789 per cent) and 1,251,092 gallons of rum (increase of 158 per cent).13 The decline within ten years was dramatic, and 1814 or thereabouts was the peak year of Glasgow’s West India era.14

Moreover, West India cotton provided the ‘spark’ for take-off in the first phase of the Scottish Industrial Revolution, with greater multiplier effects on the national economy. In 1778 – a crucial year as the first cotton-spinning mills were established in Scotland – no cotton arrived from America at all, at least according to official statistics, while 216,000lbs arrived from the West Indies (the latter region’s cotton remained most important up to 1800).15 In 1805, a total of 8.42m lbs of cotton was landed at Clyde ports, meaning these were the premier ports in Scotland (99 per cent of Scottish total) albeit only importing a small proportion of the overall British share.16 As will be explored in a later chapter, cotton had added significance in terms of multiplier effects, as it supplied the mills that provided employment for large swathes of the Scottish population.

Export tonnage at Clyde ports was even more impressive, revealing just how important the West Indies were to Scottish industry in this period. In 1790, just over a quarter of overall exports from the Clyde were destined for the West Indies, greater than the amount bound for North America (17 per cent) or Europe (18 per cent). The predominance of the West Indies was attributed to merchants shipping out manufactured goods, such as textiles, to the plantation colonies.17 In 1814, the overall value of exports from the Clyde to the West Indies was £2.49m: almost twice as much as to North America and Europe combined. Thus, approximately 72 per cent of Scotland’s West India trades went through Clyde ports.18 The West Indies was the premier trading zone for Glasgow merchants from the American War of Independence to the abolition of plantation slavery in 1834, a period that spanned Scotland’s Industrial Revolution.

The ‘golden age’ of the Clyde-Caribbean trade, however, was short. Great Britain briefly dominated the global trade in sugar after the outbreak of the Haitian Revolution in 1791, although prices declined due to a glut in production. The relocation of the Portuguese Court to Brazil in 1807 and the Argentinian declaration of independence in 1816 opened up new markets in South America, although trade levels fluctuated due to the precarious political situation.19 The rise of the cotton industry created new profits, although British merchants failed to re-establish a global monopoly over tropical commodities.20 By the mid 1800s, and perhaps even earlier, the manufacturing class superseded transatlantic merchants as Scotland’s agents of economic change.

Methodology

As the Glasgow-West India elites refocused their trading horizons after the American Revolution, they founded new commercial organizations. The individuals that formed the basis of this study were identified through records associated with the West India Club and Glasgow West India Association.21 The West India Club was a short-lived organization, and predecessor to the more formal Glasgow West India Association. Established in 1807, it evolved into one of the most powerful pro-slavery lobbying groups outside of London. By identifying 150 merchants, merchant-proprietors and absentee planters in Glasgow associated with both bodies in the period 1775–1838, this study revealed the city’s West India community was much more numerous than has previously been recorded.22 But this group were a minority elite within an exclusive mercantile group in Glasgow, comprising around 10 per cent of the city’s merchant community (and possibly much less).23

Printed, digital and archival sources establish the characteristics of these individuals. Biographical details were initially culled from antiquarian texts and family histories.24 In some cases, the printed matriculation albums of Old College (now the University of Glasgow) provided detailed information.25 From this foundation, the commercial rank of individuals in Glasgow was established by examining burgess and guild brethren registrations and the printed subscription lists of the Merchant House.26 Trade and post-office directories for Glasgow allowed identification of residence status and in many cases provided names of firms that merchants associated with. Wealth and remaining investments on death (as well as family relationships) were established by examining wills and confirmation inventories generated on the death of individuals (which provides the focus of Chapter 8). Shipping advertisements in the Glasgow Herald (Chapter 4 provides a thorough analysis of over 1,700 voyages between Clyde ports and the West Indies) confirmed the focus of each merchant firm’s colonial trading interests. Annually printed collections of Scottish court cases and comparison with the London Gazette and Edinburgh Gazette – the preferred broadsheets of the mercantile class – provide further details of colonial activities of firms and individual merchants.

Distinctive groups and personalities came to prominence at different stages across Glasgow’s sixty-year sugar era. The listing of the West India Club in trade directories between 1787 and 1792 reveals who among the city’s mercantile elite transitioned from tobacco to sugar commerce. Significantly, of twenty-four members of the West India Club, over half were previously ‘tobacco lords’ in Glasgow.27 Merchants such as John Campbell senior transferred their commercial focus from Virginia to Grenada, joining with a Jamaica clique: the main grouping in the West India Club.28 Alex Cuninghame (1756–90) of Craigends in Renfrew exemplified the old Jamaica interest.29 Cuninghame’s grandfather acquired Grandvale estate in Westmoreland, which ultimately passed to John Cuninghame on the death of Alexander in 1790. Thus, in the aftermath of the American war, former tobacco merchants collectivized with existing West India merchants and absentee planters in a new commercial grouping. The shift from tobacco to sugar brought considerable commercial disruption in Glasgow. Nine members of the West India Club (including six merchants known to have traded with Virginia) were later made bankrupt. The failure of the co-partners of Glasgow firm Alexander Houston & Co. in 1795 is well-known but this was part of a remarkably frequent pattern of bankruptcy among the city’s early West India community.30 T. M. Devine noted Glasgow’s tobacco merchants’ diversification into the West Indies averted immediate economic crisis on the outbreak of the American War of Independence,31 although in reality, the financial rewards were only available to the second generation of West India merchants.

This second generation came to prominence in the abolitionist period, establishing the Glasgow West India Association in 1807. Absentee planters were in the minority but were often prominent, such as John Blackburn, a wealthy returnee from Jamaica. The Jamaica mercantile interest – headed by James Ewing – were the most prominent group in the association. However, the first association committee was composed of individuals from prominent West India firms with different interests: Robert Dennistoun (St Kitts), Francis Garden (Jamaica), Alexander Campbell of Hallyards (Grenada and Demerara) and Robert Bogle junior (Jamaica) were directors while John Gordon (Jamaica) was appointed chairman. A third group became prominent between abolition and full emancipation in 1838. As noted that year by Colin Dunlop Donald, a lawyer specializing in colonial business and secretary of the association for over forty years, the group by then comprised West India merchants, absentee planters, financiers and merchant-proprietors (merchants who took ownership of Caribbean estates, usually after the defaulting of planters’ loans).32 For example, ‘White’ Mungo Campbell – who like his father Alexander Campbell of Hallyards was a co-partner in John Campbell, senior, & Co. – took over the running of the firm and registered with the West India Association around 1828. Thus, established West India merchants and their sons joined with newcomers such as George Cole, a Trinidad merchant who migrated to Glasgow to deal with the account of John Lamont, one of the largest planters on Trinidad.

From 1807 to 1838, the Glasgow West India Association was mainly a mercantile body, although some subscribers invested in sugar estates. The Jamaica interest were the most prominent group in the Glasgow West India Association, although the membership overall mainly comprised men who made wealth in newer colonies: Grenada, Trinidad and especially Demerara.33 The main power within the Association can be measured in director appointments, which reveal the constant influence of the Jamaica interest, although, overall, directors in firms that traded with Demerara, Trinidad and Grenada were more extensive.34 However, the sheer prominence of the Jamaica interest among the chairmen of the Association confirms this group dominated the organization between 1807 and 1838.35 Someone in this group was the leading influence. James Ewing was first secretary (1807–10), director (1811, 1825) and chairman (1821–4). In his own words, he held a ‘principle share’ in the establishment of the Glasgow West India Association.36 This powerful combination of individuals who controlled the Glasgow-West India trades, as will now be shown, hailed from rural and urbanizing areas of Scotland, and, on occasion, from the Caribbean itself.

Migration and society

In part due to the pull of commercial and industrial opportunities, Glasgow underwent a demographic explosion: between 1755 and 1821, the population rose sharply from 31,700 to 147,000.37 Individuals migrated to take up commercial occupations in the city. A small minority – sons of elite merchants and planters – originated in the West Indies. William Frederick Burnley was the son of William Hardin Burnley, a Virginian-born merchant in Trinidad and one of the major owners of enslaved people on the island.38 Burnley was connected through marriage to Glasgow-based merchants the Eccles – themselves sons of a Trinidad-based Irish planter – and it is likely this connection brought him to the city, where he became a senior partner in the merchant firm William Eccles and Co. The Caribbean background of Burnley and the Eccles, however, marked them as unusual among Glasgow’s mercantile community.

Over half of Glasgow’s West India elite originated from west-central Scotland, with others drawn from the eastern lowlands, the Highlands and the Borders.39 The most prominent counties were Renfrew, Ayr and especially Lanark.40 Indeed, the highest proportion (a third of the overall group) of individuals hailed from locations in around Glasgow, such as James Ewing, later MP for the city. While a few old families were part of the city’s West India elite, the majority were incomers from across Scotland, mixed with a handful from England and the West Indies, who all travelled in search of fortune. Thus, a diverse group was formed into a cohesive Glasgow-West India elite.

As in England, Scottish society was multi-layered and governed by social rank up to 1830 (although ‘class’ and its associated consciousness eventually superseded rank).41 Respectability of descent – marked by hereditary titles, landownership and associated political influence – determined rank and order. Eventually, like other European nations, economic resources acted as a ‘symbol of social worth that compensated for differences in rank’ in elite Scottish society, especially in potential marriage pairings.42 Wealth gained via colonial activities, therefore, facilitated rapid social mobility and contributed to the reshaping of elite society. In the west of Scotland, the landed aristocracy sat atop the elite pile and comprised notables such as the dukes of Hamilton and Argyll. Distinguished families such as the Lockharts of Lanarkshire and the Houstons of Renfrewshire were lairds: lower in social importance in comparison with the aristocracy, but sometimes equally influential in British politics.43 The Houstons were representative of a wider influx of landed families who owed their wealth and political influence to sugar plantations in the West Indies.44 For Katie Barclay, these arriviste merchants remained part of a lower gentry (a grouping which also included small landowners such as former tenant farmers).45 Owing to the rapid changes brought about by colonial wealth, therefore, elite society in the west of Scotland evolved.

Glasgow’s elite comprised the landed gentry, merchants, professionals and middling ranks.46 A wealthy mercantile class sat atop the pile. Most of the gentry – and their sons – lived on landed estates around the west of Scotland but operated as colonial merchants in Glasgow. Once successful, other parvenu merchants bought estates and lived in luxurious country houses. The middling orders, likely around 15 per cent of the city’s population in 1800, included Church of Scotland ministers. Lower middling groups comprised craftsmen, general merchants, business owners and shopkeepers. Old College professors frequented elite clubs and wielded considerable local status, as did legal and military professionals. Wealth, income and landownership, therefore, did not always determine social rank.47

The West India merchants and planters operating in Glasgow between 1775 and 1838 overwhelmingly came from the middling ranks and gentry. None seem to have originated from the aristocracy, instead springing from both old landed gentry and arriviste families. The former included ‘gentry capitalist’ families such as the Stirlings of Keir, who increased their already significant wealth and status through long-term connections with the Caribbean.48 The latter included the Smiths of Jordanhill, whose transformation from tenant farmers to landed elites coincided with the establishment of a West India firm (as noted in Chapter 3). The writer and illustrator Beatrix Potter compared the arriviste mercantile class to ‘mushroom lairds’, presumably referring to the rapidity with which they popped up across the countryside.49 Within the already landed ranks who joined the West India trades in Glasgow, the majority were younger sons – who would not normally have inherited their fathers’ estate due to the law of primogeniture – although almost as many were first-born sons.50 Thus, the West India trades of Glasgow provided younger gentry sons with a vocation but also improved existing family estates (as will be discussed in Chapter 8). Most of Glasgow-West India merchants and planters in this study, however, initially hailed from non-landed backgrounds.

Established colonial elites in Glasgow retained involvement with the Atlantic world over successive generations. Of the known fathers of West India merchants and planters, nearly half were previously involved with the colonial trades in the city. At least sixteen were sons of famous Glasgow ‘tobacco lords’. For example, James, Robert and Richard Dennistoun were sons of James Dennistoun of Colgrain. Of far greater importance, however, was the intergenerational transfer of knowledge, skill and capital to sons from fathers previously involved in the Glasgow-West India trades. Around a third of the group were second-generation West India merchants (thirty-nine of 117 known fathers), a similar proportion to eighteenth-century Bristol merchants.51 Several notable family West India firms in Glasgow promoted sons into West India commerce. Archibald Smith of Jordanhill, for example, established Leitch & Smith in Glasgow in the 1780s and ultimately groomed his sons to take over the business. The wider importance of family firms will be discussed later in this chapter, while the Smiths of Jordanhill will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3.

Successive flows of colonial wealth thus created and regenerated an elite mercantile grouping in Glasgow from 1775 onwards. First, capital from the Chesapeake trades created a new cohort of West India merchants who introduced sons across successive commercial generations. Others hailed from a ‘middling’ background such as the Church, agricultural, military or legal professions.52 John Hamilton of Northpark, for example, was the son of the Revd John Hamilton, minister of Glasgow cathedral between 1749 and 1780.53 In rare cases, the privileged status afforded to the clergy provided a path into the mercantile trades. In 1770, Robert Findlay of Easterhill registered burgess (ie a merchant with right to trade – see below) as son of a minister of the gospel in Glasgow. His father, the Revd Robert Findlay of St David’s Church, was also professor of Divinity at Old College between 1782 and 1814.54 While Findlay’s background was unusual, the University of Glasgow did have a role in developing West India elites.

Regenerating the elite: education, commerce and marriage

As Glasgow’s economic and social structure was transformed in the eighteenth century, Old College prospered. There are two schools of thought regarding the exact relationship with the mercantile elite and the university. On the one hand, a parliamentary commission in the 1820s concluded young men were ‘sent for one or more years to College’ before they engaged in commercial pursuits, inferring a close relationship with the mercantile community.55 Yet, on the other hand, existing studies suggest the links between merchants and Old College were relatively slight. The classic account of Old College students argued that while 50 per cent of matriculants in the period 1800–39 had fathers whose primary occupation was industry and commerce, only 12 per cent of enrolled students were later employed in the same area (leading the author to note that the institution channelled students from commerce to professional occupations).56

Elite citizens of the city also believed Old College to be unfit for purpose from the mid eighteenth century. In 1761, the Revd William Thom, minister of Govan, called for a public academy in Glasgow in a series of influential tracts, one entitled ‘the defects of a University education and its unsuitableness to a Commercial People’.57 The city’s merchants echoed these criticisms about Old College’s arts curriculum. In February 1784, after attending an assembly alongside the city’s merchants, Old College student Samuel Rose privately voiced indignation at their stance on a political matter which descended into an attack on the mercantile class:

What can possibly be expected from a parcel of Merchants, whose every Thought turns upon the one thing needful? Whose acquaintance with Books is confined to the Cash-Book and Ledger? And who have spent their time amongst ‘Wool-Packs, Sugar-Kists and Rum Puncheons’? You will think, perhaps, that I hold the merchants in too contemptible a Light. But I do assure you that they return it with a Degree of Interest that frequently amounts to Usury to us poor Book-Worms about the University. To see men who often cannot write their own names who more frequently cannot spell them with propriety, and who sometimes cannot read them after they are written, to see such men on possession of plums, it must naturally excite one’s Indignation.

Further, Rose noted, the merchants ‘gratified their own ability’ at local dinners, regularly comparing the advantages of ‘literary, and an illiterate education’. Indeed, they modestly cited themselves as evidence of ‘the superior advantage of the latter and hesitate not in giving it the preference’.58

Rose’s critique and previous historiography, however, underappreciated the strong connections between Old College and the Caribbean over successive generations. Around fifty-eight (39 per cent of the group) West India merchants and planters of Glasgow – a similar number to that of their predecessors, the ‘tobacco lords’ – are known to have matriculated at Old College between 1737 and 1825.59 These young lads matriculated aged twelve, on average, leaving the years from sixteen onwards for commercial education. James Ewing, for example, attended Glasgow High School before he matriculated at Old College aged eleven in 1786. He read Latin, Greek and philosophy, and then went into the West India trades with his father.60 Ewing – unusually among his mercantile peers – went on to author several works, including a history of the Merchants House (a commercial organization explained in detail below).61 Rose’s vision of a generation of illiterate mercantile bean-counters, therefore, was not wholly accurate. Most of the West India elites who matriculated at Old College were themselves sons of colonial traders in the city, and they would have attended with sons of Caribbean planters. Moreover, once successful, the West India elite sent over 100 sons to the institution.62 Old College was therefore an Atlantic world melting pot in the centre of Glasgow across successive generations and, for many, an important rite of passage before they entered the West India trades.

After education, any budding merchant in Glasgow had to secure the right to trade. In the early eighteenth century, a civic framework regulated entry to the colonial trades in Glasgow.63 The rank of burgess and guild brethren (B.G.B.) was a privileged position which not only carried great social distinction but conferred the right to trade. After 1605, when a letter of the guildry set out the constitution of the Merchants House and established its prominent position, there were two distinct classes of burgess with protected privileges and related political and judicial powers: the merchant rank and craft rank.64 Entrance requirements for a merchant burgess was especially rigorous, as fines (or fees) were payable at each stage of admission and although they varied over time, they were usually beyond the means of the working poor.65 The admission of an individual as a ‘Burgess Freeman’ in the Royal Burgh was controlled by the dean of guild of the Merchants House (as discussed below), who decided worthiness based on their wealth, mercantile training and moral reputation.66 Individuals had to demonstrate they were worth at least ‘500 merks’ in ‘land, heritage and moveable gear’, which was double the value set for craftsmen.67 Registration also included religious considerations based on Scottish Presbyterianism (although strict adherence was not a requirement for entry).68 While most individuals examined here did register as B.G.B. and it represented an important qualification, in practice, by the early 1800s, it was not an essential pre-requisite for a commercial career.69 The most common means of entrance for this group studied here was as ‘son of a registered burgess and guild brethren’, followed ‘by purchase’. Several others also took up privileges ‘by apprenticeship’, through ‘nomination’ or, in the case of Patrick Colquhoun, as an ‘Honorary Burgess’. Others registered after marrying the daughters of burgesses. The wider importance of the marital connections of the West India elite will be explored in more detail below.

Writing of his experiences in Glasgow around 1835, Sir Archibald Alison recounted how he and his wife ‘frequently laughed’ at the sugar aristocracy’s ‘rigid and universal adoption of exclusive system’. This associational system was designed to pair off eligible young people of the appropriate rank, sometimes in assemblies and balls, with the intention of continuing family traditions.70 One study of the Glasgow-West India elite noted the high incidence of marriages within this close-knit community but underestimated how strategic marriage choices created a broad diversity of networks.71 Wider analysis of the marital connections of West India merchants and planters in Glasgow between 1775 and 1838 reveals eighty individuals married at least once, and a further six married twice or more. At least five died unmarried. Four members of the West India elite married into the peerage of Scotland and England. In May 1804, for example, James Buchanan of Ardenconnell married Lady Janet Sinclair, eldest daughter of the earl of Caithness. These exceptions apart, marriages were generally with daughters of the gentry and middling sorts. West India merchants and planters who hailed from a landed background unsurprisingly tended to marry daughters of other landed families. While it was less common for West India merchants from non-landed backgrounds to marry daughters of landed proprietors, merchants were sometimes propelled up the social ladder.72

Transatlantic West India pairings in Glasgow occurred only on an occasional basis, although they provided economic benefits, consolidated commercial connections and no doubt increased the imports of merchant firms. William Frederick Burnley, for example, married Rosina, daughter of James Eccles. Burnley’s father – William Hardin Burnley – owned sugar estates in Trinidad, while Rosina’s father and uncles ran Robert Eccles and Co., the top Scottish firm on the island. William Frederick Burnley ultimately travelled to Glasgow and became heavily involved in the West India trades. Stana Nenadic has argued the institutions of family and marriage were utilized to reinforce business networks and partnerships and regenerate middle-class status.73 In these cases, there was an obvious transatlantic dimension to the practice. Marriage also connected mercantile and planting families within Scotland. Charles Stirling of Gargunnock, partner in Stirling, Gordon & Co., married Christian Hamilton, eldest daughter of John Hamilton of Sundrum, who owned two estates in St Mary in Jamaica. On his wedding in 1831, Stirling guaranteed to pay his new wife an annuity of £800 from his half-share of Content estate in St James on the same island.74

The Glasgow-West India elites generally married within the west of Scotland mercantile community; this was no doubt rooted in economics. Indeed, Katie Barclay’s study of marriage in Scotland underlined that elite families expected the marrying of children to be mutually beneficial for both sides.75 The daughters of ‘tobacco lords’ were the most popular choice for budding West India merchants.76 These couplings brought colonial fortunes to the marriage. The daughters of ‘tobacco lord’ John Alston (1743–1818) were paired with West India merchants: the eldest, Anna Hay, married John Gordon of Aikenhead, Isabella married David Connell and Christian Calder married Richard Dennistoun of Kelvingrove.77 In this way, partners of three of the top seven Glasgow-West India firms in 1807 – Stirling, Gordon & Co., D&J Connell and G&R Dennistoun & Co. – were brothers-in-law. A high degree of intermarriage between sons and daughters of merchants of similar rank consolidated commercial connections between rival firms. Overall, there were eleven pairings between West India merchants and daughters of other West India merchants. The majority involved partners of firm John Campbell senior & Co. Four of John Campbell senior’s sons married into other West India families, as did senior co-partners Alexander Campbell of Haylodge and Alexander Campbell of Hallyards.78

Although no other West India families were as connected as the Campbells, marriage was an important mechanism utilized by the Glasgow-West India community in general. The interconnected pairings meant ten of the twenty-nine merchant firms who registered with the Glasgow West India Association in 1807 were directly connected through marriage. But even if this group tended to marry within the west of Scotland mercantile community and among the West India faction in particular, a high number – around forty per cent – of the brides hailed from families with no known colonial connections. Some married daughters of Scottish lairds, such as George Bogle of Rosemount, who took Margaret Buchanan, daughter of Archibald Buchanan of Catrine Bank, as his bride in 1839.79 Once wealthy, some married into different types of elite families. Patrick Playfair – son of a Perthshire farmer – married Jane Playfair, daughter of the Revd Dr James Playfair principal of St Andrews university. Robert Findlay junior of Easterhill married Mary Buchanan, daughter of John Buchanan of Ardoch, MP for Dunbartonshire (1821–6). Two daughters of the Revd George Rainy, minister in Creich in Sutherland, married West India merchants in Glasgow. The Revd Rainy’s son, George Rainy, was a partner in Glasgow firm McInroy, Parker & Co. and these marriages connected Rainy with an other firm, Smith & Browns. Thus, while there was a high degree of intermarriage among the Glasgow-West India elite – especially those of the top rank – it was far from an exclusive caste. Many married daughters of lawyers, bankers, politicians and, on occasion, Church ministers. Marriage consolidated elite connections, but most of the ‘sugar aristocracy’ also shared the same religious affiliations.

Trust and confidence were crucial for actors involved in Atlantic commerce.80 Religion was another important tie that connected the West India trades. In Glasgow, however, although Presbyterianism was the preferred faith of most merchants, adherence was not a requirement to commence a West India career. Indeed, detailed examination of the records of St Andrew’s-by-the-Green Episcopal chapel and the roll books of the Church of Scotland St George’s West parish kirk (latterly known as St George’s Tron) reveals the West India elite of Glasgow was not a religiously homogeneous group. By 1780, there were twenty-five churches in Glasgow, mainly of the Established Church of Scotland or of Presbyterian dissent. Moreover, there was a significant Episcopalian presence after the establishment in 1751 of St Andrews-by-the-Green, whose membership was formed mainly of upper middling sorts.81 West India merchants Patrick Colquhoun, the future lord provost, and William McDowall were managers in the 1780s.82 It is, however, unlikely a substantial number of West India merchants or planters attended St Andrews-by-the-Green. Although the pew records are incomplete, analysis of the years 1817 to 1837 (at five-year intervals) suggests only a prominent minority (eight) actively worshipped.83 Episcopalians James Fyffe and Charles Stirling – both partners in Stirling, Gordon & Co. – perhaps shared the same pew in 1827.84 However, the absence of widespread involvement indicates the Caribbean entrepreneurs tended to their spiritual needs elsewhere.

The West India merchants and planters of Glasgow mainly worshipped in the Established Church of Scotland, although there was an identifiable Episcopalian minority, a pattern of religious affiliation similar to their commercial predecessors. The ‘tobacco lords’ helped establish St Andrews Parish Church (St Andrews in the Square) in 1756 and worshipped there, although elite merchants gradually relocated westwards in the late eighteenth century. An ecclesiastical resettlement to St George’s West parish kirk followed after its establishment in 1807. Examination of the communicants’ roll book of the church in the years 1818 and 1823 shows the West India elite were congregation members. Prominent merchant-manufacturers were members of the congregation, including Kirkman Finlay and Henry Monteith. Moreover, over thirty West India merchants and planters were also recorded, including the hierarchy of the Glasgow West India Association: John Gordon, James Ewing, Colin McLachlan, James Connell, William Eccles, Colin Campbell Archibald Bogle et al.85 As will be illustrated in a later chapter, Scottish Presbyterianism was exported to Kingston, Jamaica, via some of the congregation here. Indeed, John Miller and George Scheviz lived a transient lifestyle across the Atlantic world and worshipped at St Georges in Glasgow as well as establishing the Scots Kirk in Kingston. This mercantile elite also advanced their ecclesiastical cause at home. Several West India merchants who were part of St Georges’ congregation – such as Colin Campbell of Jura – donated to the evangelical Dr Thomas Chalmers’ scheme for Church extension in 1835.86 Indeed, the mercantile community of Glasgow ‘made as large a contribution to the architecture of our scheme as all the heritors of Scotland put together’.87 James Ewing was perhaps the most prominent subscriber, and he followed this up by bequeathing over £18,000 to the Free Church of Scotland on his death in 1853 (equivalent to £14.5m relative to average wages in 2020).88 In 1846, Frederick Douglass’s famous ‘Send back the money!’ speeches criticized the Free Church’s acceptance of $3,000 (c.£600) from American slave-owners.89 Ewing’s staggering donation to the Free Church has attracted little attention, yet was thirty times the American monies: the Church’s post-Disruption development was powered by wealth derived from West Indian rather than American slavery.

Associational culture and politics

The West India elite were an exclusive group in Glasgow, joined by education, marriage, commercial organizations, merchant firms and religion, with wider connections to elite society across Scotland and the Caribbean. Membership of elite social clubs further consolidated personal and commercial relationships. The associational culture of Great Britain during this period was exemplified by gentlemanly social clubs, sometimes formed for the ‘improvement’ of members or to endorse national and civic identity. There was an integrative function in all clubs, however, as they took the form of organized social networks in local society.90 In Glasgow, many colonial merchants frequented clubs. Virginia merchants led an active ‘enlightened club life’ in literary and political economy societies from the 1740s onwards.91 The most prominent was the Hodge Podge Club, a literary society ostensibly intended to improve the political debating skills of members. West India merchants and planters – such as John Orr of Barrowfield – were involved even before 1783. After the American war, however, they comprised a sizeable proportion of new members, illustrating the rise of the Caribbean elites in society.92 Thus, as the Virginia trades and their associational culture faded, West India merchants and planters rose to prominence: many attended social clubs with specific functions.

The Board of Green Cloth was frequented by the ‘Burgher aristocracy’ in the city, a small, exclusive clique made up of landed interests who dominated commerce and politics.93 Established c.1780, the board met at Buckshead Inn on Argyle Street between October and May. The reprinted minutes describe the activities of an elite whist and supper club in the period; membership was limited to eighteen and admission was decided by ballot, although candidates for admission could be vetoed by any current member. Meetings were held every Tuesday, where the members bet bottles of rum on, for example, the marriages and pregnancies of local gentry wives and daughters. The secretary, Colin Dunlop Donald, attended regularly and he was a conduit of information across the network, given he was secretary of the Glasgow West India Association and his concurrent membership in other clubs.94 Furthermore, the board was frequented by a group of influential individuals connected through kinship and commercial interests. A diverse range of professionals were among the sixty-eight attendees between c.1780 and 1820, such as David Cross of the Thistle Bank, one of the city’s provincial banks. Attendance at the club encouraged fraternization among transatlantic entrepreneurs, who represented the largest commercial group. At least twenty-two members of the Board of Green Cloth had West India connections (a third of overall membership), including individuals associated with thirteen elite merchant firms.

The members and associates of the Board of Green Cloth perfectly illustrate how social clubs facilitated a wider network that connected the banks, counting houses and manufactories of Glasgow with the plantations in the West Indies and the Houses of Parliament in London. Five MPs patronized the club and four maintained professional relations with Glasgow West India Association after 1807. As MP for Clyde Burghs, William McDowall (himself an absentee planter) was one of the most important men in Scottish politics in the 1790s. Kirkman Finlay was lord provost of Glasgow (1812–14) and MP for Glasgow Burghs (1812–18). Henry Monteith was Lord Provost of Glasgow (1814–16, 1818–20) and MP for Saltash (1826) and Linlithgow Burghs (1820–6, 1830–1).95 Another member of the Board of Green Cloth was John Buchanan of Ardoch, MP for Dunbartonshire (1821–6), father-in-law of Robert Findlay junior (1784–1862), a member of the Glasgow West India Association. Another MP in the club, Archibald Campbell of Blythswood, lobbied for pro-slavery interests in the British parliament up to 1831.

Local political appointments further confirmed the elite status of Glasgow’s West India class. In the absence of a parliament as in London or the high courts of Edinburgh, Glasgow’s elite took up positions in public institutions such as the Merchants House and Town Council, which conferred political influence and associated social status.96 The idiosyncrasies of the political system of Glasgow prior to the Reform Act of 1832 conferred civic superiority on merchants in the city. Burgess institutions – the Merchants House and the Trade House – dominated the town council, a body with authority to make civic decisions at local and parliamentary levels (since councillors contributed – with other burghs – to the election of an MP for Clyde Burghs).97 In the town council, however, the Merchants House had a fixed majority of councillors compared to the Trades House, and its members also retained the exclusive privilege of nominating the lord provost. There are two schools of thought regarding the influence of the West India interest in local politics. In 1856, John Strang described the West Indians as a ‘limited and united…City aristocracy…who, in the eyes of their fellow-citizens [were] looked up to as the really acknowledged rulers of Glasgow’ in commerce and politics.98 On the other hand, according to T. M. Devine, West India merchants did not form a ‘political hegemony’, as the town council did not solely represent their views or interests after 1800 (unlike the Virginia traders in the earlier period).99 The exact nature of the political influence of the West India interest can be gauged via appointments to the Merchants House, the town council and as MPs.

The Merchants House was a commercial organization in Glasgow with responsibilities in important areas of civic life. Its seminal history – written by absentee Jamaica planter and enslaver, James Ewing – describes its three roles: as an assembly that addressed petitions to the crown and parliament, as a charitable association and as an elective body voting on the influential position of dean of guild.100 Matriculation to the Merchants House conferred status, but also carried an important philanthropic and political role. Around ninety-six West India merchants and planters matriculated between 1768 and 1841, representing under 10 per cent of the overall membership. However, this same group were over-represented as deans of guild. Indeed, of thirty-three deans between 1775 and 1838, twelve were West India merchants and planters (38 per cent). There was only one West India dean between 1775 and 1799, although eleven were appointed (terms covering twenty-two years) between 1800 and 1838. Jamaica merchants and planters were the most prominent single grouping, although merchants with links to newer colonies – especially Grenada – were more numerous overall.101 The former included James Ewing, and the latter included Archibald Smith and Mungo Nutter Campbell.

The West India elites held similar authority in the office of lord provost of the town council. Of thirty-three lord provosts between 1775 and 1838, twelve (36 per cent) were West India merchants or planters, more numerous than has been recorded in a previous study.102 Like the dean of guild position, the West India influence increased over the period, with eight members serving (over sixteen years) between 1800 and 1838. Given the frequency of West India appointments as lord provost, they seem to have been much more influential in local politics than their successors, the cotton masters, manufacturers who dominated after 1838 (just five of whom were lord provosts of Glasgow between 1840 and 1912).103 The rise of a new Caribbean cohort can explain this disproportionate influence. The West India provosts, in general, represented old colonial wealth, epitomized by the dominance of members of the Jamaica interest such as James Ewing, although Demerara merchants became increasingly prominent.104 Indeed in 1801, by appointment of the town council, Lord Provost Hamilton, whose firm traded with Demerara although he had familial connections with Jamaica, petitioned the king to protect the free port trade in the British colonies. This trade (as will be discussed in Chapter 3) was a relaxation of the mercantilist system and allowed colonial trade with the technically barred French and Spanish West Indies.105 Thus, as this new group became wealthy and powerful, they used local influence to promote their own agenda in regional and national politics.

Prior to union of 1707, each of the sixty-six royal burghs in Scotland sent a representative to the Scottish parliament, although afterwards they were combined (except for Edinburgh) and limited to just fourteen MPs. Although Glasgow was a major economic force by this period, it became part of the Clyde Burgh with Dumbarton, Rutherglen and Renfrew. In effect, Glasgow only had a quarter share of the MP, and was clearly under-represented compared to population.106 Nevertheless, of the sixteen MPs for Clyde Burghs between 31 October 1774 and May 1831, five were of the Glasgow-West India elites.107 William McDowall and Alexander Houston were elected as MPs several times, and both were connected with firm Alexander Houston & Co. Nevertheless, West India merchants and planters seem to have been less prominent in the House of Commons than the cotton masters (although this comparison is made between pre- and post-Reform parliamentary systems).108 The political influence of the Glasgow-West India elite has therefore been underestimated at regional and national levels. While the Glasgow-West India interest did not form a majority in the Merchants House or town council, they were disproportionately powerful across both, although less powerful than contemporaries in national politics.

Relative political influence in Glasgow – measured by lord provost and dean of guild appointments and chairmen of the Glasgow West India Association – lay with the old Jamaica interest. Paradoxically, as will be explained in a later chapter, the Demerara interest left the highest average fortunes and were the most financially powerful grouping among the Glasgow-West India merchants. Yet, the wealthiest grouping had little interest in city affairs. It is very likely business lifestyles meant they had little motivation for civic duties in the Merchants House or the council. Charles Stewart Parker and partner James McInroy were among the wealthiest Demerara merchants in Glasgow, although they lived outside the city and had diversified their business into Liverpool by the 1820s. The Jamaica interest might have been less wealthy, but they dominated the city’s political affairs as well – including the leadership of the city’s first pro-slavery lobbying group.

The establishment of the Glasgow West India Association in 1807 provided the merchants and planters with a voice at the highest level of British imperial politics. Membership was comprised of the mercantile elite: James Ewing was the leading influence and initial subscribers included John Campbell senior, Archibald Smith, John Gordon, Robert Dennistoun et al.109 Anthony Cooke has unconvincingly described the West India merchants and planters of nineteenth-century Glasgow as a ‘localised elite’ with a modest impact on the national stage.110 In actuality, members of the association were disproportionately powerful in the national pro-slavery movement and influenced parliamentary affairs up to emancipation in 1834. Its members were over-represented among the standing committee of the London West India Committee, the most powerful body of its type in the Atlantic world.111 The West India merchants and planters of Glasgow, therefore, promoted their interests and pro-slavery arguments at regional and national levels.

Conclusion

In 1835, Sir Archibald Alison asserted that just ‘five or six families’ comprised Glasgow’s ‘sugar aristocracy’. Beyond a handful of strategic marriages, there was no proper aristocratic strand of the Glasgow-West India elite. Instead, the city was dominated by several distinguished families with long-term connections to the Virginia or West India trades who emulated the aristocracy by investing in and bequeathing land. They often intermarried with other colonial families and introduced sons into the business. Alison, therefore, was most likely referring to West India dynasties such as the Bogles of Gilmorehill, the Dennistouns of Colgrain and Kelvingrove, the Stirlings of Keir, the Campbells of Possil and the Smiths of Jordanhill. The latter two families were more arriviste than the other examples, but by 1834, all fitted the criteria of ‘sugar aristocracy’. And whether or not they were considered part of this upper echelon, all of Glasgow’s West India merchants and planters were an elite grouping within the overall mercantile community of the city and Scottish society more broadly.

The West India elite was created in the aftermath of the American War of Independence. Some of its members had longer-term origins as ‘tobacco lords’ or as scions of old planting families. Economic change after 1783, however, attracted many others to Glasgow in search of opportunity. Most hailed from the west of Scotland, many from other Scottish regions, a few from England and the West Indies. Some were previously landed, others purchased or inherited estates after they became successful. A significant number – mainly from old colonial families – attended Old College, and others sent their sons once they became wealthy. There was a high degree of intermarriage among the sugar aristocracy, and even West India merchants of lower standing married daughters of landed proprietors, politicians, bankers, absentee and resident planters. This was not a religiously homogeneous group but consisted of a mainly Presbyterian faction with an Episcopalian minority. The social clubs further endorsed their status among the elite and encouraged fraternization in the circles they were often married into. While the West India elite were larger than has been understood in previous studies, they only constituted a small proportion of the overall mercantile community. Nonetheless, they were disproportionately powerful as Deans of Guild, Lord Provosts and MPs. An old Jamaica clique retained control, but the rise of a new group involved with second- and third-phase colonies – Grenada, Trinidad and especially Demerara – transformed Glasgow politics. Collectively, they were disproportionately powerful compared to other contemporary merchants. The West India interest were either directly represented as MP for Glasgow Burghs or controlled those who did up to 1832. The West India elite of Glasgow formed their own lobbying group, which rapidly became one of the most powerful outport associations in Great Britain, with strong connections to the London West India Committee. The opportunities in the aftermath of the War of American Independence created a West India elite grouping that radically disrupted society in Glasgow and the west of Scotland more generally. In turn, they influenced local politics, promoting their own agenda locally and further afield in the House of Commons. The Glasgow-West Indians had a voice at the pinnacle of imperial politics via their own Association and the London West India Committee. In short, wealth from the Caribbean had a major impact on the Scottish economy and society and contributed to the transformation of social, political and cultural spheres. The next chapter explores how merchants were prepared for the West India trades and the processes that allowed them to flourish.