5. Jamaica

For several months in late 1786, Robert Burns, then a failing farmer but later Scotland’s national bard, mooted crossing the Atlantic to become, in his words, a ‘poor negro-driver’ in Jamaica to escape his multiple woes. In 1783, Robert and his brother Gilbert took over Mossgiel farm in Mauchline, Ayrshire, although it remained ‘very unprofitable’ three years later.1 Burns’ private life was also in disarray: the father of Jean Armour had reportedly initiated legal proceedings due to an out of wedlock pregnancy. Yet, Burns was a literate young man with a growing reputation as a poet. Dr Patrick Douglas, an Ayrshire landowner and absentee planter, attempted to recruit him as a ‘book keeper’ on the Ayr Mount estate in Portland. Burns was offered a reported salary of £30 per annum, although he had to fund his own passage to Jamaica. To meet these costs, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, which became the famous ‘Kilmarnock edition’, was published on 31 July.2 The literary success that followed secured the cost of passage and, in Burns’ own words, ‘as soon as I was master of nine guineas [£9 9s], the price of wafting me to the torrid zone, I took a steerage passage in the first ship that was to sail from the Clyde’. He subsequently booked three separate voyages: the Nancy from Greenock for Savanna-la-Mar on 10 August 1786; the Bell from Greenock for Port Morant at the end of September; and the Roselle from Leith to Kingston on 23 December. Later correspondence reveals Burns was aware of his probable fate: ‘a victim to that inhospitable clime, and gone to the world of spirits!’3 Anticipating an early grave was not merely fatalistic pessimism. As outlined in the last chapter, mortality rates in Jamaica were very high and, in all likelihood, Burns would have been dead from yellow fever within three years. Fortunately, he did not board a ship for Jamaica.

One scholar argued that Burns made a rational economic choice to call off in December 1786, rather than showing principled opposition to chattel slavery, simply because a ‘better offer came along’.4 Instead of crossing the Atlantic to Jamaica, Burns travelled to Edinburgh to chase his literary ambitions and quickly became a national sensation. The ‘Kilmarnock edition’ grossed c.£91 sterling, of which Burns, in his own words, ‘pocketed, all expenses deducted, nearly twenty pounds’. A second edition, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (Edinburgh Edition), was published in April 1787. From this, Burns earned £700 sterling and 100 guineas (£105) for the sale of the copyright.5 In all, Burns made £825 from both editions; it would have taken a bookkeeper on Ayr Mount estate around twenty-seven years to earn a similar sum. Subsequently taking up a literary career,6 Robert Burns has become synonymous with Caribbean slavery for not crossing the Atlantic. The irony is that he has become shorthand for those who were resident in Jamaica, most of whom remain unknown in the modern British imagination.

This chapter addresses that lacuna by examining Scotsmen who did cross the Atlantic for Jamaica. Large numbers were present in supervisory and managerial positions on the island, bringing with them Scottish Presbyterianism, which led to the construction of St Andrew’s Scots Kirk in Kingston in 1813.7 Although a British rather than a distinctively Scottish phenomenon, many young adventurers sought rapid wealth and a quick return to live in luxury, sometimes as absentee owners of sugar estates.8 Sojourning and absenteeism were different forms of economic pursuits, but they both served to extract wealth from Jamaica.9 Yet, while the activities of Scots in Jamaica are increasingly well known, a lot less is known about the wealth these men acquired, and the effects on the Scottish economy and society.

Acquired during Oliver Cromwell’s ‘Western Design’ in 1655, Jamaica was a classic first-phase English settler colony. By 1713, it had superseded Barbados as the premier sugar-producing island in the British empire, and just sixty years later produced more of the commodity than all other islands combined.10 Historians have long noted the wealth of those who owned the estates, and Trevor Burnard has revealed the ‘prodigious riches’ of the eighteenth-century Jamaica plantocracy.11 However, by the 1800s, while great wealth could still be made in new colonies Berbice and Demerara-Essequibo, this was generally no longer the case in Barbados and Jamaica.12 The increased demand for African slaves in the late eighteenth century meant the economy remained vibrant.13 However, from around 1805 up to emancipation, due to a combination of economic conditions and political factors in the West Indies and Europe (including the abolition movement), the fortunes and influence of Jamaica’s planters were on the wane.14

If Jamaica was in decline, Scots continued to flourish more than most. Like other minorities on the island such as the Sephardic Jews, Scots operated in networks, and although ethnicity did not automatically confer trustworthiness, these groupings served to increase the transatlantic flow of capital, goods and people.15 In a seminal study of Scottish networks, Alan Karras attempted to trace ‘whence sojourners came, where they went, what they did after they arrived, and how they fared’, an approach subsequently extended across the West Indies by Douglas Hamilton.16 Karras argued that Scots in Jamaica became increasingly wealthy as the eighteenth century progressed, although he was pessimistic as to whether British capital invested in West India property (land and enslaved people) was ever converted to profits in Scotland without costly legal action in colonial courts.17 Hamilton was more optimistic and noted an unquantified number of wealthy Scots returned to both Scotland and England and afterwards purchased landed estates, established educational facilities and invested in the Scottish cotton industry.18 Allan Macinnes’ study of the colonial activities of the Malcolms of Poltalloch underlined Hamilton’s view of a capital in-flow model to Great Britain. From 1750, Jamaica profits – siphoned through London from 1786 – directly improved their estates in Argyll, Scotland.19 Beyond case-study approaches, the impact of Jamaica fortunes, if they were ever repatriated to Scotland at all, has been little studied. This chapter rectifies this, first by surveying adventurers who travelled to the island after 1775 and then by unravelling how they lived, worked, became rich, repatriated and ultimately dispersed slavery-derived capital in Scotland and elsewhere throughout the nineteenth century.

Scottish adventurers in Jamaica

Jamaica was essentially a rural society, with most of the population resident along the coast. In 1788, the island’s total population was 254,184, including a small white population (18,347; 7 per cent), free people of colour (9,405; 4 per cent) and large numbers of enslaved people (226,432; 89 per cent).20 By the early 1800s, the white population had risen to 20,000–25,000, while the enslaved population dramatically increased to 354,000: a result of increased trafficking by British ships during the era of ‘gradual abolition’. Both enslaved and free labourers mainly worked on sugar and coffee plantations or on the adjoining cattle pens that provided livestock for the plantation economy.21 Kingston was the island’s main trade hub, overtaking Port Royal and Spanishtown in the early 1700s.22 The island’s wealthiest residents, especially merchants and planters, lived in its burgeoning urban sprawl, many of whom had a key role developing Jamaica’s domestic and external economy.23 One traveller to late eighteenth-century Kingston observed many upwardly mobile Scottish merchants thriving in the bustling commercial hub:

There are some extensive merchants in Kingston, Spanish Town, Montego Bay, &C. a few of whom are English and Irish, but ten times the number of Scotch; they all in general live elegantly; it is not thought strange for a peasant’s son from Glasgow, or Aberdeen, in the space of four of five years, to commence merchant, and in a few years afterwards to make a pretty independence; or if he enters the planting line, to succeed as well; to get possession of slaves.24

Figure 5.1 James Hakewill, 1778–1843, British, Llanrumny Estate, St Mary’s, Jamaica, between 1820 and 1821, watercolour on moderately thick, slightly textured, cream wove paper. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1977.14.1960Dhh. Public Domain.

These merchants not only helped to drive the prosperity of Kingston but promoted commercial relations between Jamaica and Scotland, introducing kith and kin to the island and connecting institutions located across the Atlantic.

Overall, Glasgow Herald shipping advertisements suggest over 600 voyages departed from the Clyde for Jamaica during 1806 and 1834. The most prolific merchant firm shippers were, respectively, Stirling, Gordon & Co, followed by James Ewing & Co., Leitch & Smith and Robert Bogle & Co. The latter firm was based in Kingston over many years. At least from 1797, Robert Bogle acted as an agent for Scottish planters in Jamaica, at times ensuring the wealth of deceased planters on the island was returned to Glasgow.25 The firm also diversified into planting, which provided opportunities for well-connected Scots. As part of wider trading across the West Indies, the firm scheduled, on average, around one voyage between the Clyde and Kingston every year. The most important stopping points for Glasgow ships in Jamaica were located on the north and west of the island, particularly Falmouth, Savannah-Le-Mar and Montego Bay. However, the single most popular destination was Kingston, with almost half the ships departing from the Clyde arriving in the port.26 Based on estimates in Chapter 4, it is possible these ships carried 3,000–5,500 people. Given the high mortality rates and extensive opportunities across the island, incomers would have little trouble finding exploitative opportunities.27 And still they arrived.

Ascertaining the true number of Scots in Jamaica in any given era is problematic. Notwithstanding the anecdotal nature of the evidence, several eyewitnesses described a sizeable Scottish community. In 1774, for example, planter-historian Edward Long famously quantified the Scottish diaspora on the island:

Jamaica, indeed, is greatly indebted to North Britain, as very near one third of the [white] inhabitants are either natives of that country, or descendants from those who were. Many have come…every year, less in quest of fame than of fortunes; and such is their industry and address, that few of them have been disappointed.28

Given that Jamaica’s white population ranged from between 12,000 to 15,000 before the American War of Independence, Long imagined that around 4,000-5,000 Scots were resident on the island in the early to mid 1770s – although, in general, his eighteenth-century estimations are disputed.29 Empirically informed estimates suggest the Scottish proportion lies somewhere between a tenth and one-third of white Jamaican society.30 There are modern estimates of numbers of Scots on the island at various times, although none are authoritative.31 While the exact figures will never be known, the sheer number of Scots on the island astonished one visitor in 1824 who claimed that ‘the majority of the Planters here are Scotchmen’.32 Even if an exaggeration, Scots probably were over-represented on Jamaica, since they comprised only around 14 per cent of the British population between 1801 and 1831.33

The presence of just so many Scots helped shape Jamaican society. Scots established and frequented secular bodies and ecclesiastical institutions with a Caledonian dimension. In the 1790s, members of the St Andrews masonic lodge in Kingston led the annual celebrations dedicated to the patron saint of Scotland, which included a procession down to the local Anglican church.34 Despite increasing numbers of Scots flooding into the eighteenth-century West Indies, there were no Presbyterian kirks whatsoever in the region. The first was probably established in the Bahamas in 1809.35 Before then, the Anglican Church offered a temporary compromise in Kingston and most likely elsewhere, although the need for a place of worship in line with the faith of their homeland became more pronounced as more Scots arrived. Although the first attempt to construct a kirk in Kingston in the 1780s was unsuccessful, increasingly tolerant attitudes towards the practising of dissenting faiths in early nineteenth-century Jamaica allowed Scots to establish their own institution.36

The minutes of the St Andrews Scots Kirk, now held in the Jamaica National Archives, reveal that a petition was lodged with the Mayor and Aldermen in Kingston to establish a Presbyterian place of worship in December 1813.37 Over 200 men and firms, mainly based in Kingston, simultaneously subscribed over £8,000 Jamaican currency (c.£5,700 stg.). Many of the initial subscribers based in Kingston hailed from Glasgow, such as George Scheviz, who was named on the kirk’s first committee with fellow Glaswegian, John Miller.38 The prominent Glasgow firm Bogle & Co. also contributed £200. Nephews and representatives of the Bogle family, George William and Robert Hamilton, subscribed individually too. Subscriptions were also received from Scots in the parishes of St Mary, St Andrew and especially St Thomas in the East. Thus, with the establishment of the Scots Kirk, Kingston became a hub of Scottish ecclesiastical activity, promoting a two-way transatlantic flow of people and capital from Glasgow to Jamaica.

‘Toil and care under the scorching sun’

Writing home in 1791, James Smith, a Scottish overseer in the parish of Trelawney in Jamaica, reminisced about his homeland and, in doing so, revealed the mentalité of his compatriots on the island:

I had…no word from Old Scotland – Ungrateful Country – but you gave me Birth, for that reason your Soil your Inhabitants your Climate your Religion are all dear to me. I believe sir it is the secret wish and propensity of every man who travels from his Native Land to return with the fruits of his Industry and marks of his prudence, to close his Days amongst endearing Relations and mingle his Dust with Native ground. This is my dearest Wish and this has been the Motive for these 8 years toil and care under the scorching sun.

Smith further elaborated on the ‘toil and care’ on Roslin estate, which, he hoped, would make him wealthy and enable a return home. From an annual wage of £120 local currency (£85 stg.), he had purchased three enslaved people to be hired out for jobbing work. This arrangement, Smith reckoned, would allow him to annually save the equivalent of a year’s salary for his eventual return to Scotland.39 Although we cannot determine if Smith succeeded in his quest, there is much evidence testifying to Scots as exploiters in Jamaica, revealing a comprehensive picture of their lives.

This chapter is centred around a group of 119 Scotsmen known to have been resident in Jamaica between 1775 and 1838, towards the end of Caribbean slavery.40 Wills and probate inventories (held in Jamaica National Archives and Island Record Office) reveal occupational roles and wealth levels, while a later section provides further information on repatriated fortunes and investments in Great Britain (based upon wills and confirmation inventories registered in Scottish courts). This diverse group hailed from regions across Scotland. Highlanders were prominent in Jamaica, although not overly numerous, comprising just over 10 per cent of this group. Urban dwellers from the Central Lowlands – Edinburgh and especially Glasgow – were the most extensive group of Scots on Jamaica.41 This section, therefore, examines Scots on Jamaica within a comparative framework.

Given the regularity of ships to southern Jamaica from the Clyde, it is no surprise Kingston was the premier destination for these Scots. Other favoured parishes included Hanover and Trelawney in the north-west of the island, Westmoreland on the south-west coast and St Thomas in the East.42 It is well known these Scots abroad bonded together. After residents of St Thomas in the East made a further contribution to the Scots Kirk in 1823, a newspaper reported that ‘it is gratifying to see a community of Scotch people, congregated together in a foreign land…testifying their attachment to the worship of their fathers, and country’.43 Scots not only operated in networks in Jamaica but in 1793 one commentator J. B. Moreton noted an entrepreneurial spirit matched their inclination for patronage:

The Scotch are more enterprising, partial, and friendly to each other than other nations; besides in general they are well educated young men; I never knew a raw lad from the country, who had not a letter of recommendation to his Excellency, or to some Mac or other; upon delivery of which he was taken notice of, and immediately put into some business.44

If these Scots were more enterprising and had better connections on Jamaica, is this reflected in patterns of wealth accumulation?

Richard Sheridan noted the disproportionate wealth of Scots on Jamaica, albeit based upon the seminal yet unreliable method of sampling local records using Scottish surnames. In 1754, individuals in Jamaica with Scottish surnames owned around a quarter of taxable land. Moreover, of all inventories of over £1,000 in a five-year period (1771–5) in Jamaica, around 20 per cent had Scottish surnames, but this same group owned a remarkable 40 per cent of overall wealth in the island. In the same period, merchants in Jamaica with Scottish surnames owned as much property on their deaths as English and Welsh merchants combined and double the levels of Sephardic Jews.45 How was this wealth earned and extracted? This section addresses these questions through analysis of wills and probate inventories of Scots – verified through place names – who died leaving property in Jamaica 1790–1838 (hereafter known as ‘Jamaica inventories’).46 These sources reveal much information about individuals, but the limitations must be noted. Most males in Jamaica did not leave a will and testament, and those who did obviously hailed from the propertied class.47 Moreover, inventories usually evaluated personal property only, meaning that estate ownership is rarely included in any valuation. Perhaps more importantly in the context of this study, the inventories do not include individual debt.48 Nonetheless, Jamaican probate material reveals occupations, tentative levels of wealth on death and the remittance strategies of Scottish adventurers in Jamaica.

Merchants naturally congregated around the bustling trade hub of Kingston, in a career that could bring great wealth in a short period.49 Indeed, of the top eight inventories left by Scots on Jamaica examined here, five were individuals based in Kingston. For example, on William McMurdo’s death at thirty-seven in July 1795 – assuming he arrived on the island around twenty years before – he accumulated capital of over £35,000 in Jamaican currency (c.£25,000 stg.) in that period.50 His property consisted mainly of enslaved people and he was owed over £19,000 in ‘good’ debts.51 The death of another prominent merchant, James Waddell Esq., in Jamaica on 18 November 1825 was announced early the next year in Blackwoods Magazine.52 Waddell’s house in Temple Lane was filled with expensive books, wine and furniture. His considerable business, based in the parish of St Andrews, stretched across the island. He owned several enslaved people with an overall value of £1,000 (some of whom had his surname) and outlying loans.53 His son was educated at the prestigious Edinburgh Academy in 1824 and was resident in Scotland on his father’s death.54 Even merchants outside Kingston acquired relative fortunes. Daniel McKenzie operated a modest store in Clarendon peddling goods such as axes, knives and masons’ hammers as well as carry combs and brushes. Most of his estate (£3,700 stg.) consisted of small debts owed to him by individuals to whom he advanced credit.55

The inventories reveal how the Scots plantocracy lived and died.56 Duncan McLachlan was a mid-level planter owning thirty-three enslaved people on his mountain plantation in St Andrew, Castle Lachlan, as well as livestock in the adjoining cattle pen, Dunad (probably named after the Iron age hillfort of the same name in Argyll, Scotland).57 The McLachlan inventory reveals basic but functional accommodation: the plantation house was furnished with a couch, two desks, looking glasses and some old books. The planters’ main business was agriculture and exploitation, and McLachlan’s saddle and harness show supervisory work was undertaken on horseback in the cane fields. The spying glass for surveillance, a pair of pistols and an old sword betray the planters’ constant fear of a slave uprising. McLachlan also enjoyed the estate produce and had a puncheon of rum, sugar and coffee in the big house when he died. Perhaps he swigged rum while looking over the enslaved workforce on the mountain estate and reminisced about the glens and cairns of Argyll. McLachlan left post-mortem instructions to manumit and ‘set free a certain negroe woman called Johanna McLachlan’, probably his daughter with an enslaved woman on the plantation. William Smith, his nephew in Kingston, was appointed executor to carry out his wishes. McLachlan advised Smith to get out of Jamaica and return to the ‘west of Scotland or near relations in the Highlands’ to purchase a farm. His brother, Dr McLachlan, was appointed executor in Glasgow and annuities were left to their sisters in the city, Catherine and Elizabeth Smith. McLachlan also made ample provision for his niece, Elizabeth, who was bequeathed an annuity of £20 while she remained unmarried and £400 if she wed.58 Thus, capital from the plantation economy of Jamaica occasionally seeped into the west of Scotland.

The occupational description of planter requires some qualification. B. W. Higman’s work on plantation management hierarchies notes that in the absence of the estate owner the attorney had overall legal responsibility and managed operations assisted by overseers and bookkeepers.59 Many individuals in this study were referred to as planters, although they were overseers with little property, while others were rentiers of jobbing slaves. Some, however, owned large estates and hundreds of resident enslaved people. The career of one Scot contextualizes the trajectory from overseer to attorney and eventually enslaver. The letter-books of the Georgia estate in Trelawney – owned by the Gordon family of Cairness – reveals the upward career trajectory of one well-connected Scot in Jamaica. When he left for Great Britain in July 1812, the attorney of the Gordon family, Francis Graham, devolved the management of Georgia estate to another Scot, George William Hamilton. This was not a lower-rank sojourner. He was descended from Glasgow’s ‘sugar aristocracy’ on both maternal and paternal lines. His father, John Hamilton, West India merchant and thrice lord provost of Glasgow (1800–12), was married to Helen Bogle, sister of Robert Bogle of Gilmorehill, who operated the Glasgow merchant firm Bogle & Co. Like many other sons of West India merchants, George William Hamilton and his brother Robert attended the University of Glasgow before entering commerce. 60 However, instead of joining the family firm, both travelled to Jamaica, where George William became known for his ‘liberal education and gentlemanly demeanour’, while his elevation on the island was attributed to his ‘great interest’ at home.61

The records of Georgia estate after 1812 illustrate initial challenges faced by the young overseer in his formative period. In October 1812, he took charge of the plantation and supervised the planting of the sugar crop for the coming year.62 This was a temporary position, however, and Hamilton soon stepped up the economic ladder. By June 1817, he was the attorney for his relations, the Bogle family, in Vere, Jamaica, which involved supervising groups of slaves on plantations. Deeds lodged in Kingston reveal Hamilton became a slave owner on his own account. In September 1829, Robert Page conveyed twenty-seven enslaved people to Hamilton, who may have been employed afterwards in jobbing work on estates.63 By 1830, Archibald Bogle in Glasgow had conveyed two plantations in trust to his cousins then resident in Jamaica: George William Hamilton, the planter, and Robert, the merchant in Kingston. The two brothers accepted the task of revitalizing the fortunes of Phillipsburgh and Palmetto Valley estates – both St Thomas-in-the-Vale – by ‘keeping down the contingencies...[and] to pay over the entire clear net proceeds’.64 In this period, Hamilton was at the centre of the major network of nineteen attorneys whose influence stretched across the island, which, according to one contemporary, was detrimental to conditions of the enslaved. Hamilton tasked large numbers of overseers – described by a contemporary as ‘the worst planters’ – to produce good sugar crops, but his policy of non-interference meant conditions for the enslaved – even by the standards of the time – were reputedly barbaric.65 George William Hamilton was one of the leading influences on the development of St Andrews Scots Kirk in Kingston. On emancipation in 1834, he was a large-scale claimant of compensation, collecting over £11,500.66 He died in Edinburgh in 1857, leaving a fortune of over £8,700, much of which went to family including his wife, a free mixed-race woman named Martha Hamilton, resident in Spanishtown.67 Hamilton was one of the select few to ‘mingle his dust’ in his native land and is buried in the Necropolis, the prestigious graveyard of Glasgow’s mercantile elite.

Others died before they accumulated fortunes. Alexander Reid from Banffshire died in Jamaica on 3 November 1827. As the overseer on Tryall estate in Hanover, his inventory reveals possessions required for agricultural work. He owned three horses and a riding saddle, a pair of pantaloons, a black hat and a red coat. He had a writing desk, a liquor case and a silver and gold watch. He was owed a salary of £90 local currency from Tryall estate.68 These types of activities were a risky and often fruitless business, and many other Scots died in even more impecunious conditions than Reid. However, many others survived to repatriate fortunes.

In his magnum opus, A History of Jamaica, Edward Long commented on the artisans from the north of Scotland, particularly stone masons and mill wrights, as ‘remarkably expert, and in general are sober, frugal and civil’. According to Long, these qualities were instilled by ‘the good education, which the poorest of them receive [which is] a great influence on their morals and behaviour’.69 Scots tradesmen were evidently noted for their skills and industry, allowing them to attain a level of income on the island that far exceeded the available remuneration at home. Writing home to a cousin in Edinburgh, one Andrew Taylor enquired about a carpenter back home: ‘I should advise him very much to come out to this country if he is not married a carpenter here can commonly get a salary of…£100 to £120 sterling a year’ which was five times the wage of carpenters in Glasgow.70 As well as the high wages on offer, tradesmen could accumulate profits from the exploitation of skilled enslaved labour.

On 10 September 1797, the death of the Scottish carpenter James Riddoch Esq. in Montego Bay was announced in the Edinburgh Magazine.71 He was a carpenter in St James parish in the north-west of the island, which bordered the Scots enclave Westmoreland. On his decease, most of his estate (worth £4,650 stg.) was held in enslaved people. Riddoch owned numerous gangs including valuable ‘carpenter slaves’ such as Suphax. He also had several ‘open accounts’, no doubt with local planters for carpentry work on plantations. Riddoch may have travelled from Scotland with carpentry skills and set about training enslaved people to undertake manual work. Other Scots tradesmen in this study – surveyors, shipwrights and masons – made use of skilled enslaved labour. Enslaved people in Jamaica were apprenticed to tradesmen in Jamaica, which effectively meant their labour created more profit in the plantation economy. Lauchlan McLean, a native of Coll and wealthy shipwright in Kingston, owned several enslaved people that had been apprenticed to work in his business. One bellow-blower named Scotland was worth a mere £5, no doubt due to limited productivity in his advanced years. A shipwright, Big Chester, was far more important to the operation and was valued as such (£140 Jamaica currency).72 Masons and carpenters also utilized slaves in semi-skilled labouring gangs.73 As these life stories show, Scots were involved at all levels in the plantation economy: as planters, merchants and tradesmen.

Wealth on death was identified for nineteen Scots in Jamaica archives: planters (5), merchants (5), doctors (3), carpenter (2), surveyor (1), shipwright (1), overseer (1) and mason (1). Merchants left the highest-value estates, followed by planters.74 James Waddell’s extensive mercantile dealings, for example, allowed him to accumulate a fortune of £47,857 sterling.75 The total value left by those with identified inventories (19) was J£336,106 (£240,076 stg.). Removing 15 per cent (£36,011) for liabilities, the average value estate was £10,740 sterling.76

Comparisons with other studies support the view that on average Scots held higher-valued estates on death in colonial Jamaica compared to the general white population. Richard Sheridan noted the average wealth of individuals who died in Jamaica in 1771–5 with personal property valued at at least £1,000 was £2,656 sterling.77 Trevor Burnard’s study of the wealth of Jamaica on the eve of the American Revolution estimated the personal wealth of white colonists in 1774–5 was on average £2,710 sterling (after removing 15 per cent for liabilities).78 In the nineteenth century, Christer Petley’s sample of over 200 inventories of free whites in Jamaica from 1807 to 1834 revealed an average personal estate of c.£5,000 sterling.79

Evidence culled from studies that adopt the admittedly unreliable surname analysis suggests that Scots in eighteenth-century Jamaica were wealthier than their average counterparts. Among his study of individuals who left property worth more than £1,000 in Jamaica in 1771–5, Richard Sheridan noted seventy-seven individuals with Scottish surnames were worth a total of £891,916, meaning the average personal property of those presumed to be Scots was £11,583 sterling.80 Alan Karras reported lower average wealth than Sheridan, although those with Scottish surnames left increasingly large amounts in late eighteenth-century Jamaica, with an average of £3,284 in 1778, rising to £4,669 in 1796.81 Yet, the evidence from Jamaica archives identified here (19 Scots who died in Jamaica 1790–1838; mean value £10,740 stg.) is closer to the Sheridan estimate, which suggests Scots retained estates with a relatively higher average value on death, and remained wealthier than their counterparts in white Jamaican society towards the end of Caribbean slavery. While fortunes were still available to Scots in Jamaica during the early ‘decline’ era, the largest estates consisted mainly of enslaved people and debts which, as noted by Karras, would have made early relocation difficult. Moreover, identifying levels of capital held by Scots on death in Jamaica does not reveal the levels of profits repatriated to Scotland and the effects, if any. This chapter now examines how the ‘prodigious riches’ were repatriated before tracing the impact at home.

Inter-vivos and post-mortem wealth repatriation

In tracing the careers of Colin and Alexander Maclarty, two Scottish medical doctors in Jamaica, historian Alan Karras pessimistically dismissed their chances of remitting wealth to eighteenth-century Scotland. Karras was ‘unclear how successful Colin Maclarty was’ and suggested that many Scots remained in eighteenth-century Jamaica because it was ‘almost impossible’ to convert capital and credit in Jamaica into profits without court action.82 Thus, the Maclarty case seemed to support Karras’ position that Jamaica wealth could not be extracted easily. In reality, however, Maclarty returned to Scotland and claimed compensation for enslaved people in 1834.83 He was a highly successful adventurer who acquired landed property in Scotland. A court case reveals he owned the estate of Keilcolmkeill in Argyllshire, houses in Campbelltown and Chester Vale plantation in Jamaica. He also bequeathed £3,000 each to his two daughters.84 Maclarty had in fact accumulated capital in Jamaica, which was invested in land in Scotland, which passed to beneficiaries. This was not uncommon, yet this vision of unsuccessful Scots in Jamaica has become accepted orthodoxy. Leading economic historian of Scotland, Bruce Lenman, positively cites Karras to argue that few Scots in the West Indies lived to achieve their aspirations of acquiring great wealth.85 It is perhaps unsurprising this view endures, since there is relatively little known about the few that did succeed. By examining successful Scots in Jamaica, this chapter redresses the imbalance – first by examining strategies of returning wealth in life and death. Even if Karras was correct about Scots in eighteenth-century Jamaica, this group repatriated dramatically more wealth after 1800.

Scots in nineteenth-century Jamaica developed both inter-vivos and post-mortem strategies that facilitated wealth repatriation to their homeland. Advertisements in the island’s newspapers reveal how resident merchants attempted to recover money before they departed from the island.86 Planters were able to convert plantation produce into capital easily. Many planters in this study were in credit with Glasgow-West India merchants demonstrating how plantation profits were transferred to Scotland. Lower-rank adventurers also repatriated wealth via the merchant firms of Glasgow. The letters from Andrew Taylor reveal much about the repatriation of profits to Scotland and the mentality behind it. As overseer on York estate in Trelawney in May 1819, some of his earnings were sent home to his cousin via bills of exchange which were deemed safe, as they ‘cannot be lost’. In one case, he advised drawing the bill on Stirling, Gordon & Co., merchants of Glasgow, as they were the ‘most [secure] house in North Britain’.87 In a letter in 1827, he sent money to his cousin – who by this point was economically dependent on him due to the ‘hard times’ in Scotland – and contrasted his own position in Jamaica: ‘I want for nothing’.88 Taylor underwent a series of upward promotions across plantations in Trelawney and took up ‘a very healthy situation’ on Georgia estate in 1826. At this point, he had been in Jamaica at least seven years and offered some emotional comfort, matched by an economic guarantee, to his cousin, who had despaired in an earlier letter that he would not see him again:

Be assured that should anything happen to me in this Country that I have regulated my affairs so far with certain individuals which I can depend on as will let you know my end I cannot promise you a fortune but I have a little and I have no person hear to leave anything too therefor I consider you most deserving of what I may leave behind. But there is no knowing the reverses of fortune & how things turn out.89

Thus, Taylor was in Jamaica principally to improve his own position, although his wealth was naturally bequeathed to his family. In the event of his decease, trusted associates – essentially operating as executors – would send his small fortune to Scotland. However, it seems there was no requirement for this, as Taylor left the island in February 1832. His last letter describes a picturesque tour through the Bay of Honduras and the Gulf of Mexico up to the United States en route home to Edinburgh.90

Of those who died in Jamaica, many had large fortunes waiting to be remitted to Great Britain. Planters sometimes bequeathed profits to family in Scotland in the form of annuities (a sum of money from the yearly profits), which provided an annual income long after the death of the planter concerned.91 Others left more substantial legacies. In 1801, James McPherson, a planter in St George, left his plantation and resident slaves to his sister and brother in Inverness, on the condition that the enslaved people were not disposed of but retained for the ‘benefit and advantage of the family’.92 This presented issues, as family members were afterwards responsible for estates they most likely had no experience of running. Planters sometimes resolved these issues by leaving instructions for associates to sell their property in Jamaica and to remit the wealth to Scotland, although this depended on trustworthy individuals carrying out instructions.

Capital was often sent home via transatlantic merchants. Elite adventurers in this study – planters, merchants and doctors – appointed West India merchants based in Glasgow as executor or trustee. Both roles involved the gathering and disposition of the estate, although trusteeship involved taking legal responsibility for the property. Executors were appointed merely to ensure the property was distributed based on the direct wishes of the testator. For holders of West India property, appointing merchants in Glasgow as executors was a logical step. In some cases, planters had open accounts with merchants with whom they had built up trusted commercial relationships over many years. Furthermore, testators had estates consisting of assets (land and enslaved people) that had to be sold: the merchant firms had the expertise to dispose of such property and remit profits home. It is very likely testators assumed they could rely on an honest disposition of proceeds; merchant firms who defaulted on the legal distribution of testators’ estate would have damaged their commercial reputation. Glasgow merchants were known to advertise in local newspapers looking for relations of dead Scotsmen as much as twelve years after their deaths.93 However, if executors were based in Jamaica, the distance from the source of the fortune to the beneficiary and the differing legal systems meant the risks of dishonest practices were far more likely.94 Indeed, one bookkeeper, Benjamin McMahon, described the role of executors in his memoirs of plantation life and noted a contemporary saying: ‘When a man dies in Jamaica, he is ruined forever’.95 There was legal process to address dishonesty, although it was generally a protracted and costly process.

A transatlantic legal case in November 1820 provides further insight into the role of an executor on the island. Excessive fees had been charged by one executor, Mr Samson, on a deceased planter’s estate, meaning the beneficiary, Miss Oliver of Leith, Edinburgh, received far less than her due. Preparing for a legal challenge, a lawyer’s firm in Great Britain requested advice from Robert Hamilton – the brother of George William Hamilton – who was described as a ‘highly respected gentleman of Jamaica…now in Glasgow’. The subsequent nine-point questionnaire answered by Hamilton revealed executors were entitled to 6 per cent of the total estate before any payments were made to beneficiaries (fees which had been overcharged in the Oliver bequest). The legal firm then asked for the professional opinion of a solicitor in Kingston who was to be appointed as power of attorney to collect and remit the correct sum to Miss Oliver and other beneficiaries.96 Much can be taken from this source. First, it behoved any executor to gather as much as possible from the deceased’s estate to raise their own fee, although some were unethical and did not remit the true sum. Second, legal process allowed inheritors in Scotland – if they were financially able to do so – to pursue individuals across the Atlantic.

As well as merchant firms, some adventurers left instructions that remitted proceeds to banks in Scotland for subsequent distribution to heirs. Alexander Milne, a planter who died on his Castle Gordon estate in St Thomas in the East in 1823, originally hailed from the east coast of Scotland. His death in 1823 was advertised in the Edinburgh Annual Register.97 Like many other Scots in Jamaica, he imported luxury goods from Scotland which maintained his connection with his homeland; for example, his library contained copies of Walter Scott’s Rob Roy (1817) and Ivanhoe (1820).98 There was a thriving trade in Scottish books on Jamaica; subscribers ordered publication of titles back home to be delivered via Scottish publishers in Kingston. Gaels on the island were also known to subscribe to dictionaries published in Great Britain.99 Like those Scots who sent money home, Milne left instructions on where his fortune was to be sent. His last will and testament ensured his plantation and twenty resident slaves should be sold ‘to the highest & best bidder or to the best advantage and if possible, to a good humane Master’ after his decease. The capital was to be remitted to Scotland and lodged on with ‘the Royal Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh, upon interest and that on account and benefit of my sister, Sarah Milne’ in Kirkcaldy.100 Taken together with the remittance of profits in life and the legal framework that transmitted wealth on death, Caribbean adventurers enriched Scotland for well over a century, and increasingly so after 1800.

Scots-Jamaica fortunes

This section traces the fortunes of ninety Scots who were known to be in Jamaica between 1775 and 1838 and left property in Scotland on death, principally through their confirmation inventories (hereafter ‘Scottish inventories’). This group died between 1794 and 1857; that is, during and after the era of ‘decline’.101 Thus, in contrast to the above estimates from Jamaica archives, this section measures wealth repatriated mainly from nineteenth-century Jamaica. The limitations of these legal sources must be noted. Assessing the value of real property in Jamaica – land and enslaved people – was outside the capacity of the appraisers and they were not normally given a value. The inventory of James Anderson, a carpenter who died in Jamaica in 1830, acknowledged it provided only a partial valuation, as ‘it is reputed that the deceased had left property or effects in Jamaica but the Executrix [in Scotland] does not know if this be true and cannot therefore condescend on the value of them’.102 Similarly, the value of heritable property in Great Britain – landed estates and dwellings – was not included. These snapshots, therefore, systematically underestimate the value of the deceased’s property. On the other hand, the Scottish inventories reveal verified personal wealth levels on death, and investments in Great Britain. The associated wills and testaments, discussed below, also reveal property transmission strategies which benefited family, friends and often complete strangers over successive generations.

Given Jamaica’s reputation as ‘the grave of Scotland’, it is unsurprising some settled their affairs before departure.103 About to travel to the West Indies in January 1817, John Donald had the foresight to draw up a will and testament, as he was dead in just over two years.104 There was a historical and legal precedent for this practice. In the early modern period, Scots destined for Europe arranged settlements before leaving, as, in case of early decease, distance added complications to recovering inheritance. Indeed, some fortunes were simply forfeited when family members did not have the appropriate networks abroad to administer estates or the means to pursue costly legal action.105 The Atlantic world presented similar issues, although some adventurers that travelled without sorting their affairs arranged them in Jamaica. This presented further issues due to the nature of colonial property and the idiosyncrasies of the Scottish legal system. While in Jamaica, William Rae ensured his will was written up with a codicil in the ‘Scotch form’ to ensure dissemination of his estate in England, Jamaica and Scotland.106 Scots were the only residents of the West Indies who required knowledge of a triple legal system (British, colonial and Scots law), knowledge that facilitated sophisticated strategies that ensured the desired transmission of property across the Atlantic world.

In Capitalism & Slavery (1944), Eric Williams famously argued the onset of the American Revolution in 1776 initiated the ‘decline’ of the West India economy (although it is now generally accepted ‘decline’ did not set in until the 1820s).107 Williams had little to say about the repatriation of sojourning capital, although his vision of a declining West India economy after 1776 inferred decreasing personal fortunes. In similar fashion, Alan Karras doubted whether wealth acquired in eighteenth-century Jamaica was ever converted to profits in Scotland.108 While Karras may have been accurate for eighteenth-century Jamaica, the wealth extracted by Scots from Jamaica increased exponentially after 1800. In this sense, Scots seem to have been the exception to accepted orthodoxies around the accumulation of personal wealth in the plantation economy: fewer and smaller fortunes were acquired before 1800, yet wealth levels increased dramatically afterwards, with many more Scots acquiring larger fortunes which they successfully returned to Scotland.109 The evidence from the Scottish inventories underlines how increasingly large wealth derived from slavery in nineteenth-century Jamaica contributed to the development of rapidly industrializing Scotland.

The Scottish inventories reveal this group of ninety Scots in the late-slavery era Jamaica left property valued at a total of £701,506, an average of £7,794 (see Table 5.1). Known occupations included: planters (20), merchants (10), doctors (5), overseers (3), Guinea factors (3), carpenters (2), house wright (1), coppersmith (1), carpenter (1). The highest average wealth was owned by resident traffickers in enslaved people (average £35,296) and it should be noted these three individuals were part of large Kingston firm Taylor, Ballantine & Fairlie (discussed below). Merchants represented the second highest average fortunes (£21,194), followed by planters (£12,491)and doctors (£6,862). Scots retained a major role in planting, although their commercial success in nineteenth-century Jamaica was based upon a diversification of interests.

Based on average wealth on death (£7,794), these Scots in Jamaica were relatively high earners. These average fortunes were worth around a quarter more than the average fortunes (£5,804) of the middling ranks in Glasgow and Edinburgh in 1822–4.110 And if compared to modern values, the average wealth was enormous. Indeed, £7,794 in 1825 – a mid-point of dates of death – is equivalent to £6.91m (relative to the worth of average earnings in 2020).111 Caution is required, however. Most of the assets in Jamaica were held in few hands. Just sixteen individuals (17 per cent of the overall group) left fortunes of £10,000 or more, owning approximately 80 per cent of the assets (Table 5.2). Within this elite, two exceptional fortunes accumulated by two individuals, John Shand and William Rae, represented a third of the overall total. Indeed, with assets valued at over £133,000 on his death in 1826, absentee planter John Shand of Fettercairn in Aberdeenshire was among the richest men in Great Britain.112 The bottom half of this group by decile (74 individuals or 82 per cent of the sample) owned approximately 20 per cent of the total assets.113 There was major inequality in levels of wealth, and most were relatively poorer.

Table 5.1 Wealth on death of Scots in Jamaica in the late slavery era (1775–1838) who died between 1794 and 1857.

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

Table 5.2 Range of wealth on death of Scots in Jamaica in the late slavery era (1775–1838) who died between 1794 and 1857.

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

While great fortunes of £100,000-plus could be generated in Jamaica during the ‘age of decline’, these were exceptional cases. Scottish inventories suggest that even for successful Scots in Jamaica, themselves a small proportion who crossed the Atlantic, the repatriation of small- to medium-sized fortunes of under £500 (and often much less) was most common. In general, those who survived the high-risk environment could expect a modest fortune at best if they survived. Even so, £200 in 1825 was still a major sum, equivalent to £177,000 in modern values (relative to the worth of average earnings in 2020).114

Not all returned to enjoy the spoils. Almost as many of this group died in Jamaica as managed a successful return home. Even so, this is a remarkably high proportion of absenteeism (49 per cent). There was a noted Scottish departure from Jamaica after 1800, as Scots returned home with their profits.115 In 1829, representatives of St Andrew’s Scots Kirk in Kingston noted their fee-paying congregation had decreased by half, which was attributed ‘to the deaths and departures from this island of many opulent Presbyterians’.116 The reason for this departure is unknown, but perhaps these Scots anticipated the end of plantation slavery and chose to return. Significantly, the average fortunes of those who died on the island were around 40 per cent smaller than the fortunes of those who died in Scotland.117 Obviously, wealthier people would have found it easier to return. However, it seems very likely that the under-reporting in Scottish inventories of the main assets – land and enslaved people – of those who died on the island partially explains this discrepancy, but many did not own such property in the first place. Prior to overseer Adam Johnston’s death in St Elizabeth in 1796, his total assets – the £30 worth of cotton he had shipped to Scotland – would barely have covered his own return journey home.118

Yet, many Scots died in Jamaica while asset rich in Great Britain. Almost a quarter of the group who died in Jamaica owned personal property valued at £5,000 or more, a sum that would have placed them among the middling ranks had they returned.119 Scots in the West Indies may have been sojourners in theory, but they were commercial adventurers in practice, which meant lifestyles dictated their plans. Wealth levels did not always dictate a return home, and some even became permanent residents. William Rae epitomized the Scottish plantocracy whose colonial sojourn evolved into permanent residence. Living on the island for over fifty years, Rae entered business as a merchant in Kingston soon after arriving on the island in the 1780s.120 He afterwards came into ownership of coffee and sugar estates, cattle pens and urban property in Kingston and Port Royal. On his death on 7 May 1837, he possessed property in England, Jamaica and Scotland valued at over £76,000, the largest identified estate of any Scot who died in Jamaica.121 This example complicates the vision of avaricious Scottish sojourners resident in Jamaica in the hope of gaining quick wealth and a rapid return home. While more Scots overall died in Jamaica than became wealthy, even successful adventurers who accumulated substantial property in Great Britain were not certain to immediately return home.

The wealth of Scots in Jamaica was repatriated across Great Britain. Assets held in Scotland were worth almost 15 per cent less than those in England, and a lesser amount remained in the West Indies (including held in Kingston merchant firms). Indeed, over half of the overall personal wealth was held in England (twenty-six individuals owned assets in England valued at £378,290).122 But most of the wealth in England was held by just three individuals, revealing the tendency of elite Scots to repatriate capital through English port cities, especially London. William Rae owned English property valued at over £50,000 on his death in 1837, including major sums held by merchants in Liverpool who imported his produce, as well as investments in English railways. London merchants owed James Fairlie over £40,000 on his death in 1819. John Shand owned an incredible £122,000 in 3 per cent government consols in 1826.123 It is possible Shand invested after his return to Scotland, although in any case, the financial returns on offer in London were much more attractive than provincial opportunities. Shand’s case is consistent with what Robert Morris has described as the ‘property cycle’. Property made distinctive contributions to capital formation at different stages in life, and the investments of individuals became less risky as they aged.124 In Shand’s case, he initially held investments in West India property but ultimately consolidated his fortune by transferring the fortune to more secure government stock.

Scots in Jamaica with assets in England were also more likely to own land in Scotland, hinting at the existence of colonial landed ranks integrated with the London moneyed interest. Indeed, the substantial English investments of elite Scots in Jamaica give support to aspects of the ‘gentlemanly capitalism’ thesis.125 In this case, Scots in Jamaica, mainly merchants, planters and ‘Guinea factors’, invested in the national debt, revealing a flow from colony to the metropolis that added to the wealth of London.126 On the other hand, the inventories suggest numerically more Scots in Jamaica – those of lesser means – did not repatriate wealth through London. Even if most of the wealth went via England in general and London in particular, large sums were directed to Scotland, adding support to Andrew Porter’s vision of a ‘Scottish blend of commerce’ independent of London.127

This chapter now turns to the transatlantic dispersal of Scots-Jamaica fortunes. Scots in Jamaica held considerable property in merchant firms and banks. Merchant houses operating a commission system carried the produce of planters to market and converted sugar, rum, coffee and cotton to sterling. Slave-traders in Kingston sometimes deposited their profits with London agents. Indeed, over half of the finance in merchant houses was held in firms located in Liverpool and London.128 ‘Guinea factor’ James Fairlie held the exceptional account of over £40,000 in London merchant firms, especially Fairlie Bonham and Company.129 If most of the wealth was retained in England, the majority of accounts were held with Glasgow merchant firms.130 Stirling, Gordon & Co. was the preferred option for Scots in Jamaica, underlining Trelawney overseer Andrew Taylor’s opinion of the firm’s financial integrity. On his death in 1825, John Black, owner of Elderslie Hedge in Trelawney, Jamaica, held over £20,000 in account current with Stirling, Gordon & Co., a fund that possibly contributed to the purchase and upkeep of his landed estate Ardmarnoch in Argyll from around 1820.131 Scots with wealth in Jamaica shipped through ports of Clyde to family residences scattered across Scotland, confirming the city of Glasgow’s role as a commercial hub whose firms circulated profits across the nation.

If the merchant firms carried tropical produce across the Atlantic and converted sales into profits in Great Britain, banks also held interest-bearing capital over the long term. It was common for Scots in Jamaica to repatriate capital to Scottish banking institutions.132 Accounts with values of £1,000 and under were typical, although returned adventurer John Miller of Muirshiel held an exceptional account of £16,000 in the Clydesdale and Western Banks on his death in 1854.133 These accounts were more likely to be held in Edinburgh-based banks with Glasgow offices.134 That few accounts were held in the provincial banks, such as the Thistle and Ship Banks, underlines the deep connections that Scots in slavery societies had with the Edinburgh financial system. Two returned adventurers, however, set up their own provincial bank in the west of Scotland in 1802. After the Bank of Scotland withdrew its Kilmarnock branch in 1801 and the Royal Bank refused to step in, Patrick Ballantine and John Fairlie established the Kilmarnock Banking Company a year later.135 This group were part of the triumvirate of wealthy returned slave-traders in Scotland who made their wealth via Kingston-based firm Taylor, Ballantine & Fairlie and sunk their wealth into banking institutions and landed estates. This underlines the mutually beneficial relationship between the West Indians and Scottish banks – the institutions provided credit to Glasgow-West India merchants and planters who dealt with Scottish planters in Jamaica. In return, merchants, planters and commercial adventurers deposited slavery fortunes in Scottish banks, which could be used as interest-bearing capital in loans to manufacturers and merchants, especially across Scotland.

The merchant firms and banks may have been the means of transmitting capital, but the ultimate investment for many Scots in colonial Jamaica was the landed estate at home. Among this group of successful Scottish adventurers with assets, only a minority had achieved the dream of land. Yet it was a very sizeable minority. Around one-third of the overall group were associated with heritable property in Great Britain: under 15 per cent owned or were resident in landed estates, while a higher proportion owned urban and semi-rural properties.136 The Scottish estates associated with this group were located in the Central Lowlands, especially Ayrshire. The north of Scotland was popular too, including John Shand’s estate in Kincardineshire, although only one returnee had a Highland estate, John Black in Ardmarnoch in Argyll. That some of this group died on the island while in possession of a Scottish estate reveals that if possible, individuals invested in land prior to a return. Before he died in 1825, John Black collected rentier income from tenants on Ardmarnoch (which he owned outright) and ultimately bequeathed the freehold to his nephew, John McIvor.137 But most estates were purchased directly after returning to Scotland. John Tailyour was part of a triumvirate associated with the Kingston firm Taylor, Ballantine & Fairlie who returned to live in sprawling landed estates in Scotland.138 Writing to Tailyour from Kingston in December 1796, his former co-partner, James Fairlie, wished him well in his hunt for an estate and revealed he also hoped to ‘find such a situation on his return’.139 Fairlie ultimately built a mansion on Bellfield estate in Ayrshire and was worth over £46,000 when he died in 1819.140 The other partner, Peter Ballantine bought and improved the estate of Castlehill in Ayrshire and was worth over £26,000 in movable property when he died in 1810.141

The case of John Tailyour reveals how colonial wealth revitalized one landed family’s fortunes. After Tailyour’s return to Scotland in 1792, Glasgow merchant George McCall scouted suitable landed estates for his future son-in-law in the west of Scotland.142 Instead, Tailyour purchased his father’s former estate Kirktonhill in Montrose by 1798.143 Much of his fortune was ultimately sunk into heritable property, eventually dwarfing his personal estate. On his death in Scotland in 1816, Tailyour’s personal estate in Great Britain was valued at over £33,000 (£8,937 in Scotland, and £24,625 in England). By including both heritable and movable property, it is very likely Tailyour was worth over £108,000 in 1811.144 For Scots in Jamaica, land in Scotland was evidently of some importance: for reasons of prestige, to elevate themselves to the landed ranks with political influence, to live an independently profitable life or to regain lost family estates. Lesser properties such as farms or urban dwellings provided secure incomes and solid investments. Albeit a sizeable minority, it must be recognized that adventurers like John Tailyour were unrepresentative. For most Scots in colonial Jamaica, and even those who managed to return, the dream of a sprawling landed estate remained just that.

Furthermore, it is also striking just how little of the overall wealth was invested in British industry. Just six in this group held substantial investments in industry in Great Britain (£70,739, or 10 per cent of overall wealth). Investments were made in English and Scottish railways, and manufactories in Scotland. As William Rae was the exceptional case, holding most of these industrial investments (over £27,000) in English railways, this group invested just c.£43,000 in Scottish industry.145 Instead, Scottish adventurers in Jamaica mainly held profits in institutions that facilitated the transatlantic flow and dispersal of capital such as merchant firms in Glasgow, Edinburgh banks and, on occasion, landed property in Scotland. There seems to have been no large-scale influx of sojourning capital to Scottish industry: ultimately these fortunes passed to the families of those concerned and, less often, to nominated philanthropic institutions.

Reshaping Scottish society and transatlantic families

While great Jamaica fortunes were conspicuous in Scottish society, how they were disbursed was less apparent. This section – based upon sixty-seven wills and testaments lodged in Scottish courts by Scots resident in Jamaica 1775–1838 – traces the pathways of Jamaica wealth. On occasion, these great fortunes were reported in the local press. When Dr James Black, sometime surgeon in Jamaica, died in October 1834, his fortune was reported to be £18,000.146 Black’s fortune passed to family members but £200 was bequeathed to each of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, Lock Hospital, the Magdalene Asylum and the ‘School for Instruction of Deaf and Dumb’, as well as to establish a fund to provide annual payments to ‘faithful domestic servants’ in Glasgow.147 These types of substantial schemes were not uncommon: around 10 per cent of the wills and testaments examined revealed examples of philanthropic and charitable donations. Some donations were sizeable and were designed to improve local conditions – education, health and living standards – of the urban poor and working classes across Scotland over successive generations.148 However, most of the Jamaica fortunes were bequeathed to close relations. Kinship ties, not patriotic altruism, governed where fortunes eventually rested.

Ann McCrum noted that the principal historical beneficiaries of testamentary bequests in nineteenth-century urban Scotland were, unsurprisingly, the immediate family.149 This pattern was generally also the case in this study, although the legal status of the property and sometimes even the heirs was unusual. In Scotland, heritable property included land, estates and buildings, while movable included investments, shares and money. In Jamaica, enslaved people were classed as real estate – analogous to heritable property – alongside the plantations to which they belonged.150 Many Scots in Jamaica thus owned a distinctive type of chattel property that did not easily convert to capital in Scotland. Many on the island, therefore, developed bespoke inheritance strategies for family both in Jamaica and in Scotland, with specific types of bequests dependent on the sex, residence, age and legal status of heirs. In Jamaica, heirs were often formerly enslaved peoples themselves (partners, or illegitimate children sometimes described as ‘reputed’), while inheritances could consist of estates and resident enslaved people. Heirs in Scotland were sometimes bequeathed estates in Jamaica, although it was more common for this group to receive movable property that had already made its way across the Atlantic.

The wealth of some Scots, however, remained in Jamaica. The owner of Kendall estate in Hanover, John Blyth, had purchased the plantation with money from his father-in-law John Buddle on the understanding it would pass to his daughter, Mary Blyth née Buddle. His will – written up in Spanishtown in August 1836 – ensured just that.151 Transatlantic inheritance strategies were more common, however. After he returned to Glasgow in 1840, William Dobbie bequeathed Glenhead plantation to Mary Dobbie, ‘a woman of colour’ in Jamaica, although the residue of his estate went to Alexander, his nephew in Dunipace, Scotland. Thus, Dobbie rid the family of the by then unprofitable estate, while its profits remained in Scotland.152 But legacies to partners were often designed to improve their life chances in Jamaica. Approaching death in 1801, John McPherson, a Scottish resident of St Thomas in the East, resolved to sort his Jamaica family’s affairs. His last will and testament manumitted his ‘woman slave named Eleanor Jean McPherson for…her long & faithful service’. The testament left instructions to purchase another enslaved woman to ensure an income for the soon to be freed Eleanor. Most of his capital went to his ‘well beloved son’, also John McPherson, who was to be taught carpentry. Nevertheless, McPherson’s estate followed a familiar pattern, as the residue was left to his sister’s family in Scotland.153

Daniel Livesay’s study of mixed-race Jamaicans reveals a picture of island society governed by race. Most illegitimate children born into slavery in early nineteenth-century Jamaica – as many as 80 per cent – remained enslaved.154 Thus, only a minority of fathers – white European men – manumitted children born to enslaved women. Livesay’s study paints a grim picture for most mixed-race children in Jamaica in which only around 20 per cent were freed from enslavement. Of this minority, few received any other support. However, a small elite group were sent to Great Britain for education or an apprenticeship in trades. Those who remained eked out a living in Jamaica – if they were lucky – as artisans or in small pens or estates.155

Broadly consistent with these estimates, around one-third of the group of the wills or testaments of Scots in Jamaica referred to illegitimate children.156 The terms ‘reputed’ or ‘natural’ (meaning illegitimate) were commonly used for children, although some were described using overt racial descriptors such as ‘mulatto’ or ‘quadroon’.157 A small minority of fathers provided their children with passage off the island. Around late 1802, John Finlay of Killearn travelled to Jamaica ‘animo revertendi’ (‘with intention to return’). While resident in St Elizabeth he fathered a ‘reputed son’, William Finlay, with a ‘mulato…Cecil Allison’ whom he was ‘uncertain whether of free condition or otherways’. Children born of enslaved mothers usually took the unfree status of the mother, and John Finlay’s will of September 1804 ensured his son’s freedom. The settlement also made provision for his son’s passage to be educated in Scotland. As his appointed executor, prominent Glasgow-West India merchant Archibald Smith of Jordanhill was to make such provisions for William Finlay as he ‘may see fit and proppar deuring the time of his education’ in Glasgow. The son was to be paid £500 sterling once he reached twenty-one.158 These types of post-mortem bequests of capital to illegitimate children, however, were rare. On occasion, absent fathers improved the life chances of ‘reputed children’ through educational provision or by sending them to Great Britain. However, the major bequests – landed estates, shares in firms and banks – were almost exclusively reserved for immediate and wider families in Scotland. In other words, most of the Scots-Jamaica fortunes identified in this study remained within Scotland. Kinship arrangements governed the flows of repatriated slavery-derived wealth which effectively underpinned the development of some Scottish regions throughout the period of this study.

Conclusion

This chapter reveals a distinctive Clyde-Caribbean system of commerce. Thousands of skilled and educated Scotsmen, mainly hailing from central Scotland, departed from Clyde ports and flooded into the West Indies, especially Jamaica, in search of wealth. Attracted by the prospect of opportunities and wealth not on offer at home, Scots continued to arrive in Jamaica towards the end of Caribbean slavery, confirming it as the premier Caledonian colony in the region.

Disproportionately high numbers of upwardly mobile young men worked in merchant houses and in supervisory and managerial positions on estates throughout the island, but were especially concentrated in Kingston, Westmoreland and St Thomas in the East. Fortune-building was an uncertain business, taking many years in an environment in which lives were cut short due to disease. In general, this was a high-risk environment that generally provided low to medium returns. But while it was difficult to acquire and repatriate wealth, it was not impossible.

The Scottish diaspora in Jamaica were, in general, exceptions to Eric Williams’ vision of a plantation economy in ‘decline’. Evidence tentatively suggests Scots in eighteenth-century Jamaica accumulated higher-value estates on death compared to the general white population, perhaps as a result of patronage within kith and kinship networks. Wealth and property brought political influence in the Jamaica assembly which helped bring a Caledonian dimension to the island, evidenced by the construction of the Scots Kirk in 1813. To what extent this wealth was repatriated before 1800 remains unknown, but it is clear that many Scots continued to acquire great personal wealth after the American Revolution, especially post-1800, which they successfully repatriated.

Yet, this study complicates the vision of Scots sojourners aiming for rapid wealth and a quick return to Scotland. Some permanently resided in Jamaica – such as William Rae – or on a long-term basis, such as George William Hamilton. There is no doubt Scots were a transient group in general, and many hoped for a quick sojourn but, in practice, fortune-building could take many years. Scots were commercial adventurers on the island, accumulating wealth and acquiring property and associated political power that allowed them to shape the civic life of Jamaica.

Elite Scots funnelled capital through English ports but the majority – those of lesser means – transmitted fortunes via Glasgow merchants, sometimes to rest in Scottish banks. And by utilizing British, colonial and Scots law, they ensured fortunes arrived home after death. On occasion, mixed-race children and former partners make an appearance in the wills and testaments lodged in Scottish courts by this group of Scots in Jamaica, but these sources, especially confirmation inventories, provide compelling evidence of the slavery-derived capital that seeped into certain Scottish regions, thus improving the life chances of family at home and wider society in general through philanthropic and educational bequests.