Slavery and Revolution

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Category Archives: Armed forces

Horatio Nelson to Simon Taylor, 10 June 1805

By Christer Petley |

Horatio Nelson first met Simon Taylor during the American Revolutionary War, while stationed in Jamaica. The two remained in touch. As Nelson remarks towards the end of this letter, by 1805, they had been acquainted for about three decades. The letter was written while Nelson pursued the French fleet in the Caribbean, during the months […]

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Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 7 September 1790

By Admms |

On 7 September 1790, Taylor wrote to Arcedeckne from his sugar plantation, called Holland, at the far eastern end of Jamaica. While a revolution by white slaveholders might have been an unlikely prospect for Jamaica in 1790, foreign invasion was not. And as the possibility of war with France loomed, Taylor described the outlook of […]

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Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 17 June 1790

By Admms |

Taylor saw the proposal to end the slave trade as a breach of faith between Britain and the colonies of the British West Indies. Despite the apparent impossibility of Jamaica seceding from the British empire in the same manner as the thirteen mainland colonies during the American Revolution (due to the reliance of white colonists […]

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Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 23 September 1788

By Admms |

In September 1788, Taylor looked forward to the meeting of the Assembly, convened earlier in the year than usual to discuss the issues raised by British demands for the abolition of the slave trade. He also made some of his boldest statements about the prospect of abolitionism driving white West Indian colonists into a rebellion […]

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Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 1 May 1787

By Admms |

Taylor’s discussion of breadfruit relates to the infamous 1787 expedition of the HMS Bounty, commanded by Captain William Bligh, to collect plants in Tahiti and introduce them to the West Indies, where it was anticipated that they would help provided food for the enslaved people on sugar estates and other properties. Taylor’s discussion on this […]

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