Category Archives: Kingston
Simon Taylor to Simon Richard Brissett Taylor, 30 August 1806
30/08/1806
Taylor’s letters reflect the dilemmas of slaveholding colonial planters with British identities who had, nevertheless, become disillusioned about their place within the empire. By 1806, Taylor was recommending his nephew, and principal heir, Sir Simon Brissett Taylor, who was by then aged twenty-two, to explore the possibility of moving the Taylor family and their investments […]
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Simon Taylor to George Hibbert, Kingston, 29 August 1804
29/08/1804
Taylor commented to George Hibbert on the failure of Wilberforce’s abolition bill to pass the House of Lords in 1804. By this time, he was fully aware that such a setback would be unlikely to deter future efforts by his political adversaries. He claimed, however, that if the British state were compelled to pay financial […]
Also posted in Abolitionism, British Government, Defence of slavery, Revolution, Slave trade, Slave trade abolition, St Domingue/Hispaniola, The Letters, Trade Tagged Duke of Clarence, George Hibbert, Lady Stanhope, Lord Stanhope, Simon Taylor, William IV, William Wilberforce Comments Off on Simon Taylor to George Hibbert, Kingston, 29 August 1804
Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 6 October 1792
06/10/1792
On his return to Jamaica, Taylor wrote to tell Arcedeckne about his voyage and the time he had spent in England, which was an even more disagreeable episode to him than when the sugar canes on his Holland estate had been afflicted by disease (‘the blast’). In particular, he despaired at British attitudes towards slavery […]
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Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 17 January 1791
17/01/1791
As the abolition debate continued, Taylor’s frustration rose and his language grew more colourful. In his view, abolitionists were behaving unreasonably by interfering with a lucrative system that he thought was best left to the oversight and management of slave-traders and slaveholders. His reference to events in the French islands is probably to the failed […]
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Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 17 June 1790
17/06/1790
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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