Slavery and Revolution

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Category Archives: Kingston

Simon Taylor to Simon Richard Brissett Taylor, 30 August 1806

By Christer Petley |

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

By Christer Petley |

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 […]

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Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 6 October 1792

By Admms |

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

By Admms |

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

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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