West India Colonies

MacQueen's 1824 book argues that the abolition of slavery in the colonies would threaten the future of the British Empire.

James MacQueen (Author)

9781108020329, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 September 2010

466 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.6 cm, 0.59 kg

James MacQueen (1778–1870) was one of the most outspoken critics of the British anti-slavery campaign in the 1820s and 1830s. A former manager of a sugar plantation in the Caribbean, he was editor of the Glasgow Courier, a paper that favoured West Indian merchant interests and opposed rights for slaves. First published in 1824, this book is a direct attack on contemporary anti-slavery campaigners, such as William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, whom MacQueen holds responsible for 'the dreadful misrepresentations scattered abroad' about West India colonies and the planters. MacQueen, who insists on calling himself an enemy of slavery 'in the abstract', argues that abolition in the colonies would lead to insurrections, bringing chaos and barbarism to these territories. This, in turn, would lead to the loss of the British colonies. This volume remains an essential document in the context of post-colonial studies.

Preface
1. Introduction
2. East and West Indies, political constitutions totally different
3. West Indies charged with continuing the African slave trade
4. Statements of the anti-colonists that sugar is cultivated in India by free men instead of slaves
5. Pamphlet of Mr Clarkson
6. Mr Clarkson's and the Reviewer's statements of the success of free labour by emancipated slaves examined and refuted
7. St. Domingo adduced by Mr Clarkson as a proof of the blessings and advantages of negroe emancipation
8. Emancipation of the negroes in Cayenne
9. Daring calumnies of the Abolition Society and their writers
10. Manifesto of the abolition society
11. Slavery as it formerly existed in Europe and in England
12. Immense stake at issue on this question
Appendix.

Subject Areas: British & Irish history [HBJD1]