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An Historical survey of the French colony in the Island of St. Domingo ... / by Bryan Edwards. 1797
RCIN 1196801
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Bryan Edwards was a plantation owner based in Jamaica. He directly benefitted from the transtlantic slave trade and conservative estimates place the number of people he enslaved at 1,500. A prominent figure in the politics of the West Indies in the late eighteenth century, Edwards was opposed to abolition but was open to the improvement of the conditions for enslaved people in the region.
In 1791, he joined a British relief expedition to the French colony of Saint Domingue (now Haiti). One of the wealthiest colonies in the Caribbean, those enslaved by French settlers rose up in rebellion following the French Revolution of 1789. The revolt, known as the Haitian Revolution, would eventually be successful and in 1804, the colony would achieve independence as the first free Black nation in the Americas.
Edwards main purpose was to gain information about the causes and consequences of the Haitian Revolution. He published his account of the country in this book, printed in 1797. In it, Edwards made claims that 30,000 people had died during the rebellion. He blamed the revolt on the treatment of enslaved people by the French settlers on the island and opposed further British intervention in the country. This copy was presented by Edwards to George IV when Prince of Wales.
French colonial officials condemned Edwards’s account. One official, Vernault de Charmilly, issued his own pamphlet (RCIN 1022702) that stated that Edwards did not have enough information and argued that he had only opposed British intervention in Haiti because if it became a British possession, the profits from the sugar plantations there would affect Edwards’s profits from his own sugar plantations on Jamaica.
Provenance
Presented to George IV when Prince of Wales by the author, c. 1797.
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