Beeston Long (4 February 1757 – 1820), of Combe House, Surrey, was an English businessman.
Beeston Long (4 February 1757 – 1820), of Combe House, Surrey, was an English businessman.
He was the son of Beeston Long, a West India Merchant and deputy Governor of the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation, and brother of Charles Long, 1st Baron Farnborough [1] and Samuel Long.
Long was a senior partner of the firm of West India merchants (largely trading with Jamaica), Long, Drake & Co, based in Leadenhall Street. He succeeded his father-in-law as Chairman of the West India Merchants. [2] He was a vice-president of the London Institution and leader of a group of merchants and speculators who, in a private venture, undertook the construction of the docks at Wapping. The London Docks Company had a 21-year monopoly to unload all vessels entering the port with tobacco, rice, wine and brandy (except from the East and West Indies). Long and the other directors sat in the London Dock House, in New Bank Buildings, from where they oversaw their involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.
He was Governor of the Bank of England, a position he held from 1806 to 1808, [3] having served previously as its Deputy Governor. [4] In June 2020 the Bank of England issued a public apology for the involvement of Long, amongst other employees, in the slave trade following the investigation by the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership at UCL. [5]
Long died in 1820, survived by his wife and two children.
Long married in 1786 Frances Louisa, eldest daughter of Sir Richard Neave, 1st Baronet.
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies, and later with East Asia. The company gained control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent and Hong Kong. At its peak, the company was the largest corporation in the world by various measures and had its own armed forces in the form of the company's three presidency armies, totalling about 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the British Army at certain times.
The Royal African Company (RAC) was an English trading company established in 1660 by the House of Stuart and City of London merchants to trade along the West African coast. It was overseen by the Duke of York, the brother of Charles II of England; the RAC was founded after Charles II ascended to the English throne in the 1660 Stuart Restoration, and he granted it a monopoly on all English trade with Africa. While the company's original purpose was to trade for gold in the Gambia River, as Prince Rupert of the Rhine had identified gold deposits in the region during the Interregnum, the RAC quickly began trading in slaves, who became its largest commodity.
Sir Gilbert Heathcote, 1st Baronet was an English merchant and Whig politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1701 and 1733. He also served as the governor of the Bank of England and was Lord Mayor of London in 1711.
William Manning was a British merchant, politician, and Governor of the Bank of England.
George Hibbert was an English merchant, politician and ship-owner. Alongside fellow slaver Robert Milligan, he was also one of the principals of the West India Dock Company which instigated the construction of the West India Docks on London's Isle of Dogs in 1800. An amateur botanist and book-collector, he also helped found the Royal National Lifeboat Institution in 1824.
Bristol, a port city in the South West of England, on the banks of the River Avon, has been an important location for maritime trade for centuries.
Sir Robert Townsend Farquhar, 1st Baronet was an influential British merchant of the early nineteenth century who served as a colonial governor and Member of Parliament. During his lengthy service for both the East India Company and the British government, Farquhar gained a reputation as an efficient and ambitious administrator and he notably served as Lieutenant-Governor of Prince of Wales Island from January 1804 to 1805 and as governor of Île de Bourbon, now known as Réunion from 1810 to 1811.
Sir Richard Neave, 1st Baronet was a British merchant and a Governor of the Bank of England.
Colonel William O'Brien, 7th Baron & 2nd Earl of Inchiquin, PC, was an Irish military officer, peer and colonial administrator who served as the governor of Tangier from 1675 to 1680 and the governor of Jamaica from 1690 until his death in office in 1692. O'Brien is best known for his long career in the service of the English Crown, serving as a colonial governor in England's overseas possessions in Africa and the West Indies.
Sir John Rae Reid, 2nd Baronet (1791–1867) was a Scottish merchant and financier. He was a Tory and Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1830 and 1847.
Thomson Hankey was a British merchant, a banker and a Liberal Party politician.
John Horsley Palmer was an English banker who was Governor of the Bank of England from 1830 to 1833.
Sir Francis Eyles, 1st Baronet was an English merchant who was Governor of the Bank of England and a baronet in the Baronetage of Great Britain.
William Vaughan (1752–1850) was an English West India merchant and author.
Benjamin Buck Greene was a British banker, plater, and financier. He inherited a large fortune derived from the Atlantic slave trade and the sugar industry in the Caribbean, later becoming one of London's leading merchants and shipowners. He served as a director of the Bank of England for fifty years from 1850, also serving as deputy governor (1871-3) and governor (1873–5).
Daniel Giles was a London merchant and banker, the son of Huguenot immigrant parents.
Sheffield Neave (1799–1868) was an English merchant and Governor of the Bank of England from 1857 to 1859.
Alfred Latham (1801–1885) was an English businessman and banker, born in Camberwell to Thomas Latham (1746–1818), a merchant and plantation owner, and his wife, Ann Jones. Inheriting wealth, Latham went into business in 1824, and went into partnership in what became the Arbuthnot Latham bank in 1833, with John Alves Arbuthnot (1802–1875).
Camden, Calvert and King was an eighteenth-century partnership that traded in London from 1760 to 1824, transporting slaves and later convicts. The partners' profits from slave trading created capital to fund other ventures including the East Indies trade, supplying the British army and navy with food, insurance underwriting and the status to obtain positions in important London organisations including the Corporation of London, Bank of England, East India Company, African Company of Merchants and Trinity House.
A statue of Robert Milligan was installed at the West India Docks in London, in 1813. Milligan was a merchant, and was largely responsible for the construction of the West India Docks. After being put in storage in 1943, it was re-erected by the London Docklands Development Corporation in 1997.