Thomas Atwood | |
---|---|
Chief Justice of the Bahamas | |
In office 1774–1785 [1] | |
Succeeded by | John Matson |
Chief Justice of Dominica | |
In office 1766–1773 [2] | |
Succeeded by | James Ashley Hall |
Personal details | |
Died | 27 May 1793 |
Nationality | British |
Thomas Atwood (died 1793) [3] was chief justice of the island of Dominica,and afterwards of the Bahamas. [4]
Although there are no records of the biographical details of Atwood's life,he wrote the first complete account of Dominica from both a historical and general perspective,The History of the Island of Dominica. In it he explained his belief that Dominica was able to be the best colony that the English held in the West Indies,due to its high proportion of fertile and uncultivated land. [5]
From a historical perspective,he explained that the island had flourished due to the free port of Roseau between 1770 and 1775,however due to mismanagement and "disadvantages" under the French rule after invasion of Dominica in 1778 until their surrender in 1783. However,he expressed his opinion that the island could be turned around with additional cattle and an increase of enslaved Africans for the sugar plantations. [5] The history was published in 1791,and he also published a pamphlet - Observations on the true method of treatment and usage of the Negro slaves in the British West India Islands in which he defended slavery,claiming that the slaves were treated better than English workers back home. [5]
Atwood's description of Dominica during the American Revolution was directly incorporated by Bryan Edwards into his 1793 The History,Civil and Commercial,of the British Colonies in the West Indies. [6] [7]
Atwood died in the King's Bench prison "at an advanced age,broken down with misfortunes,on 27 May 1793." [8]
The extinct Dominican green-and-yellow macaw is named Ara atwoodi in honour of his description of it in his 1791 The History of the Island of Dominica. [9]
Saint Lucia was inhabited by the Arawak and Kalinago Caribs before European contact in the early 16th century. It was colonized by the British and French in the 17th century and was the subject of several possession changes until 1814, when it was ceded to the British by France for the final time. In 1958, St. Lucia joined the short-lived semi-autonomous West Indies Federation. Saint Lucia was an associated state of the United Kingdom from 1967 to 1979 and then gained full independence on February 22, 1979.
The Danish West Indies or Danish Antilles or Danish Virgin Islands were a Danish colony in the Caribbean, consisting of the islands of Saint Thomas with 32 square miles (83 km2); Saint John with 19 square miles (49 km2); and Saint Croix with 84 square miles (220 km2). The islands have belonged to the United States since they were purchased in 1917. Water Island was part of the Danish West Indies until 1905, when the Danish state sold it to the East Asiatic Company, a private shipping company.
Slavery in the colonial history of the United States, from 1526 to 1776, developed from complex factors, and researchers have proposed several theories to explain the development of the institution of slavery and of the slave trade. Slavery strongly correlated with the European colonies' demand for labor, especially for the labor-intensive plantation economies of the sugar colonies in the Caribbean and South America, operated by Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and the Dutch Republic.
Beilby Porteus, successively Bishop of Chester and of London, was a Church of England reformer and a leading abolitionist in England. He was the first Anglican in a position of authority to seriously challenge the Church's position on slavery.
The slave codes were laws relating to slavery and enslaved people, specifically regarding the Atlantic slave trade and chattel slavery in the Americas.
The Haitian Revolution was a successful insurrection by self-liberated slaves against French colonial rule in Saint-Domingue, now the sovereign state of Haiti. The revolt began on 22 August 1791, and ended in 1804 with the former colony's independence. It involved black, biracial, French, Spanish, British, and Polish participants—with the ex-slave Toussaint Louverture emerging as Haiti's most prominent general. The revolution was the only slave uprising that led to the founding of a state which was both free from slavery and ruled by non-whites and former captives. It is now widely seen as a defining moment in the history of the Atlantic World.
The coastwise slave trade existed along the eastern coastal areas of the United States in the antebellum years prior to 1861. Shiploads and boatloads of slaves in the domestic trade were transported from place to place on the waterways. Hundreds of vessels of various sizes and capacities were used to transport the slaves, generally from markets of the Upper South, where there was a surplus of slaves, to the Deep South, where the development of new cotton plantations created high demand for labor.
Slavery in the British and French Caribbean refers to slavery in the parts of the Caribbean dominated by France or the British Empire.
Bryan Edwards, FRS was an English politician and historian born in Westbury, Wiltshire. Edwards supported the slave trade, and was described by abolitionist William Wilberforce as a powerful opponent.
The Society of the Friends of the Blacks was a French abolitionist society founded during the late 18th century. The society's aim was to abolish both the institution of slavery in the France's overseas colonies and French involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. The society was founded in Paris in 1788, and remained active until 1793, during the midst of the French Revolution. It was led by Jacques Pierre Brissot, who frequently received advice from British abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, who led the abolitionist movement in Great Britain. At the beginning of 1789, the Society had 141 members.
British America comprised the colonial territories of the English Empire, which became the British Empire after the 1707 union of the Kingdom of England with the Kingdom of Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, in the Americas from 1607 to 1783. Prior to the union, this was termed English America, excepting Scotland's failed attempts to establish its own colonies. Following the union, these colonies were formally known as British America and the British West Indies before the Thirteen Colonies declared their independence in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) and formed the United States of America.
Colonel Sir Thomas Modyford, 1st Baronet was a planter of Barbados and Governor of Jamaica from 1664 to 1671.
Slavery in Britain existed before the Roman occupation and until the 11th century, when the Norman conquest of England resulted in the gradual merger of the pre-conquest institution of slavery into serfdom, and all slaves were no longer recognised separately in English law or custom. By the middle of the 12th century, the institution of slavery as it had existed prior to the Norman conquest had fully disappeared, but other forms of unfree servitude continued for some centuries.
Richard Robert Madden was an Irish doctor, writer, abolitionist and historian of the United Irishmen. Madden took an active role in trying to impose anti-slavery rules in Jamaica on behalf of the British government.
Sir William Young, 2nd Baronet, FRS, FSA was a British colonial governor, politician and owner of sugar plantations which, in 1788, included 896 enslaved Africans. He was the governor of Tobago from 1807 – January 1815, and Member of Parliament for St Mawes, 19 June 1784 – 3 November 1806, and Buckingham, 5 November 1806 – 23 March 1807.
London Bourne (1793–1869) was a former Barbadian slave who became a wealthy merchant and abolitionist.
James Tobin (1736/7–1817) was a prominent merchant and planter based in Nevis. During his life, he became one of the most prominent proslavery activists from the West Indies.
James Laing (c.1749–1831) was a Scottish doctor and slave plantation owner in Dominica.
Colonel Thomas Moody was a British geopolitical expert to the British Colonial Office; Commander of the Royal Engineers in the West Indies; Director of the British Royal Gunpowder Manufactory; Inspector of Gunpowder; and Director of the New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Land Company.
Major-General Sir Evan John Murray-Macgregor of Macgregor, 2nd Baronet, was a Scottish colonial administrator and senior British army officer.
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