{"id":9595,"date":"2010-10-17T02:53:56","date_gmt":"2010-10-17T02:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=9595"},"modified":"2012-11-21T01:11:54","modified_gmt":"2012-11-21T01:11:54","slug":"children-of-uncertain-fortune-mixed-race-migration-from-the-west-indies-to-britain-1750-1820","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=9595","title":{"rendered":"Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-Race Migration from the West Indies to Britain, 1750-1820"},"content":{"rendered":"

Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-Race Migration from the West Indies to Britain, 1750-1820<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The University of Michigan
\n2010
\n481 pages<\/p>\n

Daniel\u00a0Alan\u00a0Livesay<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of History
\nDrury University, Springfield, Missouri<\/em><\/p>\n

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (History) in The University of Michigan 2010<\/em><\/p>\n

This dissertation shows that the migration of mixed-race individuals from the Caribbean<\/a> to Britain<\/a> between 1750 and 1820 helped to harden British attitudes toward those of African descent. The children of wealthy, white fathers and both free and enslaved women of color, many left for Britain in order to escape the deficiencies and bigotry of West Indian society. This study traces the group\u2019s origin in the Caribbean, mainly Jamaica<\/a>, to its voyage and arrival in Britain. It argues that the perceived threats of these migrants\u2019 financial bounty and potential to marry and reproduce in Britain helped to collapse previous racial distinctions in the metropole which had traditionally differentiated along class and status lines and paved the way for a more monolithic racial viewpoint in the nineteenth century.<\/p>\n

This study makes three major contributions to the history of the British Atlantic. First, it provides a thorough examination of the West Indies\u2019 elite population of color, showing its connection to privileged white society in both the Caribbean and Britain. Those who moved to the metropole lend further proof to the agency and influence of such individuals in the Atlantic world. Second, it expands the notion of the British family at the turn of the nineteenth century. Through analyses of wills, inheritance disputes, and correspondence, this project reveals the regularity of British legal and personal interaction with relatives of color across the Atlantic, as well as with those who resettled in the metropole<\/a>. Third, it allows for a material understanding of Atlantic racial ideologies. By connecting popular discussions in the abolition debate and the sentimental novel to biographical accounts of mixed-race migrants, British notions of racial difference are more strongly linked to social reality. Uncovering an entirely new cohort of British people of color and its members\u2019 lived experiences, this dissertation provides crucial insight into the tightening of British and Atlantic racial attitudes.<\/p>\n

INTRODUCTION<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1840, the Reverend Donald Sage completed his memoirs. Reflecting on the meandering twists and turns of life, he wrote extensively on his education and the different schools he attended as a youth. One of these institutions, where he stayed only briefly between 1801 and 1803, was located in the small seaside town of Dornoch<\/a>, in the Scottish Highlands<\/a>. Sage described the village as a \u201clittle county town\u201d which had been \u201cconsiderably on the decrease\u201d by the time his family had arrived. As one would do in such a journal, Sage thought back on his boyhood friends, and noted that while at Dornoch he and his brother became close companions with the Hay family. Like Sage, the three Hay brothers were not originally from the village; they had instead been born in the West Indies. In fact, Sage revealed that they were \u201cthe offspring of a negro woman, as their hair, and the tawny colour of their skin, very plainly intimated, [and] [t]heir father was a Scotsman.\u201d Sage became particularly good friends with Fergus, the eldest of the three, of whom he gave a very qualified endorsement: \u201cNotwithstanding the disadvantages of his negro parentage, Fergus was very handsome. He had all the manners of a gentleman, and had first-rate abilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

It may seem out of place for three West Indian children, the offspring of an interracial couple, to be living in a small village at Scotland\u2019s<\/a> northern tip in 1801. Historians tend to think of an Afro-Caribbean presence in Britain as a phenomenon of the last sixty-plus years, and one localized around major urban centers.<\/strong> At the same time, only recently has the topic of inter-racial unions been addressed in the \u201cnew\u201d multicultural Britain. The story of the Hay children in Dornoch, however, was not at all unique at the turn of the nineteenth century. Rather, the Hays were members of a regular migration of mixed-race West Indians who arrived in the home country during the period.<\/strong> Facing intense discrimination, few jobs opportunities, and virtually no educational options in the colonies, West Indians of color fled to Britain with their white fathers\u2019 assistance. Once arrived, they encountered myriad responses. While some white relatives accepted them into their homes, others sued to cut them off from the family fortune. Equally, even though a number of fictional and political tracts welcomed their arrival, others condemned their presence and lobbied to ban them from landing on British soil. Regardless of these variable experiences, mixed-race migrants traveled to Britain consistently during the period. The Hay children may have turned heads on the roads of Dornoch, but they would not have been a wholly unfamiliar sight.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This study examines the movement of mixed-race individuals from the Caribbean to Britain at the end of the long eighteenth century. It argues that the frequent and sustained migration of these children of color produced a strong British reaction, at both the personal and popular levels, against their presence, and helped contribute to the simplification and essentialization of British racial ideology in the nineteenth century. A number of personal histories are followed through the various stages of this transplantation, and are compared to published accounts of the phenomenon in general. White patronage and parental ties were vital in the colonies if a mixed-race individual was to leave for Britain. Connected through these kinship and business associations, elite West Indians of color maintained their own Atlantic networks. Once in Britain, they had to monitor their finances vigilantly against rival claimants to Caribbean fortunes. Family attempts at disinheritance were a frequent problem, and demonstrated an increasing British disgust at colonial miscegenation<\/a>, along with mixed-race resettlement. With the advent of the abolition movement in the 1770s and 1780s, the issue took on greater political importance. Rich heirs of color now in Britain seemed to herald the cataclysmic prophesies of slavery supporters. Certain that abolition would destroy the racial and class barriers between black and white, many Britons recoiled at those of hybrid descent now resident in the metropole. If class distinctions had restrained racial prejudice in the early years of the eighteenth century, they no longer produced the same moderating effects at the century\u2019s close…<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n