Item #68666 Observations on the Present Condition of the Island of Trinidad, William Hardin BURNLEY.
Observations on the Present Condition of the Island of Trinidad,

First Edition

Observations on the Present Condition of the Island of Trinidad, and the Actual State of the Experiment of Negro Emancipation.

London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1842.

First edition. Octavo (8 5/16 x 5 1/4 inches; 211 x 135 mm). 177, [1, colophon] pp. We could find no copies at auction since 1977.

Modern half calf over marbled boards. Black morocco spine label. Spine lettered and stamped in gilt. Previous owner's bookplate on front pastedown.

"William Hardin Burnley was the largest slave owner in Trinidad during the nineteenth century. Born in the United States to English parents, he settled on the island in 1802 and became one of its most influential citizens and a prominent agent of the British Empire. A central figure among elite and moneyed transnational slave owners, Burnley moved easily through the Atlantic world of the Caribbean, the United States, Great Britain, and Europe, and counted among his friends Alexis de Tocqueville, British politician Joseph Hume, and prime minister William Gladstone." (Selwyn R. Cudjoe)

"William Hardin Burnley was educated at Harrow School, which he entered in 1793. In 1798 he visited Trinidad to seek out opportunities on the island. He spent a short time there before he returned to England. In 1802 he returned to the island with money to invest... Burnley settled in Trinidad where he met George Smith, the chief judge of the island. They became good friends, a connection which Burnley was able to exploit on the way to making a fortune. In 1814 the incoming governor of Trinidad, Sir Ralph Woodford, appointed Burnley a member of his majesty's council (later called the Council of Government) to advise on the running of the colony's affairs. In 1815 Burnley's sister, Maria Burnley, married the radical politician Joseph Hume, which gave Burnley ready access to the Colonial Office and much influence in Trinidad. By the 1820s Burnley owned and controlled fourteen sugar estates of which Orange Grove was the largest. In 1823 he took great umbrage at British efforts to ameliorate the conditions of enslaved Africans in the island. In October 1832, when the Trinidad planters heard that the British parliament was likely to abolish slavery, they selected Burnley to represent their cause in London. In April 1833 he sailed for London where he published Opinions on Slavery and Emancipation in 1823, reiterating his critique of amelioration a decade earlier, as well as responding to the impending scheme for abolition. His efforts to avert emancipation were unsuccessful... After emancipation Burnley was active in promoting the immigration of labour to work the plantations. In August 1839 he set off for Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the eastern seaboard of the United States 'to ascertain whether any portion of the free-Negro population inhabiting these countries could be induced to remove to Trinidad' (Burnley to Lord Russell, CO 295/127, 1839). He was more successful in the United States where he spent three months, travelling from Maine to Virginia, informing free blacks of glorious opportunities that awaited them in Trinidad. He published Description of Trinidad and of the Advantages to be Derived from Emigration to that Colony. At the end of 1841 1286 African Americans had migrated to Trinidad. Burnley travelled to Norfolk, Virginia, in October 1840 to meet family members whom he described as being 'among the first people in Virginia' (Lamont, 8). His uncle Zachariah Burnley enjoyed a close friendship with James Monroe, the president of the United States. In 1841 he set up an agricultural and immigration sub-committee in Trinidad to establish new laws against the squatting taking place in the colony. The transcript of these hearings was published as Present Condition of Trinidad, as Exhibited by the Evidence Taken by the Agricultural and Immigration Society of the Colony (1842). He gave evidence in 1842 to the select committee on the supply of labour and state of economy in the West Indies... The wealthiest man and largest slave owner in Trinidad during the first half of the nineteenth century, Burnley has been described as 'a founding father of British Trinidad [who] had been deeply involved in every controversy [in the colony]' (Wood, 126). In a complex Atlantic world, operating in a crown colony governed directly from London without the representative institutions that characterized Britain's other major slave colonies, and with a narrow but burning sense of a new Trinidadian identity, Burnley achieved for a period such pre-eminence that he can be cast as Trinidad's 'first Prime Minister'". (Oxford DNB).

Sabin 9397.

HBS 68666.

$2,500.

Price: $2,500.00

Item #68666

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