A Family of Islands

by Alec Waugh

  Among the many arguments adducing in favour of retaining Guadeloupe, the one that carried, it seems, least weight was doubt as to the wisdom of freeing the thirteen colonies from the necessity of keeping on good terms with the King of England and his ministers. Until then Britain had provided protection for the colonies against the Indians and the French. The French held the view that if a colonizing power discovered a river it owned all that lay along that river until it reached the sea. It had assumed those rights in regard to the Mississippi, and had indicated that the time might come when it would assert the same rights toward the Hudson. The French were a constant menace, and when the royal governors and justices of the peace appointed by the crown passed the boundaries of what the colonists considered equitable, as they frequently did, the colonists had to admit that, anyhow, the British were a bulwark against their enemies. After the Treaty of Paris, however, there was no longer a French menace, and two years later a last desperate combination of the Indian tribes was crushed so decisively that the New Englanders could feel that they had no more to dread from them, and that they could present with unfettered hands their complaints against their English rulers.

  They had a number of complaints. The British as colonists present a record little less vulnerable than that of the French and Spanish, though a Briton is entitled to consider that his compatriots have shown in their colonial transactions a good deal of common sense, have been prepared to ignore the danger of creating precedents in view of an immediate necessity; have, through an inborn indolence, a love of privacy, a wish to ‘avoid unpleasantness’, a belief that problems if left alone will solve themselves, a readiness to call a revolution the Reform Bill of 1832; have been always prepared to accept a compromise, to do whatever seemed immediately needed to maintain the status quo. This tendency may every now and again have led to unfortunate results, as it appeared to do in 1938 at Munich, although there is no proof that a sudden rush to arms would have been in the final analysis any less unfortunate. It is never easy to deal with a madman; far less with a country dominated by a madman. By and large this tendency to compromise has not worked out too badly in the handling and dismemberment of what was once the British Empire; a bond remains between Britain and most of the countries that she once administered.

  In the eighteenth century, Britain no less than France and Spain considered that colonies existed for the benefit of the home country. Most of her kings regarded the colonies as private property, to be administered in their own best interests. The colonists were, in fact, their tenants. The New England shipowners and farmers and the cotton and tobacco merchants in Virginia had as many counts of complaint as the sugar barons of Martinique and Guadeloupe. The stages of the quarrel that led to the War of Independence lie outside the scope of this narrative, except in so far as the quarrel was brought to a head by the retention of Canada and the restitution of Guadeloupe, and for the fact that one of the chief causes of dispute was a direct outcome of West Indian commerce: a dispute that should never have been permitted, since the prosperity of the British West Indian Islands was so largely due to their trade with the North American colonies.

  In the early 1770s, the West Indians were importing annually from the colonies three-quarters of a million pounds’ worth of goods, lumber, fish, flour, grain, and the wood for their sugar barrels. The ships involved could make two or three journeys in one year. In return, the islands supplied the colonies with sugar, rum, molasses and coffee, to the value annually of four hundred thousand pounds, leaving a balance in favour of the Americans which was commonly paid in dollars or bills of exchange, enabling them to reduce their debts to British merchants. The American colonies, besides affording an inexhaustible source of supply, were also a sure market for the disposal of the planters’ surplus production, the whole importation of rum into Great Britain and Ireland being little more than half the quantity consumed in America. From whatever angle the trade is considered, Great Britain will be seen to have received substantial benefits from it. The sugar planters, being cheaply supplied with horses, provisions and lumber, were enabled to adopt a system of management useful not only to themselves but to the mother country. Much of the land in the West Indies which otherwise must have been applied to the cultivation of provisions for the maintenance of their Negroes and the raising of cattle was appropriated to the cultivation of sugar. By this means the quantity of sugar and rum were greatly increased, and the British revenues, navigation and general commerce were augmented. On the other hand, the American colonies, which were indebted to Great Britain to an extent that their tobacco, indigo, rice and naval stores were insufficient to discharge, were able to make good their deficiencies through their circuitous trade with the West Indies, foreign as well as British. The result was as advantageous to Britain as if the sugar planters instead of the Americans had been the purchasers. But Whitehall did not appreciate this. It made blunder after blunder.

  In the 1720s the pacte coloniale had been slightly modified for the benefit of the French colonies; they had an excess of molasses and they needed the poorer kind of fish that could be best supplied by the New England fishermen; the French were allowed to take nothing but fish in return for the molasses, some of which served domestic uses, the remainder being distilled into rum, a large part of which was shipped to Africa for the slave trade. New England’s prosperity was largely dependent on their fishing trade along the coast and the Newfoundland banks. They could sell their best fish in Europe, but for their poorer fish they had no market other than the French Antilles. The trade was profitable to everyone. It necessitated the building and maintenance of many ships, it found a use for New England lumber and employment for a great number of sailors and shipwrights, yet in 1733 the British government, in an attempt to protect its sugar planters in the West Indies, decided to compel the New England merchants to buy all their molasses from the British islands; to this end, therefore, it levied such a heavy tax upon the sugar and molasses imported from the French islands that the trade could not be continued.

  The Barbadian planters approved the Molasses Act because there was a temporary slump in sugar. They could not produce sugar as cheaply as the French could, so there was no longer a profitable re-export sale for their sugar on the continent. They were anxious to keep the price of sugar high in the protected home market, and they thought that by producing less sugar for Britain and more rum and molasses for the American market, they could keep their mills busy and the price of sugar high, and, indeed, by the start of the War of Jenkins’ Ear in 1739, the price of sugar had been stabilized in Britain by protective methods. The Molasses Act itself, however, was a short-sighted measure because the British islands did not want the kind of fish the French did, any more than the English wanted the ‘penitential cod’ for which the Cornish fishermen found such a profitable demand in Portugal. If the act had been enforced, the New Englanders would have lost a market for their cheaper kind of fish; they would have been short of molasses and rum, their lumber trade would have been injured, a number of shipyards would have been forced to close. It was estimated that five thousand sailors would have been out of work, the annual loss to New England would have exceeded a quarter of a million pounds, and the eventual loss to Britain would have been considerable, since the New Englanders were her best customers for farming tools, crockery, furniture, clothing, wines and luxuries. The government of the time had the good sense to recognize its error and did not enforce the act. It remained, however, on the register, and after the Seven Years’ War, when Britain was heavily taxed and needed some assistance from the colonies in whose interests, so it was maintained, the war had been conducted, it was decided to enforce the Molasses Act; either the prohibitory duty was to be paid or the cargoes of molasses would be seized.

  The general indignation was so great that even without further provocation the New England colonies might have been driven to arms, but further provocation was to be provided by the Stamp Act, a levy made on the entire American people by the Br
itish Parliament, a body in which they were not represented. In essence it was neither a tyrannical nor a foolish tax; it seemed just to the British Parliament that the colonies should make some contribution to the costs of the war and the defence of the frontier, and George Grenville, the British Prime Minister, was a reasonable man. He would not, he told Benjamin Franklin, insist upon the Act if the Americans could devise a better method. As no satisfactory alternative was offered, the Act was passed. The British government had failed to realize that a principle was at stake. Taxation was being levied without representation. The power of taxation should not be vested in any body other than the colonial assemblies.

  History took its course; the Stamp Act was repealed, with a bad grace, the British Parliament claiming that it had a right to levy such taxes if it chose. In England itself there was clamour for parliamentary reform, and George III became resolved to teach these tiresome reformers a lesson. Grenville was followed by Lord North, and Boston Harbour was soon black with discarded tea. The New Englanders were as independent as any human beings could be, and they no longer had the French and the Indians on their frontier. The Virginians, many of whom were Stuart at heart, had no love of the Hanoverians. For four disastrous years George III was his own Prime Minister. And Paul Revere galloped from Lexington.

  Three thousand miles away in Paris, Louis XVI and his ministers watched the course of the war with satisfaction. His country’s finances were in a desperate state and the humiliations of the Seven Years’ War smarted. It was pleasant that Britain should be having difficulties of her own. It was desirable that she and her colonies should exhaust themselves. France herself, in her enfeebled state, was not prepared to commit herself to the test and expense of war, but the American envoy to Paris, though not publicly recognized, was shown sympathy and assistance, and his mission was granted an unofficial agent. Benjamin Franklin’s arrival in Paris increased the popularity of the revolutionaries. Lafayette, at his own cost, fitted out a ship which he put, under his own command, at their service.

  The situation was changed by the defeat and capture of Burgoyne’s army. The news of it was received with delight, but at the same time with apprehension. The French ambassador in London reported that George III’s power had been considerably weakened by this reverse, that North was about to change his policy, repealing the tea duty and the immediately subsequent acts that had so exasperated the colonists, and admitting the principles of colonial independence. ‘Parliament,’ so the new act was to read, ‘will not impose any duty, taxes or assessment whatever ... in North America and the West Indies, except only such duties as it may be expedient to impose for the regulation of commerce, the net produce of such duties to be always paid and applied for the use of the colony in which the same shall be levied.’ Commissioners were being sent to America with powers that were practically unlimited, to resolve the colonies’ complaints. The traditional British spirit of compromise seemed to be in full operation; the colonies were to be granted everything they wanted. The Declaration of Independence could be conveniently forgotten; the status quo could be resumed.

  That did not suit the French book at all. If Britain, realizing that she could not subjugate her colonies, made peace with them on terms that left them within the Empire, Britain’s strength would be only momentarily impaired. Clearly she must not be allowed to resume her old ascendancy. Now surely was the moment to revenge the defeats that had been inflicted during the Seven Years’ War. Then France’s hands had been tied by her campaigns in Europe, but now she could throw all her forces against her traditional enemy. Strike while the foe is weak. She promptly recognized the independence of the United States, and declared war on Britain.

  From that moment the whole spirit of the war changed, as far as Britain was concerned. From the beginning, a powerful minority had opposed the war; now was the time, that party argued, to make peace with America and concentrate the country’s forces against France. If the colonies were granted full independence they might be prepared to dissolve their pact with France. One man alone, the Earl of Chatham, could have carried through such delicate negotiations. He had opposed George III’s policy from the start, and Congress trusted him. The public clamoured for Chatham, but King George was adamant. ‘No advantage to the country, no personal danger to myself,’ he said, ‘can ever make me address myself to Lord Chatham or to any other branch of the opposition.’ He might have been forced to yield, but Chatham’s health broke down and Lord North remained in office. Spain declared war on Britain; and the British commissioners returned with nothing accomplished. The war followed its course.

  That course lies mainly outside the scope of this narrative. It continued for four more years; there was an ebb and flow of fortunes, with the tide running mainly for the colonists, until finally Cornwallis found himself trapped at Yorktown. Washington and Lafayette held the heights, and the French fleet was in the Chesapeake.

  It may well be surprising that such a fleet should be there. Eighteen years earlier, the British were dominant at sea; they had swept the Caribbean clear. How had it come about that French ships were able to manoeuvre with such impunity and so disastrously for British interests? It is one of the examples of the important part played by the West Indies in the large affairs of Europe.

  Rodney was then the chief British admiral. He was one of the greatest seamen in English history, but he was not a wholly admirable person. He was ruthless, brutal, selfish, and he was overconcerned with the claims of prize money. He was sixty years old when the war began, and his health was weakened by many years of foreign service; it was he who in the Seven Years’ War had captured Martinique, St Lucia and Grenada. When peace was signed, he received the thanks of both houses of Parliament. In the interval between the wars he was commander-in-chief of the Jamaican station. As soon as France and Spain allied themselves with the rebel colonists, he was sent back to the West Indies as commander-in-chief of the Leewards, with instructions to relieve Gibraltar on the way there. After capturing a Spanish convoy off Cape Finisterre, he routed a week later a large Spanish fleet off St Vincent.

  In the meantime, England was having trouble with the Dutch. The English coast was being frequently raided by American captains, of whom Paul Donee was the most famous. Donee held a regular commission in the American navy, but the British did not recognize the legality of Congress and rated him a pirate. When he took his prizes into a Dutch port, the British requested the Dutch to hand him over as though he were a criminal. The Dutch were neutrals and behaved as neutrals, allowing Donee to remain in port ten days and depart unmolested. This incensed the British, who decided to make it an excuse for declaring war on Holland.

  The chief object of this war was, from the British view, the capture of St Eustatius. High and green, a few miles north of St Kitts, it is an island that is little visited today; it has nothing to attract the tourist or the trader. Its area of eight square miles supports a population of two thousand; it conducts a desultory trade in cattle, yams and sweet potatoes. Yet the traveller who sails past it in a schooner will see on the leeward side, along the beaches, the ruins of the great warehouses that made it in the eighteenth century one of the chief entrepôts of the Caribbean. It became particularly important after 1763; British trade was then prohibited between the French and Spanish islands, so that the trade passed into the hands of the Danes and Dutch; St Eustatius vied with St Thomas for the international trade of the area. In times of war its prosperity soared, and the British were well aware it was maintaining an extensive trade between Holland and the United States. St Eustatius was, in fact, the first port to salute the American flag, an action that was observed in St Kitts. The British were convinced that by stopping its trade a powerful blow would be levelled at the rebels’ economy. Rodney was ordered to capture it.

  He found it unarmed and unprepared; its governor did not even know that he was at war. Rodney’s sacking of the defenceless island was ruthlessly complete. He confiscated four million pounds’ worth of booty,
destroyed the warehouses, and treated the inhabitants without consideration. He moreover kept the Dutch flag flying from its towers, so that foreign vessels might seek refuge there unawares. The island never recovered its prosperity.

  It was at this point that Rodney’s rapacity proved fatal to Britain’s interests. De Grasse was in mid-Atlantic, with a powerful fleet. It should have been possible for Rodney to intercept him. But Rodney was too occupied with plundering. Instead of throwing his full forces against the French, he sent Hood south with a command of nine ships only. Hood was incapable of offering effective opposition, and de Grasse anchored in Fort Royal. Had Rodney been less rapacious, had Martinique been retained by the British at the Peace of Paris, Yorktown could not have been relieved. But Rodney was rapacious, Martinique was in French hands, and Cornwallis had no alternative to surrender. That was in October 1781, and Lord North strode back and forth across his London office, wringing his hands. ‘Oh, God,’ he cried, ‘it is all over.’

  It was all over as far as the thirteen colonies were concerned; they had achieved their independence and become the United States. But in the warm waters of the Caribbean much had yet to be resolved. The British forces – apart from the Hessians, who liked fighting anyhow, and, as long as they were well fed, did not mind whether they were bayoneting ‘Froggies’ or ‘Dom Yonkees’ - had had no particular stomach for a war against men of their own flesh and blood, with whose grievances they had a considerable amount of sympathy. But when France and Spain were allied against them their spirits rose; they were glad to be back in the familiar seas, coasting from one palm-fringed island to another, waiting to pounce on an improvident convoy, to outflank a fort, to plunder an unguarded city. This was the kind of war that Britons knew and liked, and they flung themselves into it with full hearts.