Freedom’s Debt

Pettigrew, William A.

doi:10.5149/northcarolina/9781469611815.001.0001

Cited by 74 publications

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“…Varied descriptions made petitioners appear spontaneous. 58 It also helped combat any perceptions that the public was irrational, or had been misled into signing. 59 An individual seeking to represent his or her interest was understood to act rationally.…”

Section: Middle Sortsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Petitioning and Petitioners to the Westminster Parliament, 1660–1788

Loft

2019

Parliamentary History

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Narratives of the mid‐18th‐century state as drifting towards oligarchy and closure have long been superseded by accounts stressing its responsiveness to outside interests and opinion. Participatory election rituals, crowd activity and the expansion of print media demonstrate that political activism was not limited to a narrow circle of elites, even after the passage of the 1716 Septennial Act. Additionally, as an institution after 1688 the Westminster parliament rendered itself useful to propertied society through its passage of greater amounts of legislation. However, while the strength of party and trajectory of electoral participation is well mapped, as are addresses to the crown, the petitioning of interest groups has had few systematic quantitative surveys. This article first sets out the chronology of petitioning to both houses of parliament from 1660 to 1788, demonstrating that petitioning was at its height before 1722, rather than rising to its greatest levels with the reform movements in the 1780s. Second, the article demonstrates the role of petitioning in expanding the political nation beyond the boundaries of parliamentary boroughs, and why, on occasion, petitioning involved women and illiterate men. Third, in order to emphasize the continuity in petitioning and its contribution to the formation of public opinion, the article compares the different roles that concurrent subscription practices envisaged for the public. Finally, the article argues that despite the rising tendency to cite numerical strength to arbitrate political divisions, petitioners continued to legitimise their voices on the basis of representing collections of reasons and interests rather than opinion.

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Section: Middle Sortsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Petitioning and Petitioners to the Westminster Parliament, 1660–1788

Loft

2019

Parliamentary History

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“…Sir Peter Colleton as committee member of the HBC served as a lobbyist for the RAC to seek a parliamentary statute to confirm its own monopoly. 52 Meanwhile, the company could draw on the enviable wealth of committee members to secure ships, rent warehouse space or hire captains, crews and tradesmen. The members' advanced loans were paid back handsomely in interest at the end of season.…”

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confidence: 99%

Knowing nature in the business records of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1670–1840

Colpitts

2017

Business History

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“…Private "separate traders," meanwhile, increased their profits and ate up much of the RAC's market share. 28 A series of public scandals surrounding stock manipulation and embezzlement of public subsidies by RAC officials had made them the subject of public derision in the 1720s and 1730s, further undermining investor confidence. 29 As William Pettigrew has suggested, skirmishes off the West African coast during the War of the Austrian Succession lent some much-needed credibility to the Company's claims that a strong relationship between traders and the Royal Navy was necessary to resist the encroachments of French interests.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…29 As William Pettigrew has suggested, skirmishes off the West African coast during the War of the Austrian Succession lent some much-needed credibility to the Company's claims that a strong relationship between traders and the Royal Navy was necessary to resist the encroachments of French interests. 30 But this proved a temporary crutch for an essentially defeated RAC. Crichton himself was deeply interested in the way that the Company was perceived by the public at the close of the war, since he personally bore some of the financial impact of its eventual failure.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…33 Pettigrew has demonstrated how the RAC sought to associate its pro-monopoly stance with "sentimentalised commerce" in the mid-eighteenth century by emphasising "the need to treat Africans with humanity, hospitality, and dignity, a dignity that remained attached to royalty and would be best upheld by the royally sponsored African Company." 34 Clearly, the similitude between the titles of Sessarakoo's nominal biography (The Royal African) and the RAC itself manifested connections implied in the text between regal associations and ethical tradespecifically, ethical slave trading. The inability to recognise social rank as a legitimate security from slavery was taken as evidence of the separate trader's moral deficiencies; by refusing to act in a manner that prevented a prince from being enslaved, "he plainly shewed, that, in his opinion, all Blacks were destined to be slaves."…”

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confidence: 99%

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The Royal Slave: Nobility, Diplomacy and the “African Prince” in Britain, 1748–1752

Hanley¹

2015

Itinerario

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William Ansah Sessarakoo, the son of a powerful Fante slave trader on the Gold Coast, was tricked and sold into slavery in Barbados by a British ship’s captain during the 1740s. He was emancipated and brought to Britain in 1748, where he enjoyed a brief period of national celebrity before returning to the Gold Coast in 1750. This paper examines the specific political and cultural circumstances surrounding his remarkable journey, through the lens of the media generated about him during his time in Britain. It demonstrates that the most extensive contemporaneous account of Sessarakoo’s story,The Royal African, was in reality an attempt to generate popular support for a moribund Royal African Company and incorporate slave trading into narratives of national identity, based on notions of economic responsibility and honour. Adhering to conventions typified in Thomas Southerne’s stage adaptation ofOroonoko, further popular representations of Sessarakoo emphasised his aristocratic status and putatively inherited ‘noble’ characteristics. In doing so, they emphasised perceived differences between him and the majority of African peoples, who were deemed suitable for enslavement. The paper closes with an examination of some of the effects of Sessarakoo’s visit on Euro-African trade and diplomacy on the Gold Coast.

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Freedom’s Debt

Cited by 74 publications

References 0 publications

Petitioning and Petitioners to the Westminster Parliament, 1660–1788

Petitioning and Petitioners to the Westminster Parliament, 1660–1788

Knowing nature in the business records of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1670–1840

The Royal Slave: Nobility, Diplomacy and the “African Prince” in Britain, 1748–1752

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