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The Cost of Pitt's Caribbean Campaigns, 1793–1798

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

David Geggus
David Geggus
Affiliation:
University of Florida
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Type
Communications
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , September 1983 , pp. 699 - 706
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

1 Annual Register, 1797, p. 128.

2 Geggus, D., ‘The British government and the Saint Domingue slave revolt, 1793–1798’, English Historical Review, XCVI (1981), 285–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Geggus, D., ‘Yellow fever in the 1790s: the British army in occupied Saint Domingue’, Medical History, XXIII (1979), 38–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 The Times, 15 Aug. 1794; Annual Register, 1796, p. 66ff.

5 Annual Register, 1796, p. 66ff.; Parliamentary history, XXXII, 902–18.

6 However, Burke actually made this addition to his Regicide peacea few weeks before he received Dr Lawrence's letter of 24 November: William, Charles, Fitzwilliam, Earl, and SirRichard, Bourke (eds.), Correspondence of the Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke (4 vols., London, 1844), IV, 366–7Google Scholar; Copeland, T. W. (ed.), The correspondence of Edmund Burke (10 vols., Cambridge, 1958–1978), IX, 97 n. 1.Google Scholar

7 Annual Register,1797, p. 128.

8 Parliamentary history, XXXIII, 575–94.

9 McLean, Hector, An enquiry into the nature and causes of the great mortality among the troops at St Domingo (London, 1797), preface, p. 80. CfGoogle Scholar. Annual Register, 1797, pp. 121–6; Geggus, D., ‘British opinion and the emergence of Haiti, 1791–1805’, in.Walvin, J. (ed.), Slavery and British society, 1776–1846 (London, 1982).Google Scholar

10 Annual Register, 1802, p. 74. Fourteen seamen were executed.

11 Parliamentary papers, house of commons, 1795–6, XLII (840).

12 Parliamentary papers, house of commons, 1796–7, XLIII (867).

13 Edwards, Bryan, Historical survey of the island of St Domingo (London, 1801), p. 399.Google Scholar

14 Figures of 30,000 and 45,000 are given in Lacroix, P. de, Mémoires pour servir à Phistoire de la révolution de Saint-Domingue (Paris, 1819)Google Scholar and in Malenfant, C., Des colonies et particulièrement de celle de Saint-Domingue (Paris, 1814)Google Scholar. In May, 1802, Richard, Brinsley Sheridan claimed that the whole war had cost nearly 200,000 British lives: Parliamentary history, XXXVI, 819.Google Scholar

15 Fortescue, J. W., History of the British army (13 vols., London, 1899–1930), VI, 565.Google Scholar

16 Edwards, Survey, p. 402.

17 Fortescue, History, IV, 325. Cf. Augier, R., The making of the West Indies (London, 1974), p. 115: ‘Between 1794 and 1798, nearly 100,000 British soldiers and sailors were lost in the West Indies, the greater part in St. Domingue.’Google Scholar

18 Witness his editing of The correspondence of King George III (6 vols., London, 1927–1928).Google Scholar

19 In addition to a general antipathy towards the West Indies, which almost involved him in a libel suit with the West India Committee, Fortescue was peculiarly critical of the Saint Domingue venture, displaying towards its chief proponent, Henry Dundas, a hostility reminiscent of that of his forbear, the foreign secretary, Grenville.

20 Buckley, R. N., ‘The destruction of the British Army in the West Indies, 1793–1815: a medical history’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, LVI (1978), 85 n. 30Google Scholar; Buckley, R. N., Slaves in redcoats: the British West India regiments, 1795–1815 (New Haven, 1979), P99.Google Scholar

21 History, IV, 496.

22 Plumb, J. H., England in the eighteenth century (Harmondsworth, 1963), p. 198Google Scholar; Watson, J. Steven, The reign of George III (Oxford, 1964), p. 370.Google Scholar

23 Buckley, ‘Destruction’, p. 79 n. 3.

24 Geggus, D., ‘The destruction of the British army in the West Indies, 1793–1815: some further comments’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, LVI (1978), 238–40Google Scholar; Geggus, D., Slavery, war and revolution: the British occupation of Saint Domingue, 1793–1798 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 362, 383. In addition to the two estimates mentioned, Fortescue also wrote (p. 496) of 25,000 soldiers and 10,000 seamen dying in the West Indies in the period 1794–6.Google Scholar

25 In addition to Plumb, Steven Watson, Buckley and myself, see also Sir Feiling, K. G., A history of England from the coming of the English to 1918 (London, 1950), p. 746Google Scholar; Williams, G., The expansion of Europe in the eighteenth century (London, 1966), p. 243Google Scholar; Bryant, Sir A., The years of endurance, 1793–1802 (London, 1944), p. 151. Plumb and Bryant actually refer only to the years 1794–6.Google Scholar

26 However, there are obvious inconsistencies between Fortescue's History, (IV, 565) and the calculations in his later work, British statesmen of the Great War, 1793–1814 (Oxford, 1911), pp. 129–30.Google Scholar

27 Geggus, Slavery, war and revolution, ch. 13, pt 2.

28 Geggus, ‘Further comments’.

29 Public Records Office, WO 17/2484–90.

30 P.R.O., WO 17/1986–90. I have revised upwards the figure previously given in ‘Further comments’, p. 239. A gap of several months in the Jamaican records makes any estimate uncertain.

31 Some allowance needs to be made for the small detachments which served in the Bahamas and the Honduras settlement.

32 That Fortescue included only British troops in his calculations is shown, I think, when he refers (History, p. 565) to the official estimate of losses in Saint Domingue and omits from it the losses of European troops in British pay.

33 Here I rely on Fortescue, History, IV, 324, 496. On 3 Feb. 1795 an account was presented to the house of commons of military losses distinguishing the different theatres of war but it was not printed and no details of it seem to have survived: Commons journals, L, 121.

34 Geggus, Slavery, war and revolution, p. 362. In April 1797, it was demanded in the house of commons that statements be provided of the mortalities in the royal navy and transport service. Only the latter were produced, however, and these were not printed.

35 P.R.O., ADM 102/426–7.

36 See History, IV, 385.

37 Furber, Holden, Henry Dundas, first Viscount Melville (London, 1931), p. 100.Google Scholar

38 Rainsford, M., An historical account of the black empire of Hayti (London, 1805), p. 412.Google Scholar

39 Parliamentary papers, house of commons, 1809, v (141), 278–9, 292; P.R.O., 30/8/242,97–216. The initiative in the matter derived from the 7th report of the committee for public accounts, 18 June 1782.

40 Parliamentary papers, house of commons, 1809, v (141), 277.

41 P.R.O., AO 3/200 and 265.

42 Commons journals, 49–54. Unless otherwise stated, the Commons journalsare the source of all subsequent figures.

43 Parliamentary papers, house of commons, 1795–6, XLII (840), 231.

44 Facts relative to the conduct of the war in the West Indies... (London, 1796), 32–53.Google Scholar

45 The tonnage of the troopships was only 50,000 tons; that of the ordnance ships, about 4,000 tons: P.R.O., WO 1/798.

46 See above, n. 38.

47 Commons journals, XLIX, 81, LI, 287, LII, 271, LIII, 257.

48 Treasury investigators later unearthed ‘such a mass of public corruption, fraud and abuse’, they declared, ‘as has never, probably, been equalled in the history of the country’. The main offenders were commissaries and paymasters who falsified the rates at which bills were negotiated, with the collusion of merchant friends, and who charged for stores that were never actually supplied. Abuses were concentrated, it seems, not in Saint Domingue but in the south Caribbean. When reforms were implemented in 1806, average expenditure was cul by 18 per cent, Parliamentary papers, house of commons, 1809, v (141), 273, 361 and passim.

49 P.R.O., 30/8/239, 141–2; above, n. 47.

50 Above, n. 41.

51 P.R.O., CUST 17/16–20.

52 Geggus, Slavery, war and revolution, p. 377 (Customs House values).

53 Commons journals, XLIX, III; Parliamentary papers, house of commons, 1798–9, XLVIII (970).

54 Cambridge history of the British Empire, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1940), p. 66Google Scholar; Drescher, S.Econocide. British slavery in the era of abolition (Pittsburgh, 1977), p. 67.Google Scholar

55 Geggus, Slavery, war and revolution, pp. 384–5.

56 Parliamentary history, XXXII, 752 and XXXIII, 584.

57 In this period, the exclusion of British goods from Europe was not yet a danger.