Storm Centre

Storm Centre

Come follow me, and take my hand

As heavy rain comes pouring down

Across the hills, across the town

And rivers flow out over land

The storm is breaking where I stand

Torrential rain, like fine spun gown

Come follow me, and take my hand

As heavy rain comes pouring down

Far off is distant shore and sand

Full fathoms deep, you’re sinking down

But trust in me, you shall not drown

The waves are high, but this was planned

Come follow me, and take my hand

James Carteret: The Black Sheep

There has recently been an interest in James Carteret because of his part as a slave trader. As Doug Ford notes:

‘The Speedwell, commanded by James Carteret, Sir George’s son, undertook one of the early voyages of the company [Royal African Company]. Leaving London in January 1663, he picked up 302 slaves in the port of Offra in the Bight of Benin and transported them to the West Indies — twenty died on the passage. In February 1664 he sold some of his “cargo” in Barbados and then the following month he sold the rest of the slaves in St Kitts. By the time he left in March 1664, Carteret had sold ‘155 men, 105 women and 22 boys to the eager planters.’

Given his later career, it is not certain why he ended up in charge, but it may well have been that he secured the post because of George Carteret's attempt to do something with a son who was already showing wayward tendencies, and who would be later described as "a weak and dissolute natural son" when he settled in New Jersey.

An indication of his wayward nature earlier is the mention of him owing money. Julien R. Childs writing in “The Naval Career of Joseph West” notes that:

Hitherto unnoticed in this connection are two lists in the Pepysian  Manuscripts according to which James, Duke of York, as high admiral of  England, commissioned one James Carteret captain of the Jersey in 1666 and of the Foresight in 1668, and a Joseph West lieutenant of the  Jersey in 1667 and of the Foresight in 1668.14 This James was the navy treasurer's son, and the lieutenant, beyond reasonable doubt the same Joseph West who asked Sir George in 1671 to "order mee the money  that your sonne James owes me." As the Jersey and the Foresight were  both fourth rates with a small complement of officers, Captain Carteret  was in a position to furnish information on Joseph West in reports available to Sir George through the admiralty.

Here's the account of him in Balleine's Biographical Dictionary of Jersey:

CARTERET, JAMES (d. 1682), New Jersey Rebel. Second son of Sir George Carteret, Treasurer of the Navy (q.v.), and Elizabeth De Carteret, his wife.

Chalmers in his ADD s calls James illegitimate, and other writers have repeated this, but it is incorrect. A Royal Warrant of 11 Feb 1680 grants “to Elizabeth, widow of the late Sir George Carteret, and to his younger son James the same precedence as they would have had, had Sir George been actually created a Baron, he having died before the Patent could be sued out”.

An illegitimate son would have ‘had no precedence. Since his elder brother was born in Oct 1642. James cannot have ‘been born till 1643, and so was still a child in 1651 when, before the surrender of Elizabeth Castle, Lady Carteret sent her children to St. Malo. The boy was brought up in France, and. when old enough, like his father he was sent to sea, probably in a privateer.

In 1664 he was in command of one of the slave-boats of his father's Royal African Company, and a letter from Barbados reported small-pox among the Negroes on his ship (C. P.). In 1665 he entered the Navy. and. no doubt through Sir George's influence, became Lieutenant of the Royal Prince, and is mentioned as convoying a ship from Gothenburg (S. P.) and in the same year was put in command of the Oxford (22 guns). In July 1667 he was acting as Vice-Admiral of the British Fleet operating against the French in the West Indies. He kept Christmas in New Jersey. In 1668 he was in command of the Foresight, end in 1669 of the Jersey (48 guns). Then he left the Navy.

In May 1671 he was appointed by the Lords Proprietors, of whom his father was one, a Landgrave of Carolina with “a Barony of 12,000 acres in a commodious place near the head of Cooper River” (Pipon Papers in S. J. Library). In September he was in New York and in May 1672 in New Jersey, of which his father was also a Lord Proprietor.

He found revolt brewing against his father and Philippe De Carteret (q.v.), a distant cousin, who was Governor. The malcontents, who refused to pay the quit-rents which the Lords Proprietors demanded, called an Assembly at Elizabethtown, and James put himself at their head.

In the Report which the duly constituted officials sent to London they said: — “He gives forth continual threatenings against those that do not obey his orders, and has persons adhering to him that probably will be ready to execute his will, so that they may have the plundering of our estates; and all these proceedings he carries on with the pretence that he hath power sufficient, he being Sir George Carteret's son, and that he himself is Proprietor, and can put out the Governor as he pleases, and that his Father hath given him his part of the Province, though he doth not shew any grant or commission, but saith he scorneth to shew his power to such fellows as we neither need he so doing on his own land” (Whitehead. East Jersey under the Proprietors).

The rebels then deposed Philippe, and made James "President of the Country". He ordered the arrest of all officials who refused to recognize his authority, and the confiscation of their estates.

Philippe sailed -to England to report to the Lords Proprietors. The latter entirely repudiated James and stern letters were sent to New Jersey, not only by the Proprietors but by the King, threatening his “high displeasure” on all who dared to resist the Governor's authority. The revolt then fizzled out, and James disappeared from New Jersey.

In April 1673, before the Kings letter arrived, he had married Frances, daughter of Thomas de la Val. Mayor of New York. On 1 July he and his bride set out for Carolina, but the ship in which he was travelling was captured by the Dutch, and they were set ashore in Virginia. By April 1676 they were back in New York.

Carteret's character now seems to have gone to pieces. We get a glimpse of him in Oct. 1679 in Dankers' Journal. The writer spent a night in a house at Harlem. “filled with people drinking for -the most part execrable rum. Among the crowd was a person of quality, an Englishman named Capn. Carteret, a very profligate person. He married a merchant's daughter here, and has so lived with his wife that her father has been compelled to take her home again. He runs about the farmers, and stays where he can find most drink, and sleeps in barns on the straw. If he conducted himself properly, he could be Governor, for he seems to have been of a good understanding: but that is now all drowned. His father, who will not acknowledge him as his son as before, allows him yearly as much only as is necessary for him to live”.

Sir George died in 1680 a very rich man, and, as his elder brother was dead, James would normally have inherited a large share of the fortune, but his father left him only £100 a year, and that on condition that he renounced all claims to lands in Jersey. He returned however to Jersey, and was buried in St. Peter's Church on 12 Sept. 1682.

The Register records, “He was laid in the earth by De Carterets, three of whom were Knights”.

(These must have been Sir Edward. his uncle, Sir Philippe, his cousin, the Bailiff, and Sir George, his nephew. Two of these however were Baronets).

This shows that. in spite of his past, he was not disowned by his family. Three years later his wife came to Jersey with her two small children. George and Elizabeth. She died in 1688, and the children were put under a guardian.

When George came of age in 1702 he went to New York to try to recover property which her father had settled on his mother at the time of her marriage, but on his return he was killed in an accident in London (Pipon Papers in S. J. Library). Elizabeth married (1) Philippe De Carteret, Seigneur of Rozel, (2) Philippe Pipon (q.v.), Seigneur of Noirmont.

A Borderline Strategy: Tourism and Coronavirus

A Borderline Strategy

The Local Situation

The JEP noted:

“With new cases of Covid-19 slowing down, the chamber believes the time is right to take the next step in boosting the economy. Earlier this week Chief Minister John Le Fondré said it was still hoped that borders could open early in July. Daphne East, chairwoman of the chamber’s retail and supply committee, said that the visitor economy was worth £280 million per year and was vital to both the retail and supply sectors.”

Senator Lyndon Farnham has said:

‘We have already undertaken a comprehensive trial at Jersey Airport to introduce a testing regime on arrival, supported by track and trace, and this will pave the way for the opening of our ports in a manner that continues to protect our Island, while sustaining our valuable visitor economy.’

So what is the testing regime?

“During the trial, passengers will have the option of being tested for COVID-19 when they arrive at the airport. They would then be tested for COVID-19 tests again on subsequent days while they remain in Jersey. Passengers who choose not to participate in the trial will be required to self-isolate for 14 days, as per the current guidance. Participating passengers will receive an initial swab (polymerase chain reaction or ‘PCR’ test) to determine whether they are currently displaying the virus. They will then need to self-isolate until receiving the first test result (within 48 hours). “

“Passengers whose first PCR test is negative will then receive written permission not to self-isolate. However, that permission will be of limited duration and will be conditional on completing the full testing programme. Passengers who test positive for the PCR test at any stage during the process will be required to self-isolate. The next stage in the testing programme will be a finger-prick dual blood test, clinically called a serology test, to be taken on the fourth day after arriving in Jersey. Passengers may then be required to take up two additional PCR tests on the fourth and seventh days after arriving. The combination of a series of PCR tests, plus a serology test, is a robust approach to border testing, as advised by Scientific and Technical Advisory Cell (STAC).”

Note the “may” for the additional PCR tests, suggesting it might be dropped at some stage. For a test with only 70% accuracy, that is a concern.

Looking the the numbers

Bailiwick Express comments that:

“Condor are in talks with Government with a view to resuming sailings between St. Malo, Poole and Jersey at the beginning of next month, with face masks and a cap of 250 passengers likely to be part of the ‘new normal’.”

So let’s see what it would be like. Assume – in additional to local testing – that 500 people can be tested a day, and that the addition PCR test is dropped – but not the serology test.

So for July at 500 per day, 31 days = 15,500 visitors.

The statistics give somewhere like 70,000 visitors for July 2019 and for August approx. 105,000.

That’s 22% for July, and 15% for August which still leaves a huge shortfall for tourism.

The Dangers of No Testing

The problem is that if you don’t do some kind of border checking, the virus may creep back and expand in the community again, in which case – in the absence of a vaccine – a second wave and another lockdown may be on the cards.

The case of Greece highlights issues involved. The Guardian reported this on 3 June:

“Greece has been forced to confront the risks of restarting international tourism after authorities announced that 12 out of 91 passengers onboard a Qatar Airways flight to Athens had tested positive for coronavirus. The civil protection ministry responded by suspending air links to and from the Arab state until 15 June. All 91 travellers on the flight were immediately placed in quarantine.”

As Forbes reported:

“The decision goes to show that no move to reopen borders to tourists or others is absolute. There is plenty of scope to backtrack or adapt the policy to exclude arrivals from some countries. But it also shows how the risk is there. Not only for European countries welcoming back international tourists, but for passengers taking a plane.”

And there are also decisions to be made about whether all tourists are acceptable. For example, France has restrictions on some travellers:

“France opened its Schengen borders on 15 June, but will not open borders to international visitors before the beginning of July and even then it is not expected to allow tourists from certain countries still struggling with the coronavirus.”

Which countries pose lower risks?

Greek Reporter.Com noted different categories in allowing countries tourists into others:

“Israeli authorities express the concern that Greece might close the tourist corridor between the two countries as there is an increase in cases of COVID-19 in the Middle Eastern country. According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Cyprus and Montenegro downgraded Israel from “Category A” to “Category B” in the relevant evaluation list. This means that Israeli visitors should have a negative test to allow them to enter those countries. There is a worry that the same might happen with Greece as well.”

The regime in Greece for many travellers is as follows:

“Every passenger arriving in Greece must be tested for the virus and stay overnight at a designated hotel. Visitors who test negative are required to self-isolate for seven days, while the ones who test positive must spend 14 days under a supervised quarantine.”

But in order to ramp numbers of visitors up, they are loosening that to random tests:

“International flights will be allowed to all airports in Greece and visitors will be subject only to random tests. Restrictions applying to specific countries might be announced at a later date.”

That may be a poor decision, if a second wave or spike hits.

An Alternative to Travel Insurance

Cyprus, as the BBC reports, has considered other encouragements:

Cyprus has pledged to cover the holiday costs of anyone who tests positive for the virus after travelling there. In a letter made public on Wednesday, the government said it would pay for accommodation, medicine and food for patients and their families. Tourists "will only need to bear the cost of their airport transfer and repatriation flight".

Given the very low incidence of cases, it does not seem prudent to lose testing altogether. The case of the flight to Greece shows that – without testing – 12 cases could have been loose in the community, and then pass that on to others. With social distancing down to one metre, the potential for a spike would be increased.

Iceland: A Good Model for Jersey?

Schengenvisainfo news notes that:

"A total of 5,500 travellers have been tested for Coronavirus upon their arrival in Iceland since the country began the screening process at its borders one week ago. From 5,500 tests, 11 of them have tested positive, and only two of those were active cases requiring isolation "

Clearly what is needed is to ramp up testing. Iceland is also charging for testing – although quarantine is free, because otherwise the enterprise is not commercially viable. The alternative is mandatory quarantine. For those who like the mathematics, this is on a 7 day week, an average of 786 tests per day, not massively more than ours.

But it shows what can be done if you ramp up testing enough, and any strategy for Jersey Tourism needs to plan for that.

Shaping up a Policy

So what shape might Jersey’s policy look like?

• Increase capacity for testing. It is a huge gamble to remove testing. While the numbers may be low at present, a second wave could bring them back in numbers. The late restriction of travel globally showed how easy was is to act too late and restrict flights. If flights are not to be restricted, testing needs to be in place. It is Jersey’s travel insurance. Any removal should be a decision by the States, not just the Government.
• Better contact tracing and documentation. For Iceland, on their arrival, travellers will be required to fill out a pre-registration form adhere to rules regarding infection control and are advised to download the tracing app, Raking C-19. Through the pre-registration process, passengers’ testing will be facilitated and will shorten their wait time.
• Covering the holiday costs of anyone who tests positive for the virus after travelling there. Remember there is no travel insurance cover for Covid-19 at present.
• Categorise countries and only permit travellers from countries with falling rates to come as tourists. Countries like Brazil or the USA should be currently on a high risk category.
• Fines for anyone breaking quarantine or the short term self-isolation.

And above all, a properly thought out and documented strategy.

Lockdown and Riots

"Staying home and not socialising your dogs, most notably puppies, risks them becoming afraid of unfamiliar people and other dogs."

The pressures of being cooped up indoors has also increased the risk of bad behaviour from all members of the family – and Lorna Winter, chairman of the Association of Applied Pet Behaviourists and Trainers, said her members had reported a rise in the number of incidents of otherwise well-behaved dogs giving a nip to children who won’t leave them alone

-- Vet Times

What has this to do with the recent UK riots, or the increased propensity for vandalising public monuments, and statues in particular?

Human beings are also social animals, and while changes in our behaviour are not necessarily as noticable as that with dogs, it is there nonetheless.

Being grounded except for a limited number of hours exercise and going to the shops singly, being unable to meet with work colleagues, friends and family, all lead to a pressure cooker society, which in  turn has led to an increase in domestic violence. The normal outlets - going out for a meal, for coffee, having a chat at the pub, going to the gym, have all been removed.  A solitary walk is not the same as a walk and talk.

It should be noted that places like gyms, even if people go singly, still induce a level of discipline; it was not just for good health that schools introduced team sports and gymnastics, it was part of an ethos which went by the phrase "a healthy mind in a healthy body". Of course the Victorians also had hang ups about sex, especially in all male public schools, but nonetheless the dictum does have a degree of truth in it. 

Even easing lockdown doesn't fully compensate. Shopping, for instance, has become a solitary pursuit with more than one person doing the shopping discouraged. Supermarkets in particular are quite sensible asking only one person to shop for the family (unless help is needed for the elderly etc). But that means part of the shopping experience, that sharing of the experience, and chatting, or for that matter chatting to old friends or acquiantances has gone. It has an isolating effect. It is not just physical distancing, it is very much social distancing.

And alongside that, we have the internet. If ever there was a means of creating antisocial behaviour, it is the internet, where people tend to behave in ways in which they would never behave in a face to face situation. This was of course the case before lockdown, but it was balanced by other factors: the other kinds of interpersonal socialisation, even with strangers, which has been removed.

The result is that the internet has, in cases, become something of an unchecked force for radicalisation. Groups bind together, and if talk of violent action is on the agenda, there is nothing but this virtual and narcissistic talking shop. All kinds of weird and wacky ideas get put out, and people lose those inhibitions which are an important part of both socialisation and civilisation.

In a local context, to say, as has been done, that Sir George Carteret (an adventurer who later in life invested in slave trading companies) would have been good friends with Jimmy Saville is about as sensible as saying that George Washington (a slave owner) would have been friendly with Jack the Ripper. It's a bizarre comparison, and in normal circumstances would never have been given any credence. But with the Topple the Statue bandwagon, these are not normal circumstances.

MP Christopher Pincher had some very good points to say about how things should be done.

"On a wider point, the illegal pulling down of statues is not something we like in Britain. We use quiet and measured approaches, and the tried and tested tools for change. Our buildings and monuments can be changed through petition, debating and voting, all at a local level. We have the right to peaceful protest in this county, a right that many citizens across the world do not have, but we do not have the right to attack our police forces or smash public property."

But the incident of throwing paint over the statue of Sir George Carteret, has led to an incident throwing paint over an abstract statue (with no slavery connection) and the assault on a police officer. Once you move to "direct action", it gives a legitimacy to the thuggish element in society who basically are just looking for some excuse for vandalism, and take that as a green light.

I think the absence of measured debate is reprehensible, and anyone castigating public monuments (who might after all have a legitimate case) should make it clear explicitly that they are totally opposed to violent methods which could lead to all sorts of mindless violence. Some people just like smashing or defacing things. Rather like computer virus writers, they get their kick out of seeing it reported in the news. 

G.K. Chesterton got it so right with his parable about the lamp post:

Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. 

A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, "Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good--" 

At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. 

Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. 

And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.

Postscript:

Apparently the comments after that comparison mentioned above by the writer were to the effect that Jimmy Saville befriended the rich and powerful and the courted the royals. And if he were friends with Prince Charles, Ester Ranzen, Maggie Thatcher, he would have also ingratiated himself with the absent Bailiff at the time. As the comments obviously came after critical remarks on the original post, I cannot but see this as anything other than special pleading. To my mind, the obvious deduction from the original remark was that they were both bad men, therefore they would have got on well. But I put this here in fairness so that the reader can make up their own mind!

Midsummer

Midsummer

Come, break of day, come and inspire
And rise up from the earth as fire
The summer sun, an ancient art
That solstice to us gifts impart

The stars are fading high above
The druids gather here in love
To celebrate the dawning light
And opening of an inner sight

No gods are here, not face to face
And yet the wind brings with it grace
Both at the henge, and distant home
That breath of life that bids us roam

Teach us the signs of rising sun
Reflections, myths, of that great One
As distant times, there all along
The longest day, the sweetest song

Praise the Midsummer, rising slow
And listen as the wind does blow

Sir George Carteret - Part 2

When we left Sir George Carteret’s story in Balleine’s Biographical History of Jersey, the year was 1661 and he had just been appointed Vice-Chamberlain of the King’s Household, a Privy Councillor, and Treasurer of the Navy with a house in Deptford Dockyard, as well as being elected M.P. for Portsmouth.

That part can be read here:

https://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2020/06/sir-george-carteret-part-1.html

And his part in the Royal African Company can be read here:

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2020/06/sir-george-carteret-and-royal-african.html

So what are we to make of Sir George?

To see of him simply as an investor in the slave trade and just to highlight that is to diminish his other activities and his other often dubious investments – he was clearly not someone who sought only one source of revenue. As Balleine says, “Wherever an investment looked promising, Carteret jumped at it, for acquisitiveness was one strongly marked feature in his character.”

As the Jersey Evening Post noted in 2010 (long before the statue was erected, or the controversy erupted about it): “It is dangerous to judge historical figures by contemporary values, but Sir George Carteret clearly had moral standards which would raise eyebrows today.”

When the statue of Sir George Carteret was erected, BBC news reported that the Constable, Mr Refault said Sir George is a role model for youngsters and should be recognised locally and nationally. I have to say that is something which is certainly not the case!!!

As a role model, his life leaves a lot to be desired, even leaving aside the issue of slavery. When it was mooted at one point (because of the Old Court House connection) that a statue of him should be at St Aubin, I was understandably cautious, because his privateering activities left a lot to be desired, as Balleine points out (see below)..

I understand that St Peter parish officials will be consulted by the Constable about adding a further plaque to the statue of Sir George Carteret to explain his connections with the slave trade.

I hope the plaque goes a bit further and also mentions that he was a seafaring adventurer, a valiant defender of Royalty, but also an investor in the slave trade and also an unscrupulous privateer. We need to see the whole man, warts and all. We should not airbrush him out of history, but we should make it clear his legacy was a mixed one. Statues are important signs of historical legacy, but they also need interpretation. But the history should not be buried away in books. Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

The one historical fact of note, and why the statue should definitely remain, is his renaming the colony state of New Netherland to New Jersey. That is what really made him significant, and yet it was in some ways the slightest of his achievements, which were both good and bad.

There are certain parallels between Sir George Carteret and Sir Walter Raleigh. Both were adventurers, out to seek fame and fortune, both supporters of the Royalty of their day (Charles II, Elizabeth I) and as well as being notable historical people, were also out to make money and curry the Royal favour. And both have a Jersey connection.

But Raleigh's ventures came to grief when he fell out of favour, and he ended up in the Tower. Sir George was more fortunate to have simply died of old age before a change of monarchist dynasty. He might well not have survived the accession of William of Orange to the throne. In their way, both were "Great Men". They left a mark on history. We have Elizabeth Castle and New Jersey. But that does not mean they were always good men.

This is the second section from Balleine’s Biographical Dictionary of Jersey.

CARTERET, SIR GEORGE (d. 1680), Baronet, Bailiff and Lieutenant-Governor, Treasurer of the Navy. (Though a De Carteret, he dropped the De, and his descendants followed his example: so this branch of the family will be entered as CARTERET.)

His main work for the next six years lay in the Navy Office, where he had as Clerk (or, as he would now be called, Permanent Under Secretary) Samuel Pepys; and the diarist gives many intimate pictures of him.

This appointment was for him a misfortune. Charles was desperately short of money. The seamen s pay was in arrears, and the ships were seething with discontent. The war with Holland was going badly, and the Dutch sailed up the Medway. For all this the blame was laid on Carteret’s shoulders. He was obviously a very rich man; and the suspicion spread that he was appropriating money belonging to the Fleet. .In 1666 Parliament called for the Navy Accounts, and appointed a Committee to examine them. Pepys unblushingly confesses that the Accounts had been cooked.

“Strange how we plot to make the charge of this war appear greater than it is”. But this was to squeeze more money out of Parliament, not to enrich the Treasurer. The real trouble was the extraordinarily intricate system of accountancy. The Committee could make neither head nor tail of it; nor could two Commissions of Accounts appointed afterwards. But eventually a Report was presented to the House that more than a million pounds could not be accounted for. Carteret protested that, so far from pocketing a penny, he had borrowed large sums on his own credit to keep the Fleet at sea; but in 1669 the Commons by 138 votes to 129 found him guilty, and deprived him of his seat in the House.

The Lords on the other hand decided that “Sir G. Carteret has done nothing contrary to his duty as Treasurer”. The recent publication of the Calendar of Treasury Books has at last settled this question. The Editor, with far more evidence before him than either Commission had, entirely acquits Sir George. “The lasting impression is of an active, capable, honest body of officials struggling vainly against absolutely insuperable financial difficulties. Carteret kept the Fleet at sea by raising yearly a quarter of a million on his own credit at a time when the Treasury Lords were unable to assist him, and when the Fleet would otherwise have had to be laid up”. The King knew this, and would not give him up to the wrath of the Commons. In 1666, when the trouble began, he allowed him to exchange posts with the Earl of Anglesey, and he became Receiver General and Treasurer of War for Ireland with an office in Dublin, a post he held till 1670. In 1673 he returned to the Admiralty as Commissioner.

Part of his wealth came from his colonial ventures. In 1665 he was one of eight Lords Proprietors to whom the King granted all the land between Virginia and Florida, a district to which had been given the name Carolina. In the following year he succeeded in establishing a New Jersey.

In 1664 he and Lord Berkeley presented a detailed Report to the King showing how easy it would be to seize the sparsely populated Dutch Colony of New Netherlands, which divided the two blocks of British colonies on the Atlantic coast. An expedition was sent, which occupied the district, and the two originators of the scheme were rewarded with the part which now forms the State of New Jersey. In 1665 the two Lords Proprietors appointed Philippe De Carteret (q.v.), a distant cousin of Sir George, as Governor and sent out the first shipload of colonists.

In 1670 the King made a grant to six Lords Proprietors, of whom De Carteret was one, of “all those islands commonly called the Bahama Islands with power to appoint Governors, make laws, wage wars, and transport colonists from England”.

Nor did he confine his interests to America In 1672 he became one of the Foundation Members of the Royal African Company, to which the King granted the whole West Coast of Africa from Sallee to the Cape in return for a payment of two elephants to be made whenever he visited those dominions.

Speculations nearer home also attracted him. In 1665 he obtained a licence to dig for coal in Windsor Forest. In the same year he secured permission to try to reclaim many thousands of acres of land in Connaught which were flooded every tide. On 1667 he became one of the farmers of the Chimney Tax; in the following year one of the farmers of the Import Duties into Ireland.

Wherever an investment looked promising, Carteret jumped at it, for acquisitiveness was one strongly marked feature in his character. He was a very shrewd business man. Hyde described him as “the most dexterous man in business I have ever known”: and Pepys said of him. “He is diligent, but all for his own ends and profit”.

When other Royalists lost their all, he came out of the Civil War with a very large fortune. This more unpleasant side of his nature is seen in his reluctance to help Castle Cornet, unless his hard-pressed fellow-Governor would pledge his estates to repay.

His privateering came so near to piracy that at last the King was forced to disown it. At the surrender of Elizabeth Castle he secured far better terms for himself than for his officers. He was allowed to retain his estates and to remove all his furniture and plate to France. They had to compound for their estates by paying two years income.

In his colonial ventures he was the worst type of absentee landlord, contributing nothing toward the colony, but merely drawing his rents.

Yet according to his lights he was no rogue. Pepys, who knew him as well as anyone, said, “I do take him for a most honest man”. He was a tremendous worker. Even his enemy Coventry confessed, “He is a man that do take most pains and gives himself the most to do business of any about the Court without any desire of pleasure or divertisement” (Pepys); and he retained even amid the revels of Whitehall much of his Jersey Puritanism: “He hath taken the liberty to tell the King the necessity of having at least a show of Religion in the Government and sobriety (ibid).

He was proud of his influence over Charles. I have almost brought things to such a pass”, he told Pepys, “as I am to do. that the King will not be able to whip a cat. but I will be at his tail”. Hyde called him the kindest of friends ; but he was a bad man to cross. Pepys described him as the “the most passionate man in the world”, and he was utterly merciless toward conquered foes. But the fine point in his character was his simple, undeviating, almost dog-like devotion to the Crown in its darkest days.

The King was about to raise him to the peerage: when he died on 13 Jan. 1680 at Hawnes, Bedfordshire, in the house he had bought. His widow was granted by royal warrant the same precedence that she would have had, if the promised creation had taken place; and his grandson and heir was creation Baron Carteret of Hawnes.

Sir George had thee sons Philippe (q.v.), James (q.v.), and George ; and five daughters, Anne, who was married to Sir Nicholas Stanning by the Bishop of London in the Savoy Chapel in 1662, Rachel, Elizabeth, Carolina, who married when fifteen Sir Thomas Scott, and Louise Margaretta, who when fifteen married Sir Robert Atkyns. It is noteworthy that in the Marriage Licences his daughters are called De Carteret.

In his will Carteret left to each parish in. Jersey a legacy for its poor. Portraits of Sir George and his wife by Lely are in St. Ouen’s Manor.

Sir George Carteret and the Royal African Company

Sir George Carteret and the Royal African Company

On Friday I will be posting the final part of Balleine’s article on George Carteret from the Biographical Dictionary of Jersey, but today my focus is on my researches into George Carteret and the Royal African Company.

Sir George Carteret is mentioned in connection with the founding of the Royal African Company, but what part did he actually play?

I am not seeking in this study to allocate culpability or to whitewash Sir George. Anyone from Royalty down investing the company must have been aware that at least part of its trade was in slaves. After all, the charters issued by King Charles II (1630–1685) represent the moment at which the transatlantic slave trade officially began, with royal approval, in the English Empire. But while he was a figure of note in his day, was he known here for being a prominent courtier, or because of the scale of his involvement?

He was a “consultant” which basically meant an extra source of revenue in case the company had to draw upon his geographical knowledge of the African coast, and local historian Doug Ford notes that he was paid the sum of £300 per annum for that role.

First of all, let’s look at how the company operated? In “The Decline of the Royal African Company: Fringe Firms and the Role of the Charter”, Ann Carlos and Jamie Kruse note that:

“Although it was thought of as a slave trading enterprise, slaves were only one among a number of products shipped by the Company from Africa. In fact, over the last four decades of the seventeenth century, slaves comprised only 40 per cent of total English trade with Africa. The Royal African Company was a multi-product monopolist, which, in addition to slaves, also exported gold, ivory, malaguetta (pepper), and redwood (a dye). Castles were built and maintained to protect the gold trade, not the slave trade. As Eltis points out, one does not find structures equivalent to Cape Corso Castle on those areas of the coast which supplied four-fifths of the slaves. 'No castle was ever built where gold was unimportant’.”

“The African trade was based on barter in that goods were brought to Africa and exchanged for other commodities or for slaves. The commodities consisted of redwood (a dye), ivory, gold, wax, and malaguetta (pepper), which were shipped directly to England for sale. The trade in slaves was essentially a triangular one. Commodities were shipped to Africa; slaves were purchased, transported to the West Indies, and sold; and the proceeds, in bullion, bills of exchange, or sugar, were sent to London.”

Although Carteret was a consultant, he had retired from seafaring, and was purely an investor in the company. He is mentioned in many histories (and by Balleine and by Doug Ford) as a “founder”.

For example in “Freedom's Debt: The Royal African Company and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672-1752”, (which is the reference given by Wikipedia) for him being a "founder", William A. Pettigrew comments that:

“The duke of York had been the African Company’s governor since its creation and was its largest shareholder. The African Company’s charter and its intimacy with the royal family proved attractive for investors. Conspicuous among early subscribers were those at the heart of Charles II’s circle (including four of five of the Cabal, the king’s select group of advisers): Sir Edmund Andros, Henry Bennet, earl of Arlington, George Villiers, Lord Buckingham, Sir George Carteret, Sir Thomas Clifford, Sir Peter Colleton, Sir William Coventry, William Craven, earl of Craven, Lawrence Du Puy, Ferdinando Gorges, Lord Francis Hawley, John Locke, Thomas Povey, Prince Rupert, Sir Joseph Williamson, and Matthew Wren. Many of these men had experience of the Atlantic economy. Sir Peter Colleton owned vast plantations in Barbados. Sir Edmund Andros had been governor of New York and would become James II’s governor of his Atlantic supercolony, the Dominion of New England. Ferdinando Gorges had estates in New England, and Sir George Carteret was a lord proprietor of the Carolinas. John Locke’s expertise in transatlantic issues is also well known.”

But in his book “The Royal African Company” (also referenced in Wikipedia), K. G. Davies has a similar list but relegates Sir George Carteret to what we might call a “second tier” of subscribers to the company, which, as we shall see, is reflected in his shareholding:

“In the twenty years after 1672 a total of fifteen peers and other persons of note were associated with it, though not all at the same time. A few, the Earl of Bath, Sir William Coventry, Prince Rupert and Lord Hawley, withdrew before the capital had been fully paid up. Death removed Clifford in 1673 and Buckingham in 1687. Shaftesbury sold out in 1677, Arlington in 1679, Sir Joseph Williamson in 1687 and Lord Berkeley in 1688.2 By the Revolution only three such persons remained, King James, who sold his stock in 1689, the Earl of Craven and Lord Powis, neither of the last two being large investors.3 No one of comparable calibre or distinction was recruited, and African stock passed steadily out of the hands of the aristocracy and the Court into the hands of the mercantile community. The aggregate capital invested by these distinguished men was, apart from James' £3,000, small, and at no time after 1674 can it have amounted to more than six or seven per cent. of the stock.”

“Below this group of prominent persons, and often associated with it, came such men as Sir George Carteret, Sir Peter Colleton, Thomas Povey, John Locke, Sir Edmund Andros and Ferdinando Gorges.”

Now it is important to note the Royal Africa Company was a “joint stock company”, which was in many ways a precursor to the Limited Liability Company.

So what I have investigated is how much George Carteret invested, and whether it might be more accurate to call him a “founding investor” rather than a founder as such. That’s not to say he was not culpable of investing in a company which traded in slaves, but it does let us see where exactly he stood in prominence.

In other words, was he mentioned as one of the first investors because he was a well known figure, or did he play a considerable part as a large investor, and hence that is why his name is noted. How exactly was he a founder?

In his study of the company, Jose Corpuz notes that the initial capital in 1672 was £111,100. Money was raided by issuing more shareholding, so by 30 July 1691 it was £444,400 and by 7 October 1697 £1,101,050. Maintaining the companies forts was expensive and after 1688, the Company faced more competition from other English merchants.Hence the need to issue more stock.

Dan Byrne in his study of the company actually gives some of the details of the subscription and it is worth stating that in detail because they give the details of the founders subscription to stock in the company.

“Clifford (died 1673 had £400 stock), Arlington (£500 stock), Buckingham (£500 stock died 1687), and Ashley (Shaftesbury); four of the five ministers in the Cabal, plus the Duke of York, Prince Rupert, Sir William Coventry and Sir Joseph Williamson (secretary of state, £500 stock, sold out in 1687). Plus, John Locke (philosopher interested in colonisation, £400 stock, sold in 1675). Sir George Carteret (£500 RAC stock - his family had a royal charter for Carolina, he was a Lord Proprietor of Carolina and a member of the committee of trade and plantations). Sir Peter Colleton (large plantation in Barbados, £1000 RAC stock sold in 1675, down to £400). The Earl of Craven (£600 stock).”

“Merchant Thomas Povey. Sir Edmund Andros (former governor of New York). Ferdinando Gorges (£1000 RAC stock, sold in 1679), whose family had estates in New England. Several such names had been associated with Ashley (Shaftesbury) in his earlier [unnamed] colonial schemes. Others were Lord Hawley, Lawrence du Puy and Matthew Wren, close to the Duke of York. Lord Berkeley had up to £1600 stock in the RAC but sold out in 1688. The king, James II, sold his RAC stock, £3000 on 10 January, 1689; James received in dividends £3480 and sold for £5730, with a total profit of £6210 over seventeen years. The Earl of Craven was not a large investor, nor was Lord Powis (£100 pounds stock) or Lord Falconberg. Royalty and their circles never held more than one quarter of the RAC stock.”

I list this lengthy and ponderous list in some detail because it provides a context for understanding the scope of Sir George Carteret’s investment.

So we can see from this that George Carteret, while mentioned as a” founder”, only had £500 of the original £111,100 stock (which was later diluted in size) which amounted to 0.45% of the stock at the start.

Clearly he was a favourite of Charles II and also a significant figure in his own right, which is why he comes into the histories as a “founder”, but it is also clear that is the reason why he is listed as a founder, not because he was a large stockholder in the company, for clearly he was not, rather that he was a notable courtier.

Now what George Carteret he did was reprehensible, and wrong, although by the standards of the day, it was considered “respectable” which itself is a shocking indictment of that period of history, but while in Jersey he is seen as a large fish in a small pond, actually in terms of his investment, he was only a small fish in a big pond.

Like many of his ventures at this time, he was trying to retire from his seafaring days and find lucrative businesses to invest in, as Balleine notes:

A rich man must find investments, and some of Carteret's were of the wild-cat type. Knowing that coal comes from decayed vegetation, he imagined that there must be coal beneath Windsor Forest, and he formed a company to make a mine there. He leased thousands of acres in Connacht, "which are overflowed every tide", hoping to drain them and secure good agricultural land.

More profitable was his purchase of estates. The war had ruined many landowners, and large numbers were for sale. He bought manors in Devon and Cornwall, in Lincolnshire and Essex, and never lived in one of them, but their rentals, timber, and manorial dues provided a steady income. He bought Alderney, and appointed Jean Germain as Rector. "On Sundays", we are told, "he proclaimed the sublime Truths of Religion. On weekdays he acted as Sir George's gamekeeper".

To see of him simply as an investor in the slave trade is to diminish his other investments – he was clearly not someone who sought only one source of revenue!

As Balleine says, “Wherever an investment looked promising, Carteret jumped at it, for acquisitiveness was one strongly marked feature in his character.”

Tomorrow, I will conclude with the second part of the Balleine article, and also an assessment of Sir George Carteret himself.

Benin's Shameful Legacy

King Tegesibu of Dahomey whose fortunes were based on the slave trade being visited by the Governor of Cape Coast Castle..

Bailiwick Express comments that:

"Jersey's politicians are to be asked to rename a local square after the West African country of Benin, as a way of acknowledging the island's links with the slave trade."

A correspondent of mine has noted that Benin is the name of the modern state, and the state which it replaced - the Kingdom of Dahomey, was notorious for Africans enslaving Africans:

During the colonial period and at independence, the country was known as Dahomey. On 30 November 1975, it was renamed to Benin, after the body of water on which the country lies—the Bight of Benin. It then went on to be notable for inter-tribal conflict, ending in a dictatorship. 

Changing the name to Benin then shows that Jersey is proud to be linked to a country with a brutal history of slavery and dictatorship!

"Rather than naming one of our public areas after a town in the stolen lands of New Jersey (which itself is named after a slave trader), it would be a fitting tribute to name it after the country from which these 302 slaves were stolen." 

And one might add, traded in slaves, Africans enslaving Africans and treating them brutally! It's trade in slaves only began to decline once Britain had outlawed the slave trade. When King Gezo, the great slave King of the Dahomey, died in 1858, some 800 slaves were massacred in his memory.

Indeed one of the most controversial aspects surrounding the hundreds of years of African negro slavery in the West, is the complicity of Africans themselves, in the horrendous trade. King Gezo's slave hunters would go deep into the interior. They would raid villages. They would sell the young and able, then massacre the old by beheading them. Black lives didn't matter.

In 1999, the President issued a national apology on behalf of the Republic of Benin (formerly Dahomey) for the substantial role that Africans had played in the Atlantic slave trade.

I'm not entirely convinced that's a good history to remember by renaming the square to Benin. Or precisely what it would be a fitting tribute to - a nation state that enslaved other Africans for over three hundred years! A nation state that treated other Africans as little more than fodder. 

Imagine the plaque: 

"This square is named Benin Square after the modern Republic whose ancestors enslaved and got rich beyond measure by enslaving other Africans."

Benin is the name of the modern state – so at the time of slavery no country of that name even existed. It was formerly Dahomey (the Kingdom of), a country that far from symbolising all the wrongs of the slave trade was actually party to it – a fact that the country itself was forced to recognize and apologise for later in its history.

From the 17th to the 19th century, the main political entities in the area were the Kingdom of Dahomey, along with the city-state of Porto-Novo, and a large area with many different nations to the north. This region was referred to as the Slave Coast from as early as the 17th century due to the large number of enslaved people who were shipped to the New World during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. 

The kings of Dahomey sold their war captives into transatlantic slavery. They also had a practice of killing war captives in a ceremony known as the Annual Customs. By about 1750, the King of Dahomey was earning an estimated £250,000 per year by selling African captives to European slave-traders.

Though the leaders of Dahomey appear to have initially resisted the slave trade, it flourished in the region of Dahomey for almost three hundred years, beginning in 1472 with a trade agreement with Portuguese merchants. 

The area was named the "Slave Coast" because of this flourishing trade. Court protocols, which demanded that a portion of war captives from the kingdom's many battles be decapitated, decreased the number of enslaved people exported from the area. The number went from 102,000 people per decade in the 1780s to 24,000 per decade by the 1860s

The decline was partly due to the Slave Trade Act 1807 banning the trans-Atlantic slave trade by Britain in 1808, followed by other countries. This decline continued until 1885, when the last slave ship departed from the coast of the modern Benin Republic (not to be confused with the Empire of Benin) bound for Brazil in South America, which had yet to abolish slavery. The capital's name Porto-Novo is of Portuguese origin, meaning "New Port". It was originally developed as a port for the slave trade.

When King Gezo, the great slave King of the Dahomey, died in 1858, some 800 slaves were massacred in his memory. Under his regime thousands were enslaved and sold to the traders. As one report notes: "This monster has caused as many deaths in the carrying out of his nefarious designs as some of his brethren, the white despots of Europe, in the gratification of their ambition."

By the middle of the nineteenth century, Dahomey had begun to weaken and lose its status as the regional power. This enabled the French to take over the area in 1892. In 1899, the French included the land called French Dahomey within the larger French West Africa colonial region.

In 1958, France granted autonomy to the Republic of Dahomey, and full independence on 1 August 1960, which is celebrated each year as Independence Day, a national holiday. The president who led the country to independence was Hubert Maga

For the next twelve years after 1960, ethnic strife contributed to a period of turbulence. There were several coups and regime changes, with the figures of Hubert Maga, Sourou Apithy, Justin Ahomadégbé, and Émile Derlin Zinsou dominating; the first three each represented a different area and ethnicity of the country. Coalitions between Maga, Apithy, and Ahomadégbé-Tomêtin were unsuccessful, as each sought absolute power. Eventually these three agreed to form a Presidential Council after violence marred the 1970 elections.

On 7 May 1972, Maga ceded power to Ahomadégbé. On 26 October 1972, Lt. Col. Mathieu Kérékou overthrew the ruling triumvirate, becoming president and stating that the country would not "burden itself by copying foreign ideology, and wants neither Capitalism, Communism, nor Socialism". 

On 30 November 1974 however, he announced that the country was officially Marxist, under control of the Military Council of the Revolution (CMR), which nationalized the petroleum industry and banks. On 30 November 1975, he renamed the country to the People's Republic of Benin.

The CMR was dissolved in 1979, and Kérékou arranged show elections in which he was the only allowed candidate. Establishing relations with China, North Korea, and Libya, he put nearly all businesses and economic activities under state control, causing foreign investment in Benin to dry up. Kérékou attempted to reorganize education, pushing his own aphorisms such as "Poverty is not a fatality", resulting in a mass exodus of teachers, along with numerous other professionals. The regime financed itself by contracting to take nuclear waste, first from the Soviet Union and later from France.

Kérékou's regime initially included officers from both the north and south of the country, but as the years passed the northerners (like Kérékou himself) became clearly dominant, undermining the idea that the regime was not based in ethnicity.

In 1980, Kérékou converted to Islam and changed his first name to Ahmed. He changed his name back after claiming to be a born-again Christian. In 1989, riots broke out when the regime did not have enough money to pay its army. The banking system collapsed. Eventually, Kérékou renounced Marxism, and a convention forced Kérékou to release political prisoners and arrange elections. Marxism–Leninism was abolished as the nation's form of government.

The country's name was officially changed to the Republic of Benin on 1 March 1990, after the newly formed government's constitution was completed. In 1999, Kérékou issued a national apology for the substantial role that Africans had played in the Atlantic slave trade.

Toppling the Wrong Statue: How a Website got history terribly wrong.

The above is from the website "Topple the Racists" which has jumped onto the band-waggon after the Bristol statue of Edward Colston was toppled. It is "a crowdsourced map of UK statues and monuments that celebrate slavery and racism".
And they say:

What do we want?

To promote debate. It's important to shine a light on the continued adoration of colonial icons and symbols.

Are you saying the statues should be torn down?

It's up to local communities to decide what statues they want in their local areas. We hope the map aids these much-needed dialogues. Taking down a statue could also include moving it to a museum, for example.

That is remarkably hypocritical for a site which calls itself "Topple the Racists", to say that it is only "to promote debate" and offers advice on what local communities decide when the site name suggests one approach only!

Why I've picked "Robert Peel" is because this site is so badly checked, so slip-shod in its approach to history, that they've got the wrong Robert Peel! That hasn't stopped calls for his statues to be removed. I'm still waiting for them to change the site, and put up an apology for the mistake.

There are statues in Bury, Manchester, Preston, Leeds and Glasgow and there is agitation for them to all be removed. But the site, and campaigners who trust its accuracy, are calling for the removal of Sir Robert Peel statues because they have confused him with his less famous father - who was also called Sir Robert Peel!

The Glasgow citation describes Sir Robert Peel as "Conservative PM (1834-35 and 1841-46) and creator of the modern police force. Actively petitioned against the Foreign Slave Trade Abolition Bill".

In Leeds, the map listing says "Sir Robert saw the Foreign Slave Trade Abolition Bill as a threat to the cotton industry and to the cotton industry in Manchester. He raised a petition highlighting the risk it presented to the merchants and their trade interests."

But was actually Sir Robert Peel's father, the 1st Baronet Sir Robert Peel, who petitioned against the Foreign Slave Trade Abolition Bill in 1806, when his son was still a teenager and had yet to embark on a political career.

Now other campaigners have argued that father and son would have shared a similar worldview. They say because the Peel family fortune was founded on a cotton industry which exploited slave labour in the US, the younger Sir Robert Peel should no longer be honoured in UK cities. But they couldn't have been further apart. The father actively promoted the vested interest of the landowning class, but the son broke with his own party to remove that vested interest in abolishing the Corn Laws.

As Peel Society chairman Margaret Clarke said: “Before anyone starts eyeing up a Tamworth statue to overturn please note the following correct information:

“Sir Robert Peel MP, then Prime Minister, supported William Wilberforce’s Anti-Slavery Bill wholeheartedly. This was in the face of opposition from many of his fellow parliamentary members in the then government. Those who watched the recent TV Series on Victoria may have spotted a very brief moment of Peel being harangued for his support."

“The Anti-Slavery Bill gained its second reading and eventually became law.

“Sir Robert Peel, is also remembered for supporting the poor by the Repeal of The Corn Laws - again in the face of fierce opposition from merchants and members. Earlier, as the Ireland Secretary, he also imported grain from the US when Ireland’s Potato Famine was decimating the population.”

MP Christopher Pincher said: “Tamworth’s Robert Peel emancipated the Catholics, slashed the use of the death penalty so it really only applied for murder, cut food costs for the ordinary family by repealing the Corn Laws and founded our unarmed police force. That is the very police force that continues to protect us today.

“Peel served as a minister in a Government that made slave trading an offence. As Prime Minister, Peel stationed a Royal Naval squadron off the west coast of Africa with the task of supressing the Atlantic slave trade. Between 1808-1860, this West Africa Squadron captured 1,500 slave ships and freed 150,000 slaves. People have a right to be critical of history, but if they wish to do so they might at least get their history right in the first place.

And he has this to say, which I think deserves a wider hearing. Just as we follow the rule of law and don't lynch people, we need a proper debate about statues, not a mob of activists (some of whom probably just enjoy some legitimised vandalism) tearing down statues without due process:

“On a wider point, the illegal pulling down of statues is not something we like in Britain. We use quiet and measured approaches, and the tried and tested tools for change."

“Our buildings and monuments can be changed through petition, debating and voting, all at a local level. We have the right to peaceful protest in this county, a right that many citizens across the world do not have, but we do not have the right to attack our police forces or smash public property. We must tackle the inequalities in our society, to raise up the opportunities and chances for all, where your colour or background does not discriminate or determine your chances in life."

“At the same time we should be very proud of much of our history, whilst learning from those aspects of the past that belong in the past. We should not, quite literally, pull history down and throw it away.”

Referenceshttps://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/hands-statue-says-tamworth-reveals-18402161

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/five-sir-robert-peel-statues-18390165?_ga=2.64184111.1237664234.1591963612-1666345101.1584519164