Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations and maps
- Acknowledgments
- Cast of characters
- Abbreviations
- Maps
- Introduction
- 1 Politics of colonial sensation
- 2 A gentleman's way in the world
- 3 “Only answerable to God and conscience”: justice unbounded by law
- 4 Ruling narratives
- 5 The radical underworld goes colonial
- 6 In search of free labor
- 7 Conspiracy in the archive
- Epilogue
- Index
- References
2 - A gentleman's way in the world
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations and maps
- Acknowledgments
- Cast of characters
- Abbreviations
- Maps
- Introduction
- 1 Politics of colonial sensation
- 2 A gentleman's way in the world
- 3 “Only answerable to God and conscience”: justice unbounded by law
- 4 Ruling narratives
- 5 The radical underworld goes colonial
- 6 In search of free labor
- 7 Conspiracy in the archive
- Epilogue
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter focuses on the career of William Fullarton, the man responsible for Thomas Picton's undoing. Two gentlemen on an edge of Britain's Caribbean empire fell out badly. While complaints about the governor's conduct had surfaced back in London, it remains fair to say that without Fullarton's pursuit, sustained by his own sense of imperial responsibility, Picton might have lost favor but escaped public infamy, and avoided Privy Council proceedings, trial at King's Bench, and the possibility of far worse. He might comfortably have enjoyed an unblemished reputation as one of Britain's celebrated military leaders. Life, and therefore history, turns on contingency; yet even the historically contingent requires explanation. In fact, more than plain bad luck, or the overzealous conscience of an imperial agent, was at stake in Picton being called to account for his actions in the West Indies.
This chapter traces a biographical pre-history to events at Trinidad, exploring sources of personal experience, commitment, and ideology. Fullarton's life as an enlightened gentleman, Scottish careerist, diplomat, member of Parliament, military commander, colonial reformer, agricultural improver, and man of letters produced a specific conception of ruling-class authority at home and abroad. His own self-understanding had much to do with his conception of proper command, masculine conduct, and the responsibilities of imperial rule. His career was truly global in reach and ambition; his personal history reproduces in condensed form a complicated matrix of power moving among metropolitan and colonial sites, although ever dependent on the workings of metropolitan influence. Fullarton's fashioning as a gentleman, politician, and imperial agent tells us much about the operations of networks reaching across Britain and its empire, and sensibilities forged at home and abroad; it speaks to both the connectedness of the imperial state and its fractures.
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- Scandal of Colonial RulePower and Subversion in the British Atlantic during the Age of Revolution, pp. 46 - 89Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012