Dan Snow's History Hit - Nelson and the Slave Trade

Episode Date: October 20, 2020

Vice Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson died at Trafalgar on 21 October 1805. Recently there has been considerable interest in Nelson's views on the slave trade and the plantation economy of the West Indies. A letter of Nelson's written months before his death in 1805 to the infamous Jamaican slave owner Simon Taylor, was published years after his death in attempt to stop the abolition of the slave trade as the matter was before Parliament. Martyn Downer joined me on the podcast to discuss key phrases in the letter that were forged before publication to make Nelson appear even more virulently opposed to the abolition of the slave trade.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi and welcome to Dan Snow's History. On the 21st of October 1805, Vice Admiral Viscount Horatio Nelson won one of the most famous and celebrated naval victories of all time, a complete annihilation of the French and Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar in southwestern Spain. Nelson famously died at the battle and almost immediately was absorbed into the pantheon of great British martyrs. He became almost the patron saint of empire through the rest of the 19th century. Subsequently, Nelson's reputation has been gone over by historians, quite rightly. They have sought to actually uncover the man behind the myth for generations. We've been asking questions of Nelson's correspondence, his actions,

and trying to get to the bottom of his beliefs. Now, one of the great political questions of the late 18th, 19th century was the abolition of the trade and enslaved Africans. Millions of enslaved Africans have been transported across the Atlantic in European ships to work on what were fantastically productive sugar plantations, making vast fortunes for their owners, and of course seeing none of the economic benefit to themselves at all. Nelson spent a lot of time in the West Indies. He married someone from the White Planter Society out in the West Indies, and therefore his views on the slave trade in particular and slavery itself have been a source of controversy.

Recently, a letter that Nelson apparently wrote to an infamous plantation owner, Simon Taylor in Jamaica, has been the subject of much debate by historians. that key phrases, key elements of that letter were in fact changed to make Nelson appear more virulently opposed to abolition, more pro-slave trade, if you like. I got Martin Downer on the podcast to talk about his letters, Nelson and the slave trade. If you want to watch our programme, our documentary on Trafalgar, you can do so at History Hit TV. I've got quite a few documentaries about the Navy on there, and indeed on the history of the slave trade as well. If you want to go and do that, you go to historyhit.tv. It's like Netflix for history. Because it's Trafalgar Week, we always offer a bit of a cheap introductory rate at this time of year. You go to historyhit.tv, you just go to Trafalgar, Trafalgar, and you get a

month free. And then you get three months, there there's one pound euro or dollar for each those three months crazy takes you to deep deep into the new year so go and check that out historyhit.tv use the code trafalgar but in the meantime here's martin downer enjoy martin thank you very much coming on the podcast it's great to see you dan thank you we're here to talk about Nelson. Obviously, there's an extraordinary biography of the man. Let's talk initially, before your extraordinary detective work, what was Nelson's... We now associate him probably with the European Mediterranean theatre

because of the French Revolution and the Pollyette Wars. But actually, as a young man, he probably served in the West Indies and the North American Eastern Seaboard, probably more than anywhere else. Well, yes. I mean, I think if you count Nelson's active career over some 40 years, for the first 20 or so, he spent the majority of his time in the West Indies. First of all, in expeditions to Nicaragua and Jamaica. And then later in the 1780s, he was based in the Leawood Islands, eventually as the commander of the Leawood Islands, where, of course, he met and married his wife. Nicaraguan expedition, by the way.

Astonishing mortality there. He was incredibly lucky to survive, wasn't he? He was indeed. One of his very earliest escapes from death, near-death experiences, yes. Now, he met his wife. Now, she's part of the kind of planter, slave-owning, sugar-producing class out there, is she? She was. Her father was, in fact, not a plantation owner, but he died when she was just a young girl. And she was essentially adopted by her uncle, who was a major plantation owner on Navis.

And she was brought up by him, and she due course inherited slaves from him and she benefited certainly to a degree from the plantation and Nelson met her at his at her plantation on Nevis in 1786. Abolitionism had been a powerful force in Britain for a generation or two by then. Before we come to the kind of key bit of evidence, what do we know about Royal Navy, men in Nelson's position, their attitude towards the trade and enslaved Africans, plantation economy? Do you think as a class, as a group, they were inclined to be fairly supportive, given that, for example, the tax on sugar basically paid for the Royal Navy? Well, as a class and as a job, their task was to protect all British trade, including the slave trade.

That was part of their role. And most of them did that without questioning their role. And Nelson was certainly of that conventional type. He would have not questioned his role in support of the slave trade, although he had no direct contact with slaving ships. And he certainly never owned or invested in the slave trade. But he would certainly have seen his task as the projection of British status and influence across the world, and the extension of British trade, and the protection of British trade. And that really continued all the way through the French wars as well. So let's come on to his views about the slave trade. What do we know about Nelson and the slave trade? Because surely marrying

into someone of that class, the reality of that would have been something he's incredibly familiar with. He was. And although he was very familiar with the West Indies and was intimate with many plantation owners and slave owners in the West Indies, he never actually drew particularly close to that class of person. Although he married into one of the planter families. He had a very difficult relationship, certainly latterly in his Leawood Island station, because he was, Nelson being Nelson, was very rigorous about rules and abiding by rules. And he, more than any other naval officer who had been in command of that station, wished to make sure that the navigation laws which kept British shipping unique to British

crewed ships and not to foreign ships was fully regulated and upheld. Unpopular with the West Indians who they want to trade with the new USA. That's right. Absolutely right. And they did, candestinely sometimes and more often more blatantly. And they very obviously flouted these laws and had got away with it for a long time. And they very obviously flouted these laws and had got away with it for a long time. And Nelson turns up and he really annoys them. And so much so that he, in the late 1780s, he faced a whole raft of writs against him, challenges to duels for a certain amount of time he had to keep to his ship.

He really did have an extremely difficult relationship with the planters in the Leeward Islands because of his rigorous, strict upholding of their navigation laws. And indeed, they pursued him back to London. So even when he returned to England, he was still pursued legally through the courts by many of the planters. So he had this difficult relationship. Through his wife, Frances Nisbet, he was intimate with some of the planter families who were resident in England. But as their marriage collapsed, he drew away from them and moved, of course, famously into the arms of Emma Lady Hamilton and into more liberal circles. So his life encapsulated many attitudes towards politics and political concerns at the time.

But his slave trade views and his views on the abolition of the slave trades were in many ways through the 1790s very conventional and conservatively minded. He was very affected by the revolution, the slave revolt in Saint-Domingue in 1791, which following from the French Revolution in 1789, seemed to conservatively minded figures in England to precipitate some worse catastrophe in the West Indies if they fiddled around with the slave trade or sought to abolish it. And he, like many in Parliament and elsewhere, was very reluctant to see the slave trade abolished for fear of revolution. And many of that fed into some of the famous words or infamous words he later wrote to one of the planters in 1805. Let's just quickly rehearse the events of 18045, because Nelson finds himself

back in the West Indies. Tell me, and yet he's in command of the Mediterranean fleet, isn't he? He is. He gets sent to the Mediterranean in September. In May 1803, he's put in command of the Mediterranean fleet to keep an eye on the combined Spanish and French fleets, which were threatening to support an invasion of England. It was his, obviously, we now know his climactic role, and he knew he was heading towards a showdown with those fleets. In the spring of 1805, the French fleet crosses the Atlantic to the West Indies, and Nelson pursues them, not knowing their target or their aim. And there was a real great fear that the French intended an invasion of the West Indies, which was the jewel in the British trading crown because of the Sugar Islands.

Nelson was very aware of criticism that he'd received in England of his possible neglect of the West Indies or the Royal Navy's neglect of the West Indies and leaving open to possible invasion. So he pursued the French to the West Indies and as soon as he got there almost they turned around and headed back towards Europe. But in the short time that he was in the West Indies, he wrote to a planter in Jamaica with whom he'd been acquainted some 30 years before to assure the planter, Simon Taylor, one of the largest plantation owners in Jamaica, that Jamaica would be protected by the Royal Navy in the event of a French invasion. But then, of course, he goes further to express some candid opinions of the slave trade. Or did he? Well, the now famous letter in which Nelson

expresses his personal opinion of the slave trade, and more particularly his personal feelings for William Wilberforce, has been repeatedly published through the 19th century. The letter itself was written by Nelson in the victory in June 1805 to Simon Taylor at Jamaica and was first published in February 1807 in William Cobbett's political register. February 1807 was just ahead of the votes in parliament for the final abolition of the slave trade, and it appears in the Political Register in full. Now the original letter to Simon Taylor is lost, presumed destroyed, and so we have relied on that initial publication in 1807, subsequent re-publication through the

19th century of Nelson's letter to Taylor, in which he talks of the damnable and cursed doctrine of William Wilberforce and his hypocritical allies. And he makes other certain sort of harsh comments about Wilberforce and the slave trade as part of this letter to Simon Taylor. Now, the context of the letter is that Nelson, it was certainly a private letter because his secretary in victory took no copy. If Nelson was writing an official letter, if you like, certainly a letter to do with naval affairs, his secretary would have made a copy and most of

those copies reside in the British Library today. But his private letters and more secret letters, if you like, he kept a pressed copy in his cabin, which was essentially an early form of carbon copy. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History,

a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Can I ask, why did they do that? Because it's for the same reason that we like to keep our sent items in our email. I mean, was that, was this something that was done as a, deliberately? So you had a record of all correspondence that was going on? Absolutely, Dan. I mean, very often, of course, they were in a war zone

and their letters could get intercepted, lost, and many were. And so it was essential that they kept a record of their correspondence by both through their official record of their correspondence by both through their official record with their secretaries or through their subsequently their press copies. So there was a need for their own protection. And certainly, for a serving naval officer of Nelson's seniority, he had to make damn sure that if he made or there was a disaster on his watch, he had a paper trail to prove he'd been following his orders or had been making the right decisions. So they do keep a very close record,

which is great for us. And Nelson, because of his rising fame in his own lifetime, people who corresponded with Nelson hung on to his letters. So perhaps more than any other popular or famous celebrity or historical figure of the 19th century, we have more correspondence surviving of Nelson's than almost anyone else, some 8,000 or 9,000 letters. But it's a single letter written in June 1805 to Simon Taylor, this rather infamous plantation owner, that has come to encapsulate Nelson's opinions towards the slave trade and subsequently have been used to heavily criticise him. The letter itself, the original letter, is lost. It was published in 1807 in the Political

Register and subsequently. The pressed copy, which I inspected during the summer, shows that the pressed copy, Nelson's original letter, and the published copy in the Corbett's Political Register are different. In addition, about 18 months ago, out of a private archive of historical papers, a facsimile copy of the letter came to light with a fake Nelson seal and a false faked Nelson signature. And it now appears that Nelson, in writing to Simon Taylor, had fallen into a rather murky web of anti-abolitionist schemes and scheming and plotting. Simon Taylor was a very high profile figure in the anti-abolitionist cause. And he knew of Nelson's enormous influence that he could wield in the political arena. Nelson himself was a very clumsy politician. In the 1790s, he had been invited to become a Member of Parliament and had rejected

the idea. When he did appear in Parliament as a peer in the House of Lords in 1802-1803, he spoke clumsily, but only on naval matters and not very well. And he wasn't a highly regarded statesman. But he did wield enormous public influence. And Simon Taylor knew that. And when he received this letter with Nelson's candid comments about Wilberforce and the slave trade, he hung on to it as a possibly useful piece of propaganda. But of course, within four or five months or so of writing the letter, Nelson was dead. But he died at the moment of his greatest victory and became almost a deified figure in the public imagination.

And of course, the funeral at St Paul's in January 1806. And for Taylor, it must have been just an amazing propaganda gift to be holding this letter in which Nelson discussed his feelings about the slave trade and seemed to support Taylor's opinion of the danger of abolishing the slave trade. So it appears that Taylor sent the letter to William Cobbett, the radical progressive journalist in London, who, although he was a strong supporter of British working class rights and rural rights, he was a fierce opponent of William Wilberforce and was a member of the anti-abolitionist lobby. abolitionist lobby. Cobbett, however, as is clear from the facsimile copy that's come to light, and by comparison with Nelson's press copy, which remains in the British Library, made some changes to Nelson's letter to make it a more virulent anti-abolitionist document.

They had a great piece of propaganda falling into their hands from the greatest hero of the country, and they weren't going to waste it. So not only was the letter published, but this facsimile was manufactured. And I would have imagined being passed round the dark corridors of Westminster so they could show, here we are, Nelson, the great hero, supported our cause. Now, Nelson did oppose the abolition of the slave trade. He opposed the abolition for very conventional ways that people had through the 1790s. He feared revolution in the West Indies and feared the turmoil. He'd seen revolution in Naples in 1799. He'd seen the horrific massacres that had ensued following that. He feared disrupting British trade. But in the letter that Corbett published and the facsimile letter, they changed some of the words Nelson made to further heighten his dislike of the trade, to heighten his support

of the trade. And they used him and abused and exploited his words. So the original words were more tempered were they? In his original words Nelson castigated Wilberforce and his damnable cruel doctrine of abolishing the slave trade. Now he wrote those words in the light of the massacres in Saint-Domingue and elsewhere in the West Indies, triggered by slave revolts. It seems to our eyes an extraordinary thing to write, but it was written in a climate of many conservative-minded people who feared further revolts and the massacre of hundreds of thousands of people,

both black and white, as there had been in Saint-Domingue and elsewhere. When it was received by Cobbett in London, they changed the words to damnable and cursed doctrine. Now, to us, the change seems minor. But by 1805-6, when Taylor received the letter, Nelson was already behind the argument. Nelson was expressing an opinion that was more familiar to the debate in the 1790s when the whole drive for the abolition of the slave trade had been disrupted and held back and delayed by the revolts in the West Indies. By 1804, 1805, the abolitionists had countered the argument that the abolition of the slave trade would trigger revolts in the West Indies by countering with the argument that by importing further African slaves into the West

Indies, it just fuelled the risk of the revolt. So they had countered the argument of the anti-abolitionists, but Nelson was behind that argument and wasn't across the subject properly. He had after all by 1805 been at sea continuously for two years so to a certain degree he was out of touch but for the anti-abolitionists they wanted to phrase the abolition of the slave slave trade as fundamentally a cursed problem because of the disruption to British trade but of course they meant their own pockets so they beefed up and they moved the argument on from where Nelson was into the argument they were then fighting in a last-ditch effort to stop the abolition of the slave trade. These nuances are very minor to us, seem incredibly shaded 200 years later. But in the firmament of the debate in 1805, 1807, these are meaningful differences. And the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists

fought over individual words in this manner. Well, Bill Clinton's presidency hung on the definition of sex. And indeed, Donald Trump's impeachment depended on how we were supposed to regard his comments to the Ukrainian president. So, no, it feels very familiar. As a side note, William Cobbett, a man who, I use it quite hesitantly, but was on the right side of history in terms of rotten boroughs and taxation and enclosure and Catholic emancipation. How extraordinary that he was such a virulent anti-abolitionist. It's fascinating. Cobbett and Nelson in many ways shared, had a similar sort of political outlook. As you say, Cobbett was and is seen as a very progressive figure and a radical

figure. But Cobbett was a huge supporter of the British working class and the rural poor. And Nelson, when he did intervene in politics, it was often lobbying for the rural poor. He'd grown up in Norfolk, surrounded by the rural poor, and he made applications to the Duke of Clarence later, William IV, on behalf of the rural poor. And for Cobbett, and by extension, we must believe Nelson as well, they saw Wilberforce's desire for the end of the slave trade to be at odds with Wilberforce's apparent neglect in Parliament of the British rural labouring poor. Wilberforce had voted against efforts to, if you like, form early unions of the labouring poor and work his rights. And he had also shown no interest in

the rural poor, although he did later in his career but by 1805 he hadn't and this is probably what triggered Nelson to describe Wilberforce's allies as hypocrites because they were you know fighting on behalf of the abolition of the slave trade but had neglected the poor and impoverished within their own country. And freedom in those days, the labouring poor were, in the eyes of someone like Cobbett, as enslaved as the Africans on the sugar plantations, enslaved by their poverty and living conditions. And so Cobbett was a fierce critic of Wilberforce.

For Nelson as well, Nelson was the son of an Anglican parson. He was very suspicious and wary of the evangelism that Wilberforce and his allies brought to the debate. And he had a very conventional Anglican view of any nonconformist activity, such as the Quaker element in the abolition debate. So there's a whole raft of conflicting political and social elements brought into the whirlpool of the debate.

As a Nelson biographer, how have you found, more generally, the discussion around Nelson, indeed other people's reputations, how we should remember them. I mean, how do you think we should remember Nelson? I spent many years studying the art and culture around Nelson. It fascinates me how he's represented in his lifetime, at the time of his death and subsequently. And Nelson, every generation gets his Nelson and every generation imposes on Nelson as a historical figure,

their own prevailing worries and concerns. For example, during the Second World War, the Hamilton woman, the famous filmmaker Alexander Corder, was produced to try and encourage the United States into the war. And Nelson was used as an iconic patriotic figure, as he was in the First World War. One of the changes that Cobbett made to Nelson's letter when he published it at the height of the debate over the abolition of the slave trade was that in the original letter, Nelson wrote that

he wished to serve the public. Cobbett, however, when he published the letter, it said that Nelson wished to serve the empire. So already Nelson was being recast and redrawn as an empirical figure. Nelson's column was erected some 40 years after Nelson's death, when Nelson's reputation, which had sunk soon after Trafalgar, remarkably, because of the scandalous revelations of his affair with Emma Hamilton. But by the 1840s, he had been identified as a figure around which the growing British Empire could rally, and the column was raised. And for 50, 60 years, up until the First World War, he remained a key empirical figure, if you like. He's far more complex than that as a private individual, rather than sort of the badge of empire or logo for empire. In the letter that he wrote, Taylor, it was a private letter. He ensured that he understood the platform that he

enjoyed as a public figure. He certainly made no public pronouncements on the slave trade. He was certainly not part of the West Indian lobby and his words were exploited, but they nevertheless represented, broadly speaking, his view. His letters and his legacy of letters allows us to read his shifting opinions and private thoughts, possibly in a more candid manner than any other public figure. So he is a highly rewarding figure in our historical narrative

to study. Well, thank you very much for studying him so closely and bringing us the fruits of that study. Fascinating stuff. Thank you. What's the latest book? The latest book is called Nelson's Lost Jewel and it's the story of a diamond award that was awarded to Nelson by Sultan Selim of Turkey following the Battle of the Nile and the extraordinary journey that jewel then took sounds like you need to do a different podcast on that come back again soon i hope you enjoyed the podcast just before you go bit of a favor to ask i totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money. Makes sense.

But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review. I'd really appreciate that.

It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome, but if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you.