A Scottish family at the heart of imperial history

Metropolitan cultures and imperial cultures

The history of empires is the subject of a broad reinterpretation movement which seems to definitively move it away from state perspectives based solely on institutional and military relations between the metropolis and the colonies. Historians ofAtlantic History now emphasize the homogeneous and interdependent character of maritime spaces beyond political divisions while those of junior studies intend to give a voice back to various actors (women, artisans, peasants), who were as much ignored by Western academics of the colonial period as by the main actors of the independence struggles. Another frequently debated theme revolves around the domestic consequences of imperial expansion and gives rise to numerous controversies. In the case of the United Kingdom, some authors, such as Bernard Porter, believe that the majority of the population remained both indifferent and ignorant regarding imperial issues. Only a minority of individuals left the British Isles and their existence in a closed caste would not have contributed to the spread of an imperial culture to the rest of society. Others, like Catherine Hall and Sonya Rose, have pointed out, conversely, that from the point of view of economic growth, social hierarchies and political debates, the repercussions have been considerable. Beyond its economic impact, the consumption of sugar and tea would have contributed to a greater homogenization of British society. In the background, looms the debate over the place of Empire in the British industrial revolution and in the domination of the landed aristocracy.

A Scottish family in a global story

In The Inner life of EmpiresEmma Rothschild – Professor of economic history at Harvard and author of several works on political economy and the Enlightenment – ​​supports the hypothesis of maximum interpenetration between the metropolis and its empire. From what she refers to as “ a new micro-story “, she intends to restore the way in which a family of the gentry Scottish – the Johnstones – experienced the transformations of the British Empire after the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763). Unlike Alain Corbin’s work on François Pinagot, whose existence had left only minute traces in the archives, the author chose abundance, through the study of a considerable collection of letters circulating between India, Florida, West IndiesCanada, New York and the British Isles. The family level offers a privileged point of observation to reveal the organic continuity between the intimate sphere and imperial affairs and to demonstrate the extent of the repercussions of the colonial experience in the British Isles: “ The promise of the new microhistory is thus of variability of historical size or historical resolution, in which the micro is set in many different scenes, of different dimensions, and seen from different points of view. (pg. 279) “. This is a perspective long neglected in favor of institutional archives or statistical surveys. Of the seven brothers, four are elected to the Parliament of London, six have held military office (army, Navy), three held positions in the high colonial administration (governor of Florida, member of the Council of theEast India Company in Calcutta, delegate of the legislative assembly of Grenada). On their return, they invested in large properties in Scotland, North America or in sugar plantations in the West Indies. They maintain close relationships with the great figures of the Scottish Enlightenment: Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson and David Hume. Women – the mother and four sisters – also occupy an essential position in the Johnstone Empire. Most remained in Scotland and maintained the family epistolary system by centralizing information from the East and West Indies and adding that drawn from Scottish and English gazettes. They are involved in land management, loans, the importation of Indian satins and cottons or in the negotiation of marriages, particularly with the prestigious English Pulteney family. One of the sisters also got involved in the Jacobite rising of 1745 and went into exile in France with her husband.

For a story sentimental » of the Empire ?

But the main quality of Emma Rothschild’s work does not lie in the factual description of the British elites at the end of the first imperial age. The family archives allow a finer and more personal approach to the situations experienced by the Johnstones. In her previous work, Emma Rothschild underlined the importance of sentiment in the first debates on political economics between Adam Smith and Condorcet, beyond the sole consideration of private interests. In her latest work, she refutes the idea of ​​a family business subject to a rational and concerted strategy. The various correspondents express their anxiety and indecision in the face of the rapid transformations of the empire in the second half of the XVIII^e century : “ One of the Johnstone’s distinctive idioms, over most of a century was their preoccupation with insecurity » (125). If the financial benefits were initially significant in the 1760s, the family gradually found itself marginalized and impoverished by the guardianship of theEast India Company by the government and by the American War of Independence. The Johnstones bet on the continuation of an informal commercial empire, deregulated as the latter was replaced by settlements tightly regulated by the army and the administration. Likewise, alongside anxiety, the violence of divisions is prominent. Two of the brothers clash in the House of Commons over the advisability of an abolitionist bill. While the elder, a close friend of Adam Smith, spoke out in 1792 for the gradual suppression of the slave trade, the younger succeeded in 1805 in pushing back the slave trade by two years.abolition bill by William Wilberforce. The empire insinuates itself into the smallest corners of their private lives and those around them. One of their servants, originally from Bengal, is accused of infanticide. During a long trial which divided the family, she narrowly escaped the death penalty and was deported by Scottish judges to Virginia. Likewise, the family finds itself involved in a new trial, initiated by a slave brought back from Jamaica. Following several conflicts with his masters, he requested his emancipation and based his hopes on the famous verdict pronounced by Lord Justice in favor of a slave James Somerset in 1772. In the name ofHabeas corpus in force in mainland France, the owner, also a Scotsman involved in the trade and sugar plantations, was ordered to release him. The Johnstone slave obtains his emancipation in the same way.

Abundant and descriptive work, The Inner Life of Empires is not an easy read, the reader finds himself caught in a maelstrom of names, places, quotes. The construction of the work also resulted in numerous repetitions. The most general themes – the State, races, commerce, the Enlightenment, the private forum – follow one after the other in fairly allusive sequences. The author openly assumes these exhaustive enumerations and the labyrinthine nature of his developments. She does not hide the romantic, Balzacian turn of her work. Such a rhetorical device would, from his point of view, allow us to approach the imperial experience and feel the diversity of possibilities available to these families as well as the doubts and anxieties nourished by these distant spaces. Emma Rothschild’s latest work confirms Claude Markovits’ comments on the dynamism of studies around metropolitan and imperial cultures: “ Whatever the future of this debate, we must recognize that, thanks to it, British historians are now very clearly confronted with the question of the place of the Empire in their history. Will the debate be as rich among French historians? ? He’s just starting “.