Colonial Commerce; comprising an Inquiry into the Principles upon which Discriminating Duties Should be Levied on Sugar,

the growth respectively of the West India British Possessions of the East Indies, and of Foreign Countries. First edition. 8vo. Contemporary half calf over marbled paper covered boards, recased with original spine laid down. xx, 302pp. London, John Murray, Alexander MacDonnell (1798-1835) was born in Belfast to a physician father of the same name. He trained as a merchant, focussing his trade on the products of enslaved labour being produced in Demerara-Essequibo, a historic colonial region on the northern coast of South America later known as British Guiana, now the independent nation of Guyana. A "vigorous propagandist for the slave-owning sugar planters in the West Indies", upon his return from South America he assumed the role of secretary for the West India Committee of Merchants (ODNB). He published ten works against abolition and "was regarded as the most sophisticated apologist for slave ownership" (ibid).   In spite of MacDonnell and the West India Lobby's active role campaigning against any parliamentary bills that might affect the prosperity of the British planter class, in 1833 the Abolition Act did finally pass through the house. This piece of legislation emancipated all enslaved people in the British colonies, and offered generous reparations to slave owners. Indeed, the negotiation of these terms was heavily influenced by the dogged action of the West India Lobby.   MacDonnell himself was a claimant. He jointly owned enslaved people in St Kitts and Trinidad with journalist James Macqueen, and registered nearly £8000 worth of claims. None of these were settled before his death in 1835. Mcdonnell is widely remembered as a chess master, probably the best English player of his generation.    The present work essentially builds an argument for a protecting duty to be levied on sugar produced in the British West Indies. Using figures which tacitly outline the impact of the Slave Trade Act of 1807 on the British place in the competitive international sugar market, it is a stark reminder of the conflicting interests of global capitalism and the abolitionist cause in the nineteenth century. Early chapters extol the commercial advantages of various British colonies, with details given of not just the West Indies, but also the Americas, the East Indies, and even New South Wales.    OCLC finds copies at the BL, NLS, U Oxford, U Aberdeen, American Philosophical Society, Queens University Library Ontario only. The last copy in Rare Book Hub Sotheby's 1974.   Alexander MacDonnell [McDonnell] in Centre for the Study of Legacies of British Slavery (Accessed 17 June 2024).…