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Lyautey, Hubert
His military career was imperial: Algeria (1880-1882 and 1903-1912); Indochina (1894-1897); Madagascar (1897-1900); Morocco (1912-1925). He played a crucial role in the conquest of Morocco from 1908. He became the first Resident General of Morocco in 1913, revigorating the classic protectorate formula. Raised to the rank of Marshal in 1921, he resigned in 1925 in opposition to the all-out war waged against the Rif Republic. He wrote influent essays, notably on the "social role of the officer", and was elected to the Académie française in 1912. From 1927 to 1931, he organized the Vincennes International Colonial Exhibition. -
MacDonald, Flora
Scottish Jacobite and a plantation-owner in North Carolina in the 1770s. In 1774, Flora and her husband Allan MacDonald (?-1792) emigrated to Montgomery County, North Carolina, where they settled on a plantation at Cheek's Creek. There is a possibility that enslaved Africans worked on their plantation or on nearby estates. Hugh Douglas's 1993 biography refers to the MacDonalds bringing 'eight indentured servants, three women, and five men' with them to their plantation in North Carolina (Douglas, p. 151), but makes no mention of slavery in this period. Primary sources indicate the MacDonald's entanglements with slave-ownership. In an extract from a letter dated December 31st 1777 from Captain Alexander MacDonald to his cousin Allan MacDonald, Alexander asks him to deliver some enslaved African children from his home on Staten Island in New York: 'I wish you would be so Good as to Sende or order to be Sent Some Negro Chielderen that are at my House as their Mothere is Dead, unless you finde matters are like to be Sattled in which case I would let them Stay where they are I again wish we were alltogethere as the more we are in one place the more respectable our appearance wishing you and all ffriends the complments of the Season and with Mrs McDonald's and my kinde wishes for every thing that can make you Hapy & ever I am with Sincerity and truth Dear Cousin' (AmericanRevolution - Letter-Book of Captain Alexander MacDonald of the Royal Highland Emigrants) In 1775, the MacDonald's plantation life was disrupted by the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. Allan departed to fight on behalf of the Loyalists, while Flora was left in charge of running their plantation. In April 1777, the MacDonalds were evicted from their estate and had their property confiscated. In 1779, Flora MacDonald departed North America for London and later returned to Scotland. There are tentative matches in the Legacies of British Slavery database for a 'Lieut. Col. John McDonald' and an 'Allan McDonald', but the precise family connections have not yet been traced. -
Mackinnon, William
Scottish ship-owner and businessman in the nineteenth century. Mackinnon established the British-India Steam Navigation Company and the Imperial British East Africa Company. -
Mandela, Nelson
South African anti-apartheid activist, politician and first president of South Africa (1994-1999). -
Mangin, Charles
French soldier who fought in North Africa and Europe. Mangin was a key supporter of the use of Senegalese Tirailleurs during the First World War. -
Mason, Hugh
English cotton mill owner, social reformer and Liberal politician in the nineteenth century. The British cotton textile industry had deep connections to transatlantic slavery and colonialism in this period. The industry was supplied by countries such as the United States, India, and Egypt, and, in many cases, enslaved labour was involved in producing the raw materials. In the 1860s, for example, Mason had to manage his company's response to the Lancashire Cotton Famine, which was partly triggered by the outbreak of the American Civil War. -
McGrigor, James, 1st Baronet
Scottish physician, military surgeon and botanist in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. McGrigor was a key figure in the founding of the Royal Army Medical Corps and served as Director-General of the Army Medical Department from 1815 to 1851. The British Empire was involved in a number of colonial conflicts during this period, including the First Ashanti War (1823-1831), the First Anglo-Afghan War (1838-1842) and the Xhosa Wars. -
Mill, John Stuart
British philosopher, political economist, politician and civil servant in the nineteenth century. Mill was an employee of the East India Company from 1823 to 1858. -
Millais, John Everett
British painter and illustrator in the nineteenth century. -
Milligan, Robert
Scottish slave-owner and merchant in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Milligan was born in Dumfries, Scotland in 1746 to an inkeeper, although secondary sources suggest he may have grown up on his family's plantations in Jamaica. He was resident in the colony roughly between 1768 and 1779, where he worked as a merchant and slave-factor in partnership with James Dick of Kingston. After settling in London from the 1780s onwards, Milligan became a merchant in two London firms, Milligan and Allen and Milligan and Mitchell, by 1794. Milligan & Mitchell had interests in the Golden Vale estate in Jamaica, while two additional estates, Kellet's and Mammee Gully, were also listed as the property of Robert Milligan. Firmly established in London's West India circles as a member of the Society of West India Planters and Merchants, Milligan spearheaded the development of the West India Docks in the final years of the eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth, serving as deputy chairman and chairman of the West India Dock Company. -
Mitchel, John
Irish nationalist, pro-slavery propagandist, and white supremacist. Exiled in the United States from 1853, Mitchel was a hardline supporter of the institution of slavery and the Southern secessionist cause. Mitchel edited the Confederate newspaper Daily Enquirer in Richmond, Virginia during the American Civil War, and was a fierce opponent of Reconstruction after the war. Mitchel was also deeply influenced by the essayist Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), author of the proslavery text 'Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question' (1849), whom he met in London in 1846. -
Montgomery, Bernard
British Army officer who served in the First World War, the Irish War of Independence, the Arab Revolt and the Second World War. Montgomery was the son of Henry Montgomery, who was Bishop of Tasmania from 1889 to 1901, and spent his early childhood in the colony. -
Moore, John
British politician and slave-trader in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Moore was Member of Court of Assistants for the Royal African Company (1687–9 and 1700–1702), Member of Parliament for the City of London (1685-1687), and Lord Mayor of London (1681–82). Moore was also a shareholder in the East India Company. -
Moore, Lt. Gen. Sir John
British Army general in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Moore was involved in consolidating British colonial rule in St. Lucia between 1796 and 1797, having been appointed Commandant and Governor of the island, and helped to re-establish its slave society. Moore also fought to suppress the Irish Rebellion of 1798. -
Morley, Samuel
British abolitionist and Member of Parliament for Nottingham (1865–1866) and Bristol (1868–1885). Morley was an important supporter of Josiah Henson, an escaped enslaved American, during his travels in Britain. -
Mountbatten, Louis, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
British statesman, naval officer, and colonial administrator. Mountbatten was the last Viceroy of India in 1947 and the first Governor-General of India from 1947 to 1948. -
Napier, Charles James
British Army officer and colonial administrator in the nineteenth century. Napier was Governor of Sindh from 1843 to 1847 and Commander-in-Chief, India from 1849 to 1851. -
Napier, Robert, 1st Baron Napier of Magdala
British Indian Army officer in the nineteenth century. Napier fought in several colonial conflicts in India and China, as well as leading the British expedition to Abyssinia from 1867 to 1868. -
Neill, James George Smith
British military officer of the East India Company, who fought in the Second Burmese War (1852-1853), the Crimean War (1853-1856) and the Indian Rebellion of 1857. -
Nelson, Horatio
British naval commander during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, who is widely remembered for his victory at the Battle of Trafalgar on October 21st 1805. His wife, Frances "Fanny" Nelson (1758-1831), was born to a wealthy family of slave-owners in the British colony of Nevis in the Caribbean. -
Nicholson, John
British Army officer with the East India Company in the nineteenth century. Nicholson was instrumental in the violent suppression of the Indian Rebellion in 1857. -
Nightingale, Florence
English social reformer, statistician, and founder of modern nursing. Nightingale was involved in efforts to study and improve sanitation in India in the wake of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Nightingale's travels to Egypt in the mid-nineteenth century also represent an interesting contribution to the field of Egyptology, with her impressions of the country recorded in Letters from Egypt: A Journey on the Nile, 1849-1850. -
Northcote, Stafford, 1st Earl of Iddesleigh
British politician who served as President of the Board of Trade (1866-1867), Secretary of State for India (1867) and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1886-1887) among many other positions. -
Nott, William
British colonial military officer of the East India Company, who fought in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan during the first half of the nineteenth century. -
Orwell, George
English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name 'George Orwell'. Eric Arthur Blair was born in Motihari, Bengal in 1903 to Richard Walmesley Blair, an Indian Civil Service agent, and Ida Mabel Blair. Orwell's great-great-grandfather, Charles Blair, was an absentee slave-owner of two estates in Jamaica. Orwell had a complex relationship to the British Empire and class society in twentieth century Britain. From 1922 to 1927, he served as a police officer with the Imperial Indian Police in colonial Burma. Orwell would later recount his colonial experiences in several writings, including the novel Burmese Days (1934) and the essays 'A Hanging' (1931) and 'Shooting an Elephant' (1936). -
Oswald, James
Scottish merchant and politician in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Oswald's wealth firmly derived from the proceeds of transatlantic slavery, both through his own familial network and his commercial interests as a cotton manufacturer. His father, Alexander Oswald (1738-1813), was a 'tobacco lord' in Glasgow, while his cousin, Richard Alexander Oswald (1771-1841), was awarded slavery compensation for the Pemberton Valley estate and Boscabelle Pen in Jamaica. Legacies of British Slavery has possibly linked Oswald himself to further compensation claims in Jamaica, but there is no evidence at present to fully confirm this. As Member of Parliament for Glasgow, Oswald did support Parliamentary moves towards the abolition of slavery in 1834, when he assisted representatives of the pro-slavery Glasgow West India Association on their visit to London, as well as an abolitionist petition calling for an end of the apprenticeship system in the British Caribbean. Oswald's changing position on the question of slavery may have been the result of a shift in his own personal values, but it could equally have been a commercial recognition of the broader shift towards free-trade in Britain. -
Outram, James, 1st Baronet
British general who fought in India, Afghanistan and Iran in the nineteenth century -
Palmer, Charles, 1st Baronet
English shipbuilder and politician in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Palmer was the founder of Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company (1852-1933), which supported Britain's maritime empire by building ships for military and commercial usage. As Member of Parliament for North Durham (1874-1885) and Jarrow (1885-1907), Palmer took an interest in imperial affairs, contributing to debates over the Suez Canal in 1882 and 1883 as well as raising concern over the Nisero Incident in 1884. -
Pankhurst, Sylvia
Feminist, socialist, anti-fascist, and anti-colonialist in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928), Sylvia broke with her mother's leadership of the suffragette movement in 1914 and went on to defend Ethiopia during the Italian Invasion of 1935-1937. Sylvia formed a close friendship with Emperor Haile Selassie and died in Ethiopia in 1960. -
Pankurst, Emmeline
British political activist in the the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who organised the suffragette movement and helped women win the right to vote in Britain. The importance of Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) and her family to the feminist movement in Britain is well-established and has been celebrated for some time. The Pankhurst family's complex relationship to imperialism, however, is less well known. After the First World War, for instance, Emmeline spent a number of years in Canada and North America, where she promoted support for the British Empire and eugenic feminist ideas of "race betterment". By way of contrast, Emmeline's daughter, Sylvia Pankhurst (1882-1960), was an ardent feminist, socialist, anti-fascist, and anti-colonialist. Sylvia broke with her mother's leadership in 1914 and went on to defend Ethiopia during the Italian Invasion of 1935-1937. Sylvia formed a close friendship with Emperor Haile Selassie and died in Ethiopia in 1960. -
Park, Mungo
Scottish explorer in West Africa in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. During his two expeditions to the continent (1795-1797; 1805), Park actively used enslaved people to aid his explorations. During his life, Park briefly worked as a ship surgeon. In 1793, Park worked onboard the East India Company ship 'Worcester' travelling to Bengkulu in Indonesia. In 1797, Park again worked as a ship surgeon, this time onboard a slave trade ship named 'Charleston' travelling from West Africa to Charleston, South Carolina [Voyage ID 25406, Slave Voyages database]. The voyage across the Middle Passage was disrupted and the ship was eventually forced to land in Antigua. A total of 129 enslaved people were held in captivity on board the ship and 11 died during the voyage. As Secretary of the African Association, Bryan Edwards, a major slave-owner in Jamaica and pro-slavery politician, helped to edit and publish Park's narrative of his 1795-1797 expedition. -
Pearce, William
British shipbuilder in the nineteenth century. In 1869, he took over management of the shipbuilding firm John Elder & Co, which was was actively involved in supporting Britain's naval empire and imperial commerce. Some of the company's clients included the African Mail Company and the African Steamship Company. Pearce converted the firm to a limited company called the Fairfield Shipbuilding & Engineering Co in 1886. -
Pease, Joseph
English railway pioneer, politician, and supporter of the anti-slavery movement in the nineteenth century. -
Peel, Robert
British Prime Minister (1834-1835; 1841-1846), Conservative statesman, and the father of modern British policing. His father, Robert Peel, 1st Baronet (1750-1830), was a wealthy politician, industrialist, and textile manufacturer. The Peel family wealth came from cotton-spinning, the raw material of which would have been grown by enslaved people in the Americas. Peel senior was an opponent of the abolition of the slave-trade and was one of a number of Manchester manufacturers and merchants who signed a petition against abolition in 1806. -
Percy, Hugh, 3rd Duke of Northumberland
British politician in the nineteenth century. Percy was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1829 to 1830. His maternal great-grandfather, Peter Burrell I (1692-1756), was a Director of the South Sea Company (1724-1733) and sub-Governor (1736-1756). The Company was involved in the transatlantic slave-trade during this period. In 1807, Percy spoke in favour of the abolition of the slave-trade and tried unsuccessfully to introduce a bill for the gradual abolition of slavery in the colonies. -
Picton, Thomas
Welsh slave-owner, colonial administator, and military officer in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Picton was Governor of Trinidad from 1797 to 1803 and owned the Union estate on the island. As Governor, Picton came under severe public scrutiny for approving the torture of a 14 year old mixed-race girl named Luisa Calderón, who was illegaly subjected to picketing (a form of military punishment) in order to extract a confession from her. Picton was initally convicted of Calderón's torture in England, but had the conviction overturned by claiming such practices were permitted on the basis that Trinidad was subject to Spanish law. Picton is commemorated by a number of memorials across the UK. These include a monument in Carmarthen, a monument in St. Paul's Cathedral, and a statue in Cardiff City Hall, which was removed in 2020. -
Pirrie, William James
Prominent British shipbuilder in the nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries. Pirrie was a director of the African Steamship Company in 1892, chairman of Harland & Wolff from 1895 to 1924, and Lord Mayor of Belfast (1896-1898). Harland & Wolff was actively involved in supporting Britain's maritime empire with ship-building yards across the UK. -
Pitt the Younger, William
British statesman in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Pitt was Prime Minister of Great Britain (1783-1801) and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1801; 1804-1806). In 1793, Pitt oversaw Britain's entry into the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), leading a campaign to conquer the French colony of Saint-Domingue and restore slavery on the island. Britain's five year intervention in Haiti was a military and fiscal disaster, with over 40,000 British soldiers dying in the conflict. Although he expressed support for the abolition of the slave-trade before the House of Commons in 1792, Pitt failed to secure progress on the issue throughout his time in office. The British slave-trade was abolished in 1807 after Pitt's death, while the institution of British slavery itself was not abolished until 1833. -
Platt, John
English manufacturer of textile machinery and Liberal politician in the nineteenth century. He was owner of the Platt Brothers & Co., which, by the mid-nineteenth century, was the largest manufacturer of textile machinery in the world. This machinery was used to process cotton - produced in plantations in the Caribbean or USA, or colonial or semi-colonial conditions in India or Egypt. -
Pocahontas
Native American woman, born Amonute and also known as Matoaka, belonging to the Powhatan people in Werowocomoco, Tsenacommacah (present-day Virginia). In 1613, aged approximately 17 years old, Pocahontas was captured and held ransom by English settler colonists. Pocahontas is believed to have converted to Christianity during her captivity, although whether was of her own volition or as a result of coercive pressure is unclear. She married the tobacco planter John Rolfe the following year in 1614, with whom she had a son, Thomas Rolfe (1615 – c. 1680). Rolfe and Pocahontas traveled to London in 1616, where she was exhibited to metropolitan English society as a New World indigenous woman. In 1617, Pocahontas died of unknown causes and was buried at Gravesend, Kent. -
Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale
British prince and eldest child of the future King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. Albert Victor undertook a seven-month tour of India from 1889 to 1890. -
Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn
Prince of Great Britain and the father of Queen Victoria. Edward was Commander-in-Chief, North America (1799-1800) and Governor of Gibraltar (1802-1820). -
Prince George, Duke of Cambridge
British prince and military commander. George was Commander-in-Chief of the Forces from 1856 to 1895. -
Raleigh, Walter
English statesman, writer, soldier, and colonial explorer in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Raleigh was one of the leading figures in the English colonisation of North America as well as being involved in the suppression of the Desmond Rebellions in Ireland. Raleigh also made two expeditions to Guiana in 1595 and 1617. -
Ramsden, James
British mechanical engineer, industrialist, civic leader, and shipbuilder in the nineteenth century. Ramsden was managing director of the Barrow Shipbuilding Company between 1875 and 1888. During this period, the Company built ships for the Pacific Steam Navigation Company and the Eastern Steamship Company. -
Reynolds, Joshua
English painter in the eighteenth century. Some of his notable paintings linked to empire include a portrait of Edward Cornwallis (1756), a painting of Tysoe Saul Hancock, his wife Philadelphia, their daughter Elizabeth and their Indian maid Clarinda (1765), and an unfinished portrait of Francis Barber. -
Rhodes, Cecil
English colonialist, mining magnate and politician in southern Africa. Rhodes first moved to Africa in 1870 and would spend the next three decades of his life on the continent, save for a brief interlude studying at Oriel College, Oxford. Rhodes made his colonial wealth through diamond mining in Africa and created De Beers Consolidated Mines in 1888. Rhodes was a committed believer in British imperialism and white supremacy. As Prime Minister of the Cape Colony (1890-1896), Rhodes dispossessed black Africans of their land and their ability to vote through the Franchise and Ballot Act (1892) and the Glen Grey Act (1894). The Glen Grey Act laid down a key precedent for South Africa's Native Land Act (1913), forming one of the cornerstones of what would later become the apartheid regime. Rhodes resigned as prime minister in 1896 after the Jameson Raid, an ill-fated attack on the South African Republic which escalated tensions in the region and eventually led to the Second Boer War (1899-1902). Many of Rhodes' personal views on race during his lifetime have also been subjected to close debate and examination. Rhodes' legacy continues to attract critical scrutiny and protest in the twenty-first century, particularly since the emergence of the global Rhodes Must Fall movement in 2015. His statue above Oriel College, Oxford has been one of the key sites of contestation over empire and its memory in the United Kingdom. -
Roberts, Frederick, 1st Earl Roberts
British military commander in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Roberts served as Commander-in-Chief, Madras Army (1880-1885), Commander-in-Chief, India (1885-1893), Commander-in-Chief, Ireland (1895-1900), Commander-in-Chief of British Forces in South Africa (1900), and Commander-in-Chief of the Forces (1904). -
Robinson, George, 1st Marquess of Ripon
British politician who served as Secretary of State for India (1866), Viceroy and Governor-General of India (1880-1884), and Secretary of State for the Colonies (1892-1895) -
Rolle, John, 1st Baron Rolle of Stevenstone
British slave-owner and politician in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Rolle owned more than three hundred enslaved people on his estate on the island of Exuma in the Bahamas as part of his inheritance from his father Denys Rolle (1725-1797), who had been granted the land as an American loyalist. In 1830, Rolle, who managed the estates in absentia, attempted to move his enslaved people to Cat Island in order to increase profits, sparking a revolt among the enslaved led by a man named Pompey. Pompey fled into the bush alongside 43 others to avoid being forced to move. They later tried to sail to Nassau to appeal to Governor James Carmichael-Smyth, but were arrested, placed in a workhouse, and flogged as punishment. Rolle begrudgingly accepted emancipation in 1834, but complained in Parliament that his emancipated enslaved people 'refused to work' and protested the expenses required to feed them. Rolle was awarded £4,333 in compensation for 377 enslaved people on his estate, which was the largest compensation sum awarded in the Bahamas. Rolle's impact on the physical environment of Devon was extensive, and examples of these material legacies across the county include Bicton House, the China Tower, Rolle Canal, Rolle Quay, and Exmouth Sea Wall. In the Bahamas, the memory of Pompey and his revolt against Rolle has been commemorated with a statue.