Charles Mackenzie (diplomat)

Charles Kenneth Mackenzie (1788–1862) was a Scottish diplomat, writer and journalist.

Life

He was the eldest son of Kenneth Francis Mackenzie,[1] who had plantation interests in the West Indies, and at the time of Fedon's Rebellion acted as president of the council in Grenada;[2] there are sources stating that Charles Mackenzie would have been classified as a Negro in the USA.[3] Colin Mackenzie was his brother.

He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he befriended James Cowles Prichard,[1] and served in the Peninsular War. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1815.[4] He then edited a conservative evening paper, Albion.[1]

Subsequently, he was a diplomat in Mexico, Haiti and Cuba;[4] in Haiti at least he did intelligence work.[5] Returning to England, he wrote for The Metropolitan Magazine, under the editorship of Cyrus Redding.[1]

During the latter part of his life he lived mostly in the United States, where he died on 6 July 1862 at a fire at the Rainbow Hotel on Beekman Street[6] in New York City.[4]

Mackenzie collected plants for August Grisebach and William Jackson Hooker.[4]

Works

Mackenzie published Notes on Haiti in two volumes (1830), based on his period 1826–7 as British consul there, and including both economic statistics and social observations.[7] Parts were republished shortly by John Brown Russwurm, to publicise the Haitian Revolution.[8]

  • Mackenzie, Charles. Notes on Haïti, made during a residence in that Republic, Vol. 1, London, Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830. Manioc
  • Mackenzie, Charles. Notes on Haïti, made during a residence in that Republic, Vol. 2, London, Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830. Manioc

Mackenzie wrote also for the Edinburgh Review, Quarterly Review, and Encyclopædia Britannica.[9]

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References
  1. Cyrus Redding (1863). Yesterday and To-day. T. C. Newby. pp. 173–7. Retrieved 30 April 2012.
  2. Douglas Hamilton (2005). Scotland, the Caribbean And the Atlantic World, 1750-1820. Manchester University Press. p. 164. ISBN 978-0-7190-7182-9.
  3. Gerald Horne (December 2011). Negro Comrades of the Crown: African Americans and the British Empire Fight the U.S. Before Emancipation. NYU Press. p. 88. ISBN 978-0-8147-9050-2.
  4. JSTOR Plant Science, MacKenzie, Charles Kenneth (1788-1862)
  5. Gerald M. Sider; Gavin A. Smith (1997). Between History and Histories: The Making of Silences and Commemorations. University of Toronto Press. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-8020-7883-4.
  6. Appletons' annual cyclopaedia and register of important events of the year: 1862. New York: D. Appleton & Company. 1863. p. 669.
  7. Leslie Bethell (1995). The Cambridge History of Latin America. Cambridge University Press. p. 236. ISBN 978-0-521-39525-0.
  8. Winston James; John Brown Russwurm (2010). The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm: The Life and Writings of a Pan-Africanist Pioneer, 1799-1851. NYU Press. p. 64. ISBN 978-0-8147-4289-1.
  9. Joseph Irving, The Book of Scotsmen Eminent for Achievements in Arms and Arts (1881) p. 306; archive.org.
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