James Tobin (planter)

James Tobin (1736/7–1817) was an English merchant, and a plantation owner in Nevis. He is known as an advocate and apologist for slavery.[1]

Life

He was born in London, the son of James Tobin Sr. of Nevis, identified tentatively in the ODNB with the sea captain James Tobin (1698–1770), as given in Caribbeana. Educated at Westminster School, he took articles as a solicitor. After a period in Nevis, he returned in 1784 to Bristol. He was in business there, with John Pretor Pinney, and advocated for the planters' view of slavery. He was a member of the Bristol West India Association.[1][2][3]

Tobin travelled first to Nevis in 1758, to work in the family plantation business, at Stoney Grove Estate. From 1760 to 1782 he was there at least three times. He went back there in 1808.[1][4] In 1817, the year of his death, there were 213 enslaved people on the Stoney Grove plantation.[5]

In the end Tobin quarrelled with the Pinney family. He died in Bristol, on 6 October 1817.[1]

Works

Tobin was one of a group of writers who defended the existing institution of slavery, based on experience in the Caribbean, that included also Samuel Estwick, Edward Long, Richard Nisbet who published Slavery not Forbidden by Scripture (1773), and Philip Thicknesse.[6][7] He was drawn into controversy by the views of James Ramsay, expressed in An Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies of 1784;[8] and published a number of works:

  • Cursory Remarks upon the Reverend Mr. Ramsay's Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the Sugar Colonies (1785).[9] Tobin deployed arguments including the deprivations found in English rural life, compared to an idealised West Indian plantation drawing on the novels of Henry Mackenzie and Sarah Scott.[10] He cited the pro-slavery work of Rev. Robert Robertson from earlier in the century,[11] and followed racial purity arguments from Long.[1]
  • Short Rejoinder to the Reverend Mr. Ramsay's Reply (1787).[12] Tobin pointed out the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts as owner of a Barbados sugar plantation that used slave labour.[13]

Tobin was addressed personally by Ramsay in A Letter to James Tobin, Esq., late member of His Majesty's Council in the island of Nevis (1787). He replied in:[12]

  • A Farewel Address to the Rev. Mr. James Ramsay (1788)[14]

The 1786 Essay on Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species by Thomas Clarkson deals with Tobin as the "Cursory Remarker".[15] In 1787, Ottobah Cugoano responded to a number of authors defending enslavement, including Tobin, in Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species.[16] Olaudah Equiano replied to Tobin in 1788, in The Public Advertiser, attacking two of his pamphlets, and also a related book from 1786 by Gordon Turnbull.[17][18] Hector Macneill wrote positively about Tobin's Cursory Remarks in his Observations on the Treatment of the Negroes in Jamaica (1788).[19]

In February 1790 Tobin gave evidence to a parliamentary committee on the slave trade.[1] A later work was A Plain Man's Thoughts on the present Price of Sugar (1792).[20] In that year a bill to abolish the slave trade was defeated in the House of Commons.[21]

Family

Tobin married in 1766 Elizabeth Webbe, daughter of George Webbe, a Nevis planter. Living until 1777 in Salisbury, they had eight children: James Webbe, George, Henry Hope, John, Elizabeth, Charles Meadows, Joseph Webbe, and Frances. Elizabeth married John Cobham of Barbados, and Frances Robert Bush of Clifton. In a marriage of first cousins, George Webbe Tobin, son of George, married Susannah Cobham, daughter of Elizabeth.[1][22]

Notes
  1. Small, David. "Tobin, James". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/53030. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. Lena Boyd Brown; Vere Langford Oliver (September 2007). More Monumental Inscriptions: Tombstones of the British West Indies. Wildside Press LLC. p. 68. ISBN 978-0-89370-422-3.
  3. Oliver, Vere Langford (1918). "Caribbeana: being miscellaneous papers relating to the history, genealogy, topography, and antiquities of the British West Indies". Internet Archive. London: Mitchell, Hughes and Clarke. p. 2. Retrieved 14 May 2016.
  4. Royal Historical Society (February 2012). Transactions of the Royal Historical Society: Volume 3: Sixth Series. Cambridge University Press. p. 192. ISBN 978-0-521-55169-4.
  5. Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons (1818). Parliamentary Papers, House of Commons and Command. 17. H.M. Stationery Office. p. 119.
  6. Bernard Bailyn; Philip D. Morgan (1 December 2012). Strangers Within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire. UNC Press Books. p. 214. ISBN 978-0-8078-3941-6.
  7. Larry E. Tise (1 October 1990). Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701–1840. University of Georgia Press. pp. 28–. ISBN 978-0-8203-2396-1.
  8. James Ramsay (1784). An Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies. J. Phillips.
  9. Olaudah Equiano (22 February 2001). The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. Broadview Press. p. 6. ISBN 978-1-55111-262-6.
  10. B. Carey (31 August 2005). British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility: Writing, Sentiment and Slavery, 1760-1807. Palgrave Macmillan UK. p. 122. ISBN 978-0-230-50162-1.
  11. Vincent Carretta (2011). Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage. University of Georgia Press. p. 208. ISBN 978-0-8203-3338-0.
  12. Christopher Leslie Brown (1 December 2012). Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism. UNC Press Books. p. 367. ISBN 978-0-8078-3895-2.
  13. Vincent Carretta; Philip Gould (5 February 2015). Genius in Bondage: Literature of the Early Black Atlantic. University Press of Kentucky. p. 38 note 39. ISBN 978-0-8131-5946-1.
  14. Travis Glasson (1 February 2012). Mastering Christianity: Missionary Anglicanism and Slavery in the Atlantic World. Oxford University Press. p. 216. ISBN 978-0-19-977399-2.
  15. Vincent Carretta (23 July 2013). Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the Eighteenth Century. University Press of Kentucky. p. 181 note 16. ISBN 0-8131-4409-4.
  16. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (24 June 2014). The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism. Oxford University Press. p. 160. ISBN 978-0-19-987451-4.
  17. Vincent Carretta; Philip Gould (5 February 2015). Genius in Bondage: Literature of the Early Black Atlantic. University Press of Kentucky. p. 67. ISBN 978-0-8131-5946-1.
  18. Peter Fryer (1984). Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain. University of Alberta. pp. 108–9. ISBN 978-0-86104-749-9.
  19. Michael Morris (12 March 2015). Scotland and the Caribbean, C.1740-1833: Atlantic Archipelagos. Routledge. p. 142. ISBN 978-1-317-67586-0.
  20. James Tobin (1792). A Plain Man's Thoughts on the Present Price of Sugar, &c. J. Debrett.
  21. Thomas Clarkson; Ottobah Cugoano (5 October 2010). Thomas Clarkson and Ottobah Cugoano: Essays on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species. Broadview Press. p. 53. ISBN 978-1-77048-254-8.
  22. Oliver, Vere Langford (1918). "Caribbeana: being miscellaneous papers relating to the history, genealogy, topography, and antiquities of the British West Indies". Internet Archive. London: Mitchell, Hughes and Clarke. pp. 2–4. Retrieved 14 May 2016.
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