White planters sought British occupation to preserve slavery against revolutionary France

Evidence

Administrators sought aid from nearby Jamaica, whose governor sent several ships with provisions and ammunition, though no troops. The planter Bryan Edwards, who joined the convoy, described how as the ships arrived in Le Cap townspeople “assembled on the beach” and “with uplifted hands and streaming eyes, gave welcome to their deliverers (for such they considered us).” The white population, he claimed, was unanimous in its “outcry against the National Assembly, to whose proceedings were imputed all their disasters.” Indeed many were ready to “renounce their allegiance to the mother country,” and “without scruple or restraint” declared that they wished the British would “conquer the island, or rather receive its voluntary surrender from the inhabitants.” One prominent planter sent a letter to British prime minister William Pitt requesting an English occupation of the colony, which he saw as the only way to preserve the institution of slavery. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 398

Administrators sought aid from nearby Jamaica, whose governor sent several ships with provisions and ammunition, though no troops. The planter Bryan Edwards, who joined the convoy, described how as the ships arrived in Le Cap townspeople “assembled on the beach” and “with uplifted hands and streaming eyes, gave welcome to their deliverers (for such they considered us).” The white population, he claimed, was unanimous in its “outcry against the National Assembly, to whose proceedings were imputed all their disasters.” Indeed many were ready to “renounce their allegiance to the mother country,” and “without scruple or restraint” declared that they wished the British would “conquer the island, or rather receive its voluntary surrender from the inhabitants.” One prominent planter sent a letter to British prime minister William Pitt requesting an English occupation of the colony, which he saw as the only way to preserve the institution of slavery. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 398

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Dubois’s theme and connects to empire-rivalry realpolitik seen in other Atlantic slavery histories where planters chose empire over revolution.
• SHARE: The detail about planters preferring British conquest to save slavery would land well with someone interested in empire and Atlantic slavery.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 398