Consequential Manuscript Correspondence Sugar Plantations and Slavery in Dutch Guiana Berbice - Demerara - Essequibo Single Purchase of Ninety Female Slaves 1764
ALS written by a prominent American plantation owner in the Dutch Colony of Berbice, to Dutch nobility, discloses paramount concerns regarding the leadership and economic progress of the slave-dependent colony London, 13 August 1764. Signed Manuscript Letter in a fine hand, reporting on matters of slavery, insurrection, and governance in the Dutch colony of Berbice, now part of Guyana, South America. The author, slave trader and plantation owner Gedney Clarke (Jr.) who was also affiliated with the Dutch West India Company, addresses nobleman and politician Count de Bentinck of Holland, and mentions other key administrators of this and neighbouring Dutch plantation colonies. 8vo. 4 pages on two single-leafs, laid watermarked paper measuring approximately 7 x 9 inches.
Very good, original condition document with significant content.
For almost a year, the rebels held on to southern Berbice, while the whites were able to hold on to the north. Eventually only about half of the white population that had lived in the colony remained. Superb and early manuscript correspondence from Guayana 1764, written by an influential slave owner and trader of American descent, reveals the death of a Dutch colony's governor, suggests scandalous behaviours of others whom are named, presents allegedly sage and prudent advice for appointing new leaders encourages the involvement the Dutch West India Company, and boasts of a purchase of ninety female slaves. It further serves to illustrate the consanguinity of pioneer settlements abroad.
A document of excellent content, dating to an era of slave uprisings and the dawn of an annexation of the Dutch colony by the British, key administrators and delegates, foremost settlers, planters and slavers, mentioned or described herein include the following:
• Laurens Storm van's Gravesande (Governor of Guiana, Directeur-General of colonies Essequibo and Demerara, Administrator and Commander for the West India Company)
• Honorable Laurens Lodewyk van Bercheyck (Land surveyor and Commander of Demerara)
• Victor Amadeus Heyliger (first Marshal of the Demerara Colony, later Acting President of the colony and of the Court of Justice)
"But I flatter myself, that your Excellency's Discernment will do justice to my father's actions, so that he may not only be repaid his expenses, but be publickly thanked for saving our Colony from Destruction... had not our forces arrived in time to quel the insurrection in Demerary..."
"Mr. Van's Gravesande has, no doubt, behaved very well and would do anything to serve Demerary, but the other Gentlemen of the Council, very, very few excepted, are remarkably jealous of the Progress... would do anything in their Power to prejudice or distress us. We have long perceived this, and very often wished that we had no connections with Essequibo."
"Our Comander van Berch Eyck is dead [Laurens Lodewyk van Bercheyck, Commander of Demerara 1761-1764]. This therefore is a fine opportunity out a man of Spirit & of Interest & we would willingly join hands with the Company to increase his Salary, which is so pityfully low, that our Head Servants receive a great deal more than the Person who should rule & govern us..."
"...if Mr. van Bercheyck, uncle to the last, or Mr. Heyliger gets any share in the Government of the Colony. The former is applying for the Commandine of Demerary and the latter for the Secretairies of the whole Colony. They are people not fit for either of those posts. Bercheyck being a wild, mad Boy at the age of 50, and Heyliger having Slurr upon his character too well known to be repeated... should make him forever hide his Head in Darkness... these two men, who are obnoxious to the major part of the Inhabitants & who can do no good, but perhaps much Harm to our Infant Settlement."
"I apprehend from Mr. Amyot who is in London on his way to Barbados and Demerary that before he left Holland Captain von Oyen was arrived from Demerary... being an impartial man, he of course can give the fairest Account of things..."
"It would be a great Happiness and advantage that our Lande was made free & open and that we were put under some sort of Government and proper Encouragments given to the Inhabitants. Demerary would the flourish and n a short time prove itself worthy of your Excellency's Patronage and the attention of the Mother Country."
"... we are pushing on our Estates with Vigour, my Father having ninety female slaves on 26th June for our three Plantations & in three months after he intends to send as many men from Barbados. Thus do we convince Your Excellency , that we look upon you as our Patron & Protector, for I will frankly confess, that but for your generous & spirited Behaviour, we had before now removed effects from the Colony and I believe our example would have been followed by others."
"... enclosed letter from the Gov't of Essequibo to me, which will give you a further insight into the affairs of the Colony..." End Excerpts.
The recipient of this letter, addressed as "Your Excellency, Count Bentinck" is a Dutch nobleman, politician, and member of "The Counts Bentinck of The Hague," a prominent branch of the Bentinck family who owned extensive property in the Caribbean, and who were involved in colonial affairs. Henry Bentinck (1682-1726), first duke of Portland, acquired a plantation and enslaved Africans when he went to Jamaica as governor in 1722. Henry William Bentinck (1765-1820) was governor of Demerara 1806-1812 and of Berbice 1814-1820. Charles Anthony Ferdinand Bentinck (1792-1864), fourth Count Bentinck, together with his brother Henry John Bentinck (1796-1878) petitioned unsuccessfully for compensation for 266 slaves on La Bonne Intention plantation in the Demerara colony, though an award was grated to Daniel Willink of Liverpool, a merchant to whom the Bentincks owed funds for two mortgages. Finally, the one who penned this important correspondence is Gedney Clarke junior (1735-1777), born in Barbados the son of Gedney Clarke senior (1711-1764), a slave broker and most influential investor in plantation colonies. The letter is written on the approach of his father's death, though indicative that he was still alive at the time, and making plans to acquire a large number of male slaves. (His father's will was written less than 3 weeks after this letter, and he died within four months). Gedney Clarke senior was born in 1711 in Salem, the English settlement of Massachusetts Bay Colony, and moved to Barbados in 1733, where he remained a merchant until is death in 1764. [His sister Deborah Clarke Fairfax was William Fairfax's wife.] After a visit to London in 1742, Gedney Clarke invested heavily in plantations in the Dutch West Indies, in association with Henry Lascelles, a London-based financier, commission merchant and slave trader. He was a member of the council, collector of customs at Barbados, merchant, and planter with holdings in America, including 3,000 acres on Goose Creek in northern Virginia.
The colonies of Demerara and Essequibo opened to non-Dutch settlement in 1746, and the governor, van's Gravesande, considered Clarke to be the most influential of the Barbadians who subsequently invested. From about the same date he was also involved as a middleman in slave trading, in partnership with Henry Lascelles. In 1746 he bought Nieuw Walcheren and Pyra in Demerara, During the 1750s Clarke dealt extensively with Henry Laurens, of South Carolina, purchasing slaves for resale in America by Laurens. Many of his letters appear in Laurens’s letterbooks, where his name is always entered as Gidney Clarke. In 1755 he sent his son Gedney Clarke junior to Amsterdam to learn Dutch and become naturalised, thus securing the family's position. In 1762 Gedney junior married Henry Lascelles's daughter Frances. Clarke also owned plantations in Berbice and, when a slave revolt broke out in 1763, he sent four armed vessels to assist in putting down the rising, accompanied by HMS Pembroke, which has been 'lent' to him by his friends in the British Navy. There was no official sanction for this force, whose sole purpose was to protect Clarke's investment. In 1764, after the Berbice slave rising, Clarke 're-stocked' his plantations with a purchase of ninety female slaves and planned to buy eighty male slaves, as confirmed in this, his son's letter. He died later the same year and it soon became apparent that his finances had been out of control. In his will, recorded 4 Sept. 1764, Clarke left property to his wife, his niece Hannah Fairfax, and his sons, Peter, Francis, and Gedney junior. The bulk of the estate went to Gedney junior, including the Goose Creek lands. Only three years later, in August 1767, Gedney junior arranged to sell all of the family's eleven Demerara plantations, and called in all his outstanding debts. Gedney Clarke junior died in Barbados in 1777.
The long-standing governing authority in Guiana, the West-Indische Compagnie, (West India Company) founded in 1602, also the primary architect of Dutch colonising activity in the region, came to a close in 1792, only 28 years after this letter was written.
This precise correspondence was published in a work by J. Thomson in 1888, printed in the Argosy office in Demerara titled, "Timehri: The Journal of the Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society of British Guiana"
Berbice (Kolonie Berbice) was a Dutch colony from 1627 to 1815. Situated along the Berbice River in Guyana, it was settled in 1627 by Abraham van Peere, under the suzerainty of the Dutch West India Company. Until 1714, the colony remained the personal possession of Van Peere and his descendants. On 14 September 1678 a charter was signed which established Berbice as a hereditary fief of the Dutch West India Company, in the possession of the Van Peere family. In November 1712, Berbice was briefly occupied by the French under Jacques Cassard, as part of the War of the Spanish Succession. Reluctantly on 24 October 1714, to prevent the colony from being ceded to the French, five brothers, Nicolaas and Hendrik van Hoorn, Arnold Dix, Pieter Schuurmans, and Cornelis van Peere, paid a ransom to acquire the colony for themselves. In 1720, the five owners of the colony founded a Society of Berbice to raise more capital for the colony. In 1732 the Berbice Association (Society of Bernbice), together with the Dutch West India Company established a charter with which to grant lands to private individuals. In 1733, a village which had sprung up near Fort Nassau was named New Amsterdam. Berbice's economic situation improved, and by 1735 it consisted of 12 plantations owned by the society, 93 private plantation along the Berbice River, and 20 plantations along the Canje River. In 1762 the population of the Berbice colony was recorded as 4,423 (346 whites, 244 Amerindians, 3,833 Africans), indicating a successful expansion, until suddenly a slave uprising broke out under the leadership of Cuffy in February 1763, and continued well into 1764, with Cuffy naming himself governor of Berbice. Only with the use of brute force was governor Wolfert Simon van Hoogenheim able to finally suppress the uprising, and restore the colony to Dutch rule. The Dutch colonies of Berbice, Demerara, and Essequibo, were captured by the British in 1796, officially ceded in 1814, and finally consolidated into the colony of British Guiana in 1831. Slavery had been abolished in Great Britain in 1834, on paper at least. Still today however Guatemala and Guyana are active centers in human trafficking.
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