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Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 54 (2), 215–222 (2000) © 2000 The Royal Society

BRYAN EDWARDS, F.R.S., 1743–1800

by

OLWYN M. BLOUET

Department of History, Virginia State University, PO Box 9070,

Petersburg, VA 23806, USA

SUMMARY

Bryan Edwards was a Jamaican planter and politician who published a well-respected
History of the West Indies in 1793. He articulated the planter view concerning the value
of the West Indian colonies to Great Britain, and opposed the abolition of the slave
trade. Edwards disputed European scientific speculation that the ‘New World’
environment retarded nature, although his scientific interests have largely gone
unnoticed. Elected a Fellow of The Royal Society in 1794, he became a Member of
Parliament in 1796, and wrote a History of Haiti in the following year. As Secretary
of the African Association, Edwards edited the African travel journals of Mungo Park.

INTRODUCTION

In 1794, Bryan Edwards, described as a gentleman of Southampton, ‘well vers’d in

many branches of natural knowledge’, was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society. The
certificate of election listed his proposers, including William Young, colonial governor,
John Gillies, historian and classical scholar, and Edward Bancroft, a naturalist and
chemist, who had published a Natural History of Guiana in 1769.1
Bryan Edwards was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society on the basis of History
of the West Indies, published in 1793.2 The well-received book was translated into
several languages, and went into five editions. It became the standard history of the
British West Indies, a starting point for subsequent works. But, with the exception of
Elsa Goveia’s Study of the historiography of the British West Indies, there has been little
examination of Edwards’s ideas and perspective.3 There is no biography of Bryan
Edwards, perhaps because his papers have not been located.
This article discusses Bryan Edwards’s achievements, particularly the publication
of History of the West Indies. He had two major reasons for publishing his History.
On the political front, Edwards represented the moderate planter position, emphasizing
the value of the sugar islands to the British Empire, and opposing the growing pressure
to abolish the slave trade. But he also entered the scientific debate of his time,
concerning the impact of the environment, particularly the ‘New World’ environment,
on plants, animals, peoples and cultures. Edwards was involved in what Antonello

215
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216 Olwyn M. Blouet

Gerbi has called The dispute of the New World,4 taking issue with authors such as the
Comte de Buffon, who argued that the American environment had a degenerating
impact on animals and humans.5

EARLY LIFE

Bryan Edwards was born on 21 May 1743 in Westbury, Wiltshire, England.6 His father
died in 1756, leaving a wife and six children. A wealthy uncle, Zachary Bayly, took
charge of the family, and, after schooling in Bristol, Edwards sailed to Jamaica in 1759
to help manage Bayly’s sugar plantations. Edwards continued his studies, under the
Reverend Isaac Teale, developing literary and scientific interests.
It is a mistake to assume that, as a slave society, Jamaica was devoid of cultural or
scientific life. Several members of the Jamaican Assembly were educated at Oxford
or Cambridge, and maintained an interest in science.7 Sir Charles Price (1708–1772),
for example, was born in Jamaica, and studied at Trinity College, Oxford, before
returning to Jamaica, where he became Speaker of the Assembly.8 Price had a stately
home and fine library in Jamaica. Hinton East, another contemporary of Edwards, was
Receiver General, and an accomplished botanist, who corresponded with Joseph
Banks, and introduced numerous species of plants to Jamaica. East’s garden became
the basis for the Jamaica Botanic Garden.9 Edwards included a list of all the plants in
East’s garden as an Appendix (‘Hortus Eastensis’) to his History of the West Indies.
William Beckford, historian and patron of the arts, was born in Jamaica in 1744, and
educated at Balliol College, Oxford. He wrote a history of Jamaica, and persuaded
several artists to visit the island and paint its scenery.10 Another historian, Edward Long
(1734–1813), published his three-volume History of Jamaica in 1774. Edwards used
material from that work in his own writing, although he did not adopt the extreme
racism of Long.11 Even a small landowner and overseer like Thomas Thistlewood, who
lived in Jamaica between 1750 and 1786, was well-read and interested in horticulture
and meteorology, keeping a diary and weather journal for most of his life in Jamaica.12
In 1774, Edwards was elected a Fellow of the American Philosophical Society. In
that year, out of 17 new members, John Ellis (1710–1776) and Dr William Wright
(1735–1819) were also listed as ‘of Jamaica’.13 Ellis was a naturalist, and Fellow of
The Royal Society (1754), who won the Copley Medal in 1768; Wright, a physician
and botanist, sent numerous plant specimens from Jamaica to Kew. In 1774, Dr
Wright was appointed Surgeon General of Jamaica, where he studied scurvey, diabetes
and diseases common to troops in the West Indies. He was elected a Fellow of The
Royal Society in 1778. Indeed, the West Indian environment was a tropical laboratory
for scientific study and observation.
The records of the American Philosophical Society indicate that John Ellis was
working on methods for preserving peach seeds, and Wright contributed a paper to the
Society ‘On antiseptic medicines’.14 Unfortunately, the accomplishments of Edwards were
not mentioned, but, from his History of the West Indies, we learn that he was interested
in horticulture, sugar production and the introduction of plants into Jamaica. The
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Bryan Edwards, F.R.S., 1743–1800 217

Figure 1. Portrait of Bryan Edwards, from an engraving held in the Archives of

The Royal Society.

impact of the environment on peoples and cultures fascinated him. Ultimately, he

entered the debate about the relative importance of nature versus nurture.

JAMAICAN PLANTER AND POLITICIAN

Edwards was trained in the sugar-planting business by Zachary Bayly, who gave him
two estates, Bryan Castle and Brampton Bryan. On Bayly’s death in 1769, Edwards
inherited other properties, making him one of the richest men in Jamaica, with
thousands of acres, and approximately 1500 slaves.15 Elected to the Jamaican Assembly
in 1765, Edwards became an advocate of colonial rights, supporting the 13 mainland
colonies in their dispute with Great Britain on the road to the American Revolution.
In 1774, Edwards visited England, arguing to no avail before the Board of Trade that
the Jamaican Assembly should regulate the slave trade to Jamaica.16 In 1782, shortly
before the end of the American Revolution, he returned to England as a critic of the
war, and tried, unsuccessfully, to win a seat in Parliament. The next year he appeared
before the Board of Trade to protest Orders-in-Council that virtually prohibited West
Indian trade with the newly independent United States. As part of the West India lobby
Edwards published a pamphlet, arguing that West Indian trade with the United States
was essential for food and supplies.17 These opinions went unheeded, and later many
slaves died of hunger.18
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218 Olwyn M. Blouet

Edwards returned to Jamaica in 1787, re-entered the Assembly and played an active
role in reforming the slave codes. In 1789, he delivered a powerful anti-abolitionist
speech to the Assembly, which was subsequently published in London.19 He supported
reform of the Atlantic trade by colonial legislatures, but opposed outright abolition by
Parliament, because most West Indian islands faced a natural decrease of slave numbers.
West Indian affairs hit the headlines in 1791, with the outbreak of the Haitian
Revolution. Bryan Edwards was part of a Jamaican mission taking arms and provisions
to Haiti,20 where he saw the death and devastation caused by the largest slave uprising
in history. Edwards blamed French abolitionists, the Amis des Noirs, for inciting the
Haitian slaves to rebel. Fearing the spread of slave revolution to Jamaica (little more
than 100 miles from Haiti), Edwards returned to Britain in 1792, to publicize the
planter view, and confront the abolitionists.

HISTORY OF THE WEST INDIES

Edwards published his two-volume History, civil and commercial, of the British colonies
in the West Indies in 1793. Much of the scholarly book had been drafted in Jamaica.
Edwards’s objective was to discuss the British settlements in the West Indies, ‘to describe
the manners and dispositions of the present inhabitants, as influenced by climate, situation,
and other local causes’, and to give a detailed account of agriculture in the sugar islands.21
A number of important maps were included in the second edition of 1794.
The History begins with the physical geography of the islands—topography,
climate, and vegetation. Edwards stressed the size of cedar and mahogany trees, and
the diversity of bird species, including flamingoes, parrots and humming birds. He
catalogued the vegetation, noting exotic fruits such as guava, sweet-sop and star-apple.
His information challenged European speculation that the American environment
retarded nature and produced fewer species than the ‘Old World’.22
Edwards used Spanish sources to arrive at an estimate of 3 million indigenous
inhabitants in the Caribbean at the time of contact with Europeans. He viewed the
Caribs as a distinct group, who had migrated from South America (Guiana) to the
islands. Carib women had fewer children than Europeans due to hard work, not
because of climate or the weakness of the men, as was suggested by some
commentators.23 Edwards thought the Arawaks of the Greater Antilles had migrated
from the Mexican Empire, and suggested that, far from being lazy, they had used an
efficient agricultural system requiring little labour.24 In essence, Edwards supported
Native Americans against charges that they were inferior and subordinate.
Contemporary opinions of wholesale inferiority conflicted with his scientific
observations, which stressed diversity and lack of uniformity.
Edwards studied human origins and movement, believing, ‘The migration of any
people is best traced by their language’.25 By reproducing several Carib words, and
comparing them with vocabulary from an ancient oriental dialect, he concluded that
the languages were connected. He suggested an earlier migration of peoples from Asia
to the Americas across the Atlantic.
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Bryan Edwards, F.R.S., 1743–1800 219

In the second volume of History, Edwards examined the contemporary West Indian
population. Again, responding to the hypothesis that the New World environment led
to degeneration, he defended Creole whites against charges that they were physically
weak and lacked intelligence.26 It was absurd to think that an Atlantic voyage could
affect human faculties, although Edwards allowed that Creoles were generally taller
than Europeans, and their eye-sockets deeper in order to counteract the strong sun. He
believed that Creole white children were strikingly precocious. Thus Edwards doubted
the impact of environment on mental capacities, but held that physical changes were
possible over time.
Most inhabitants of the British West Indies were enslaved Africans, and Edwards
discussed slavery and the slave trade, fundamentally viewing the trade as a necessary
evil, and many planters as relatively innocent. Edwards gave his slaves’ histories,
showing an interest in their African backgrounds and customs. For instance, he
mentioned his old and faithful Mandingo servant, who was circumcised and could
remember parts of the Koran. Another Mandingo servant could write Arabic
beautifully. He spoke of Gold Coast negroes, many of whom had been slaves in
Africa, and differentiated the people of Whidah from those of the Bight of Benin.27
Edwards, at this point, believed the slave trade encouraged violence in Africa, but
because of a natural decline in West Indian slave numbers, saw no alternative to its
continuation. His solution was for West Indian legislatures to ameliorate the system
of slavery, encourage a natural increase of slaves and make the Atlantic trade
redundant.28 Eventually, the institution of slavery would die out, being replaced with
a form of serfdom. Evolutionary change was what he envisaged.
Edwards continued to support the slave trade, even though he disagreed with
contemporary views that certain peoples, such as Native Americans or Africans, were
intrinsically inferior to Europeans. From his reading of the scientific literature and his
own observations, he reacted against the notion of uniformity. How could whole
continents of peoples be uniformly inferior? But, as a planter and politician, he opposed
abolition on economic grounds, revealing an apparent contradiction in his viewpoint.
Edwards devoted a large section of History of the West Indies to agriculture,
discussing innovations in the sugar industry, such as new rollers for crushing cane,
designed by Edward Woolery, and improvements in sugar boiling, developed by Mr
Bousie of Jamaica. In addition, new varieties of cane from the South Seas might prove
productive in the West Indies.29 Regarding other commercial crops, Edwards thought
cotton had good potential, but suggested that coffee offered the best chance for
expansion, especially with slave rebellion raging in Haiti, where coffee had formerly
been widely grown.30
The History of the West Indies received good reviews, with the Gentleman’s
Magazine placing it ‘in the highest rank of the annals of the historic literature of Great
Britain’.31 Edwards demonstrated the economic and political importance of the West
Indian colonies to Great Britain, arguing that it was impossible for Britain to
unilaterally abolish the slave trade at that time, since other European powers would
continue the trade. Further, he presented the planter position in a rational manner,
explaining the colonial view to a metropolitan audience.
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220 Olwyn M. Blouet

MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT AND FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY

A second edition of the History of the West Indies appeared in 1794, the same year
Edwards was elected to The Royal Society. The Haitian Revolution was still news, as
British troops attempted to quell the slave revolt and win Haiti from the French.32 The
slave trade continued to come under pressure from abolitionists. In 1795, Edwards ran
unsuccessfully for Parliament but, in the following year, won the seat for Grampound,
joining the West India interest in Parliament that included Sir William Young and
Charles Rose Ellis.33
Edwards divided his time between politics and science. In Parliament, he opposed
Wilberforce’s motion for immediate abolition of the slave trade in 1797, and again the
following year.34 He warned that fanatical abolitionists could incite rebellion in the
British West Indian islands, with the resulting extermination of both blacks and
whites. The abolitionists were not successful in 1798, but only four votes separated
the noes from the yeas. Eventually, the slave trade was abolished in 1807, after
Edwards’s death.
In 1797, Edwards published An historical survey of the French colony in the Island
of St. Domingo,35 attempting to explain the Haitian Revolution. According to Edwards,
French metropolitan abolitionists and politicians were to blame for instigating the
Revolution.36 The message was that London authorities and institutions should not
interfere in internal West Indian affairs. The tone was significantly more outspoken
than in his earlier History of the West Indies. Edwards included information on the high
mortality of British troops in Haiti (with many deaths coming from yellow fever),
concluding that Britain could not win Haiti.37 British troops did, in fact, evacuate the
island in 1798, and, in 1804, Haiti became the second republic (after the United
States) in the Western Hemisphere.
Bryan Edwards kept his interest in science alive by taking over from Sir Joseph
Banks (President of The Royal Society) as Secretary of the Association for Promoting
the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa in 1797.38 As demonstrated in his History
of the West Indies, Edwards was interested in Africa, and played an active role in the
Association. At Banks’s suggestion, he helped to edit Mungo Park’s African travel
journals for publication.39 This exercise convinced Edwards that the interior states of
Africa were constantly at war, thus minimizing the impact of the slave trade.
Edwards had enjoyed a productive life as a planter, politician and publicist when
he died in 1800. He moved from the Jamaican political stage to become a Member of
Parliament, effectively countering abolitionist pressure. The History of the West
Indies, in which he demonstrated familiarity with contemporary environmental
debates, gained him respect in the literary and scientific community, earning him
election to The Royal Society. During his last years Edwards wrote a history of Haiti,
and edited the African travel journals of Mungo Park. His scientific and political
viewpoints were more in tune with evolution than revolution.
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Bryan Edwards, F.R.S., 1743–1800 221

NOTES

1 Royal Society, Certificate of Election, v. 229, ballotted for and elected May 22, 1794. Young,
Gillies and Bancroft have entries in the Dictionary of national biography. Other supporters
included John Day, Richard Brocklesby, John Henniker Major and William Seward.
2 B. Edwards, The history, civil and commercial of the British colonies in the West Indies, 2
vols (London, John Stockdale, 1793).
3 E. Goveia, A study of the historiography of the British West Indies to the end of the nineteenth
century (Mexico, Instituto Pan Americano de Geografía e Historia, 1956). See also D.B.
Davis, The problem of slavery in the Age of Revolution, pp. 185–195 (Ithaca, Cornell
University Press, 1975).
4 Antonello Gerbi, The dispute of the New World: the history of a polemic, 1750–1900 (trans.
J. Moyle) (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973). See also C.J. Glacken, Traces on the
Rhodian Shore: nature and culture in Western thought from ancient times to the end of the
eighteenth century (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1973), and H. Steele Commanger
and E. Giordanetti, Was America a mistake? An eighteenth century controversy (New York,
Harper Row, 1967).
5 Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, was a French naturalist and Keeper of the Jardin
du Roi. He published Histoire Naturelle, Générale at Particulière, 44 vols (Paris, 1749–1804),
one of the most influential scientific works of the eighteenth century. See J. Roger, Buffon:
A life in natural history (trans. S. Bonnefoi, ed. L. Pearce Williams) (Ithaca, Cornell University
Press, 1997).
6 Biographical information is from ‘Sketch of the life of the author, written by himself a short
time before his death’, in B. Edwards, The history, civil and commercial, of the British
colonies in the West Indies (London, John Stockdale, 1801), H. E. Vendryes, ‘Bryan Edwards’,
Jamaican Historical Review I, 76–82 (1945), and Dictionary of national biography.
7 Edward Brathwaite, The development of Creole society in Jamaica, 1770–1820, pp. 41–42
(Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1971).
8 M. Craton and J. Walvin, A Jamaican plantation: the history of Worthy Park, 1670–1970, pp.
71–95 (London and New York, W. H. Allen, 1970), and Dictionary of national biography.
9 B. W. Higman, Jamaica surveyed: plantation maps and plans of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, p. 267 (Kingston, Institute of Jamaica, 1988).
10 R. Sheridan, ‘Planter and historian: the career of William Beckford’, Jamaican Historical
Review 4, 36–58 (1964).
11 E. Long, History of Jamaica, 3 vols (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970, orig. pub. London,
1774). See B. Edwards, ‘Notes on Edward Long’s History of Jamaica’, John Carter Brown
Library. These are marginal manuscript notes. Edwards disputed Long’s remarks about the
inferiority of all Africans.
12 D. Hall, In miserable slavery; Thomas Thistlewood in Jamaica, 1750–86 (London, Macmillan,
1989). The original Thistlewood materials (90 vols) are in the Lincolnshire Archives. Copies
are at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library. For more information on horticultural
activity see D. Hall, ‘Botanical and horticultural enterprise in eighteenth-century Jamaica’,
in Roderick A. McDonald (ed.), West Indies accounts: essays on the history of the British
Caribbean and the Atlantic economy in honour of Richard Sheridan (Barbados and Jamaica,
University of the West Indies Press, 1996).
13 Information conveyed by Mr Scott DeHaven of the American Philosophical Society. For
details about Ellis and Wright see Dictionary of national biography.
14 Proc. Am. Phil. Soc. I, 86–87 (1744–1837) (Philadelphia, McCalla and Stavely, 1884).
15 K.E. Ingram, Sources of Jamaican history, 1655–1838, vol. 2, pp. 708–716 (Zug, Inker
Documentation, 1976).
16 E.L. Saxe, ‘The Political Career of Bryan Edwards’, 1765–1800, pp. 24–43, MA thesis,
Richmond College, City University of New York, 1971.
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222 Olwyn M. Blouet

17 B. Edwards, Thoughts on the late proceedings of Government respecting the trade of the West
India Islands with the United States of America (London, T. Cadell, 1784).
18 B. Edwards, History of the British West Indies, vol. II, p. 421 (London, John Stockdale, 1794).
Unless otherwise indicated references are from the second edition of 1794.
19 B. Edwards, ‘Speech delivered at a free Conference between the Council and Assembly of
Jamaica, held on 19 November 1789, on the subject of Mr. Wilberforce’s Propositions in the
House of Commons, concerning the Slave Trade’ (London, 1790).
20 B. Edwards, An historical survey of the French colony in the Island of St. Domingo (London,
John Stockdale, 1797).
21 Edwards, op. cit., note 18, vol. I, Preface.
22 Buffon presented the notion of degeneracy. His ideas were adopted by such writers as
Cornelius de Paw and Abbé Raynal. Edwards was not alone in challenging European
assumptions. Thomas Jefferson, for example, was also involved in the debate. See T. Jefferson,
Notes on the State of Virginia (London, John Stockdale, 1787). Edwards and Jefferson had
much in common. Born in the same year, they were planters, slaveholders, politicians and
interested in science. They both questioned the institution of slavery, though depending on
slaves for a livelihood. They even used the same London publisher.
23 Edwards, op. cit., note 18, vol. I, pp. 26–59.
24 Ibid., pp. 56–59.
25 Ibid., p. 116.
26 Edwards, op. cit., note 18, vol. II, pp. 9–12.
27 Ibid., pp. 60–74.
28 Ibid., pp. 112–191.
29 Ibid., pp. 197–315.
30 Ibid., pp. 263–302.
31 Gentleman’s Magazine LXIII, 2, 1017 and LXIV, pt 1, 50 (London, 1793). See also Annual
Register, 417–427 (London, 1793).
32 D.P. Geggus, Slavery, war and revolution (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1982).
33 R.G. Thorne, History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1790–1820, 3 vols (London,
1986).
34 Parliamentary History (Hansard), vol. XXXIII, pp. 569–576 and pp. 1376–1415.
35 Edwards, op. cit., note 20. In 1801, when the third edition of Edwards’s History of the West
Indies appeared, An historical survey of St. Domingo became volume III of that edition. A
fourth edition was published in 1807, and a fifth in 1819.
36 Edwards, op. cit., note 20, p. 15 and pp. 57–63.
37 Ibid., pp. 171–173. Edwards’s opinion was questioned by Venault de Charmilly in Answer
by Way of Letters to Bryan Edwards, containing a Refutation of his Historical Survey of the
French Colony in St. Domingo (London, 1797).
38 See R. Hallett (ed.), Records of the African Association, 1788–1831 (London, Thomas
Nelson and Sons, 1964) and Hallett, The penetration of Africa (New York, Praeger, 1965).
39 Edwards kept Banks informed of his progress in editing Park’s journals. See, for example,
Edwards to Banks, Kew: B.C. 2. 189, 193, 204, 207 and 208. Edwards published an abstract
of Park’s account in the second volume of the ‘Proceedings of the African Association’ in
1798. The following year appeared M. Park, Travels in the interior districts of Africa in 1795
and 1796 (London, 1799).