Prospects of Empire: Slavery and Ecology in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain
Prospects of Desire and Unease
After Abraham James
The Torrid Zone, or, Blessings of Jamaica, [1800 or 1803]
Etching with aquatint and hand coloring
Published 1 October [1800 or 1803] by William Holland
After Abraham James
Johnny New-Come in the Island of Jamaica, [1800 or 1803]
Etching with aquatint and hand coloring
Published 1 October [1800 or 1803], by William Holland
Satirical prints exposed the grim realities that idyllic images of the British West Indies sought to obscure. The colonies were known as “the white man’s grave” for the high mortality rates that Europeans faced there—to say nothing of the countless enslaved persons who died from brutal plantation labor. In these two prints, Abraham James, a lieutenant who served in the 67th regiment, evokes the threat of yellow fever and the hedonistic lives for which the colonists were mocked in the metropole. In one, “Johnny Newcome”—a caricature of the European immigrant—perishes of yellow fever.
Artist unknown, monogram J.F.
Johnny Newcome in Love in the West Indies, 1808
Aquatint with etching and hand coloring
Published April 1808 by William Holland
White male colonists sought to satisfy their desires by conscripting enslaved women into domestic arrangements. Johnny Newcome in Love in the West Indies mocks the “smitten” Newcome for resorting to obeah, an outlawed black creole spiritual practice, to win the affection of “Mimbo Wampo.” Anxieties over these domestic arrangements can be seen in the artist’s depiction of the pair’s proliferating offspring. The grid—natural history’s chief tool for classification and containment—is undermined; a leader of the Haitian Revolution is evoked when one child “promises fair to be the Toussaint of his Country.”
Artist unknown
Black Beauties, or Tit Bits in the West Indies, 1803
Etching with aquatint, soft-ground etching, and hand coloring
Published 1803 by William Holland
Artist unknown
Tit Bits in the West Indies, 1798
Etching with color
Published 1798 by William Holland
John Carter Brown Library, Brown University
Black Beauties depicts black women as grotesque, arousing internecine battles, and welcoming colonists’ advances. The missing center pane of what was originally a triptych portrayed a clergyman, eyes bulging and tongue angling from his lips, leering eagerly from behind a grassy hill at a reclining black woman, chest bare, legs spread, with a white cloth draped around her waist, throwing her blackness-and genitalia- unto relief. Eyes closed, the woman cannot return the clergyman’s gaze; rather, her body merges with the landscape, as much a prospect as the vegetation upon which she lies and the distant mountains.
Henry Heath (active 1822–42) after C.J.G.
The Delights of Emigration!, 1830
Etching with hand coloring
Published 1830 by S. Gans
Henry Heath (active 1824–50)
Manufacturing Cigars for the Poodles. A Sketch from the Havannah!, 1827
Etching and aquatint with hand coloring
Published 5 October 1827 by S.W. Fores
The Delights of Emigration! diptych ostensibly mocks the failure to attract white colonists to the British West Indies as the British government moved toward abolition and sugar production plummeted. However, the print also evokes homoeroticism in the colonies. The phallic snake and open-mouthed man in the left-hand image’s dystopic Eden, combined with the portrayal of the male colonists’ infertile gardens, observed by a black woman, in the right-hand image, suggests homoeroticism and effeminacy. The white male colonists in Manufacturing Cigars for the Poodles also appear effeminate, and the print’s homoeroticism takes the shape of brown, phallic cigars—perhaps a reference to enslaved men’s genitalia—upon which the colonists “suck.”
Abraham James
Martial Law in Jamaica: Taken after the life by a Gentleman on the spot & dedicated, with every assurance of the highest consideration, to all whom it may concern, [1801 or 1803], printed ca. 1824
Etching and aquatint with hand coloring
Published 10 November [1801 or 1803] by William Holland; reprinted ca. 1824
British military personnel frequently ridiculed colonial militias comprised of residents whose wealth, rather than military prowess, earned them their posts. Here, British lieutenant Abraham James caricatures Jamaica’s bumbling local guard. In the second frame, one militia member is half-planter, half-soldier; and another’s enormous hat and sword suggest that their defense preparations are mere pomp and circumstance. The third frame portrays a naked, androgynous black figure nailing metal “armor” to the bottom of one of the militia’s lowliest members, insinuating homoeroticism and white male effeminacy. The print also evokes anxieties over black militia members’ loyalty to the white elite.