Papers of Samuel Martin, 1694-1776, relating to Antigua

Catalogue record

Notes

These papers detail the commercial, political, and personal lives of the Martin family of Antigua and Berkshire from the mid-eighteenth through the late nineteenth centuries. The volumes included in this microform edition are the letter-books of Samuel Martin (1694/5-1776), planter of Antigua, and related documents (British Library Add. Mss. 41346-51 & 41353). As one of the largest and widest-ranging surviving collections of West Indian planter family papers, the letter-books of Samuel Martin constitute an important source for the study of eighteenth-century West Indian planters, and of the island societies which they shaped and were shaped by at the height of the era of sugar and slavery. As such, they offer an unparalleled picture of social and economic life in one of Britain's most important plantation colonies at the time of its greatest prosperity, and offer the historian an outstanding opportunity to understand both the day-to-day management of a successful sugar plantation and the patterns of life in a mature plantation society.
The Martin letters offer a unique snapshot of life and labour in one of Britain's most lucrative colonies at the height of its economic success. Through these documents, we see Antigua at the height of its great prosperity in the period from 1707 to 1774, during which the slave population grew from 13,000 to 38,000, and the average annual yield of 5,000 tons of sugar rose to just over 9,000 tons. Martin was not only one of the island's most successful planters, but he was also, in the words of the contemporary Scots traveller, Janet Schaw, its "loved and revered father, to whom it owes a thousand advantages," and thus a study of his correspondence is of considerable value to scholars interested in the social, economic, and political history of Antigua, the Leeward Islands, and the British West Indies in general at the height of the era of sugar and slavery. Martin's travels to England and North America, his constant correspondence with far-flung family and friends, and his tremendous interest in political and agricultural developments throughout the British Atlantic world, particularly in rational and humane techniques of plantation management, also make his letters an important source for scholars working in the flourishing field of Atlantic history, and could be of value to anyone hoping to introduce a wider Atlantic perspective to the study of Antigua or the Leeward Islands. Through the eyes of Samuel Martin, the 18th century slave owner, soldier and author of "An essay on plantership" (London, 1773) and "A plan for establishing and disciplining a national militia in Great Britain, Ireland, and in all the British dominions of America : to which is added, an appendix, containing proposals for improving the maritime power of Great-Britain" (London: A. Millar, 1745), we can gain a sense of what it actually meant to live in this British Atlantic imperial world, and of the multiple and overlapping identifications and allegiances experienced by British colonists in the decades prior to the outbreak of the American Revolution.
The introduction by Dr Natalie Zacek, University of Manchester, is accompanied by John Martin's notice on Samuel Martin, reproduced with permission from the Oxford dictionary of national biography (© Oxford University Press 2004-8).

Add. mss. 41346-41349 is reproduced from a duplicate of the BL's own master negative, and Add. mss. 41350-41351 & 41353 from digital images supplied by the BL using an AW-1 archive writer from Micrographics Data Pte Ltd (Singapore).