Content provided in partnership with
Francis Williams: An Eighteenth-Century Tertium Quid
Negro History Bulletin, April-June, 1998 by Michele Valerie Ronnick
The story of Francis Williams (c.1700- c.1770) has been told and retold in a number of places, but never very well nor very thoroughly. Williams has seldom been looked at as his own person but instead has been perceived as a useful little tessera, which various writers for various reasons have placed in some corner or other of their verbal mosaics. This holds true for the first and fullest account of the life and achievements of Williams in The History of Jamaica by Edward Long, who was a member of the island,s plantocracy until 1769. In 1917, T. H. MacDermot explained that our "efforts to make an objective evaluation of his position ... are seriously hampered by the obvious prejudice with which Long describes his subject."(1)
- Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »
As many scholars have noted, Long's sole interest in Williams sprang from a desire to render him ridiculous, and thereby prove that black people were an inherently inferior people worthy of enslavement. With a stance of ersatz objectivity, Long declared that he has left "it to the readers' opinion whether what they shall discover of his genius and intellect will be sufficient to overthrow the arguments I have before alleged, to prove an inferiority of negroes [sic] to the race of white men." As W. J. Gardner politely observed about one hundred years later, "it is to be deplored that Mr. Long's history is almost the only source of information relative to the career of Williams, for his prejudices arouse the suspicion that a black man would not receive impartial justice at his hands.'(2)
If the prejudice and polemic are put aside and information from other contemporary sources is introduced, the story of Francis Williams is as follows. He was born around 1700 to John and Dorothy Williams, a free black couple in Jamaica. In a society that considered most people of African descent to be human implements, only a limited number of free blacks were ever in a position to accumulate any property or gain any social status. Free people of color became increasingly outnumbered throughout the eighteenth century. For example in 1703 near the year of Francis Williams' birth, an estimated 45,000 slaves lived in Jamaica. By 1778 during the decade in which he died, that number had grown to 205,261. The status of the Williams' family was therefore extraordinary because through the private bill system of the Jamaica Assembly, they had gained rights accorded almost exclusively to whites. "Those who stood highest in the social scale," according to W. J. Gardner, "were such as had been manumitted by private acts of the assembly."(3)
Of the 128 laws enacted by private bill during the eighteenth century by a government that was patently reluctant to grant privileges to any black people, only four laws pertained to rights for white men. The first of these private bills was passed into law in 1708 and referred solely to John Williams. "Acting on the petition of John Williams," the legislature conceded to him the right to be "tried according to the known laws, customs, and privileges of Englishmen."(4)
Why these rights came to John Williams remains obscure. "Someone fairly high up in Jamaica must have been taking a special interest in the Williams' family, and that interest in view of the collateral facts must have been based on something of note in John Williams, Senior." Clearly, Williams had attained an importance worthy of special attention for some reason but not, however, without stirring up a certain amount of rancor.(5)
According to the historian W. J. Gardner, he "soon after nearly lost the social status he thus acquired through having incurred the displeasure of a member of the house of assembly. The latter had called him a `black negro.' Williams ... simply retorted by calling his antagonist a 'white negro.' Still the retort was thought of sufficient importance to engage the attention of the learned legislators, by some of whom it was proposed to revoke the act of 1708, so far as it related to the culprit."(6)
The result can be traced in the records of the legislature for April 5, 1716, when another act was entertained that concerned the entire Williams family, who were mentioned member by member. The intent of the private bill was a protective one that sought "to prevent negroes being evidence against Dorothy the Wife and John, Thomas and Francis, sons of John Williams, a free negro." The attorney general's "report upon an Act passed in Jamaica" was read in May 1717.(7)
Suffice it to say, the lot of the average disenfranchised black person vis a vis life in the West Indies could hardly bear comparison. In William Dickson's Letters on Slavery (1789), we find disturbing accounts of violence against black people in Barbados. "An elderly negro woman, who worked out in Bridgetown ... looked up to me for protection. One evening she came to me, bathed in her blood, from a very large gash in her head ... she said she knew (and I am pretty sure, I know) the white man who cut her, and that a great many negroes saw the deed done. This was no proof. Her owner, therefore, was obliged to bear the expence [sic] and the loss of her labour." The narrative continues with a description of "a valuable and inoffensive negro man" who "was attacked, one evening, when going on his owner's business, by a white man, who, with one stroke of his cutlass, severed one of his hands from his body. His owner, who could produce no white evidence, was obliged quietly to put up with the damage and the poor fellow with the loss of his limb."(8)
Find Research Guides for:
Find Featured Titles for: Arts
Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »