City staff have confirmed that the road was named in 1793 by John Graves Simcoe, the first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, in honour of Scottish politician Henry Dundas, First Viscount Melville. My answer is simple: change has to begin somewhere and names mean everything. The supposed intentions of a historical figure like Dundas, dead for more than 200 years, are rarely knowable after the fact. I am a historian by profession. Or was he a pragmatic abolitionist, whose intervention in one of the most important debates in British parliamentary history rescued abolition from certain defeat? In Guyana, as historian Nigel Westmaas notes, the statue of Queen Victoria was dynamited and partially destroyed at the height of the anti-colonial period in 1954. I have men like Dundas to thank for that. Scottish politician Henry Dundas' name is all over Ontario. Please register or log in to comment on this article. The claim is that the person after whom the street is named, Edinburgh Scotland’s Henry Dundas, First Viscount Melville, has a history of working against the movement for racial equality in addition to being impeached as a British MP. The weight of the evidence – that Dundas was a man dedicated to a vision of empire built on the mass enslavement of Black people and the mass slaughter of Indigenous Americans – is overwhelming. He was the trusted lieutenant of British prime minister William Pitt, and the most powerful politician in Scotland in the latter decades of the 18th century. But now clamour is growing for the removal of the statue of Henry Dundas, the 1st Viscount Melville, from St Andrew Square in Edinburgh as awareness has … Napoleon reimposed slavery across the empire in 1802, but he too was unable to defeat the rebels. A FREE roundup of top news from Guyana you might otherwise miss. Where does the truth lie? Edinburgh’s Dundas Street has been hit with graffiti and posted signs which state ‘Son of slaver Dundas + Colonialist Profiteer’. In the 1790s, faced with the epoch-defining choice to either align Great Britain with freedom or slavery, British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger and his ministers unequivocally chose slavery. As Secretary of State for War and Colonies, Dundas prioritised seizing France’s Caribbean slaveholding empire “with the view of enlarging our national wealth and security”. This movement reveals the global scale of imperialism’s genocidal legacies. The impetus for this removal stems from the person these designations sought to honour: Henry Dundas, 1 st Viscount Melville. This island is the homeland (yurumei) of the Garifuna, the Afro-indigenous descendants of African fugitives from enslavement and the indigenous people for whom the Caribbean region was misnamed. In 1796, he opposed immediate abolition as politically inconvenient in the context of the British war against emancipation, racial equality and democracy in France and the Caribbean. Across the pond, Dundas Street is a major historic arterial road in Ontario. Dundas was a powerful politician who, among many things, is … City Hall. Was he responsible for cynically delaying the abolition of slavery? Log in for full access to stabroeknews.com. Not far away lay St. Vincent, the main island in the modern-day multi-island state of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Delivered every morning. So, does the name of a street matter? The colonial government ordered the transportation of thousands of indigenous Vincentians to nearby Balliceaux Island, where British forces held 4,476 Garifunas prisoners for months. Half of the prisoners died and the survivors were then exiled to Central America. Apologists for Dundas point to his role as an advocate representing an Afro-Jamaican man, Joseph Knight, in his freedom suit in Scotland in the 1770s, as evidence of Dundas’ abolitionism. The answer, obviously, is no. British forces hunted down indigenous Vincentians across the island, massacring entire villages and destroying Garifuna autonomy. But interpreting the role of Henry Dundas in the abolition of slavery “is complicated,” the report noted. What stopped Pitt and his government in Saint Domingue was not their own misgivings, or parliamentary abolitionists, or the French, or the British public… but enslaved rebels in Saint Domingue, the British empire’s Vietnam. HIS name was usually only known to students of Scottish history and researchers in the slave trade. Britain had seized St. Vincent from France in 1763, part of the empire’s expansionist vision for slavery and sugar production – however, the Garifuna controlled about half of the island. The Henry Dundas Committee for Public Education on Historic Scotland [1] wishes to highlight important evidence that has been ignored — evidence that shows that Dundas was an abolitionist. In Canada, they have persuaded Toronto City Council to consider renaming the iconic Dundas Street that runs through the city. In 1804, Saint Domingue became independent from France as Haiti, the second independent state in the Americas. In 1795, MPs accused Dundas of allowing British forces to commit atrocities against the Jamaican Maroons of Trelawney Town, a free black community with whom Britain had signed a treaty in 1740. Henry Dundas opposed the abolition efforts of people like William Wilberforce in the British Parliament. Toronto City Council is to launch a public consultation over renaming a street named after 18th-century Scottish politician Henry Dundas. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/henry-dundas-empire-and-genocide/?fbclid=IwAR08KX_7Ghhk8ZQW491U7IlvDQKS-9L5ijuK4IpKXSfRReXs2phhkvQMSC8, Understanding ourselves: Confronting shame, blame and internalised racisms: Reimagining the future? Much of the discussion about Dundas is narrowly focused on the 1792 parliamentary slave trade abolition debate, when he inserted the word ‘gradual’ into William Wilberforce’s abolition bill, which passed in the House of Commons. Nicola Sturgeon's wildcat independence referendum plan shows how dangerous voting SNP really is – Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP, Stricter quarantine measures to be introduced in Scotland depending on UK Government announcement. The case led to a 1778 ruling, similar to the more famous decision in the 1772 case of enslaved man James Somersett, in which an English judge ruled that there was no positive law in England that could empower a slave owner to force an enslaved person back to a slaveholding jurisdiction. But his complicated historical legacy – which included delaying slavery abolition for 15 years – is under greater scrutiny. The City of Toronto is currently determining how to respond to a petition, signed to 14,000 people, to rename Dundas Street, one of the oldest and longest streets in the city. Meanwhile, in Grenada, Dundas’s forces suppressed an abolitionist uprising that lasted for eighteen months from 1795-96, led by enslaved people and a free man of colour named Julien Fédon. Abolitionists certainly did not see Dundas as one of them; in 1806 abolitionist Charles James Fox described Dundas as the man “who took a lead in constantly opposing our attempts at a total and immediate abolition” even though he knew the trade “to be adverse to policy, humanity, and justice.”. It ended up forming much … However, the Knight decision had no direct impact on the Atlantic slave trade or slavery in any legal jurisdiction besides Scotland. The petition says he was active in obstructing the elimination of slavery in the British Empire between 1791 and 1806 while he … During a press briefing this week, Mr Tory said: “We have been clear about that, at the same time acknowledging that it still exists in 21st century Toronto and that there has been plenty of anti-Black racism in Toronto's past. ©JPIMedia Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. Save on top camera brands - Stores located in … Haitian independence (which the UK did not recognise). We can never know whether or not that might have been true; to pursue counterfactualism as truth is to enter the realm of “alternative facts”. Some of his defenders have pointed out that, during the 1792 debate, he also made recommendations on how to improve conditions for enslaved people. Henry's - Canada’s digital camera store. With France financially devastated by the war, Napoleon sold the Louisiana Territory to the US. These debates are not new to the Caribbean and Colston was not the first slave trader whose monument ended up in the ocean. A petition went up today on the site You.leadnow.ca to change the name of Dundas Street in Toronto. Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville Henry Dundas Wiki Henry Dundas was not a good guy. Dundas had nothing to do with the eventual success of slave trade abolition. Dundas’s namesake has been deeply emblazoned across the province. Between 1793 and 1798, across the Caribbean, 40,000 British troops, most of them sent there by Dundas, died or were incapacitated in a bloody struggle to expand the frontiers of British slavery. Dundas was a Scottish aristocrat and key British cabinet member under William Pitt the Younger. Ontario's NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, who grew up in Hamilton, supported the idea of renaming the Toronto street on Twitter. In a recent public event, Diana Paton, William Robertson Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh, accurately summed up the debate among serious scholars of the slave trade about whether or not Dundas was an abolitionist by stating emphatically that there is no such debate. The spotlight in Toronto has been on Dundas Street, the major artery that snakes from the city centre far into the suburbs and beyond. Noble descendant of Henry Dundas calls in to defend ancestor in street renaming debate ... 2020. Was Dundas a corrupt scoundrel who deserved both his impeachment in 1806 and his nicknames, ‘The Great Tyrant’ and ‘The Uncrowned King of Scotland’? Toronto Mayor John Tory will look into changing the name of the street and a task force will be assembled within 30 days to look into the matter. Will it undo the past of Indigenous genocide and Black enslavement if city officials in Toronto and Edinburgh publicly acknowledge Dundas’s role as one of British slave traffickers’ most powerful supporters? These men were celebrated not in spite of the fact that they were white supremacists and, in some cases, mass murderers… but because of it. Genealogy profile for Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville Henry Dundas (1742 - 1811) - Genealogy Genealogy for Henry Dundas (1742 - 1811) family tree on Geni, with over 200 million profiles of ancestors and living relatives. Other than that the connection is pretty tenuous.”. Mr Lochend, who began the petition, told Toronto’s National Post that keeping Dundas’ name on the street was ‘particularly galling’. Dundas Street, which runs through Toronto and several other southern Ontario cities, was named after Henry Dundas, an 18th-century politician who delayed Britain’s abolition of … Across the United States, confederate monuments and symbols have been torn down or banned from public life. The street is named after Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville from Edinburgh, Scotland. He added: “Henry Dundas has very little if any impact on British North America other than the fact he purposely obstructed the abolition of slavery and other than the fact he happened to one mates with John Graves Simcoe. This website and its associated newspaper are members of Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). The ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movement has also reignited, with protesters in South Africa and at Oxford University, Cecil Rhodes’ alma mater and mine, calling for the removal of monuments to one of apartheid’s most important architects. It was banished to the Georgetown Botanical Gardens in 1970 when Guyana became a Co-operative Republic, but returned to its original location in front of the law courts in 1990. No scholar who is really committed to this subject thinks Dundas was an abolitionist. Until recently, few Scots who stood under the shadow of Edinburgh’s Melville Monument or sauntered along Dundas Street; or Canadians who walked down Toronto’s Dundas Street and gathered in Dundas Square, or residents of Dundas, Ontario, knew or cared that Henry Dundas (1742-1811), first Viscount Melville, was Home Secretary from 1791 to 1794, Minister for War and Colonies from 1794 to 1801 and First Lord of the Admiralty from 1804 to 1805. In addition to Dundas County, Dundas Street, an early settlement, military, and post road, was named after Henry Dundas. Scholarly work about Henry Dundas has virtually ignored his handling of indigenous interests in the North American territories controlled by Britain. Modern arguments defending the necessity of Pitt’s efforts to expand Britain’s slaveholding empire in order to undermine France echo the recent statement by US senator Tom Cotton, who described slavery in his country as a “necessary evil”. Quite predictably, this bill died in the House of Lords. The petition states that Scottish politician Henry Dundas, whom Dundas Street is named for, has a “highly problematic” legacy which saw him participate in … on Wednesday, June 10, 2020. Perhaps the most powerful example of this transnational imperial past is the current public debate in Scotland and Canada about memorials to Henry Dundas. Like Edinburgh, Toronto’s Dundas Street is named after Henry Dundas, the 18th century Scottish politician who delayed Britain’s abolition of slavery by 15 years. In response to a public campaign, Edinburgh City Council has decided to proceed with a plaque on the Melville monument acknowledging Dundas’s role as a defender of the slave trade. Those options include renaming Dundas Street as well as other city streets and city assets carrying the Dundas name, retaining the name but adding ceremonial street names and other signage that will address the legacy of Henry Dundas or retaining the name while renaming other city assets with Dundas in its name, such as Yonge-Dundas Square. The period from 1793-1807, after Parliament agreed to ‘gradual’ abolition’, witnessed the most consistently high volume of Africans transported to the British Caribbean in the entire history of the slave trade (574,370, or an average of 38,391 per year). Since the 1750s, enslaved people in Britain like Knight and Somersett, as well as Black and white abolitionists, had challenged slaveholding in metropolitan Britain. Mr Lochend had been inspired by the petition originating in Edinburgh which called to remove the Henry Dundas statue from St Andrew Square’s Melville Monument. An individual’s historical relevance is also about their actions, and the reasonably foreseeable consequences of those actions. The sight of British protesters dumping the statue of slave trader Edward Colston into Bristol harbour will likely be one of the enduring images from the anti-racism protests currently sweeping the world. The petition states that Scottish politician Henry Dundas, whom Dundas Street is named for, has a “highly problematic” legacy which saw him participate in … It is irresponsible revisionism for certain historians to assert, on the basis of no sound evidence, that, had it not been for the unfortunate business of the war with France, Dundas would have supported abolition. Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, was a Scottish politician. Only one active session is allowed per subscriber. Every day we move through streetscapes, pass under the shadow of monuments, learn in buildings and live in towns named for the architects of the structural forms of violence that continue to shape Black and Indigenous lives, limit our choices, destroy our health and kill our children. In 1795, Dundas threw Britain’s military might against a combined French and Garifuna force for control of the island. This essay was first carried on opendemocracy on July 30, 2020: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/henry-dundas-empire-and-genocide/?fbclid=IwAR08KX_7Ghhk8ZQW491U7IlvDQKS-9L5ijuK4IpKXSfRReXs2phhkvQMSC8. Does the name Dundas matter? Britain slunk out of Saint Domingue in defeat as Napoleon rose to power in 1798-99. Shop online for new, used and demo digital cameras, buy digital SLRs and video cameras. Henry Dundas, Empire and Genocide By Melanie J. Newton Melanie J. Newton is an Associate Professor of History and the former Director of the Caribbean Studies Program at the University of Toronto. Long before Colston, in 1986, after the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship, Haitians threw Port-au-Prince’s statue of Christopher Columbus into the sea. For a historian of slavery and abolition in the Caribbean, these questions are easy to answer. I have spent countless hours in the archives of the British empire. 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