Hector William Munro

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Hector William Munro (born January 20, 1769 , † January 3, 1821 in Bath ) was a British military and colonial official. From 1811 to 1813 he was governor of the British colony of Trinidad .

Life

Hector William Munro was born the second son of surgeon George Munro, 2nd Laird of Auchinbowie . His family belongs to a branch of the Scottish clan Munro .

Munro joined the British Army in August 1778 as Ensign of the 51st Regiment of Foot . he rose in February 1780 to lieutenant and in March 1788 to captain . In September 1789 he moved to the 42nd Regiment of Foot and was promoted to major in September 1796 . In October 1795 he was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel of the Caithness Legion of Fencible Men and in January 1801 to their Colonel . During the coalition wars he took part in the fighting in Flanders and in the conquest of Menorca (1798). In March 1804 he was promoted to major-general . In 1808 he was entrusted with the responsibility for several regiments on various West Indies .

On September 27, 1811 Munro was appointed governor of Trinidad. He succeeded Thomas Hislop , who, towards the end of his tenure, concentrated more on his military career and successfully participated in sea operations against France, the invasion of Martinique in February 1809 and the invasion of Guadeloupe in February 1810, and who abdicated in 1811 due to illness. Hislop, more of a military than civil administrator, had created numerous enemies by curtailing the rights of civil administration on the island, so expectations of Munro were correspondingly high. His tenure was marked by two events on the world stage that had a direct impact on Trinidad. In Venezuela, only a few kilometers from Trinidad, the struggle for independence raged; The First Republic had been proclaimed just under three months earlier . In Europe, Great Britain, in a permanent feud with Napoleon's France, temporarily allied itself with the arch enemy Spain on the occasion of the French occupation of Spain. For Trinidad, which did not find out about the new constellation until months later, the situation changed suddenly: The threat from Spain disappeared, but the conflicts within the most important Trinidadian trading partner paralyzed the economy. The situation culminated in August 1812 when the Trinidadian merchants approached Munro with a memorandum demanding that their interests be protected. Munro sat out the conflict, and a few months later the situation eased on its own as Spain temporarily gained the upper hand in Venezuela. Another event of the Venezuelan War of Independence overtook Munro in the first week of January: On the Trinidadian island of Chacachacare , Santiago Mariño Carige Fitzgerald, a native of Margarita , who had served in the Trinidadian militia and whose family owned a cotton plantation on Chacachacare, collected and armed 44 followers with them the Venezuelan city of Güiria , located on the opposite mainland , whereupon his troops suddenly increased to 5,000 men through revolutionary-minded supporters, took the strategically important Maturín and formed one of the two military associations that led to the Second Republic . Munro only found out about Mariño's plans immediately after his departure and could no longer prevent them; as a subsequent measure he had martial law proclaimed and founded a committee of inquiry, and he also confiscated the property of all known to him participants in Mariño's campaign.

On June 4, 1813, he was promoted to Lieutenant-General . He held the office of governor of Trinidad until June 14, 1813; he was succeeded by Ralph Woodford . This is recognized today for the fundamental rebuilding of the city of Port of Spain after the Great Fire of 1808, a task that was subject to Munro's tenure but was not tackled.

Munro was married in January 1796 Philadelphia Bower of Edmondsham, daughter and heiress of a southern English gentry family. Through his wife he inherited the Edmondsham estate in Dorset and since then has had the title of "1st ( Lord ) of Edmondsham". The couple had three sons and four daughters.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ London Gazette . No. 11898, HMSO, London, August 4, 1778, p. 1 ( PDF , English).
  2. ↑ London Gazette . No. 12058, HMSO, London, February 15, 1780, p. 2 ( PDF , English).
  3. ↑ London Gazette . No. 13812, HMSO, London, September 8, 1795, p. 929 ( PDF , English).
  4. ↑ London Gazette . No. 13825, HMSO, London, October 24, 1795, p. 1104 ( PDF , English).
  5. ↑ London Gazette . No. 15326, HMSO, London, January 6, 1801, p. 37 ( PDF , English).
  6. ↑ Alexander Mackenzie: History of the Munros of Fowlis with genealogies of the principal families of the name . A&W Mackenzie, Inverness 1898, p. 332 .
  7. ^ Lionel Mordaunt Fraser: History of Trinidad . tape 1 : From 1781 to 1813 . Government Printing Office, Port of Spain 1891, p. 361 .
  8. ^ Lionel Mordaunt Fraser: History of Trinidad . tape 1 : From 1781 to 1813 . Government Printing Office, Port of Spain 1891, p. 362 .
  9. ↑ VS Naipaul: Farewell to Eldorado . List Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-548-60358-0 , pp. 412 .
  10. ^ Lionel Mordaunt Fraser: History of Trinidad . tape 1 : From 1781 to 1813 . Government Printing Office, Port of Spain 1891, p. 364 .
  11. ^ Olga J. Mavrogordato: Voices in the Street . Inprint Caribbean, Port of Spain 1977, pp. 48 .
  12. ↑ ClanMacFarlaneGenealogy.info: George Munro, 3rd of Auchinbowie. Retrieved June 16, 2017 .
  13. ↑ John Alexander Inglis: The Monros of Auchinbowie and cognate families . T&A Constable, Edinburgh 1911, p. 53 .


personal data
SURNAME Munro, Hector William
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Munro, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British military and colonial official
DATE OF BIRTH January 20, 1769
DATE OF DEATH January 3, 1821
Place of death Bath