William Fullarton

William Fullarton (born January 12, 1754 in Ayrshire , † February 13, 1808 in London ) was a British military, politician, writer and High Commissioner of Trinidad .

Life

Early years

Fullarton was born in the Scottish county of Ayrshire as the only child of his father, who was also called William. Since he was wealthy, Fullarton was able to study at the University of Edinburgh and visit Sicily and Malta as part of a cavalier tour that he undertook with William Beckford's private tutor . He was initially destined for a diplomatic career and he took up a position as secretary to the British Ambassador in Paris, but after he inherited his father's property, he settled in England and in 1779 obtained a seat in the British Parliament for the Borough of Plympton Alder . In 1780 he did not run again, but devoted himself to a military career as a lateral entrant: at his own expense he raised a regiment to use it against the Spanish fleet with the help of ships of the British Crown off the Mexican Pacific coast; for this he was appointed lieutenant colonel of the 98th regiment he financed. Without being involved in combat operations, Fullarton's regiment was transferred to the Cape of Good Hope when the fourth Anglo-Dutch War broke out , where it was again not used.

India

In the same year Fullarton and his regiment were transferred to India to take part in the Second Mysore War . He was stationed in Chennai (then Madras) and operated from there as the leader of troops of the British East India Company southwards into the Carnatic . In June 1782 he was promoted to colonel in the Army of the East India Company and subsequently directed several successful operations in Tirunelveli , Palakkad and Coimbatore .

England

In 1787 Fullarton returned to England and there to his family estate in Ayrshire. With A View of English Interests in India he published a political paper that criticized the politics of the East India Company, but afterwards dealt primarily with agriculture and published several papers on this topic. At this time he married his wife Marianne, who belonged to the Scottish noble clan of the MacKays . From 1787 to 1803 he was a member of the House of Commons for different constituencies, most recently for Ayrshire, and was a member of the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh . In 1794 and 1800 he set up regiments again, but in both cases there were irregularities in the financing. At the beginning of the 19th century, Fullarton was therefore not without controversy.

Trinidad

In 1802 the then governor of the British colony of Trinidad , Thomas Picton , was disempowered for criticizing his administration. Since the slave rebellion in Haiti , the islands of the Caribbean, which are characterized by plantation economy, have experienced a perceived or real threat from rebellious slaves of African descent. In Trinidad, this diffuse mood was fueled by a seven-year series of real or supposed poisonous murders of hundreds of slaves, for which other slaves were held responsible. Picton reacted first by setting up a commission, but then with a series of arrests, torture, banishment, mutilation and execution. Although he succeeded in restoring public order, he made enemies on the island among those residents of British origin who followed the comparatively humanistic, sometimes Jacobin ideals of their homeland. This opposition made its voice heard in London until the competent ministry decided there in July 1802 to set up a three-man commissioner in place of the post of governor. William Fullarton was appointed First Commissioner and responsible for civil administration. Picton was to be Second Commissioner in charge of military affairs on land; Samuel Hood was named Third Commissioner in charge of the Navy. On January 3, 1803, Fullarton arrived in Port of Spain with his wife and an entourage of eleven people.

On the fourth day after his arrival, there was a dispute between Fullarton and Picton when the latter, after consulting with Fullarton, put up a proclamation and the latter subsequently declared it to be invalid. The two commissioners were very different characters: Picton was an eloquent, generous and open-hearted slave owner, Fullarton, on the other hand, a more closed type who only surrounded himself with his entourage, always kept an eye on finances and was also an abolitionist . Within a few weeks, the dispute turned into bitter hostility, which polarized the island: The Spanish and the numerically small but mostly British opposition, which was very present in Port of Spain, sided with Fullarton, while the plantation owners and Port of Spains upper class stopped at Picton. Both sides wrote excited letters to London, and Picton and Fullarton made life difficult almost every day. Third Commissioner Hood arrived in Trinidad at the end of January and sided with Picton, adding to tensions. On February 18, 1803, if the unbearable situation, Picton signed his resignation, which, however, still had to be shipped to London and accepted there, which in turn had to be reconfirmed by ship to Trinidad, so that Picton initially remained formally military governor and continued his guerrilla war with Fullarton . The latter drew up a list of 37 offenses by Picton, on the basis of which he intended to bring a lawsuit against Picton in London and which he presented to a commission meeting in Port of Spain. Annoyed by Fullarton's actions, Hood resigned just 30 days after arriving in Trinidad. Fearing for his life, Fullarton prepared to flee the island. As evidence against Picton he took the files of the court of Port of Spain with him and went on board a ship he had rented, but Hood forcibly prevented its departure because of the theft of the court files, until Fullarton declared that the files were not but to have handed them over to an informant ashore for safekeeping. Fullarton fled to Union Island with his entourage . A month later he cruised off Trinidad to find out the current situation. Given that Hood had left and Picton, still acting second governor, was back in sole command of Trinidad, he fled to Barbados on May 19, 1803 . On May 20, 1803, only ten months after its establishment, the experiment of the Commissariat Government was terminated by decree of the Secretary of State for the Colonies , Robert Hobart , and Picton was summoned to London; Thomas Hislop was appointed the new governor. Picton left on June 14, 1803, and Fullarton took over the government of Trinidad again. In parallel with government business, he was preparing a lawsuit against his archenemy Picton, focusing on the case of the torture of a fifteen-year-old girl named Luisa Calderon for stealing. As a free (not enslaved) woman under the age of fourteen, she should not have been tortured under the Spanish law then applicable in Trinidad - Fullarton had a henchman create a forged birth certificate that made Calderon two years younger. Hislop arrived in Trinidad on July 20, 1803; Fullarton left for London on the same day.

England

Back in England, Fullarton filed a lawsuit against his intimate enemy Picton before the Privy Council . He was arrested in December 1803 for seven possibly unlawful executions and the torture of Luisa Calderon. The process dragged on for years because inquiries had to be made regularly in Trinidad, which was two months away by ship. Picton was convicted in the first instance, but a lengthy retrial rehabilitated him, while Fullarton, meanwhile without title and income, was increasingly isolated.

William Fullarton died on February 13, 1808 in a London hotel at a pneumonia . He was buried in Isleworth in western Greater London .

Works

• 1787: A View of English Interests in India
• 1793: General View of the Agriculture of the County of Ayrshire

Individual evidence

1. ↑ VS Naipaul: Farewell to Eldorado . List Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-548-60358-0 , pp. 249 .
2. ^ Naipaul, p. 248
3. ^ Naipaul, p. 218
4. ↑ Michael Anthony: Historical Dictionary of Trinidad and Tobago . Scarecrow Press, London 1997, ISBN 0-8108-3173-2 , pp. 239 .
5. ↑ Naipaul, p. 250
6. ↑ Michael Anthony: Profile Trinidad: A Historical Survey from the Discovery to 1900 . 4th edition. Macmillan Caribbean, London 1986, ISBN 0-333-16666-3 , pp. 65 .
7. ↑ Naipaul, p. 293
8. ^ Anthony, Profile Trinidad , p. 68.
9. ↑ Naipaul, p. 300
10. ↑ RoyalSocEd.org.uk: Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1783-2002. Retrieved June 16, 2016 .