Painting Pictures by Numbers: Edward Long's Political Economic Fantasy for Jamaica

Abstract: Edward Long (1734–1813), wrote the History of Jamaica (1774), in part, with the hope that his words would reshape the colony's frontier by drawing yeoman farmers from Britain to the island's unsettled interior. Long's vision was to remake the unimproved frontier into something approximating rural England, which would serve the planter class by reducing island food prices; denuding forested safe havens for runaways and rebels; and refashioning the colony into something that could better withstand nascent British antislavery critique. Long's rhetorical strategy obscured the harsh realities of Jamaica's slave economy while it pointed potential migrants away from commercial slave ownership. This article highlights how the planter-author juxtaposed his picturesque descriptions of the island with quantitative tables that were intended to attract migrants of a certain caste. It was Long's hope that these settlers would be liminally and forever fixed between the enslaved population and the ruling planter class. Long's plans for the creation of British settlements excited neither the ruling class nor potential migrants and therefore failed.