Bryan Edwards (348)

Bryan Edwards (21 May 1743–16 July 1800) was a historian, politician, plantation owner and enslaver, and a member of the American Philosophical Society via his election in 1774. His early life was marked by hardship and disruption—his father, who worked diligently but unsuccessfully to increase his family’s wealth, died when Bryan was thirteen years old, leaving the family with little financial security—but Bryan's fortunes quickly changed. His widowed mother, Elizabeth Bayly, turned to her two wealthy brothers, Zachary and Nathaniel, for support. In 1759, Bryan moved to Jamaica to live with Zachary Bayly, who, upon his death in 1769, left his nephew five estates. Soon afterward, Bryan also inherited two plantations from a friend, Benjamin Hume. At least 1,500 enslaved people worked on these properties producing sugar and rum. Edwards’s wealth thus became dependent on the institution of slavery: unsurprisingly, he became a lifelong and public opponent of the abolitionist movement. Edwards’s political career in Jamaica began in 1765 when he joined the House of Assembly in the parish of St. George. He later ran three times for British Parliament; in 1795, he was elected to a seat for the county of Grampound. During his tenure as an elected official, he participated in heated debates in defense of slavery against the abolitionist leader William Wilberforce but was considered a moderate voice on the issue. Today, he is most well-remembered as a writer and historian of the West Indies. Between 1784 and 1797, Edwards published multiple works including pamphlets, poems, speeches, and multi-volume histories of the cultures and economies of the region. He spent the last eight years of his life in Southampton, where he worked as a merchant and established a bank. He became a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1797. Upon his death in 1800, he left his son, Zachary Hume Edwards, a great fortune. (DNB)