Class, Gender and British Elections, 1794-1818

This chapter presents a case study in which one can see the convergence between London’s radical underworld and the West Indies, which also produced a critical understanding of a mutually constituted regime of ruling-class authority. McCallum’s book, Travels in Trinidad, published in 1805, offers the most detailed account and sustained indictment of the regime of General Thomas Picton, the first British governor of the island. McCallum was a recognisable sort of cosmopolitan, a footloose adventurer drifting through the Atlantic world, before landing at St. Domingue during the great slave insurrection. McCallum argued that one cannot be mandated to become a volunteer; furthermore, he maintained that the same constitutional rights that pertain in Britain must also operate in a British colony. McCallum was a man on the make; he may have acted as a government spy and his Travels may well have been secretly commissioned by Fullarton.