Cover of The Inner Lives of Empires with portrait of John Johnstone, Betty Johnstone and Miss Wedderburn by Sir Henry Raeburn.

A new book by historian Emma Rothschild tells the extraordinary story of an eighteenth century family.

The lives of the two slaves whose stories feature in the book – Bell or Belinda and Joseph Knight – make reading that is both compelling and distressing.

The story of the Johnstone siblings is a family saga of epic proportions. The 11 children are born in the 1720s and 1730s to an impecunious lawyer and his irascible wife. Four sisters and seven brothers, they are brought up in a tiny place in Dumfriesshire in south west Scotland, educated to go out and seek their way in the world. Their lives intersect with social and political upheaval, the apparently unstoppable expansion of the British empire around the globe, far-flung wars and bloody rebellions.

In The Inner Life of Empires, published today, Emma Rothschild tells the fascinating story of the Johnstone family and their fluctuating fortunes with meticulous attention to detail right down to the theft of a silver teapot, experiments on the nutritional value of carrots as animal feed, and “small congratulatory” gifts of elephants. An economist and historian at the Universities of Cambridge and Harvard, Rothschild first came across the letter diary of James Johnstone, the oldest of the brothers, in the archives of Edinburgh University.

Captivated by its many references to anxiety, expectation and anguish, and by the glimpses of sisters and aunts, she spent the following six years on the track of James and his siblings, her investigations spiralling out to encompass not just their spouses and offspring but also, perhaps most tellingly, some of their slaves.

Rothschild’s sources are copious bundles of letters, flimsy lists of things to do, parchment mortgages, plantation accounts, ledgers and leases, held in archives in Scotland and beyond. Their survival is a testament to the diligence of archivists and librarians over two centuries. Rothschild pursues them assiduously to paint a vivid picture of the siblings’ lives, deciphering faded handwriting and wildly erratic spelling. By means of this “old-fashioned scholarship” she unearths both the intimate histories of her cast of characters and their interactions with the fast-changing wider world. She charts family disputes, sibling rivalries, disapproval over unsuitable marriages, pleas for money to buy “shoos”, squabbles over who should have the rabbit skins from the estate, and a huge row over a parcel of Indian textiles.

Thus she reveals the enduring preoccupations of the era: financial security, social status, political power. The Johnstones were acquaintances of the most prominent figures of the Scottish enlightenment, including David Hume and Adam Smith, and they used the language of enlightenment in their private and public lives. But they were also deeply involved in the dramas of empire.

In eighteenth century Scotland, the fortunes of a family with a name to uphold, and a place in society, depended on its members making their way. The routes for doing this were army service, overseas commerce and marriage. The Johnstones, though they owned a small estate called Westerhall and aspired to be a family of substance and showed an almost obsessive interest in ancestry, had very little money. Debts piled up and bills went unpaid. A complicated system of letters of recommendation and a carefully cultivated network of family connections provided the vital network needed to get a foot on the career ladder, acting as the inside contacts and internships of the era.

Each of the 11 siblings (a further three died as infants) takes a different path. Of the four sisters, Margaret Johnstone is the most remarkable: she is the archetypal rebel, intensely political and physically intrepid, with “black Eyes and black Hair, her person well sized, and an easy though not very slender Shape”. Margaret and her husband are Jacobites, supporting the cause of Bonnie Prince Charlie and riding across Scotland with rebel armies. At the Battle of Culloden, where she has “a led horse for her husband”, she is captured by British forces.  Imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle, she escapes in disguise and flees to France. Her older child, a daughter, grows up to marry a man whose slave becomes the first person in Scotland to challenge, successfully, the legality of his status.

Margaret’s younger sister Betty Johnstone takes on the role of family communicator, keeping tabs on family affairs from tenancy agreements to marital separations.  She remains at home apart from a two-year period when she packs her trunk and seeks refuge elsewhere, following a terrible argument with her mother over who was the intended recipient of some Indian muslin sent by one of her brothers. Only when she apologises is she allowed back into the family home. Betty’s younger sister Charlotte Johnstone also feels the vent of parental wrath: when she makes a “catastrophically unsuitable” marriage to the son of a minister she is cut off by her father, who forgives her only on his deathbed. This is a family where tempers flare and words fly.

Growing up in the eighteenth century is tough. Barely grown up, the Johnstone boys are expected to stand on their own feet. George Johnstone goes to sea at the age of 13; his brothers John and Patrick Johnstone are both 16 when they join the British East India Company. Letters home take months and there is much agonising over how they are faring. But an early career start reaps rewards. In his mid-30s George Johnstone becomes Governor of the British Colony of West Florida where he has a grand vision for universal prosperity. John Johnstone, by dint of his ability to speak “the Moor’s language” (Persian) and “the Country Language” (Bengali), finds himself responsible for administering a province with “near 8,000 villages and near two millions of inhabitants”. It is this Johnstone brother who is on the receiving end of the elephantine gifts.

These are dangerous times in every sense. George Johnstone’s two small sons are captured by pirates on their way from Livorno to London. James Johnstone is seized by “Putrid Fever” and his body is covered with “Pustles as large as nuts”. Patrick Johnstone perishes shortly before his nineteenth birthday in the episode that becomes known as the Black Hole of Calcutta. Money amassed overseas is not easily brought home to Scotland, causing endless anxiety. The most successful brother is William Johnstone who stays in his homeland, marries an heiress and changes his name to hers. The least successful is James Johnstone, the brother in line to inherit the family estate. He lives in impoverished circumstances in Norfolk, at one point moving into a single room to cut costs. He is in no hurry to return to Scotland with its “barren Hills and horrid Mountains”.

Slavery is one of the means by which fortunes are made; six of the seven Johnstone brothers become owners of slaves. When Alexander Johnstone purchases a sugar plantation on the island of Grenada, it comes with 178 “Negroes and Mullatoe slaves”. Family inventories of goods and chattels list slaves along with “furniture, linnnen, China, Horses, Carriages”.  On the ethics of slavery, the family is divided. William Johnstone, as a member of parliament, supports the slave trade; Alexander Johnstone petitions against ill-treatment of slaves in Grenada; and James and John Johnstone, also members of parliament for a short time, become opponents of slavery.

The lives of the two slaves whose stories feature in the book – Bell or Belinda and Joseph Knight – make reading that is both compelling and distressing. Bell is brought from Bengal to Britain by John Johnstone and his wife. In 1771, she is found to have given birth secretly and is thought to have killed her baby, who is found in the River Esk. Committed to trial for child murder, a crime punishable by death, her lawyer appeals for clemency on the grounds of her illiteracy and ignorance of the law. She is sentenced to transportation to the Americas “to be sold as a Slave for Life”, and told that if she returns to Britain she will be “Imprisoned whypt and again Transported”. This is the last occasion when a British court determines that an individual should be enslaved.

Joseph Knight is brought from Jamaica to Scotland by John Wedderburn, son-in-law of the rebellious Margaret Johnstone. After falling out with his master, Knight saves his pocket money to present in 1773 a petition to the local sheriff in arguing that the state of slavery is not recognised in Britain. A year later the court finds in Knight’s favour and after four years of appeals he is released from a life of “perpetual service”, becoming the first person in Scotland to successfully challenge the status of slave, just seven years after the case of Bell with its very different outcome.

The diorama that emerges from The Inner Life of Empires is one of a chaotic and troubled family living in turbulent times across continents, over oceans, through good times and bad. Rothschild is a historian and economist, not a novelist, and she applies herself meticulously to the teasing-out of the complexity, ambiguity and contradictions contained in her source material. The result is a work that is rich in detail and rigorous in its pursuit of historical evidence. Her compassion and humour shine through, but never does she embroider her story. In the case of the Johnstone siblings and their ordinary but extraordinary lives, there is simply no need.

The Inner Life of Empires is published today by Princeton University Press. Professor Emma Rothschild is Director of the Joint Centre for History and Economics, a Fellow of Magdalene College, and Honorary Professor of History and Economics at the University of Cambridge. She is Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History at Harvard University.


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