Maritime Enterprise and Empire: Sir William Mackinnon and His Business Network, 1823-1893

544 Pages·2003·7.869 MB·English

by  J. Forbes Munro

MARITIME ENTERPRISE AND EMPIRE
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Munro, J. Forbes. Maritime Enterprise and Empire : Sir William Mackinnon and His Business Network, 1823-93, Boydell &
Brewer, Incorporated, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=218453.
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MARITIME ENTERPRISE
AND EMPIRE
SIR WILLIAM MACKINNON AND HIS BUSINESS
NETWORK, 1823–93
J. Forbes Munro
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THE BOYDELL PRESS
Munro, J. Forbes. Maritime Enterprise and Empire : Sir William Mackinnon and His Business Network, 1823-93, Boydell &
Brewer, Incorporated, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=218453.
Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-09-12 12:25:07.
© J. Forbes Munro 2003
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no
part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded
or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission
of the copyright owner
First published 2003
Published by The Boydell Press
An imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604–4126, USA
website: www.boydell.co.uk
ISBN 0 85115 935 4
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Munro, J. Forbes.
Maritime enterprise and empire : Sir William Mackinnon and his
business network, 1823–93 / J. Forbes Munro.
p. cm.
.d Includes bibliographical references and index.
e
vre ISBN 0–85115–935–4 (alk. paper)
se 1. Steamboat lines—Scotland—History—19th century.
r sth 2. Shipping—Scotland—History—19th century. 3. Mackinnon,
gir llA William, 1823–1893. 4. Wm. MHaEc8k2in7n .Mon8 C6 o2.0—03History—19th century. I. Title.
.de 387.5′44′092—dc21 2002153718
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Printed in Great Britain by
St Edmundsbury Press Limited, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
Munro, J. Forbes. Maritime Enterprise and Empire : Sir William Mackinnon and His Business Network, 1823-93, Boydell &
Brewer, Incorporated, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=218453.
Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-09-12 12:25:07.
Contents
List of illustrations vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
Part 1 Enterprising Scots 13
1 East India merchants: Clyde to Calcutta, 1823–61 15
2 The British India Steam Navigation Company, 1856–70 35
3 Extending the system: Australia, Indonesia and Arabian
waters, 1862–70 69
4 Business networking, 1860–70 88
Part 2 Suez and after 119
5 The Suez Canal, India and the Netherlands Indies, 1869–82 121
6 The Persian Gulf, the Zanzibar mail contracts, and the
London-Gulf line, 1869–82 154
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r sthg 8 ‘Aristocratic capitalism’, railways and the Central African
ir llA project, 1876–82 213
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14 Imperial politics: Egypt and the scramble for Africa, 1882–6 346
v
Munro, J. Forbes. Maritime Enterprise and Empire : Sir William Mackinnon and His Business Network, 1823-93, Boydell &
Brewer, Incorporated, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=218453.
Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-09-12 12:25:07.
CONTENTS
15 Interludes: a Scottish election, an African expedition and
a Persian railway, 1885–7 382
16 A false dawn: East Africa and the western Indian Ocean,
1887–90 408
17 The fall of the Imperial British East Africa Company, 1890–3 451
Conclusion 483
18 Maritime enterprise and empire 485
Appendix: family trees 512
Sources 515
Index 517
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vi
Munro, J. Forbes. Maritime Enterprise and Empire : Sir William Mackinnon and His Business Network, 1823-93, Boydell &
Brewer, Incorporated, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=218453.
Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-09-12 12:25:07.
Illustrations
Maps
1 The Indian Ocean in the nineteenth century 11
2 British India S.N. Co’s services, 1870 54
3 Netherlands India S.N. Co’s lines, 1870 78
4 The Persian Gulf 170
5 Eastern Africa in the 1870s 185
6 Queensland in the 1880s 286
7 East-Central Africa, 1888–9 412
Tables
2.1 Calcutta and Burmah S.N. Co: distribution of shares,
1857–60 41
2.2 BI: profit and loss account results, 1864/5 to 1869/70 68
4.1 British India and Netherlands India S.N. Cos:
distribution of shares, 1870 92
5.1 BI and NISM fleets, 1869–82 133
5.2 Coasting trade of British India, 1872/3 to 1882/3 134
5.3 BI and NISM: builders of new steamships, 1870–82 145
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ser sthg 115..15 TBIh aen Md aNckISinMn:o cna pGitraolu apn idn dAivuisdteranldias:, s1h8a6r9e–h8o3ldings 125925
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thg 9.1 The Mackinnon Group, 1881 240
irypo 9.2 Mackinnon Mackenzie & Co’s shipping agency earnings,
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1870–82 241
9.3 The Mackinnon enterprise network, 1881 251
vii
Munro, J. Forbes. Maritime Enterprise and Empire : Sir William Mackinnon and His Business Network, 1823-93, Boydell &
Brewer, Incorporated, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=218453.
Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-09-12 12:25:07.
ILLUSTRATIONS
12.1 Shipping freights, 1880–93 310
12.2 BI net earnings, 1880–93 317
Plates
William Mackinnon, 1882 ii
William Mackinnon, James Hall and Robert Mackenzie in Bengal,
c. 1850 22
Sir Henry Bartle Frere 47
Peter Denny 146
Steamships on the Hooghly 149
Shipping at Zanzibar 188
Leopold II 223
James Nicol Fleming 256
William Mackinnon, May 1881 269
Thomas McIlwraith and fellow Ministers, Queensland, 1879 284
The Dorundain Queensland waters 296
Henry Morton Stanley, 1886 396
George Mackenzie and General Mathews issue manumission papers
to freed slaves 424
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viii
Munro, J. Forbes. Maritime Enterprise and Empire : Sir William Mackinnon and His Business Network, 1823-93, Boydell &
Brewer, Incorporated, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=218453.
Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-09-12 12:25:07.
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to many people for their advice and assistance in preparing this
book. It could not have been written without access to archives and libraries
in Britain and around the world, and I would like to thank the staff of
the institutions listed in the section on ‘Manuscript Sources’ for their care
and attention. Among them, Stephanie Jones, the former archivist of
Inchcape & Co, Marylin Bell Hughes of the Tennessee State Library and
Archives, and Dr Gustaaf Janssens of the Archives of the Royal Palace,
Brussels, deserve special mention for going out of their way to make my work
easier. I am particularly grateful to Mr. Sandys Dawes of Faversham, Kent, to
Mr Duncan Macalister Hall of Torrisdale Castle, Argyll, and to Mr J. Bounder
of Melbourne, Victoria, for giving me access to source material which was not
available on public deposit.
Among my academic colleagues, Andrew Porter of King’s College,
London, the late Frank Broeze of the University of Western Australia, Gregg
Huff of the University of Glasgow and Duncan Waterson of MacQuarie
University in New South Wales were generous in supplying information
within their particular areas of expertise. Tony Slaven of the University of
Glasgow gave support and encouragement to the project over the years, and
I am very grateful to him for the opportunity to spend some time in the
Centre for Business History in Scotland, of which he is Director. This not
only enabled me to revisit my academic roots but also provided the incentive
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se the University.
r sth Small grants from the Economic and Social Research Council, the
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.de possible to undertake some of the extensive travelling which was necessary to
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I ,re Finally, I am grateful to Mike Shand of the CartoGraphics Unit, Depart-
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ix
Munro, J. Forbes. Maritime Enterprise and Empire : Sir William Mackinnon and His Business Network, 1823-93, Boydell &
Brewer, Incorporated, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=218453.
Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-09-12 12:25:07.
This book is dedicated to
George Shepperson
Philip D. Curtin
Jan Vansina
Sydney Checkland
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Munro, J. Forbes. Maritime Enterprise and Empire : Sir William Mackinnon and His Business Network, 1823-93, Boydell &
Brewer, Incorporated, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=218453.
Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-09-12 12:25:07.
Introduction
On 22 June 1893, Sir William Mackinnon, Baronet of Balinakill and Loup,
and Companion of the Indian Empire, died in his personal suite in the
Burlington Hotel, just off Bond Street in London’s West End. Some six days
later he was buried in the little churchyard of the village of Clachan, in
Kintyre in western Scotland. One mourner, Henry Morton Stanley, the
African explorer, recorded the scene: ‘We walked from his house, after a
simple service in the dining room. ... The coffin was borne on the shoulders
of relays of the Clachan villagers. In the parish grave-yard was an open grave,
as for a peasant, into which the sumptuous oak coffin, was lowered ... and
in a short time all that was mortal of a dearly-loved man lay beneath a
common mound.’1The contrast between the setting and location of William
Mackinnon’s death, in the fashionable heartland of Victorian Britain and its
Empire, and the simplicity of the final ceremony and resting-place in the
Scottish Highlands symbolises much of the contradiction and ambiguity
which surrounds this nineteenth century figure. A self-made businessman –
merchant, shipowner and financier – who rose from humble origins by
methods that were little known to the British public. A successful entre-
preneur who was touched by the shadow of the failure of at least two of the
larger enterprises with which he was associated. A philanthropist who
shunned publicity. A neat, dapper little figure, whose personality could
appear as colourless as the pale grey suits he favoured, but whose private
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se imperialist who influenced government policy but who largely steered clear of
r sth party politics. A man whose advice and assistance were sought by members
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.de but who preferred to take his leisure privately, in the company of a small
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1 Dorothy Stanley (ed.), The Autobiography of H.M. Stanley(London, 1909), p. 449.
1
Munro, J. Forbes. Maritime Enterprise and Empire : Sir William Mackinnon and His Business Network, 1823-93, Boydell &
Brewer, Incorporated, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=218453.
Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-09-12 12:25:07.