Cochin to Calicut – Australia and Britain, their journey
There are so many people of Indian origin living in
Australia, these days. Many of them as well as tourists view Sydney with wonder,
but few would know the connections between the Australian ‘Father of the
Nation’ Lachlan Macquarie, Sydney, and Malabar. Nor would they know that his
lifelong servant and man Friday, George Jarvis was a slave boy purchased from a
Cochin slave market. In 12 years, Lachlan changed the face of a penal convict
nation and laid the foundations for Sydney to become a great metropolis. I had
introduced Lachlan and George a few years earlier, and outlined their times at
Calicut, but as promised, here is a follow-up version with some more details.
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Let us first speed through the bio of Lachlan Macquarie – he was primarily a career soldier, a British Army officer, and finally, a colonial administrator hailing from Scotland. After service in India and Egypt, Macquarie served as the fifth Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821 and is considered by historians to have a major role in the transition of New South Wales from a penal colony to a free settlement and shaping Australia’s social history.
Back in Bombay, a sick Lachlan was nursed back to health, and
in Nov 1792, met a 20-year-old heiress Jane Jarvis, whose father, the Chief Justice
at Antigua had made his fortunes in the West Indies. Lachlan got hitched to
Jane after signing a prenuptial agreement forfeiting any of Jane’s wealth and committing
£1000 of his savings to Jane’s trust fund. The days that followed were not profitable
financially, and to avoid bankruptcy, he had to retire and move south. Lachlan
sailed to Calicut with Jane, in Dec 1794 (I had covered his life in Calicut in
that previous article, so a perusal through
this link will take you to the details) as a lieutenant in Colonel James Marsh’s
unit, and we note that to ease life at the Staffa Lodge, he planned to acquire
a couple of slave boys for his wife, Jane.
But before we get into that, let’s check out the bustling
slave markets in Cochin. Tenured slaves from the lowest of castes were part of
Indian society for ages, however, they were not sold (they were passed along
with property or inherited) or moved across borders. The export of slaves as a
commodity started with the Portuguese settlers and became a lucrative trade
during the Dutch presence in South India. While slaves of all ages were
supplied to the buyers by locals, several slave markets existed in different
parts of Kerala. In these markets, slaves were sold off to meet the demands of
Arab, French, and Dutch buyers. They were then moved to distant locales and
plantations, all over the world. Kappiri (Black – African Siddi) slaves were
also brought and sold in this market (we can see examples of purchases by Sakthan Thamburan) while local slaves were often acquired by English,
Dutch, and Portuguese patrons for their households and estates.
Thus, it was in 1795, that Lachlan Macquarie asked his
colleague Lt Gray, then pursuing some deserters at Cochin to head to the slave
market and buy a couple of boys for Jane. On Jan 24th, 1795, he records
- Lieut. Gray returned from Cochin, and brought me two very fine, well
looking healthy black boys; both seemingly of the same age, and I should
suppose from their size and appearance that they must be between six and seven
years old. The stoutest of them Mrs.
Macquarie has called Hector after my brother, and the smallest I have called
George after her brother. Lieut. Gray has executed his commission much to our
satisfaction, for which I conceive myself much obliged to him. The two slave boys cost One Hundred and
Seventy Rupees. We had the boys immediately well washed, their hair cut and
combed, and well clothed.
Because slaves usually took the surnames of their owners,
the boys were called Hector Jarvis and George Jarvis, respectively. It is
mentioned here and there that George was a Topass (Portuguese Indian or Mestico
offspring- their habit of wearing hats earned them the name Topass, others say
Dubhash (translator) was corrupted to Topass), though he may not have been one.
More details of George’s parents are not known. However, Lachlan’s biographer
Ritchie terms him as a black Hindu servant– incidentally Lachlan also had other
servants at various stages - Abdullah at Bombay, the other long-serving English
servant named William Stewart, and Francis Bender.
Lachlan was later deputed to Cochin with the 77th
to fight the Dutch and take Cochin, after which he and his wife bid goodbye to Malabar
and moved to Bombay. The next year, Lachlan was sent to Ceylon for a
re-engagement with the Dutch, but Jane suffering from TB passed away soon after
and Lachlan slipped into a dark period, beset with depression. The Staffa lodge
was sold, all of Jane’s stuff was disposed of and Lachlan found himself left
with a legacy of £6,000. Hector and George were put into a Parish school in
Bombay. It was in 1796, after Jane’s death that Lachlan decided to emancipate the
slave boys, well before the British Empire’s official abolition of slavery in
1833 (although he did help his late wife’s cousin in buying a couple of twelve-year-old
slave girls from Cochin in 1802!).
Lachlan again found his way back to Malabar joining in the
British fight against the Pazhassi Raja of Kottayam. That done, he moved on to
fight Tipu in the final battle at Srirangapatanam and obtained a share of the
loot as prize money. Hector the older slave boy, was kidnapped during this war,
in 1799 and was never to be heard from, again. George however, remained with
the family and accompanied Macquarie as an officer's servant during his
military campaigns, and continued life.
By 1800, we see the soldier working as the secretary to
Jonathan Duncan, Governor of Bombay. Arthur Wellesley who passes by, does not
take a liking to Lachlan and sends him off to go to Egypt to fight Napolean’s
forces, as Dy Adjutant General. In the meantime, Lachlan stakes all his
savings, some £15,000 to hold on to his uncle’s land. The Egyptian campaign
was, however, quite profitable, and raising such a sum presented no difficulty.
After the Egyptian campaign in 1801, Macquarie sent George
with his brother Charles, to be taken to Lochbuie House and placed in school in
Scotland. Macquarie wrote -I have sent home in charge of my brother, my
favorite slave boy named George Jarvis with the intention that he should put
him to school and get him otherwise qualified for making him a good servant
when I return home myself, this poor boy expressed at first great sorrow at
parting with me, at length cheerfully undertook to accompany my brother to
Europe.
Back in England, he meets and gets to know his cousin
Elizabeth, and in Elizabeth Campbell’s diary, we see a mention that the usually
quiet George, became very excited seeing Lachlan Macquarie after the Egyptian
adventures, demonstrating their closeness. George continued in Macquarie's
service as his valet. Lachlan spent a few years in high society in London, seemingly
got into trouble (he did participate in or even organize many a swindle during
his life) with the Duke of York, and is ordered back to India.
In 1805, he is seen back in India with George, fighting the Holkar’s
with the 83rd, and two years later, in 1807, he happily bids goodbye
to India for the last time, which he considered a land of death (due to Jane’s
demise there). From India, Lachlan journeys through Persia and Russia, and 'George'
follows him, with the valet’s role of guarding Macquarie's possessions and
attending to his personal needs. Later, during the voyage across the Caspian
Sea, he would also become the unofficial cook for the travelers. At the time of
the 1807 overland journey 'George' was approximately eighteen (18) years of
age. Upon getting back to England, Lachlan gets married to Elizabeth Campbell.
After another two years, in1809, he was appointed as
governor (curiously recommended by two people who posed trouble for him earlier
– the Duke of York and Arthur Wellesley!! Maybe they were acting in unison to
exile him?) of New South Wales where trouble was brewing. Interestingly,
Macquarie was appointed as the Lieutenant Governor of New South Wales, but when
Brigadier-General Miles Nightingall deferred from taking the position of
Governor, the British Government decided to appoint Lachlan Macquarie, instead.
This was where he made his name, finally, and today many consider him the
founder of modern Australia.
Thus, we move on to Australia where the story continues. Lt
Cook discovered Australia in 1770 and Joseph Banks, a botanist who accompanied
him suggested Botany Bay as the ideal place to land convicts. The British
wanted to beat the French in colonizing Australia because it was rich in timber
and flax, amongst other strategic objectives, such as colonial trade or the establishment
of a naval base. NSW became the port of choice in 1788 when several thousand
British prisoners (and possibly some from Calicut and Wynad) were sent there,
an outcome of Britain’s experimentations with penal settlements, transporting
prisoners far away from their natural homes. The first penal settlement,
comprising about 850 convicts and their guards and officers, led by Governor Arthur
Phillip, destined for Botany Bay, settled down at Sydney instead. As many as
80,000 convicts were moved to NSW between 1788 and 1840.
After many difficult years, William Bligh became the fourth governor of New South Wales in 1806. NSW, a European colony with less than 7,000 people, struggled to survive, with food shortages, very little infrastructure, and limited trade. As London did not provide the colony with enough currency, barter was resorted to, in addition to promissory notes (IOUs) and coins from around the world. It was at this stage that a new commodity took over as the currency of the penal colony, that being alcohol – colloquially titled rum, comprising all types of strong spirits, belonging to the cheap end. Rum imported from India thus became the de facto currency – a commodity whose importation and distribution had been monopolized by the New South Wales Corps since the departure of Governor Phillip in 1792. We get to understand that while Philips ensured that food was available for two years, the corps stockpiled rum for four. After his departure, the NSW Corps later dubbed as the Rum Corps, took over the day-to-day running of the colony. Succeeding governors could not wrest away the control of Rum from the corps.
Soon, it was clear that there were mainly two classes of
people in the colony, the rum sellers and the drinkers. Newspaper headlines
started flashing in British newspapers, such as ‘Bengal Rum for Coal’, ‘Four
gallons would buy a wife’, and so on. While there are plenty of books dealing
with the subject, they all mention the spirit with a family name – Bengal Rum. Let’s take a look at how this potent beverage
changed the course of Australia’s future, and went on to start what is known as
the Rum Rebellion, which hastened the arrival of Lachlan Macquarie and his 73rd
regiment, to the island.
Due to the shorter transportation distance and cheaper cost
of production, as well as a not-so-discerning consumer, the powerful EIC
traders in Calcutta supplied the colony with spirits either produced in Bengal
or rebottled in Bengal from bulk imports (typically from Jamaica). Rum produced
at the Mirzapur and Shahjahanpur distilleries as well as rebottled varieties,
coupled with several other spirits were loosely termed ‘Bengal Rum’. Neither
were all of them rum, nor were they of great quality, and some were over potent
(though terrible tasting), and thus even more popular with the addicts.
The powerful Rum Corps officers garnered land holdings and
monopolized much of the trade, especially those concerning alcohol imports. They
doled out just enough liquor in the market to ensure that the price was high, but
enough to keep them addicted. It was in this Australia that William Bligh
arrived in 1806. Though talented, he was a disciplinarian and one responsible
for the mutiny on his ship the HMS Bounty in 1789. There are two sides to the
story, the more accepted side tells us that he attempted to break the Rum Corps
monopoly and their discrimination of the poorer farming community. Tensions
grew between the administration and the military and finally, on Jan 26th,
1808, the troops led by one Gen Johnston staged a coup, arrested Bligh, and
took over the administration of the colony. This therefore was Australia's only
military coup, the “Rum Rebellion’. The NSW Corps remained in control until the
British government sent a new Governor with his regiment, to disband the NSW
Corps.
In January 1810, Britain’s Colonial Office recalled the NSW Rum
Corps back to London and replaced it with Lachlan’s 73rd regiment. Major-General
Lachlan Macquarie became the new Governor, and he rapidly ensured that the old regime
and monopoly were dismantled and started the process of bringing things back to
an even keel. But the addiction had taken hold and rum continued to flow to the
colony, and over the next two decades, the amount of rum drank per person more
than doubled. Nevertheless, things started to change when the 1840’s depression
set in and convict transportation slowed to a trickle.
Macquarie was instrumental in the development of modern
Sydney, he professionally structured the city and promoted the construction of
public buildings and other infrastructure. Still, the hold of rum in those
early years was tight, so much so that when Lachlan wanted to build a large
public hospital, he had to allow the three promoting entrepreneurs a monopoly
on the trade of rum for three years. It was a very badly built hospital,
missing even toilets and whatnot - an entire story to itself. Macquarie is also
credited with producing an official currency for circulation in Australia and being
instrumental in reforming many of the convicts who had professional
backgrounds, so also the farming community. That said, there are also some
black marks to his name, such as his treatment of the Aborigines of Australia.
Lachlan and Elizabeth settled down to a new Aussie routine,
and in 1814, Lachlan Jr was born to them, after 7 miscarriages. George, his
servant remained a member of Governor’s staff and accompanied Lachlan on his
tours of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land. We can see examples from
Lachlan’s diary.
Macquarie wrote -Monday 16 Oct. 1820 -- I set out this
morning at half past six o'clock from Parramatta in my carriage with my old
faithful valet George Jarvis. Thursday 26 Oct: -- We all rode into camp
together and arrived there at 1 pm, George having wine, biscuit and oranges
prepared for the travelers - But when he went to Newcastle and Port Macquarie
he wrote – Thursday 1 Nov 1821 -- my old faithful valet George was too unwell
to accompany me on this voyage.
George Jarvis met and fell in love with Mary Jelly, the
chambermaid in the mansion. She had been transported there like many others,
convicted in Leicester for stealing her master's wine. Her responsibilities
included getting the fires going, heating the bath water, emptying chamber pots,
making the beds, and so on. On 22 March 1820, Mary and George, aged 32 got
married.
Lachlan wrote - 22.3.1820. This morning my old faithful
Domestic (now in my service 25 years) George Jarvis was married by the Reverend
Mr. Cowper in St. Phillips Church to Mary Jelly (sic) recently arrived in the
Colony, prisoner, and now Chambermaid at Government House. In December,
George and Mary became parents to little Jane, but she passed away a few days
later.
Lachlan’s actions in converting Australia to a normal
settlement as against the penal colony it was, was not quite appreciated by the
bigwigs back in the Blighty or the ‘exclusives’ group in NSW. Lachlan was
charged with misconduct by Judge Biggie and eventually, his resignation was
accepted in 1820. The Macquarie family decided to sail back to England, 12
years after changing the character of Sydney. Though the British decried his
actions then, he is now regarded as an enlightened and progressive governor who
created Australia the country, from what it was, just a prison camp.
The Macquaires left Australia in Feb 1822, and Mary Jarvis delivered
Elizabeth on the return voyage, in May. On
their return, the Macquarie household was re-established on the Isle of Mull,
and named Jarvisfield. In 1822-23, worried about Elizabeth's fragile health,
Lachlan went on a European tour with his wife and son, as well as two servants,
George Jarvis and Francis Bender, and a tutor, Robert Meiklejohn, covering France,
Italy, and Switzerland.
Lachlan Macquarie continued to suffer from health issues and
fell grievously ill in the summer of 1824 when he and George went to London on
business, to try to obtain his pension issues sorted out. As his illness turned
out to be serious, Elizabeth hurried from Mull to London to be with him, but
Lachlan Macquarie died on July 1, 1824. It is stated that the ever-faithful
George accompanied the coffin back to The Isle of Mull by ship. Macquarie willed
George with an annuity of 25 pounds "during his natural life",
allowed him to live on one of his farms, and made provision for George to be
fed, clothed, and lodged at the expense of Macquarie's heirs and successors.
George had thus remained Macquarie's devoted servant for
three decades and accompanied him not only throughout India (1794-1806), but
also to Egypt (1801), Iraq, Persia, Russia, Denmark (1807), Australia
(1809-1822), Britain and Europe (1822-1824). It seems the master and servant
were inseparable, for George died 6 months later in January 1825 aged about 35.
Mary Jarvis continued to live on Mull for the rest of her life, serving as Elizabeth
Macquarie's maidservant. Elizabeth Macquarie
passed on March 11, 1835, leaving a trust for George’s daughter, Elizabeth. The
interest from the trust would pay an annuity of 24 pounds for Elizabeth Jarvis.
Elizabeth Jarvis married John Dewar in 1845 and after begetting two children,
George, and William, passed away in 1892.
Gretta’s fictional novel based on actual history titled
Jarvisfield provides us a view of high society life of those days and we get to
see George Jarvis in flesh and blood (it dates him past 1826, though he passed
away in 1825). He comes across as well-dressed (Muslim at heart in the novel),
articulate, and courteous, we see him get discriminated by the pompous gentry,
we see his genuine affection for young Lachlan Jr, and we get to hear of his
death on a cold and icy night when he and his horse Brodie slip off the face of
a cliff and fall to their death. We also get to hear (I am not sure if it is
true, perhaps not) that George’s mother was a young girl in Morocco who had
been imported as a slave to the Cochin markets and sold to an Indian Prince.
Their child is kidnapped and sold off (rescued from a cruel Dutch slave owner,
who was whipping him) to Lachlan and is our George Jarvis. These aspects do not
substantially alter the core of the tale, the 30-year relationship between a
master and his servant, or slave as others prefer to call him, and the association
through the many thousands of miles they traveled, and the many seas they
sailed through, in tandem.
Sadly, we still know little of George’s early days and parentage. Sometimes I wonder, did George ever remember the country of his birth and his native language, Malayalam? George Jarvis though forgotten for centuries is now a subject of Aussie radio shows as well as books. However, nothing more than what you read is as yet available, I am not surprised, for, after all, he was just a servant. I am sure the descendants of the Jarvis Dewar family are still around in England somewhere. Perhaps we will hear and read more about ‘George Jarvis the slave from Malabar’, someday!
References
An Englishman at Calicut – Maddy’s Ramblings
Lachlan Macquarie: A Biography – John Ritchie
George Jarvis, Macquarie’s faithful valet - Beverley Earnshaw
Finding ‘George Jarvis’ at the Parramatta Lecture Series -Robin Walsh and Roanna Gonsalves
Jarvisfield - Gretta Curran Browne
Robin
Walsh’s talk on SBS Hindi
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