Henry Dundas falsely accused of being “key architect” behind scheme to buy slaves
The Trope that Won’t Die:
In the summer of 2023, Toronto media outlets, including the Canadian Press, resurrected the false claim that Henry Dundas was the “key architect” behind a scheme to buy slaves for the military.
It’s time to put that trope to rest.
The truth is: (a) the plan to buy slaves for the regiments was developed by British generals, not Henry Dundas, (b) Dundas rejected the generals’ repeated requests for permission to buy slaves, and (c) he was ultimately overruled by cabinet.
The origins of the accusation
The “key architect” accusation originates with historian Stephen Mullen, a research associate at the University of Glasgow. He published an article in the Scottish Historical Review in 2021 that was widely viewed as ground breaking at the time: “Henry Dundas: A ‘Great Delayer’ of the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.” Dr. Mullen accused Dundas of leading the strategy to purchase 13,400 slaves for the Black regiments during the Revolutionary Wars.
In a move that profoundly affected the decision in Toronto to rename Dundas Street, Dr. Mullen also provided advance notice of his findings to the Scotland Herald in March 2021: “Dundas “key” to Britain’s slave army, investigation finds,” three months before Toronto voted on whether to rename Dundas Street.
The timing of news story allowed City of Toronto City staff to make liberal use of Dr. Mullen’s findings in advance of publication of the article. They reported to Council that Dundas was the “key architect” of Britain’s purchase of slaves in their 2021 report to Council:
As Secretary of War, Dundas was a key architect behind this policy, which made the British Government the largest individual purchaser of slaves during this period. In a paper titled “Henry Dundas: a ‘Great Delayer’ of the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade,” Dr. Stephen Mullen expands on this work…
Professor Patrice Dutil later exposed Dr. Mullen’s errors regarding the purchase of slaves for the military. Around the same time, in April 2022, the peer-reviewed journal Scottish Affairs exposed Dr. Mullen’s paper as being extensively flawed.
The article, “Bad History: The Controversy over Henry Dundas and the Historiography of the Abolition of the Slave Trade,” dismantled Dr. Mullen’s thesis about Dundas’s role in abolition. The author, Professor Angela McCarthy, stated:
Historians have the right to interpret facts differently but not to knowingly misrepresent them.
Dr. Mullen has since withdrawn from public debate over Henry Dundas’s legacy, and no historian has published a defence of his paper.
Professor McCarthy recently unearthed additional evidence exonerating Henry Dundas, further discrediting Dr. Mullen’s ‘take-down’ of Henry Dundas.
Dr. Mullen’s accusation concerning the purchase of slaves, however, remains on the City of Toronto website and continues to exert a powerful influence over city politicians and the media. Several media outlets, including CP24 and The Globe and Mail, picked up a wire service story in August 2023 that repeated the error. Toronto city councillor Paula Fletcher, who was part of the core group of five city councillors who supported renaming in June 2020, told Zoomer Radio on August 16, 2023, that she was still concerned about the accusation, although she intended to take a closer look at it in light of more recent scholarship.
What the evidence shows
Here’s what we found when we examined Dr. Mullen’s sources, and other peer-reviewed publications and texts.
1. Home Secretary William Grenville had previously authorized the purchase of slaves for the military.
The military’s use of slaves pre-dated Dundas’s tenure as the War Secretary. As recently as October 1790, Home Secretary William Grenville had given the governor of Jamaica authority to use public funds to purchase slaves to assist the British garrison by serving as scouts. [Buckley, Roger N. (2008) “The British Army’s African Recruitment Policy, 1790–1807,” Contributions in Black Studies: Vol. 5 , Article 2.]
Grenville was a prominent supporter of abolition at the time. Seventeen years later, during his brief term as prime minister, he oversaw passage of Britain’s 1807 Anti-Slave Trade Act.
2. After France declared war on Britain in 1793, British generals developed a plan to buy slaves for Black regiments and sought Dundas’s approval.
Dundas became the War Secretary in 1793. In 1794–95 General Sir John Vaughan asked him repeatedly to authorize the purchase of slaves to serve in the Black Regiments in the West Indian territories.
3. Dundas repeatedly refused General Vaughan’s requests.
The passage excerpted below is from Slaves in Red Coats, Professor Roger Buckley’s landmark book on the use of slaves in the West Indian Regiments. It documents one of several instances in which Dundas rejected General Vaughan’s proposals to purchase slaves, and confirms that Dr. Mullen’s thesis was unfounded.
![[Roger Buckley, Slaves in Red Coats: British West India regiments, 1795–1815 (New Haven and London, 1979) p 18]](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/format:webp/1*lFMTcLEKuWBB2qpas54iFA.png)
4. Despite Henry Dundas’s refusals, the generals quietly put together Black regiments comprised of slaves who were promised emancipation after five years.
In this excerpt, Professor Buckley confirms that the purchase of the slaves ran contrary to Dundas’s instructions:
5. In February 1795, Dundas learned about what the generals were doing and ordered them to stop.
Military historian Professor Tim Lockley provides further details:
6. Two months later, the British cabinet overruled Dundas and approved the purchase of slaves for the military
Dundas wrote to General Vaughan in April 1795 authorizing the purchase of slaves for military service, but made a point of noting that the decision was made by “the King’s confidential servants,” i.e. cabinet.
Dundas also wrote that cabinet considered the move “politic but unprincipled.”
Professor Buckley observed that cabinet made the decision reluctantly:
“The emergency in the West Indies had impelled them to sanction a measure that under other circumstances would never have received their endorsement.”
Conclusion
Leading publications that discuss the use of slaves in the British military directly contradict Dr. Mullen’s central and most devastating claim against Henry Dundas. It was top military officials, and General Vaughan in particular, who developed the plan to purchase slaves for the military. Furthermore, Dundas resisted the generals’ demands for months. The generals finally took the matter to cabinet, which reluctantly overruled Dundas and authorized the purchase of slaves for the Black Regiments.
Dr. Mullen’s accusations about Dundas being a “key architect” are demonstrably incorrect.
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By: Jennifer Dundas, BAA SF LLB, Chairperson, Henry Dundas Committee of Ontario. The Committee’s research paper is HERE.
