{"id":7782,"date":"2020-10-07T07:24:22","date_gmt":"2020-10-07T07:24:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7782"},"modified":"2021-02-06T12:49:00","modified_gmt":"2021-02-06T12:49:00","slug":"wordsworths-weak-link-to-the-east-india-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2020\/10\/07\/wordsworths-weak-link-to-the-east-india-company\/","title":{"rendered":"Wordsworth's weak link to the East India Company"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I wrote last week about the National Trust's <em>Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, Including Links with Historic Slavery. \u00a0<\/em>Subsequent to this,\u00a0I wrote to the Trust about this passage about Allen Bank, a house near Grasmere.<\/p>\n<p>\"The poet William Wordsworth (1770\u20131850) lived for a time at Allan Bank. He and his sister, writer Dorothy Wordsworth (1771\u20131855), are both known for expressing views in opposition to slavery.<\/p>\n<p>Their brother, John Wordsworth (1772\u20131805), became Commander of the East India Company ship Earl of Abergavenny in 1801. \u00a0He captained two successful voyages to China, in which the family invested. \u00a0Wordsworth\u2019s third voyage would have made the family a considerable sum, but the ship sank a few days into the journey, causing the death of John and many others.\"<\/p>\n<p>I did not get a helpful reply (after a promise, I was fobbed off), but less than three minutes on the internet revealed a readily available <a href=\"http:\/\/nauticalarchaeologysociety.org\/john-wordsworth-and-the-earl-of-abergavenny\">account<\/a> <strong>*\u00a0<\/strong>of the sinking of the Earl of Abergavenny (including details of the investments by the Wordsworth family) which was not referenced in the report.<\/p>\n<p>These investments turned out to be money lent to their brother so that he could buy goods\u00a0in the UK to sell in China; and then to buy goods in China to sell back here. \u00a0The link to the East India Company was that this was happening (as was common practice with officers) on a Company ship.<\/p>\n<div class=\"\">It makes me wonder why the second paragraph (above) was included in the text. \u00a0It\u2019s not as though William or Dorothy Wordsworth were key figures in the East India Company's work or had any link to what it got up to in India. \u00a0What they invested in was trade between the UK and China hoping for a return on capital.<\/div>\n<div class=\"\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"\">So what? you might think. \u00a0Of course, old money didn't really approve of trade. \u00a0Old prejudices, it seems, die hard at the Trust. \u00a0I'm giving Wordsworth the last word on his brother, although I note that, replacing \"him\" by \"it\" could be how an increasing number of people seem to view the National Trust today:<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div class=\"\">\"<i class=\"\">We have lost him at a time when we are young enough to have been justified in looking forward to many happy years to be passed in his Society and when we are too old to outgrow the loss\u201d.<\/i><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>.................................<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>* <em>John Wordsworth and the wreck of the Earl of Abergavenny. \u00a0Researched, compiled and edited by Ed Cumming. \u00a0Honorary Fellow of the Nautical Archaeology Society<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wrote last week about the National Trust's Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, Including Links with Historic Slavery. \u00a0Subsequent to this,\u00a0I wrote to the Trust about this passage...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-new-publications"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7782\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}