Sir Eyre Coote and the governorship of Jamaica, 1805–1808

The British Caribbean islands were one of the more important military stations for the roving British army in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Many Governors were drawn from the military, emphasising a metropolitan determination to concentrate on security over civil matters. This was especially the case during wartime, when the islands became susceptible to attack. Despite Ireland’s sometimes tense political relationship with the British administration, Irish Governors in the Caribbean islands maintained an inflexible imperial policy. When General Sir Eyre Coote was appointed Governor of Jamaica in 1806 at the height of the wars with Napoleonic France and Spain, his main purpose was to ensure that the defence of the island would withstand an expected invasion. At the same time, he and his masters in London expected the colony to pay for the island’s defence, which the island’s planter-dominated Assembly resisted. The situation was even more tense as the abolition of slave-ownership was now to be implemented, which tended to excite both the planters and the black population of the island for different reasons. The chapter examines Coote’s two years as Governor of Jamaica and his increasingly difficult relationship with the island’s Assembly. It argues that Coote’s tenure as Governor was hampered by the Assembly’s increasingly assertive position, which allowed it to withhold support for Coote’s initiatives.