Ladies of Ill-Repute: The South Sea Bubble, The Caribbean, and The Jamaica Lady

Abstract

Ladies of Ill-Repute: The South Sea Bubble, The Caribbean, and The Jamaica Lady MELISSA K. DOWNES England's power in the early eighteenth century depended heavily on its imperialist adventures, and particularly upon a series of islands—the Caribbean. The Caribbean was of central economic importance to England in the eighteenth century, particularly in its reliance on slaves and its production of sugar.1 Indeed, various historians argue the important role of the Caribbean in developing English commercial power. For example, historian W.T. Selley remarks, "The West Indies occupied a place of supreme importance in the first British Empire." He notes their strategic value during the great conflicts of the century where "the possession of the Islands was constantly at stake in these struggles." The islands functioned as naval bases and strengthened England's maritime growth and power, both commercially and in terms of military capability. The Caribbean also served as a source of tropical goods for England and functioned as a place for exporting English goods. By the end of the century, the West Indies accounted for about a quarter of all British import and export trade, a very high proportion.2 In terms of export, import, taxation, maritime growth, British industries and manufacture, and the slave trade, the Caribbean was essential to the British economy (and culture). I would argue the centrality of the Caribbean to both the English culture and 23 24 / DOWNES economy, in part because the two—economy and culture—are so entangled within the early eighteenth century. I would suggest further that the Caribbean plays a significant part in the developing discourses of imperialism, trade, Englishness, and the South Sea Bubble. The Bubble was the economic scandal of the British early eighteenth century, and around it much of the anxiety over luxury, credit, empire, sexuality and women coalesced. The majority of early eighteenth-century British writers, both the canonical and the Grub Street variety, were taken up with the convulsions of a more fully urbanized and commercialized England. Not only did human anxiety about the tumult of the time insist upon comment, but the literary market insisted that, for a writer to be published, those comments must be made. Topical events were the frequent subject of both celebration and satiric attack, and the South Sea Bubble was the central event. The South Sea Company was established to alleviate the national debt crisis and, simultaneously, to cash in on the immense wealth and trading possibilities of Spanish possessions in the Americas. The Company was set up to counter and compete with the "whiggish Bank of England and East India Company."3 But corruption soon set in. The stocks rose to extreme heights before the Bubble burst. When it did, "the fire of London or the plague ruined not the number of people that are now undone."4 There were devastating bankruptcies, mass panic, and a general outcry to hang the directors. The purpose of this essay is twofold: first, to bring the Caribbean, trade, and the institution of slavery back into discussions of the South Sea Bubble and, second, to read The Battle of the Bubbles and The Jamaica Lady as Bubble texts within that context of trade, slavery, and the Caribbean. I am suggesting that representations of the Caribbean in early eighteenthcentury literature enter into the anxieties about the domestic market and the changing economic identity of England, with particular reference here to the moment of greatest anxiety, the South Sea Bubble. To discuss narratives surrounding the scandal of the South Sea Bubble is, judging by surface appearance, to enter a realm far away from the Caribbean. The South Seas appear to have nothing to do geographically with the Caribbean. We have come to think of the South Seas as Pacific space. However, modern understanding of the South Seas differs somewhat from early eighteenth-century discourse. As John Carswell notes: The £9 million worth of unfunded government securities were to be exchanged compulsorily for shares at par in a joint Ladies of Ill-Repute / 25 stock company to be set up under the Act to carry on "the sole trade and traffic, from August 1, 1711, into unto and from the Kingdoms...