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 Liverpool’s inconvenient
imperial past

E D I T E D B Y S H E R Y L LY N N E H A G G E R T Y,
ANTHONY WEBSTER & NICHOLAS J. WHITE
9780719078873_1_pre.qxd 9/22/08 1:52 PM Page i

general editor John M. MacKenzie

When the ‘Studies in Imperialism’ series was founded

more than twenty five years ago, emphasis was laid upon
the conviction that ‘imperialism as a cultural phenomenon
had as significant an effect on the dominant as on the
subordinate societies’. With more than seventy books
published, this remains the prime concern of the series.
Cross-disciplinary work has indeed appeared covering the
full spectrum of cultural phenomena, as well as examining
aspects of gender and sex, frontiers and law, science and
the environment, language and literature, migration and
patriotic societies, and much else. Moreover, the series has
always wished to present comparative work on European
and American imperialism, and particularly welcomes the
submission of books in these areas. The fascination with
imperialism, in all its aspects, shows no sign of abating,
and this series will continue to lead the way in encouraging
the widest possible range of studies in the field. ‘Studies in
Imperialism’ is fully organic in its development, always
seeking to be at the cutting edge, responding to the latest
interests of scholars and the needs of this ever-expanding
area of scholarship.

The empire in one city?

9780719078873_1_pre.qxd 9/22/08 1:52 PM Page ii

AVAILABLE IN THE SERIES

CULTURAL IDENTITIES AND THE AESTHETICS OF BRITISHNESS ed. Dana Arnold
BRITAIN IN CHINA
Community, culture and colonialism, 1900–1949 Robert Bickers
RACE AND EMPIRE
Eugenics in colonial Kenya Chloe Campbell
RETHINKING SETTLER COLONIALISM
History and memory in Australia, Canada, Aotearoa New Zealand and South Africa
ed. Annie E. Coombes
IMPERIAL CITIES
Landscape, display and identity
eds Felix Driver and David Gilbert
IMPERIAL CITIZENSHIP
Empire and the question of belonging Daniel Gorman
SCOTLAND, THE CARIBBEAN AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1750–1820
Douglas J. Hamilton
FLAGSHIPS OF IMPERIALISM
The P&O company and the politics of empire from its origins to 1867 Freda Harcourt
MISSIONARIES AND THEIR MEDICINE
A Christian modernity for tribal India David Hardiman
EMIGRANT HOMECOMINGS
The return movement of emigrants, 1600–2000 Marjory Harper
ENGENDERING WHITENESS
White women and colonialism in Barbados and North Carolina, 1625–1865
Cecily Jones
REPORTING THE RAJ
The British press and India, c. 1880–1922 Chandrika Kaul
SILK AND EMPIRE Brenda M. King
COLONIAL CONNECTIONS, 1815–45
Patronage, the information revolution and colonial government Zoë Laidlaw
PROPAGANDA AND EMPIRE
The manipulation of British public opinion, 1880–1960 John M. MacKenzie
THE SCOTS IN SOUTH AFRICA
Ethnicity, identity, gender and race, 1772–1914 John M. MacKenzie with Nigel R. Dalziel
THE OTHER EMPIRE
Metropolis, India and progress in the colonial imagination John Marriott
IRELAND, INDIA AND EMPIRE
Indo-Irish radical connections, 1916–64 Kate O’Malley
SEX, POLITICS AND EMPIRE
A postcolonial geography Richard Phillips
IMPERIAL PERSUADERS
Images of Africa and Asia in British advertising Anandi Ramamurthy
GENDER, CRIME AND EMPIRE Kirsty Reid
THE HAREM, SLAVERY AND BRITISH IMPERIAL CULTURE
Anglo-Muslim relations, 1870–1900 Diane Robinson-Dunn
WEST INDIAN INTELLECTUALS IN BRITAIN ed. Bill Schwarz
MIGRANT RACES
Empire, identity and K. S. Ranjitsinhji Satadru Sen
AT THE END OF THE LINE
Colonial policing and the imperial endgame 1945–80 Georgina Sinclair
THE VICTORIAN SOLDIER IN AFRICA Edward M. Spiers
MARTIAL RACES AND MASCULINITY IN THE BRITISH ARMY, 1857–1914 Heather Streets
THE FRENCH EMPIRE BETWEEN THE WARS
Imperialism, politics and society Martin Thomas
ORDERING AFRICA eds Helen Tilley with Robert J. Gordon
BRITISH CULTURE AND THE END OF EMPIRE ed. Stuart Ward
‘THE BETTER CLASS’ OF INDIANS
Social rank, imperial identity, and South Asians in Britain 1858–1914 A. Martin Wainwright
9780719078873_1_pre.qxd 9/22/08 1:52 PM Page iii

The empire
in one city?
L I V E R P O O L’ S I N C O N V E N I E N T
I M P E R I A L PA S T

edited by
Sheryllynne Haggerty,
Anthony Webster and Nicholas J. White

MANCHESTER
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Manchester and New York
distributed in the United States exclusively by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
9780719078873_1_pre.qxd 9/22/08 1:52 PM Page iv

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2008

While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in
individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly
or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher.

Published by MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS

OXFORD ROAD, MANCHESTER M13 9NR, UK
and ROOM 400, 175 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, NY 10010, USA
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
Distributed in the United States exclusively by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 175 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, NY 10010, USA
Distributed in Canada exclusively by
UBC PRESS, UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA,
2029 WEST MALL, VANCOUVER, BC, CANADA V6T 1Z2

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

ISBN 978 0 7190 7887 3 hardback

First published 2008
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Typeset
by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong
9780719078873_1_pre.qxd 9/22/08 1:52 PM Page v

CONTENTS

List of plates — vi
List of figures — vii
List of tables — viii
General editor’s introduction — ix
Notes on contributors — x
Acknowledgements — xiv

Introduction: The empire in one city? Sheryllynne

Haggerty, Anthony Webster and Nicholas J. White 1
1 Liverpool, the slave trade and the British-Atlantic empire,
c. 1750–75 Sheryllynne Haggerty 17
2 Liverpool and the Asian trade, 1800–50: some insights into
a provincial British commercial network Anthony Webster 35
3 ‘Stirring spectacles of cosmopolitan animation’: Liverpool
as a diasporic city, 1825–1913 John Herson 55
4 Liverpool and South America, 1850–1930 Rory M. Miller
and Robert G. Greenhill 78
5 Collecting empire? African objects, West African trade
and a Liverpool museum Zachary Kingdon and
Dmitri van den Bersselaar 100
6 Transmitting ideas of empire: representations and
celebrations in Liverpool, 1886–1953 Murray Steele 123
7 The maligned, the despised and the ostracised: working-class
white women, interracial relationships and colonial ideologies
in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Liverpool Diane Frost 143
8 Liverpool shipping and the end of empire: the Ocean group
in East and Southeast Asia, c. 1945–73 Nicholas J. White 165
9 Return to imperial trade? John Holt & Co. (Liverpool) Ltd
as a contemporary free-standing company, 1945–2006
Stephanie Decker 188
Afterword: Liverpool and empire – the revolving door?
John M. MacKenzie 210

Index — 229

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9780719078873_1_pre.qxd 9/22/08 1:52 PM Page vi

L I S T O F P L AT E S

1 Cover of the timetable for Cunard Line sailings from

Liverpool, 1901. By permission of Björn Larsson
from his collection of marine timetable images at
www.timetableimages.com/maritime/index.htm page 58
2 Oba Ovonramwen on his way to exile in 1897.
Photograph by J. A. Green © National Museums
Liverpool 102
3 Bronze horseman from Benin given to John Henry
Swainson by Oba Ovonramwen in 1892. © National
Museums Liverpool 104
4 Fang sword, 1880. © National Museums Liverpool 107
5 Fang reliquary guardian figures made for sale, 1897,
Bata, Equatorial Guinea. © National Museums Liverpool 114
6 Royal visit to Liverpool, July 1913. Courtesy Liverpool
Central Libraries 132
7 India Buildings, Water Street, Liverpool, in the 1960s.
Small photographs and prints collection, commerce
and industry, Liverpool Record Office 169
8 Postwar advertisement for the Blue Funnel Line.
British Malaya, 21:3 (July 1946), iv 171
9 1961 advertisement for Blue Funnel sailings between
Liverpool and Malayan ports. Malaya (January 1961),
p. 43 175
10 John Holt company logo. www.jhplc.com. Reproduced
courtesy of John Holt & Co. (Liverpool) Ltd 189

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9780719078873_1_pre.qxd 9/22/08 1:52 PM Page vii

LIST OF FIGURES

3.1 Destinations of passengers from Liverpool, 1825–1913 page 57

4.1 Shipping entering UK ports from South and Central
America, 1865–95 84
4.2 Shipping entering UK ports from Argentina, 1875–95 84
9.1 John Holt’s proportion of turnover by business division,
year ending 1962 195

[ vii ]
9780719078873_1_pre.qxd 9/22/08 1:52 PM Page viii

L I S T O F TA B L E S

2.1 Shipping arrivals in Liverpool from ports in ‘the East’,

1836–51 page 40
2.2 Shipping departures from Liverpool to ports in ‘the East’,
1836–51 41
2.3 Shipping departures from London to ports in ‘the East’,
1836–51 42
2.4 Shipping arrivals in London from ports in ‘the East’, 1836–51 43
3.1 Extra-European passengers from British and Irish ports,
1825–1913 56
3.2 Destinations of extra-European passengers from Liverpool,
1825–1913 57
3.3 Estimated origins of passengers through Liverpool, 1853–1912 60
3.4 European transmigrants in Liverpool, 3 April 1881 62
3.5 Estimated fare revenue from North American emigrants,
1825–1913 64
3.6 Foreign and empire-born, Liverpool, Manchester and London,
1901 66
3.7 Birthplaces of sailors in Liverpool, 3 April 1881 66
3.8 Frederick Street birthplaces of people aged over sixteen, 1881
and 1901 68
3.9 Diasporic typology of Liverpool’s nineteenth-century peoples 71
4.1 Main ports for importation of commodities exported from
South America, 1860–95 83
9.1 Phases of corporate development, John Holt & Co. 190
9.2 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) by Transparency
International, 1980–2005 198

[ viii ]
9780719078873_1_pre.qxd 9/22/08 1:52 PM Page ix

GENERAL EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

This book emerges from a conference on the history of Liverpool’s relation-

ship with the British Empire which took place in the Maritime Museum at
the Albert Dock in April 2006. This was an exceptionally appropriate place
for such a conference. The magnificent Albert Dock stands as testimony to
the grand engineering and architectural expressions of Liverpool’s growing
economic significance in the early nineteenth century while the Maritime
Museum reflects Liverpool’s role in the slave trade, in emigration, and in the
shipping and commercial relationships of the city. The papers delivered at
this conference were pioneering in their emphases and penetrating in their
insights, stimulating a great deal of discussion among the members of a dis-
tinguished audience. Revised versions of some of these papers are presented
here as a contribution to Liverpool’s year as the European Capital of Culture
in 2008.
It is clear that the mutual and interactive relationship between Britain, global
power and its empire (both ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ – whether represented
by political and administrative authority or by the inequalities of economic
penetration without direct rule) can be fully understood only through a series
of local histories. A start has been made in this respect on studies of Glasgow
and Southampton (although a great deal remains to be done in both these and
many other cases). Liverpool, of course, makes an ideal case study and the
chapters offered here consider aspects of the slave trade, of provincial com-
mercial networks, of emigration, of the commercial and shipping inflexions
of the relationship with Latin America, with museum ethnographic collecting,
the position of white women, iconic shipping companies, as well as with the
cultural expressions of imperialism in Liverpool. Taken together, these articles
cover the period from the mid eighteenth century to the late twentieth.
Yet they are by no means complete in their coverage. A great deal more
remains to be done and it is to be hoped that this collection will stimulate
further research, not only in respect of Liverpool but also in relation to many
other cities, towns and localities within the British Isles and perhaps within
the former British Empire as well. Port cities constituted key points of con-
tact in economic, cultural, demographic and other ways, though such rela-
tionships can also be identified in towns that were not ports, for example
through local regiments, the churches, societies, the press, education and much
else. What these essays demonstrate is that the relationship between Britain
and its empire was indeed a reciprocal one, and the full range and nuance of
these reciprocities is only now becoming apparent to us.

John M. MacKenzie

[ ix ]
9780719078873_1_pre.qxd 9/22/08 1:52 PM Page x

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Stephanie Decker is currently at Harvard Business School as the Harvard New-

comen Fellow in Business History for 2007–8. Previously she held appoint-
ments as a lecturer in International Business at the University of Liverpool
Management School and as ESRC postdoctoral research fellow at the London
School of Economics. Her PhD thesis on ‘British business, development, and
economic nationalism in Ghana and Nigeria’ was completed in 2006. She has
published on Barclays Bank’s Africanisation programme in Nigeria in the Journal
of Imperial and Commonwealth History. Her research interests are in the
history of multinationals and the threat of economic nationalism in less
developed countries in the 1960s and 1970s, and the intersection of business
architecture and symbolic corporate communications in West Africa.
Diane Frost lectures in sociology at the University of Liverpool. She is author
of Work and Community among West African Migrant Workers (Liverpool
University Press, 1999) and joint editor (with A. B. Zack-Williams and A.
Thompson) of Africa in Crisis (Pluto, 2000). She has published a number of
articles (in Immigrants and Minorities and New Community) and book chap-
ters on racism and identity amongst West African Kru migrants in Liverpool.
Robert Greenhill graduated with a BA (Hons) degree in History from the Uni-
versity of Exeter in 1966 and was awarded a PhD in 1972. He was formerly
Head of the Department of Business Studies at London Guildhall University
but has since retired from full-time work to become a visiting lecturer at a
number of universities in London. He remains active in contributing essays
to edited books and papers and reviews to scholarly journals, winning the prize
for the best article published in Business History in 1995. His principal research
interests centre on British shipping in Latin America, and many of the area’s
commodity trades. He is the co-author of 150 Years of Coffee (privately pub-
lished by Marcellino Martins and E. Johnston Exportadores Ltda in 1992).
Sheryllynne Haggerty is Lecturer in Early Modern History in the School of
History, University of Nottingham. Her research interests encompass the busi-
ness culture and trading communities of the British Atlantic in the eighteenth
century, including the role of women. Her book The British-Atlantic Trading
Community 1760–1810: Men, Women, and the Distribution of Goods was
published by Brill Press in 2006 and explored the relationship between the
trading communities of Liverpool and Philadelphia. She has published art-
icles in Business History and the International Journal of Maritime History.
She also contributed a chapter on women, work and the consumer revolution
in Liverpool in John Benson and Laura Ugolini (eds), A Nation of Shopkeepers
(I. B. Tauris, 2003). She held an ESRC Post-Doctoral Fellowship in 2004–5 on
Liverpool and the Atlantic and is a member of the Council of the Historic
Society of Lancashire and Cheshire.

[x]
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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

John Herson was formerly Head of History at Liverpool John Moores Univer-
sity. His research interests are in migration, urban history and transport history
and he has publications in each of these fields. He is writing a book on the
long-term history of Irish migrant families who settled in Stafford in the English
West Midlands, and he has published a number of essays on this topic. He has
written on the economic and social history of the long nineteenth century of
Chester for the Victoria County History of Cheshire and on the problems
of estimating historical traffic flows in the Journal of Transport History. The
research on Liverpool as a diasporic city for this volume involved a synthesis
of his three research interests. He is also currently working on aspects of Welsh
migration to Liverpool.
Zachary Kingdon is a social anthropologist and museologist with a particular
interest in African material culture. He is Curator of the African Collections
at the World Museum Liverpool and curated the Africa displays of the ‘New
World’ Cultures Gallery which opened in April 2005. He has conducted
detailed anthropological research among Makonde sculptors in Tanzania
and is the author of A Host of Devils: the History and Context of the Making
of Makonde Spirit Sculpture (Routledge, 2002). In 2005 he edited and part
authored, with Hassan Arero, a collection on East African material culture titled
East African Contours: Reviewing Creativity and Visual Culture, Contributions
in Critical Museology and Material Culture Series (Horniman Museum). He
is preparing an article entitled ‘Assembling the canon of “African Art”: the
Hutchings acquisitions of West African sculpture at the World Museum
Liverpool’ that critically assesses a collection of West African sculptures pur-
chased in the 1960s.
John M. MacKenzie has been the editor of the Manchester University Press
‘Studies in Imperialism’ series, highlighting the reciprocal influences of Britain
and its empire, for more than twenty years. There are now more than seventy
books published in this series and it is still growing. Among his publications
within this series are Propaganda and Empire (1984), The Empire of Nature
(1988) and Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts (1995). He has also been
editor of a number of volumes of essays including Imperialism and Popular
Culture (1986). He contributed a chapter on provincial geographical societies
in Britain (one of them in Liverpool) to M. Bell, R. Butlin and M. Heffernan (eds),
Geography and Imperialism (1995) and another entitled ‘ “The Second City
of the Empire”: Glasgow – imperial municipality’ to F. Driver and D. Gilbert
(eds), Imperial Cities (1999). His book The Scots in South Africa: Identity,
Ethnicity, Gender and Race, 1772–1914 was published in 2007. He is cur-
rently working on a book about the history of museums in the nineteenth-
century British Empire and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Rory Miller is Reader in International Business History in the University of
Liverpool Management School, and currently also Joint Editor of the Journal
of Latin American Studies. He has worked for over thirty years on British
business relations with Latin America. His published work includes Britain
and Latin America in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Longman,

[ xi ]
9780719078873_1_pre.qxd 9/22/08 1:52 PM Page xii

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

1993), Business History in Latin America: the experience of seven countries

(jointly edited with Carlos Dávila, Liverpool University Press, 1999), and
Football in the Americas (jointly edited with Liz Crolley, Institute for the
Study of the Americas, forthcoming). He has published articles in Business
History Review, Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv, Itinerario, Journal of Latin
American Studies, Revista de Indias, and World Development, and has con-
tributed to the forthcoming UNESCO History of Latin America.
Murray Steele was until retirement Head of Afro-Asian Studies at Edge Hill
University, where his main field of expertise was the colonial history of
southern Africa, but he has retained a research affiliation with that institu-
tion. He has taught and researched in Canada and Zimbabwe, as well as the UK.
His publications cover a number of fields in Zimbabwean history, including
race relations, labour and missionary history, rural studies and comparative
local government, predominantly in the twentieth century. The perspectives
gained from this research have been brought to bear in this present contribu-
tion, and in his most recent publication, ‘Confronting a legacy: the Atlantic
slave trade and the Black community of Liverpool’, in Alyson Brown (ed.),
Historical Perspectives on Social Identities (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006).
He is currently working on a study of the confrontation between Liverpool’s
Black Caucus and City Council in the mid-1980s.
Dmitri van den Bersselaar is Lecturer in African History at the University
of Liverpool and is founding editor of the series African Sources for African
History. He has published broadly on the social and cultural history of
nineteenth- and twentieth-century West Africa. His work explores African
responses to, and involvement in, colonialism, missionary enterprise, and trade
with Europe and the Americas – including the legacies of slavery and the
slave trade. His latest book, West Africa’s King of Drinks: Schnapps Gin from
Modernity to Tradition (Brill, 2007), explores the local African meanings and
importance of a controversial foreign import. His articles include, ‘Imagining
home: migration and the Igbo village in colonial Nigeria’, Journal of African
History, 46:1 (2005), 51– 73, and ‘Missionary knowledge and the state in
colonial Nigeria: on how G. T. Basden became an expert’, History in Africa,
33 (2006), 433– 50.
Anthony Webster is Head of History at Liverpool John Moores University.
His research interests are in the field of British imperial history in Asia
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His books include: Gentlemen
Capitalists: British Imperialism in South East Asia, 1770–1890 (I. B. Tauris,
1998), The Debate on the Rise of the British Empire (Manchester Univer-
sity Press, 2006) and The Richest East India Merchant: The Life and Business
of John Palmer of Calcutta 1767 to 1846 (Boydell and Brewer, The Worlds of
the East India Company Series, 2007). He has published in such journals as
the Economic History Review, Historical Journal and Journal of Imperial and
Commonwealth History. In 2006 he was awarded the Newcomen Prize by
the Newcomen Society of the USA for his article on John Palmer in the 2005
volume of the business history journal Enterprise and Society.

[ xii ]
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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Nicholas J. White is Reader in Imperial and Commonwealth History in the

School of Social Science at Liverpool John Moores University, where he has
taught imperial and Asian history since 1993. His research interests have
previously been focussed on the business and economic history of Malaysia,
Singapore and Brunei. He has published three books, Business, Government
and the End of Empire: Malaya, 1942–57 (Oxford University Press, 1996), De-
colonisation: The British Experience since 1945 (Longman, 1999) and British
Business in Post-Colonial Malaysia, 1957–70: ‘Neo-colonialism’ or ‘Diseng-
agement’? (RoutledgeCurzon, 2004). He has also published articles in a num-
ber of scholarly journals such as The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth
History, Modern Asian Studies, Economic History Review, Twentieth Century
British History, South East Asia Research, The Journal of Southeast Asian
Studies, and Asia-Pacific Business Review. In addition, he is the editor (with
Shigeru Akita) of The International Order of Asia in the 1930s and 1950s
(Ashgate, forthcoming).

[ xiii ]
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The editors would like to thank several organisations and individuals who
have contributed in various ways to the publishing of this book. First and fore-
most we would like to recognise the importance of the Centre for Liverpool
and Merseyside Studies (CLAMS). This organisation promotes and initiates
research into the region’s history and culture by bringing together academics
and others who share an interest in the region. The main sponsors are Liver-
pool John Moores University, The University of Liverpool, Edge Hill Univer-
sity and Liverpool Hope University. This volume was first conceived in April
2005 at a series of workshops to promote discussion and ideas as part of the
CLAMS Second Annual Conference at Edge Hill. This was followed by the
Third Annual Conference designed around the specific theme of ‘Liverpool
and Empire, 1700–1970’ in April 2006. CLAMS has therefore supported a num-
ber of activities which have facilitated the publication of this volume in a
constructive and cohesive manner. More specifically, we would like to thank
Nicola Ronan for her hard work in the administration and promotion of the
2006 conference. Her efficiency and good nature produced a constructive and
enjoyable environment for all the participants. We would also like to thank
Tony Tibbles for facilitating the holding of the conference at the very apt loca-
tion of the Merseyside Maritime Museum and for chairing the session on
‘Slavery and Beyond’. Last, but by no means least, we are most grateful to all
of the participants at the 2006 CLAMS conference. The input, comments and
questions of all those who attended helped to produce this volume.

[ xiv ]
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INTRODUCTION

The empire in one city?

Sheryllynne Haggerty, Anthony Webster and Nicholas J. White

Liverpool occupies a prominent position in the contemporary popu-

lar imagination. In spite of decades of economic decline, urban decay
and a name associated by some with poverty and crime, the city’s
reputation is by no means a negative one. While a headline-seeking
Conservative politician like Boris Johnson might provoke the fury of
Liverpudlians by references to Scousers ‘wallowing in their victim
status’, the swiftness with which the city rebutted his claims, and with
which the Tory leadership compelled him to make abject apology for
his remarks, are hardly indicative of an urban community in retreat
or the subject of general public disdain.1 Even nearly fifteen years ear-
lier, at a time when the city’s economic problems were more severe
and its political leaders associated with left-wing extremism, The
Sun, and its belligerent editor, Kelvin McKenzie, felt Liverpool’s fury
when the tabloid falsely suggested that the football fans who died in
the Hillsborough disaster were the victims of the misbehaviour of their
fellow Liverpool FC supporters.2 The newspaper’s sales in Liverpool
have yet to recover.
Liverpool has long enjoyed such civic self-confidence. From a small
fishing town in the early seventeenth century, Liverpool grew to vie
for the title of ‘second city of the British empire’ by the end of the
eighteenth. Liverpool merchants in this period did not feel the need
to apologise for their role in slavery – part of the burgeoning trade profile
of the city. Though the battle to keep this controversial commerce was
lost in 1807, for the rest of the nineteenth century Liverpool’s trade
continued to grow to ‘the East’ as well as ‘the West’, including another
traffic in people through the carriage of European settlers to the ‘New
World’. Liverpool’s identity with Irish migration became infamous and
long-lasting. Both of these trades in people have been memorialised
in the Merseyside Maritime Museum (MMM), and popular history walk-
ing tours continue to stress these connections, despite the desire of

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many to forget the former. The magnificent decoration inside the Port
of Liverpool building (now called the Dock Office) built in 1908 is a
‘secular cathedral of commerce’ and proudly proclaims Liverpool’s con-
nection with the sea.3 Indeed, Liverpool’s architecture on the water-
front, around St George’s Hall and elsewhere was celebrated in a new
Pevsner guide in 2004.
Liverpool has remained a proud city, despite its turn of fortunes in
the second half of the twentieth century. The reason why lies partly
in Liverpool’s central position in the development of popular youth
culture from the 1950s. This is, after all, the city of the Beatles, The
Cavern, Billy Fury, Frankie Vaughan and Gerry and the Pacemakers, whose
‘Ferry Cross the Mersey’ seemed to rebrand Liverpool’s Edwardian
waterfront, identifying it with the modernity and vibrancy of postwar
popular culture. Strong claims have been made for Liverpool’s role in
importing black American music and rock ’n’ roll, and there have been
assertions that its merchant seamen (the ‘Cunard Yanks’) were the first
to adopt the new culture as their own. This reimagining of Liverpool
dovetailed with the city’s growing reputation for industrial militancy
and working-class support for the Left (especially during Militant’s rise
to power in the 1970s and 1980s), a combination which appealed to
the anti-establishment sympathies of youth and to sections of the media.
The city itself gave birth to a formidable generation of its own intel-
lectuals and artists, whose work helped to create a national image of
Merseyside life and popular culture. The Liverpool poets and playwrights
such as Russell and Bleasdale, and even Phil Redmond in his televi-
sion soap opera Brookside, all generated a compelling and fundamentally
sympathetic popular perception of their home, curiously at odds with
a city seemingly in terminal decline.
Academic studies of the city’s history have also been preoccupied
with this sense of Liverpool’s uniqueness. Indeed, one of the most
influential collections of essays in recent times focuses upon the city’s
‘exceptionalism’.4 Many of the themes most favoured by modern his-
torians of Liverpool reflect these recent popular perceptions of the city,
including a fascination with the history of the Liverpool working class,
its labour movement and its ethnic complexities.5 Generally, there has
been an abundance of writing on most aspects of Liverpool’s history
in recent times. Yet one facet does not loom large in either older or more
recent accounts of the city’s development: the relationship between
Liverpool and the British Empire, and its role within it. At first sight
this might seem a perverse claim, given the considerable volume of
material on Liverpool’s involvement in the slave trade in the eighteenth
century, and in overseas commerce generally. However, in much of this
literature Liverpool is contextualised as a port with global commercial

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INTRODUCTION

links, especially with the Americas, an image which subtly aligns the
city with notions of free trade and cosmopolitan liberality, rather than
the aggression, protectionism and oppression of empire.6 While it is
true that Liverpool’s non-imperial American trade was highly import-
ant to the city’s commerce for much of the last two centuries, it would
be a mistake to see its trade with such key imperial possessions as
India as insignificant. In the nineteenth century, for example, Liverpool
quickly became the second most important British trading port with
‘the East’. Given India’s crucial importance as a market for British
cotton manufactures, and Liverpool’s role as the principal port of import
and export for the Lancashire textile industry, it is clear that Liver-
pool’s economic position in the British Empire was pivotal. Into the
era of decolonisation in the 1950s and the 1960s, many of Liverpool’s
leading institutions remained heavily orientated towards the Empire-
Commonwealth: for example, the numerous shipping lines and trading
companies, the Chamber of Commerce, the School of Tropical Medi-
cine, the Cotton Exchange, the Tate & Lyle sugar refinery and, if we
extend the analysis to ‘Greater Liverpool’ or Merseyside, the Cammell
Laird shipbuilding complex in Birkenhead and the Lever Brothers
works at Port Sunlight.7 Nor must we overlook the significant, but often
marginalised, Chinese, Indian, Malay, West African and Afro-Caribbean
communities. Moreover, Liverpool’s huge Irish population might be
classified also as ‘colonial’. Initially bearing the brunt of English expan-
sionism, many Irish men and women emigrated from Liverpool to the
colonies of settlement to, paradoxically, become colonisers themselves,
notwithstanding the popular mythology of the Irish in exile. Yet, his-
torians have been peculiarly slow to acknowledge the imperial dimen-
sion in Liverpool’s modern and contemporary history.
For example, the great historian of Liverpool’s economic and urban
development, Francis Hyde, in a masterful account of the rise of the
city’s shipping and commercial elite, makes little direct reference to
the Liverpool establishment’s role in the formation of imperial policy,
even though he provides a comprehensive survey of the port’s trade
with parts of the empire in Africa and Asia. For Hyde, Liverpool mer-
chants were principally concerned in the field of economic policy with
securing free trade.8 The collection of essays on Liverpool’s economic
history edited by John Harris and published just two years earlier is
notable for the absence of any attempt at an overview of Liverpool
and empire.9 Similarly, in the early 1980s, Sheila Marriner’s study of
the economic development of Merseyside, while providing a reason-
ably thorough outline of Liverpool’s developing trade with Asia from
the early nineteenth century, is curiously silent on the question of
Liverpool’s wider importance to the imperial project, or on the role

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of its political and commercial elites in the sphere of imperial politics.

The words ‘British Empire’ and ‘imperialism’ do not even appear in the
index.10 Likewise, Tony Lane’s more populist account of Liverpool’s
development spends little time considering the city’s relationship
with the Empire, or its impact on the city’s identity and self perception.
Far from being imbued with notions of racial or national superiority,
Lane’s Liverpudlians are ‘natural democrats’, displaying ‘a certain scep-
ticism toward authority and a general independent mindedness’.11 While
the British Empire certainly appears in Lane’s account of the forging
of the ‘Liverpool character’, on closer examination the key factors were
those connected with Liverpool’s role as an international port, rather
than its colonial connections. The lifestyles of dockers and seafarers,
and the influx of a multi-ethnic immigrant population (also according
to Lane imbued with the same democratic turn of mind as their white
fellow citizens), were the key elements in the creation of Liverpudlian
identity, ones which could be said to prevail in most major port cities.
The introduction to the most recent reassessment of Liverpool’s past,
an edited volume to celebrate the city’s eight-hundredth anniversary,
does open with a reference to Liverpool as ‘The proud second city of
empire’, and subsequently refers to efforts by the Liverpool author-
ities to build upon the imperial connections of the city, through such
initiatives as the Colonial Products and Tropical Products Exhibitions
in 1904 and 1907.12 But the tenor of this piece, and indeed the whole
book, is upon Liverpool’s global rather than its imperial character. The
imperial legacy receives least attention in the chapter on ‘Maritime
Liverpool’, which focuses upon the commercial base of the city. Here,
again, the emphasis is upon the city’s global as opposed to its imperial
connections and orientation.13 The opening of trade to India and Pacific
Asia, where the British had major colonial possessions, for example,
merits only a brief sentence, and no specific reference to empire, or
particular commercial groups active in lobbying on colonial issues.14
Other references to Liverpool’s imperial connections are similarly
accorded only limited recognition: such as in the discussion of the city’s
colonial immigrants and the contention (not fully explained or evid-
enced) that ‘Liverpool’s . . . pattern of troubled race relations needs
to be understood within the contentious processes of imperialism and
decolonization, compounded by another critical contextual factor:
legacies and memories of the slave trade’.15 While Liverpool 800 cer-
tainly offers more by way of reference to empire than most of its pre-
decessors, it still lacks the emphasis due to the imperial aspect of the
city’s history.
To use a culinary metaphor, the economics, politics, attitudes and
cultures of British imperialism are not therefore universally recognised

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INTRODUCTION

as ingredients in the recipe for Scouse. Perhaps this is why the title of
the later edition of Lane’s book was changed from Liverpool: Gateway
of Empire to Liverpool: City of the Sea.16 Even accounts of the polit-
ical history of Liverpool’s elites have tended to overlook the imperial
dimension. Thus John Belchem’s excellent account of the rise of popu-
lar Liverpool Toryism during the nineteenth century focuses princip-
ally upon sectarianism and the debate over free trade, yet remains silent
on the question of imperial ideas within the city’s mercantile elite.17
Nor have modern historians been at the forefront of glossing over
Liverpool’s role in empire. Ramsay Muir, that celebrated Edwardian
historian of Liverpool, focused principally upon the role of what he
saw as the city’s great reforming elite, personified in William Roscoe,
the fervent opponent of slavery.18 In Muir’s account Liverpool’s cru-
cial role in the British Empire is largely passed over, as the city is
depicted principally as a successful global port, rather than an imperial
one. Indeed, Muir was at pains to emphasise that Liverpool’s trade grew
fastest in the late nineteenth century, when both British commercial
and imperial dominance were being challenged.19 Like later writers,
with the exception of the slave trade, Muir is curiously silent about
the relationship between Liverpool and the British Empire.
What are the reasons for this reticence surrounding Liverpool’s impe-
rial experience? A sense of collective shame about the role of the slave
trade in the city’s development was probably one factor which
affected Muir and other earlier historians of the city. The success of
the abolitionist movement, and the understandable resistance to it
within the ranks of interested Liverpool merchants, opened to question
the very moral foundations of the city’s existence. This was why his-
torians such as Muir, while not shying away from Liverpool’s slaving
heritage, were at pains to emphasise the work of Roscoe in opposing
slavery, and subsequent Liverpool reformers’ attempts to improve the
lot of the poor, almost as an attempt to redeem the city’s claim to moral
legitimacy. In this context, there was probably an understandable hes-
itancy to stress the city’s more general engagement with the Empire,
especially in the light of contemporary controversies surrounding wars
of conquest and the oppression of colonial peoples. Even at the height
of late nineteenth-century imperial fervour, liberal, anti-imperial voices
were still loud. In spite of the relative ‘blindness’ of early Liverpool
historians to the question of empire, it is important to realise that
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Liverpudlians themselves were
in no way shy of their nation’s imperial ‘achievements’.
The absence of an imperial dimension in post-Second World War
histories is perhaps best understood in light of the changing political
context, both nationally and within the city itself. The dismantling

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of empire from the late 1940s was accompanied by an abrupt dis-

continuance of a long Liverpool tradition of celebrating empire. On a
national level, empire rapidly fell out of fashion. This was especially
so of Liverpool, as the city’s new association with radical popular youth
culture became firmly established in the 1960s. Moreover, in the mid-
1950s the Conservative hold on the city was broken, ushering in a long
period of Labour/Liberal domination of the city’s political offices; polit-
icians not well disposed to the traditions of empire, and certainly not
inclined to afford them a prominent place in their conception of Liver-
pool’s identity. While Liverpool’s cosmopolitanism and ethnic diversity
were to be celebrated, and the sins of the slave trade acknowledged, the
preferred image of the city focused upon its cosmopolitan proletarian
character and its role in the development of British popular culture
and music. Such attitudes appear to have diffused into both academic
and official cultural interpretations of Liverpool’s past. It is interesting
to note, for example, that neither the MMM nor the revamped World
Museum Liverpool affords a discrete place for exhibitions specifically
addressing Liverpool’s role as an imperial city. Themes such as migra-
tion, slavery, ethnic diversity, shipping and commerce are all repres-
ented, but contextualised as part of Liverpool’s global, as opposed to
its imperial, heritage. (In this regard, however, plans for a British Empire
gallery at the new Liverpool Museum on the city’s water front are a
welcome development).
Concurrently, Liverpool’s role in the wider historiography of the
British empire has been patchy and inconsistent. Not surprisingly,
Liverpool and indeed other provincial cities have received limited
attention in the work of Peter Cain and Antony Hopkins. In propos-
ing the notion of ‘gentlemanly capitalism’, Cain and Hopkins have
argued that Britain’s overseas expansion in the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries, as well as the survival, revival and contraction of British
imperial power during the twentieth century, can be explained by the
dominant influence and presence of a London-based financial and ser-
vice elite. In this southern exclusiveness, provincial interests became
outsiders with limited ‘clout’ in the imperial enterprise.20 However,
other scholars, notably Andrew Porter, have proposed that the Cain
and Hopkins analysis is far too ‘Anglo-centric’. Up until 1914, at least,
the imperial dynamism of Clydeside – linked to industrial rather than
financial capitalism – is forgotten in the ‘gentlemanly capitalist’
paradigm.21 It could be argued therefore that Cain and Hopkins have
been too ‘London-centric’. This is especially true for Liverpool, where
a network of nineteenth-century ship-owners, traders, commodity
brokers, insurers, processors and financiers produced a ‘northern out-
post of “gentlemanly capitalism”’ which was remarkably reminiscent

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INTRODUCTION

of, and second only to, London.22 Moreover, this Scouse financial and
commercial nexus was closely linked both to empire markets and
domestic manufacturing in an industrial hinterland, which extended
as far south as Birmingham. As Andrew Porter reminds us, Liverpool
business interests (with those of Lancashire more generally) ‘were fre-
quently consulted in connection with overseas commercial and colo-
nial development policies at least until the 1940s’.23
As such, Liverpool does emerge as the empire’s second city in the
nineteenth-century volume of the Oxford History of the British Empire
(OHBE) edited by Andrew Porter (with seven references to Liverpool
in the index as against thirteen for London, three for Manchester and
Glasgow apiece, and one for Birmingham). Hence, Liverpool’s status
as a leading provider of credit to colonial territories (in conjunction with
Edinburgh and London) from the late eighteenth century is acknow-
ledged, as is its prominence in the peopling of the empire (especially
British North America), alongside the city’s significance in the trade
of Argentina between the 1820s and 1850s, and in the provision of
shipping services to Canada, the Caribbean and West Africa in the
second half of the century. Moreover, the role of its merchants in
the modification of colonial bureaucratic practice in late nineteenth-
century West Africa, and the enthusiasm of the Liverpool Chamber of
Commerce (LCC) for both colonial trade and imperial federation from
the late 1880s, is highlighted.24 Indeed, the role of Liverpool merchants
and MPs (often in collaboration with other provincial interests) in
the promotion of direct British administration during the partition of
Africa has been stressed by William Hynes.25 In Southeast Asia, mean-
while, the East India and China Trade Section of the LCC was ‘very
vociferous’ during the annexation of Upper Burma (1885–86). Anthony
Webster has likewise emphasised a similar pattern of collaboration
between the provinces and London mercantile interests since Liver-
pool, Glasgow, London and Manchester all co-operated in advocating
the Burma conquest.26 Webster has underlined Liverpool’s role in a
wider, pan-British and pan-imperial network in the growth of the
‘eastern’ trade in the first half of the nineteenth century as well.27
Liverpool and other provincial centres, therefore, were not as divorced
from the ‘the City’, Whitehall and Westminster as Cain and Hopkins
suggest. How far this pressure from the provinces was decisive in
determining the empire’s late nineteenth-century political expansion
in Africa and Asia remains contentious. But, clearly, imperial issues
informed the discourses of Liverpool’s establishment to a degree which
has been underacknowledged.
As Andrew Porter also pointed out in his critique of the ‘gentlemanly
capitalism’ paradigm, Merseyside’s ‘buoyancy was linked in part with

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its early participation in the North Atlantic economic system’.28 There

is significant coverage of Liverpool’s imperial links in the OHBE
eighteenth-century volume (although Bristol and Glasgow as well as
London have more index entries). Most notable in this context is David
Richardson’s discussion of the ‘remarkable shift from the Thames to
the Mersey in the location of slaving activity’.29 The fact, however,
that Liverpool’s global interactions and exchanges with the develop-
ing world did not suddenly end with the abolition of slave trading in
1807 suggests that there has been rather more to Merseyside’s imperial
history than the Atlantic commerce in human cargo.
Given the Mersey estuary’s ‘emergence as a major centre for the
British and continental emigrant traffic’, the complete absence of any
reference to Liverpool in the index of the OHBE companion volume
on Ireland is puzzling.30 Liverpool does not feature in the index of the
twentieth-century OHBE volume either.31 This is perhaps explicable
because London’s lure as a political and financial centre increasingly
encouraged trading companies and shipping lines to shift their head-
quarters to the Square Mile (especially after 1914). But, as John Darwin
has commented, ‘[e]ven in the 1930s, Liverpool was still the real capital
of British West Africa’.32 Here was a phenomenon which can not have
failed to influence Jack Gallagher – the ‘most brilliant and original
historian of modern imperialism’ in Darwin’s view – who grew up in
pre-Second World War Birkenhead and who (with Ronald Robinson)
went on to champion the concept of ‘informal empire’ and coined
the phrase ‘imperialism of free trade’.33 On his daily walk to and from
school, the young Gallagher would have been confronted with a River
Mersey clogged with steamships, loading and discharging goods bound
for, or having their origins in, Britain’s ‘spheres of influence’ in the
Middle East, East Asia and Latin America, as well as the UK’s world-
wide network of formal colonies, protectorates and dominions. There are,
of course, numerous problems with the concept of ‘informal empire’.34
In partial deference to Gallagher, however, and following the practice
of the OHBE, the British imperial system is interpreted in its broadest
terms in this collection to include parts of the globe which were not
painted pink on the map, notably South America and China where
Liverpool business interests were especially active throughout the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Rather than analysing the engines behind imperial expansion and
contraction, there has been a tendency recently for imperial historians
to focus increasingly on the impact of the empire ‘at home’. Yet, in
this new imperial historiography of Britain, remarkably little has been
written about Liverpool’s long-standing connections with the empire.
Indeed, a volume on Imperial Cities does not include an entry for

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INTRODUCTION

Liverpool in its index, and instead John MacKenzie’s essay awards

Glasgow the moniker of ‘second city of the Empire’.35 Bernard Porter,
meanwhile, has been highly sceptical about the imperial influence
on metropolitan Britain generally, and in one of his two references
to Liverpool points out that Walter Citrine (TUC general secretary
from 1926 to 1946) recalled Colonial House – the headquarters of the
Liverpool-based leading West African shipping line Elder Dempster –
as the site of his conversion to socialism rather than imperialism,
while working there as an electrician at the fin de siècle.36 Andrew
Thompson’s more balanced analysis highlights the influence of Alfred
Jones – head of Elder Dempster and the pre-eminent figure in West
African shipping, banking and direct investment from the 1890s until
his death in 1909, and whose weather-beaten statue on the Liverpool
waterfront is currently being restored – not only on British official
policy in Africa but also in the lasting guise of the Liverpool School
of Tropical Medicine (LSTM).37 Thompson has also emphasised the vig-
orous role of the Edwardian Liverpool Education Authority in assisted
emigration to Canada. Yet, in line with Bernard Porter, Thompson points
to the apparently limited influence of imperial styles and themes on
Liverpool’s physical environment: even Edwin Lutyens’s 1930s plans
for a colossal Roman Catholic Cathedral, based on his Durbar Hall in
Delhi, were never fully implemented.38
Given existing deficiencies in the historiographies of both Liverpool
and the British Empire, this collection of essays has two broad prin-
cipal aims: to reassess both Liverpool’s role within the British imperial
system and the impact on the port city of its colonial connections.
These essays force us to conceive of the development of these rela-
tionships as an iterative process and to pose the question: to what extent
has, or does, Liverpool represent ‘the World in One City’ (the slogan
for Liverpool’s status as European Capital of Culture in 2008), or, indeed,
‘the Empire in One City’?
It is clear that the rise and subsequent decline of the British Empire
was not a teleological process. In terms of the economy, the experi-
ence of individual sectors, firms or even individuals within Liverpool
were not always in line with the wider story of Liverpool’s rise and
fall, let alone that of Britain and its imperial system more widely. The
diversity of Liverpool’s trade, and indeed of its peoples and businesses,
meant that many were able to transcend the wider development of
Britain’s relationship with empire, in terms of both success and failure.
Therefore Stephanie Decker demonstrates that, at a time when not
only the British Empire but especially Liverpool’s economic role within
it was in decline in the second half of the twentieth century, John
Holt & Co. evolved into a free-standing company running against the

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prevailing trend in business organisation. Holt was also able to diver-

sify, avoid annihilation from takeover and survive to the present day.
Moreover, the firm retained both its Liverpool home base and its trad-
ing focus on West Africa in the post-colonial age.
Nevertheless, it remains obvious that both formal and informal
empire were central to Liverpool’s economy in the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries. While the loss of the thirteen continental colonies
may have meant the demise of the ‘first’ formal British Empire, the end
of the slave trade in 1807 did not entail disaster for Liverpool. Indeed,
in the popular imagination the slave trade may be most famously
associated with the rise and wealth of Liverpool, but contemporaries
did not necessarily see their own, or indeed Liverpool’s, identity in
such simplistic terms. Sheryllynne Haggerty argues that Liverpool
slave traders classified themselves as simply merchants. The high-risk
slave trade was usually only one part of a complex and diverse global
imperial business profile which was balanced by far more mundane
and low-risk commercial activity. The success of Liverpool following
abolition of the trade in human cargo in 1807 demonstrates that the
city’s identity, economy and wealth structure was far more sophistic-
ated, and underlines the important role of ‘legitimate commerce’ with
Asia in the nineteenth century. Indeed, the opportunity was taken not
only to change the nature of trade with West Africa but to expand eco-
nomic interactions with other parts of the world. Anthony Webster
argues that Liverpool merchants collaborated with their counterparts
in London, Glasgow and elsewhere in order to end the East India Com-
pany monopoly and thereby open trade to ‘the East’ in the first half
of the nineteenth century. At the same time, however, wider develop-
ments in Britain’s overseas economic interactions, such as increasing
trade with South America, were not always to the city’s advantage
in the longer term. As the export of capital superseded the exchange
of manufactured goods for primary production by the end of the nine-
teenth century, the role of Liverpool’s ship-owners and merchants
declined in importance. In defence of Cain and Hopkins, Rory Miller
and Robert Greenhill show how power shifted further towards London
as the financial and political centre as a result of this development.
Therefore, even as opportunities increased in South America, Liverpool
was unable to compete in the transforming imperial economy.
Even so, significant imperial businesses remained headquartered
on Merseyside into the late twentieth century, such as John Holt for
West Africa and the Ocean group of companies, the leading British
shipping interest in East and Southeast Asia which is the subject of
Nicholas White’s chapter. Here, White argues that the larger imperial
context needs to be considered in Liverpool’s relative decline after

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INTRODUCTION

1945 and that current explanations of the port’s demise, such as those
focusing on containerisation, are not satisfactory. Rather, he cites
decolonisation and imperial specialisation as destabilising factors in
Liverpool’s involvement in Asian trade so carefully built up in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ocean did remain remark-
ably profitable in the 1950s and 1960s, but political turbulence and
economic nationalism ‘east of Suez’ encouraged the group’s executives
to increasingly disengage both from the sea and from Liverpool.
The strength of Liverpool’s merchant marine, representing both
informal and formal empire over three centuries, forces us to consider
the physical nature of that imperial complex. As one historian has
recently asked, was the British Empire primarily one of land or sea,
or were the two interlinked?39 In the case of Liverpool, the complex
manifestations of formal and informal empire meant that maritime
and terra firma empires were intertwined. This facilitated a two-way
process in which not only goods but peoples, cultures and artefacts
moved into and out of Liverpool, usually, though not always, changing
the character and nature of the city and its people. For example, Liver-
pool’s links with Africa were more diverse than simply the city’s role
in the forced migration of African people during the first British Empire,
or its role in colonisation that followed in the second. Dmitri van den
Bersselaar and Zachary Kingdon complicate this story by investigat-
ing the significance of objects brought from West Africa to be housed
in Liverpool museums. These artefacts were clearly collected, inter-
preted and displayed in a European imperial context. Yet, van den
Bersselaar and Kingdon also reconstruct a positive past in which the
African creators of these objects not only mediated European under-
standing of African material, political and religious culture but also
exercised influence over which particular artefacts were allowed to
be exported and at what price. Liverpool’s interaction with empire,
therefore, was not one-sided. This is not to deny the power that Britain
wielded over its various subjects and dependencies; nor did empire have
more positive than negative consequences.40 Yet, van den Bersselaar
and Kingdon do force us to reassess the agency of non-European
peoples within the imperial network.
Liverpool is also famous for the peoples that migrated into and
through it, further physically linking the empires of land and sea. How-
ever, John Herson’s contribution reminds us of the dangers of over-
privileging the role of the British Empire in certain aspects of the city’s
history. Liverpool may have been the single most important British
port for emigration to Canada, particularly by the end of the nineteenth
century, but the vast majority of passengers from Liverpool between
1825 and the First World War were destined for the USA. At the same

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time, Herson’s investigation into Liverpool as a diasporic city challenges

simplistic notions of the cultural exchanges of immigrants into and
migrants through the city. Whereas the history of Liverpool’s cargo
trade provides support for ‘the Empire in One City’ concept, he finds
far more uneven evidence of colonial cosmopolitanism and cultural
interaction, notwithstanding the cornucopia of ethnicities and nation-
alities which passed through or settled in the port. The numbers of
non-white colonial immigrants in nineteenth- and twentieth-century
Liverpool were relatively small. Nevertheless, Diane Frost’s chapter on
interracial relationships in 1950s and 1960s Liverpool demonstrates
that many African and Afro-Caribbean sailors (and others) married
or had relationships with white women. The fact that these couples
challenged racial and therefore imperial boundaries meant that they
encountered ostracism and racism from the white community. In this
case, it was the white women who experienced the most abuse, and
were labelled as ‘loose’, as prostitutes and of low character. Frost’s chap-
ter thus provides a classic example of how Liverpool’s long-standing
colonial connections had a disturbing influence upon popular attitudes
into and beyond the era of decolonisation.
Even so, the everyday experience of individuals either within or
connected to Liverpool varied, as did their identification with empire.
While many travelling through or settling in Liverpool were no doubt
very conscious of its imperial connections, others had no understand-
ing of its impact on them, or indeed of others in that empire. Murray
Steele demonstrates a wide range of imperial influences from the 1880s
to the 1950s upon Liverpool’s media, politics, educational provision
and public exhibitions and celebrations. But the impact of this ‘pop-
ular imperialism’ was not clear cut. Textbooks and adventure stories
attempted to make subjects aware of their newly-understood respon-
sibilities to non-white members of the empire. Yet, Steele also hints
that Liverpool schoolchildren were often only mildly aware of their
city’s imperial connections and were more interested in simply enjoy-
ing a day off school during Empire Day.
Hence, this collection does not necessarily support a ‘maximalist’
position that all aspects of Liverpool’s history should be reinterpreted
within an imperial framework. Liverpool’s role in formal and informal
empire was not a simple story of rise and decline, and the experience
of individual peoples or institutions did not always reflect direct
imperial influences. Throughout this volume, however, empire is used
in both the formal and informal sense. Empire might formally have
been those lands coloured pink in early twentieth-century atlases, but
control of trade and cultural influence expanded far beyond the empire’s
official geography; in practice, the boundaries between formal and

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INTRODUCTION

informal empire were ambiguous. As such, John MacKenzie argues that

the essays in this volume demonstrate significant colonial interaction
in, and via, Liverpool in terms of economic, political, social and cul-
tural life, so that it can clearly be identified as a leading imperial
city. He also points to areas of possible future research – such as the
press, patriotic associations, botany, shipbuilding, the churches and
the worlds wars of the twentieth century – where further imperial
concerns, influences and legacies in Liverpool should be revealed. At
the least, this volume puts the imperial factor back into Liverpool’s
history, and renovates Merseyside’s role within the historiography of
the British empire. Moreover, contemporary claims to be ‘the World
in One City’ must take more account of Liverpool’s imperial heritage
(however uncomfortable and inconvenient that may prove).
Indeed, the editors are aware that this revived emphasis upon Liver-
pool’s imperial past may not sit conveniently with contemporary inter-
pretations of the city’s history, or with current debates about British
imperialism. Recent popular and academic histories of Liverpool have
tended to emphasise the working-class character of the city, its rela-
tive poverty and traditions of class conflict. The notion of Liverpool
as a leading and aggressive force in the expansion of the British empire
beyond 1807, and as a major beneficiary of this controversial phase of
British history, has not figured prominently in this casting of the city
as a cauldron of class struggle and emergent socialist movements. The
city’s international commercial relationships have been characterised
as ‘global’ rather than imperial in nature, downplaying the intertwin-
ing of the interests of all its social groups with those of the empire.
Strong claims have also been made for Liverpool’s ‘exceptionalism’,
for its uniqueness and difference from other British cities. Yet, in con-
trast, many of the contributions in this volume stress that Liverpool
was very much an integral component of the British imperial system,
working both commercially and politically in collaboration with other
cities in Britain and the empire. In this respect, we would argue for
an interpretation of the development of the city which reveals its role
within national and imperial contexts, as well as highlighting exam-
ples of peculiar or exceptional trends. This emphasis upon Liverpool
as a component within a network of British and imperial cities is also
inconvenient for Cain and Hopkins’s ‘gentlemanly capitalism’ inter-
pretation of British imperial development which identifies London as
the political and economic hub of empire, relegating other cities in
Britain and the empire to a ‘second division’ of imperial players. This
study of Liverpool clearly demonstrates that London did not enjoy a
monopoly when it came to the direction and consequences of empire.
The imperial project brought together a diverse range of urban economic

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SHERYLLYNNE HAGGERTY, ANTHONY WEBSTER, NICHOLAS J. WHITE

centres, sometimes working together, sometimes in competition with

each other, and the relationships between them are only now beginning
to emerge. In this respect, this collection of essays on Liverpool and
empire will, we hope, inspire others to explore the imperial pasts of
other British and imperial cities, revealing more about this complex
national and international network of interests and commerce which
enabled the British empire to function and thrive.41 By the same token,
the end of empire may well have had a more profound impact upon
the economic, social and cultural experiences of Britain’s commercially-
based provincial imperial cities than is usually assumed.

Notes
1 BBC News Online (16 October 2004) (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3749548.
stm, accessed 6 February 2007).
2 The Sun (19 April 1989).
3 J. Sharples, Liverpool, Pevsner Architectural Guides (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 2004), p. 68.
4 J. Belchem, Merseypride: Essays in Liverpool Exceptionalism (Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press, 2000), esp. pp. xi–xvii.
5 See, for example, J. Belchem (ed.), Popular Politics, Riot and Labour: Essays in
Liverpool History, 1790–1940 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1992).
6 Hence, John Belchem, the Professor of Liverpool History at the University of
Liverpool, informed a journalist in October 2004 that ‘Liverpool . . . “is an Atlantic
city, its back traditionally turned to Britain, facing the Irish Sea and the ocean”
. . . Liverpool . . . was always the British city closest to the US’. ‘A city matured –
a city reborn’, The Guardian (20 October 2004).
7 For a recent reassessment of the first Lord Leverhulme’s imperial activities in Africa
and the Pacific islands, for example, see B. Lewis, So Clean: Lord Leverhulme, Soap
and Civilization (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), chapter 4.
8 F. E. Hyde, Liverpool and the Mersey: An Economic History of a Port, 1700–1970
(Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1971), p. 65.
9 J. R. Harris (ed.), Liverpool and Merseyside: Essays in the Economic and Social History
of the Port and Its Hinterland (London: Frank Cass, 1969).
10 S. Marriner, The Economic and Social Development of Merseyside (London: Croom
Helm, 1982), pp. 30–46.
11 T. Lane, Liverpool: Gateway of Empire (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1987), p. 85.
12 J. Belchem, ‘Introduction: celebrating Liverpool’, in J. Belchem (ed.), Liverpool
800: Culture, Character and History (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006),
pp. 9, 22.
13 G. J. Milne, ‘Maritime Liverpool’, in Belchem (ed.), Liverpool 800, pp. 257–309.
14 Ibid., p. 259.
15 J. Belchem and D. M. MacRaild, ‘Cosmopolitan Liverpool’, in Belchem (ed.),
Liverpool 800, pp. 320, 368–87.
16 T. Lane, Liverpool: City of the Sea (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1997).
See also J. M. MacKenzie, ‘ “The Second City of the Empire”: Glasgow – imperial
municipality’, in F. Driver and D. Gilbert (eds), Imperial Cities: Landscape, Display
and Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), p. 219.
17 Belchem, Merseypride, pp. 155–76.
18 R. Muir, A History of Liverpool (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1907), pp. 205–6.
19 Ibid., p. 298.
20 See especially P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688–2000 (Harlow:
Longman, 2nd edn, 2001). Anthony Webster has pointed out for the early nineteenth

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INTRODUCTION

century that Cain and Hopkins have ‘softened their position’ in the above revised
version of the gentlemanly capitalist paradigm from their earlier articles in the 1980s.
(See ‘Gentlemanly capitalism and British expansion overseas, I: the old colonial sys-
tem, 1688–1850’, Economic History Review, 39:4 (1986), 501–25, and ‘Gentlemanly
capitalism and British expansion overseas, II: new imperialism, 1850–1945’, Eco-
nomic History Review, 40:1 (1987), 1–26, and the two volumes published later, British
Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, 1688–1914 (Harlow: Longman, 1993) and
British Imperialism: Crisis and Deconstruction, 1914–1990 (Harlow: Longman, 1993).
Cain and Hopkins now ‘concede that they may have underestimated the role of provin-
cial interests in shaping such policies as free trade’. Nevertheless, they remain adamant
that London’s dominance was restored after 1850 and that even before this ‘eco-
nomic policy continued to be determined by “gentlemanly capitalist” assumptions
and ideology’ and ‘it was [n]ever the exclusive preserve of the industrial interest’.
Concurrently, ‘the prevailing impression in their work is of a quite sharp division
between provincial industry and City finance’. A. Webster, ‘The strategies and limits
of gentlemanly capitalism: the London East India agency houses, provincial commer-
cial interests, and the evolution of British economic policy in South and Southeast
Asia, 1800–50’, Economic History Review, 59:4 (2006), 743–64, p. 744.
21 A. Porter, ‘“Gentlemanly Capitalism” and empire: the British experience since
1750?’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 18:3 (1990), 265–95, p. 278;
J. F. Munro, Maritime Enterprise and Empire: Sir William Mackinnon and his Business
Network, 1823–1893 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press), esp. pp. 506–7.
22 Belchem, Merseypride, p. xii, 40 n. 42; Lane, City of the Sea, pp. 32, 36–7.
23 Porter, ‘ “Gentlemanly Capitalism” ’, 278.
24 A. Porter (ed.), OHBE: Volume III: The Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1999), pp. 35, 77, 84, 127–8, 196, 254–5, 358.
25 W. G. Hynes, The Economics of Empire: Britain, Africa and the New Imperialism,
1870–95 (London: Longman, 1979), pp. 43, 59, 62, 74, 93, 95–6. Although Man-
chester’s fifty entries in Hynes’s index eclipse Liverpool by fifteen.
26 Ibid., pp. 53–4; A. Webster, ‘Business and empire: a reassessment of the British con-
quest of Burma in 1885’, Historical Journal, 43:4 (2000), 1003–25.
27 See also Webster, ‘Strategies and limits of gentlemanly capitalism’.
28 Porter, ‘ “Gentlemanly Capitalism” ’, 278.
29 D. Richardson, ‘The British empire and the Atlantic slave trade, 1660 –1807’, in
P. J. Marshall (ed.), OHBE: Volume II: The Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998), pp. 446–50. Again, however, this does not suggest a Scouse
‘disconnect’ with ‘gentlemanly capitalism’ in London, since the capital supplied both
finance and East Indian and other goods for slave voyages from Liverpool.
30 Porter, ‘ “Gentlemanly Capitalism” ’, 278; K. Kenny (ed.), Ireland and the British
Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
31 J. M. Brown and W. R. Louis (eds), OHBE: Volume IV: The Twentieth Century (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999).
32 J. Darwin, ‘Gallagher’s empire’, in W. R. Louis (ed.), Yet More Adventures with
Britannia: Personalities, Politics and Culture in Britain (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005),
p. 241. Sarah Stockwell has acknowledged the on-going importance of Liverpool in
West African trade, shipping and investment in the post-Second World War period.
S. Stockwell, The Business of Decolonization: British Business Strategies in the
Gold Coast (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 19–25. The Joint West Africa
Committee, formed in the 1930s, comprised delegates from the West African sec-
tions of the London, Liverpool and Manchester Chambers of Commerce. In the
decolonisation period, West African interests in Liverpool could also rely on a degree
of representation in Westminster through a circle of Conservative politicians – notably
Sir John Tilney, the MP for Liverpool Wavertree from 1950 to 1974, who became
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, 1962–64, and
for the Colonies, 1963–64. There also existed in Liverpool a West African group of
the Conservative Commonwealth Council, which involved various business interests.
Ibid., pp. 19–29; P. Murphy, Party Politics and Decolonization: The Conservative

[ 15 ]
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 — 64 — de júbilo, la República: que esas mayorías
populares cuyos votos, esperanzas y sentimientos hemos traído al
Capitolio de la Nación, glorifican al Caudillo leal, al Ilustre Personero
de la voluntad nacional que ha echado por fin sobre sus hombros la
túnica de su soberanía, y les ha devuelto el supremo derecho del
sufragio libre, que constituye la majestad de los pueblos; que ha
rescatado la dignidad de la Patria; que ha reivindicado la honra del
verdadero Partido Liberal y la nobleza de sus principios, con la
corona de la probidad que le ha ceñido y la mano generosa con que
ha extendido sobre todos los venezolanos, para cobijarlos bajo su
augusta sombra, la bandera gloriosa de sus victorias; que ha quitado
de las manos de los hijos de esta tierra el fusil de las revueltas, para
ponerles en la una la boleta del sufragio libre con que realizan su
voluntad, y en la otra la cartilla del estudiante con que ascienden á
las regiones de luz, donde encuentran la grandeza del hombre y la
dignidad del ciudadano. «Por eso festeja la Patria alborozada la
fecha inmortal de este día; por eso no hay ojos que recuerden con
sus lágrimas, ni corazón que llore con sus gemidos el desastre
pavoroso de la batalla. Fueron aquellos los dolores del inevitable
alumbramiento de un mundo nuevo; y esos los borran siempre de la
memoria las gracias y las sonrisas de la nueva creación. ¿Quién se
acordó jamás, en medio de la luz, de los colores y del dulce calor de
la primavera, de los rigores y crudezas del invierno, si no es para
bendecir, agradecido, á la Providencia, por la deliciosa
transformación, mejor sentida entonces y más amada? «Caliente
todavía el cañón de la victoria escribisteis sobre sus cureñas el
inmortal Decreto de la instrucción popular, para mostrar á la Nación
que los relámpagos que había vomitado por su escandecida boca, no
eran los resplandores siniestros de incendio, sino la luz de las
inteligencias, la aurora del progreso, el alba espléndida de una
nueva civilización». Siguieron después las felicitaciones de las demás
corporaciones y empleados; dando á todos el señor General
Presidente esta respuesta:
 — 65 — «Seis años hace hoy que ocupé á Caracas á la
cabeza de las huestes liberales. «Como este es el último 27 de Abril
del presente período, debo despedirme de mis compatriotas que me
oyen, y por su medio de todos los de la República. «Entré al Poder
en 1870 abrumado de preocupaciones, y saldré de él el 20 de
febrero de 1877 lleno de satisfacciones. «Comparemos aquel 27 de
Abril con el 27 de Abril que celebramos hoy. «Encontramos la guerra
civil, y dejamos fundada la paz sólida y durable. «No había Gobierno
sino el imperio de turbas ebrias de pasión y de licor, y está ya
constituido el Gobierno de la libertad, el orden y el progreso;
respetable y respetado moral y materialmente. «La única soberanía
que imperaba era la de la fuerza, la violencia y la anarquía: en su
lugar dejamos prácticamente reinstalada la soberanía popular por
medio de elecciones libres, como nunca las hubo en Venezuela, y de
Cuerpos Legislativos dignos, ilustrados y patriotas, tan
independientes como lo es el Poder Judicial, y como de ambos lo es
el Poder Ejecutivo, cada uno en el círculo de sus respectivas
delegaciones constitucionales. «Los Estados son soberanos é
independientes en su administración interna de un modo
incuestionable. «El 27 de Abril de 70 no encontramos más que un
periódico, mientras que hoy tenemos 62, y en cada Estado ha
situado el Gobierno una imprenta como foco de libertad y de
civilización. «Además del Código Militar, se han hecho los Códigos
Civil, Criminal y de Procedimiento, tan adaptados al País, que todos
los Estados los han hecho legislación propia. «El matrimonio civil y el
registro civil, los hemos establecido y se practican con toda
perfección. «Se ha organizado la Hacienda Nacional dotándola de
otro Código que la moraliza y regenera: cuando los hombres de Abril
entramos al Poder no había fondos con qué pagar los Tomo xi — 5
 — 66 — empleados del servicio público, y para hoy acusa la
estadística nn rendimiento probable de V. 7.000.000: se ha creado
una nueva renta con las salinas negociadas á los Estados; y se han
extinguido los peajes para aplicar el producto del tránsito á ese
fomento material del país que ya sorprende. «Hemos fundado el
crédito interior con la liquidación, reconocimiento y amortización
gradual de toda la deuda y el pago puntual de sus intereses, lo que
quedará complementado con el arreglo de la deuda exterior
combinado con la ejecución del ferrocarril entre Caracas y La Guaira;
las dos medidas de que el Gobierno espera que Venezuela derive
más fecundos resultados en el porvenir. «El 27 de Abril de 1870 no
encontramos instrucción popular de ninguna especie, y hoy 27 Abril
de 1876, tenemos 1.200 planteles entre escuelas federales,
municipales y particulares con cerca de 50.000 alumnos; hijos del
pueblo laborioso y honesto, que serán, con los que vengan detrás,
los ciudadanos que compongan la patria regenerada. ((El
pensamiento de la inmigración, que ha de hacer á Venezuela la
primera Nación de Sur-América, seis años pasados, aquel 27 de Abril
que celebramos hoy, parecía una quimera, y, sin embargo, para el
próximo diciembre, tendremos como 15 mil inmigrados produciendo
y consumiendo en el País, y establecida una corriente fácil y
espontánea cual nosotros mismos no esperábamos. «Y hemos
defendido y asegurado nuestras prerrogativas internacionales, y
hemos fortificado los puertos que necesita la defensa exterior, y
hemos traído artillería moderna de gran calibre, y hemos cambiado
el armamento de infantería, y construido parques, y mejorado la
marina, y puesto el ejército bajo un pie que nunca tuvo. «Como
síntesis, como demostración gráfica del patriotismo, acierto,
consagración absoluta y ejem.plar honradez, el Gobierno de la
Revolución de Abril, presenta 44 obras públicas concluidas, 27 en
construcción y 24 más ó menos próximas á concluirse. En seis años
de Gobierno patriota, inteligente y laborioso, hemos abierto veinte y
tantas vías de comunicación
 — 67 — terrestre, que ponen en contacto los puntos más
importantes de la República; hemos levantado edificios en sus
capitales, abiértoles acueductos, arregládoles sus calles, hécholes
paseos públicos y embellecídolas con todo género de ornato ; hemos
establecido veinte Colegios nacionales, plenos ya todos ellos de
alumnos que son esperanzas para la patria ; y hemos levantado la
Universidad Central por su organización y su renta, á la categoría de
un gran centro de ilustración y saber. «Después de todo, no abrigo el
menor temor por la paz futura. Esos veinticinco años de guerra civil
tuvieron una razón de ser que ya desapareció. Disputábanse el
Poder dos grandes partidos sin fe en las vías legales, y más ó menos
equilibrados, vinieron hasta la Revolución de 1870, atronando entre
efímeros triunfos y reveses. Vencido uno de los dos en la última
guerra civil, después de haber agotado todos sus elementos, todos
sus hombres y todo su prestigio, el vencedor ha hecho un uso tan
patriótico y fecundo del poder de que quedó dueño, que todos los
vencidos que luchaban con sinceridad, se han incorporado á la obra
de la Revolución de Abril en su calidad de buenos ciudadanos, á
quienes satisface la dicha y el engrandecimiento de la patria, débase
á quien se debiere . «¿Quiénes quedan pensando aún en la guerra
civil? Uno que otro ambicioso impaciente y chasqueado, y unas
cuantas docenas de subalternos que convirtieron la guerra en oficio
y no encuentran cómo merodear en la paz. A esos hombres, porque
nada ofrecen á la patria sino el precio de su inmoralidad, y porque
son muy pocos y en extremo desacreditados, no habrá de seguirlos
este valeroso é inteligente pueblo de Venezuela, que componen los
pequeños labradores que se sienten protegidos por esta situación en
su familia y en su trabajo, como no lo estuvieron nunca ; de los
propietarios que se sienten en posesión de todos sus derechos
civiles y políticos, así para su persona como para sus intereses ; del
comercio que prospera con una rapidez que sorprende ; de la
juventud que ve horizontes llenos de luz y con todos los caminos
que su iniciativa y sus aptitudes quieren tener abiertos ; de los
 — 68 — sabios que se sienten honrados y respetados ; de
los artistas y artesanos para quienes esta situación ha venido á ser
una especie de renacimiento. «Nó : la paz de Venezuela depende de
todos esos sanos, legítimos y permanentes intereses : depende de sí
misma. «En octubre de 74 lo vimos de bulto ; la ambición y la
rapacidad lograron en Coro un último esfuerzo contra la portentosa
obra de Abril, sustentada por casi la totalidad de los venezolanos, y
quedó de manifiesto la evidente impotencia del espíritu de la guerra,
contra la inexorable, patriótica y popular voluntad de la paz. «Aquel
espíritu no tiene hoy ni cómo producir una ligera perturbación. Si se
agita, es en la conjuración ; y un atentado contra mi persona no
cambiaría los destinos de Venezuela, ni por otra parte depende de
los conjurados sino de Dios, que es quien dirige todas las cosas
humanas, hasta en sus más imperceptibles pormenores y en virtud
de leyes sapientísimas, que no porque nuestra luz intelectual no las
alcance todavía, dejan de ser las que gobiernan el mundo moral.
«En la víspera, el puñal resulta amellado y el revólver no da fuego
.... «Entre tanto, yo voy á retirarme, gozando un sentimiento que me
duele que no gocen todos mis compatriotas : no hay emoción igual á
ésta que me produce el bien que he hecho á la patria y la gratitud
de mis compatriotas . . . «Si estuviéramos hoy en el 20 de febrero
entregando yo el Poder al futuro elegido de los pueblos, temería
morirme de felicidad. «El Gobierno próximo no podrá terminar la
obra que nosotros hemos emprendido, porque esa obra es infinita y
ha de durar lo que dure la patria. Pero sí tengo fe en que realizará la
etapa que le corresponde en ese camino de portentos y grandeza ; y
yo desde ahora me preparo y os invito para que felicitemos al
Presidente del próximo período, por la gloria que va á conquistarse
haciendo la dicha de Venezuela».
 CAPITULO XLV Sumario. — Continúa el año de 1876. —
Cuestión arzobispal. — Mensaje del señor General Presidente. —
Proyecto de Iglesia venezolana independiente. — Renuncia del señor
Doctor Guevara y Lira. — Renuncia del señor Pbro. Doctor Arroyo. —
Carta del señor General Presidente al General Duarte Level. —
Proyecto de ferrocarril de I,a Guaira á Caracas. — Condecoración al
señor Doctor José María Rojas. — Condecoración á algunos
periodistas. — Prórroga de las sesiones del Congreso. — Creación
del Banco de Caracas. — Restos mortales de algunos servidores
eminentes llevados al Panteón nacional. — Remoción del
Monumento del Libertador. — Varios jóvenes ofrecen escoltar las
cenizas del Libertador al ser llevadas al Panteón. — Kl General
Márquez es designado Jefe de esta guardia. — Clausura de las
sesiones de las Cámaras Legislativas, — Prórroga.— Monseñor Rocca
Cocchia en la Guaira. — Es portador de la declaratoria de sede
vacante del Arzobispado de Caracas. — Reinstalación de las Cámaras
Legislativas. — Monseñor Rocca Cocchia en Caracas. — Texto de la
renuncia del señor Doctor Guevara y Lira. — Candidatura del Pbro.
Doctor José Antonio Ponte.— Mensaje especial del General
Presidente al Congreso.— Candidatura del señor Pbro. Doctor Tomás
Zerpa para el Obispado de Mérida. — Klección de los señores Pbros.
Doctores Ponte y Zerpa para el Arzobispado de Caracas y Venezuela
y Obispado de Mérida. — Juramento del señor Pbro. Doctor Ponte.
— Discursos. — Manifestación de Monseñor Rocca Cocchia.— Texto
de la admisión de la renuncia del señor Doctor Guevara y Lira. N la
sesión del 9 de mayo volvió el Congreso á ocuparse de la cuestión
arzobispal con motivo de un mensaje especial que le dirigiera el
señor General Presidente de la República. Este, como lo ha visto el
lector, buscaba de todos modos un arreglo con la Santa Sede, pero
persistiendo en la renuncia del señor Doctor Guevara y lyira. Al
efecto había llevado sus gestiones ante la Corte Pontificia; y
esperaba la terminación del plazo concedido para la obtención de la
renuncia. El 4 del citado mes de mayo llegó á Puerto-España,
Trinidad, residencia del expresado señor Doctor Guevara y Lira,
Monseñor Rocca Cocchia, Obispo de Orope y Nuncio de Su Santidad
el Papa en Santo Domingo, y al
 — 70 — día siguiente de su llegada visitó al Cónsul de
Venezuela en dicha isla, señor General Duarte I^evel, quien dio
cuenta de la entrevista y su objeto al Ministro de Relaciones
Exteriores, en la siguiente nota: «Consulado de Venezuela en
Trinidad. — Puerto España: mayo 5 de 1876.— N"? 168. ({A¿ señor
Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores. «Ayer llegó á esta Isla el Nuncio
de su Santidad que estaba en Santo Domingo. — En la mañana de
hoy he tenido una larga conferencia con él de la que paso á imponer
á usted. Me refirió que venía á exigir la renuncia del señor Guevara,
á cuyo fin se trasladó ayer mismo á San José, pueblecito cercano,
donde aquél está viviendo: que el médico de cabecera del señor
Guevara le expuso que éste se hallaba enfermo sufriendo del
corazón, (hipertrofia): que apenas tendría dos ó tres meses de vida
y que cualquiera fuerte impresión le ocasionaría la muerte: que á
pesar de esto le exigió la renuncia y no obstante sus excitaciones,
insistió en su negativa: que entonces le manifestó que obraba así, el
Nuncio, en virtud de cartas recibidas de Su Santidad, en que le decía
que el señor Guevara le proporcionaría placer en renunciar y que al
efecto le remitiría dichas cartas y le daría algunos días de tiempo
para reflexionar: que el señor Guevara pidió algunos meses, lo que
finamente excusó: que hoy le mandó las cartas y que mañana
tendrá con él una segunda conversación: que trata de que el
Arzobispo y el Obispo de Trinidad le ayuden á persuadir al señor
Guevara, de lo conveniente que es su renuncia, y que al efecto habló
con ambos y los halló dispuestos á ello: que el Pbro. Espinoza
también piensa de este modo: que tocará hoy con los Pbros.
Amitesarove, Plaz y Rivero, para que también le acompañen: que si
nada logra pedirá órdenes decisivas á Roma, por el telégrafo; y en
último caso irá á Caracas á ver si de acuerdo con el Ilustre
Americano se halla una solución
 — 71 — á este asunto: que si obtiene resultado
satisfactorio también irá á Caracas, con el fin de dejar arregladas
todas las cuestiones pendientes con el Gobierno de la Iglesia. Le
contesté que el médico de cabecera del señor Guevara, es el Doctor
Padrón, enemigo del Gobierno de Venezuela, y que lo de la
enfermedad grave y la espera, bien pudieran ser pretextos para
ganar tiempo, porque se cuenta con que la revolución que hoy se
trama, derroque al Gobierno actual, ó que el Presidente electo,
llamaria al señor Guevara, pero que yo cumplía con el deber de
significarle que nada de esto sucedería, porque la actual situación de
Venezuela no estaba á merced de cualquier aventurero y que el
Presidente electo, sostendría la política actual sin vacilación alguna.
Convino en ambas cosas y que si no se obtenía la renuncia del señor
Guevara, era inútil que él tratara de ir á Venezuela, porque yo no le
daba pasaporte ni allí le recibirían: me dijo, que en ese caso, se iría
para otro punto en un vapor que hiciera escala en La Guaira, para
ver si lograba entenderse con el Presidente; le agregué que hoy
despachaba al General A. Level que estaba aquí esperando el
resultado definitivo de este asunto, y que al llegar sin la renuncia del
señor Guevara, se comenzaría á discutir la ley que separa la Iglesia
de Venezuela de la Corte de Roma, que en este punto no había
término medio posible, con tanta más razón cuanto que el Pbro.
Amitesarove había asegurado en el pulpito, que el señor Guevara no
renunciaría, en caso alguno, circunstancia que mi gobierno no
ignoraba: que el Presidente no veía en todo esto sino la tendencia
de parte de aquél de dejar que el Congreso cerrara sus sesiones,
creyendo que de este modo terminaba esta cuestión; pero que tal
cosa no sucedería, porque yo podía asegurarle que el Congreso,
antes de la clausura, dejaría separada la Iglesia de Venezuela. Me
dijo que lo mortificaba la idea de que el Presidente creyera tal cosa
de él y que trataba de arreglar el asunto cuanto antes. Ofrecióme
una visita para hoy á las 4 de la tarde, y comunicarme el resultado
de su conferencia de mañana, si ella fuere favorable, para que fuese
por este paquete: que él creía
 — 72 — que aquí se ejercía una gran presión sobre el señor
Guevara; á lo que contesté que sí, porque él se había prestado á ser
instrumento de los revolucionarios. — Si en su visita de esta tarde
me agregare algo lo comunicaré á usted por esta misma ocasión y si
obtuviere á tiempo resultado de la conferencia de mañana, también
irá en este paquete. Aun en el caso de obtener la renuncia del señor
Guevara, no le daré al Nuncio pasaporte para Venezuela y sobre este
punto pido órdenes á usted, que deben serme comunicadas por
Sainthomas para que vengan por telégrafo á fin de evitarme algún
conflicto, proveniente de la falta de instrucciones precisas. De La
Guaira sale el vapor alemán el 11 para Sainthomas, y como de aquí
sale para La Guaira un vapor el 20, hay tiempo para recibirla yo
antes que él me pida pasaporte. — Dios y Federación, L. Duarte
Level)). Por cablegrama del 6 participó el Cónsul al señor General
Presidente: que el señor Doctor Guevara y Lira se negaba á la
renuncia: que el señor Pbro. Doctor Amitesarove cedía: que el señor
Doctor Padrón dominaba al señor Doctor Guevara y Lira: que el
Nuncio vacilaba en venir á Caracas: que le había negado pasaporte,
y que era indispensable (inevitable) el rompimiento. Fue en virtud de
este cablegrama que el señor General Presidente de la República
dirigió al Congreso el mensaje de que antes se ha hecho mención, y
que es el siguiente: ({Ciudadanos Senadores: ciudadanos Diputados:
«En mi cuenta del año administrativo que terminó el 20 de febrero
próximo pasado, os dije, hablando de nuestra cuestión arzobispal,
que estaba corriendo un último plazo que se me había pedido, para
que conforme á insinuaciones de Roma, presentase el señor Guevara
á Su Santidad la renuncia del Arzobispado; acto con el cual la
política usurpadora de la Curia, cree que quedaba Venezuela en
capacidad de elegir Arzobispo, y el Papa en la de otorgarle la
facultad de orden; todo lo cual es desconocer la soberanía del país,
única
 — 7Z — que puede dar jurisdicción á sus Prelados para
administrar las Diócesis y la x\rquidiócesis, y diametralmente
opuesto al texto expreso de los artículos 16 y 17 de la ley de
Patronato vigente desde el año de 1824, que literalmente dice:
«Artículo 16. Los nombrados por el Congreso para los Arzobispados
y Obispados, antes de que se presenten á Su Santidad por el Poder
Ejecutivo, deberán prestar ante éste ó ante la persona que delegare
al efecto, el juramento de sostener y defender la Constitución de la
República, de no usurpar su soberanía, derechos y prerrogativas y
de obedecer y cumplir las leyes, órdenes y disposiciones del
Gobierno. De este juramento se extenderán dos ejemplares firmados
ambos por el nombrado, y se pasará uno al Senado y otro á la
Cámara de Representantes, para que se guarden en sus respectivos
archivos. «Artículo 17. Luego que los nombrados hayan prestado el
juramento que antecede, podrán entrar en el ejercicio de su
jurisdicción, excitando para ello el Poder Ejecutivo á los Cabildos
eclesiásticos; pero no percibirán las rentas que les correspondan
hasta el fíat de Su Santidad». «El plazo terminó desde el 19 de abril;
pero como el Nuncio del Papa, de Santo Domingo, me notificó con
fecha 20 que en 21 del mismo salía para Trinidad en solicitud de la
renuncia del señor Guevara, conforme á instrucciones que acababa
de recibir, juzgué que yo debía hacer un nuevo y postrer esfuerzo, y
esperar el resultado de la conferencia de Monseñor Rocca Cocchia
con el señor ex-Arzobispo. «Ayer me llegó por fin la participación
oficial de que el señor Guevara se ha negado á renunciar, y he
venido, además, en conocimiento de que tampoco tiene el Nuncio
facultad para imponerle la renuncia ni para destituirlo. «En tal
situación, están agotados todos los medios diplomáticos para
arreglar la cuestión arzobispal, que no podemos, por otra parte,
dejar insoluta al próximo Gobierno, sin exponerlo y exponer la causa
nacional. «Como representante hoy de esa causa, por el voto
reiterado de la nación, como el primer responsable ante la his 
 — 74 — toria de la consolidación de la obra de abril, de que
los pueblos me hicieron conductor, y con la plena convicción de que
nuestros enemigos disfrazados con la religión del Cristo, cambiarían
el espléndido porvenir que estamos labrando á la patria, por el
oscuro pasado que el fanatismo haría pavoroso, os pido con plena
convicción y asumiendo la más grata responsabilidad de cuantas por
llenar mi misión he echado sobre mi nombre, la Ley que independice
la Iglesia venezolana del Obispado romano, y preceptúe que los
párrocos sean elegidos por los fieles, los Obispos por los párrocos, y
por el Congreso el Arzobispo, volviendo así á la Iglesia primitiva
fundada por Jesús y sus Apóstoles. «Esa ley no sólo resolverá
nuestra cuestión clerical, sino que será además, un grande ejemplo
para el cristianismo de la América republicana, entorpecida en su
marcha de libertad, orden y progreso, por el elemento, siempre
retrógrado, de la Curia romana, y el mundo civilizado la verá como la
notación más característica de la regeneración de Venezuela.
«Caracas, mayo 9 de 1876. ((Guzmán Blanco)), En la tarde del
mismo día de la fecha del mensaje se reunieron las Cámaras
Legislativas en Congreso para considerarlo, resolviendo nombrar una
comisión compuesta de los señores Senador General Juan C.
Hurtado y Diputado señor Doctor Laureano Villanueva para redactar
la contestación á dicho mensaje y excitar á la Cámara del Senado á
formar y discutir un proyecto de ley sobre la independencia de la
Iglesia venezolana. Al día siguiente fue discutida la minuta de
contestación: el Congreso se resolvió en Comisión general, y
después de excitar al Senado á iniciar el proyecto respectivo, se
generalizó la discusión, en la cual tomaron parte los señores A. L.
Guzmán, Bolet Peraza, Celis Avila, Doctor Terrero Atienza, Doctor E.
M. González, Doctor E. Calcaño y General Eladio Lara en favor de los
propósitos del Ejecutivo. El señor General José Manuel Montenegro
contrarió las ideas del señor Guz 
The text on this page is estimated to be only 24.50%
accurate

General José Manuel Montenegro

 — 75 — man y se pronunció en contra del proyecto de
crear la iglesia venezolana. Aludiendo al ataque que hizo el señor
Guzmán al Pontificado romano, dijo el General Montenegro: «Habría
sido conveniente que nos hablara también de los bienes que ha
hecho el Pontificado, porque donde las dan las tornan. Habría sido
conveniente que nos hubiera hablado de León X, que dio su nombre
á su siglo; también de que los Papas salvaron las ciencias y las letras
en la Edad-media y de que los Sumos Pontífices han venido
haciendo á la humanidad bienes que pesan mucho más, en
comparación, que esos pocos males que se les atribuyen. También
se manifestó el Ilustre Procer como queriendo negar la primacía de
Pedro. He tomado también nota de ese argumento. No se necesita
sino leer el Evangelio, si es que creemos en él. Tanto en el Evangelio
de San Lucas, como en el de San Mateo, vemos que Jesús reconoció
el primado de Pedro. Jesús lo reconoció antes de morir, y después de
su resurrección lo reconoció también á orillas del lago Tiberiades».
Al discutirse y votarse la minuta de contestación al mensaje del
señor General Presidente, dijo el General Montenegro que, en su
concepto, Venezuela no podía emanciparse del Padre de los fieles y
que lo que se pretendía era sancionar el absurdo más solemne que
habían visto los pueblos de Sur-américa. El señor Guzmán replicó
extensamente al señor General Montenegro, y éste en su contra-
réplica dijo: «El absurdo no puede defenderse: á medida que uno se
empeña más en defenderlo, no hace otra cosa que presentarlo más
de relieve, en esqueleto; pero esqueleto que repugna y hace cerrar
los ojos y darle la espalda para no verlo jamás. ¿Es decir, señores
Senadores y Diputados de mi patria, que por la conducta de un
Prelado estamos nosotros en la obligación de castigar al pueblo de
Venezuela, reformando su culto?» Estas palabras produjeron
sensación en el auditorio. El diputado Bolet Peraza dijo: «Si fuera
necesario hacer una profesión de fe cristiana, yo la haría en este
momento, y estoy cierto que todos mis colegas contestarían al credo
que yo pronunciara. ¿Quién pone aquí siqídera en duda ninguno
délos
 — 76 — dogmas de la religión de Cristo? ¿Quién ha querido
derribar del altar al Crucificado? ¿Quién es que puede negar á ese
Salvador el culto del corazón y la reverencia en el espíritu ? Nadie».
Extiéndese luego en la dilucidación de la materia, no bajo el aspecto
religioso, sino por su faz política. De igual manera discurrió el
diputado señor Doctor Eduardo Calcaño, quien sostuvo que el
Congreso de Venezuela no era autoridad para tratar cuestiones
religiosas ni dogmáticas. La minuta de contestación fue aprobada,
salvando su voto el senador Montenegro. En la admisión del
proyecto salvaron sus votos los señores Montenegro y Bofil;
suspendiéndose luego la discusión del expresado proyecto por haber
anunciado el 11 el Cónsul de Venezuela en Trinidad que el Nuncio de
Su Santidad concebía esperanzas de obtener la renuncia del señor
Doctor Guevara y Lira, mediante ciertas condiciones, á saber,
restablecimiento de los Seminarios bajo la vigilancia del Gobierno:
pensión para las monjas exclaustradas: pensión para el señor Doctor
Guevara y Lira, y supresión del matrimonio de los sacerdotes: que
en vista de la manifestación de Monseñor Rocca Cocchia, le había
contestado que carecía de instrucciones para proceder en el
particular, pero que tenía motivos para creer que lo de las pensiones
era un punto tan secundario que no valía la pena de ocuparse de él.
El señor Doctor Guevara y Lira resistió la renuncia hasta el 16 en que
convino en ella, anunciando el Cónsul el suceso al señor General
Presidente por medio de esta carta: «Puerto España: mayo 16 de
1876. {(Señor General Guzmán Blanco. «Caracas. «Estimado
General: «Por fin hemos salido de la cuestión Guevara, y el Nuncio
tiene en su poder la renuncia, como lo digo oficialmente. «Antes de
irse hoy á San José le mostré su calograma
 — TJ — del 10 que le impresionó mucho. El ha tomado
informes aquí acerca de usted y está convencido de que no
retrocederá en ningún caso. «Hemos convenido tácitamente: «1. En
que se le dará una pensión á Guevara. «2. Pensión para las monjas.
«3. Que todos los sacerdotes volverán á Venezuela tranquilamente.
«4. Que se le dará un buen puesto á Amitesarove. «Nada de
Seminarios, ni de conventos, ni de matrimonio de los clérigos.
«Descarté también la cuestión matrimonio de Urbaneja y hemos
convenido en que no se toque por ahora, y el Nuncio ignorará todo
lo que ha pasado. En mi concepto él sabe los pasos dados por usted
en Roma por medio del marqués de Lorenzana, pero cree que nada
se conseguirá porque ya se dio el escándalo. «El Nuncio es hombre
astuto y sagaz: tiene mucha sangre fría y no pierde de vista el
objeto que persigue. No es fácil sacarle de sus casillas, y trata de
molestar á su interlocutor para saber lo que piensa en el fondo.
Tiene una triste idea del Clero venezolano en lo que respecta á
instrucción. Es hombre de mundo y accesible. Creo que usted
arreglará todo al hablar con él, pues se va pronto al grano sin
rodeos. Es pobre y no le vendrían mal algunos regalos y obsequios.
Le gusta figurar y ama la pompa y homenajes. «El punto difícil será
el nuevo Arzobispo, porque quiere un hombre que no haya sonado
para nada en esta cuestión. No hay que pensar en Arroyo, ni en
Baralt, ni en Quinte* ro, ni en Riera, cada uno por distintas causas,
si bien se manifiesta satisfecho del proceder del último. Me temo
que en el fondo de todo haya la pretensión de un Gobernador
provisional extranjero. «Soy su amigo. «Z. Duarte Leveh.
 — 78 — A pesar de esta carta continuó discutiéndose en el
Senado el proyecto de ley de independencia de la Iglesia
venezolana; pero fue general la creencia de que la enojosa cuestión
se arreglaría en buenos términos; hasta el punto de que el 20 se dio
curso ante el Congreso á la renuncia que desde enero del año
anterior había presentado el nombrado Arzobispo señor Doctor
Arroyo, y el mismo General Presidente consintió en que una
comisión compuesta de algunos sacerdotes y el señor Doctor
Antonio Parejo fuese á Trinidad á prestar sus buenos oficios en el
sentido del arreglo. La carta del cónsul fue contestada así por el
señor General Presidente: «Caracas: mayo 21 de 1876. ((General L.
Dtiarte Leve!. «Mi querido amigo: «La ley que nos independiza de
Roma y pone todas las leligiones bajo la inspección del Gobierno civil
de la República y proscribe todas las jerarquías eclesiásticas del
territorio, se está discutiendo en el Congreso con una decisión que á
mí mismo me ha sorprendido. Ayer se presentó el proyecto con un
buen informe al Senado, fue admitido y pasó á segunda discusión.
Será ley en lo que falta de las presentes sesiones, sin necesidad de
convocar el Congreso extraordinariamente, «Digo será, porque no
obstante lo que usted me escribe con referencia á lo que en la noche
del 16 le dijo el Nuncio á su regreso de San José, yo no creo en la
renuncia, y si viniere estoy seguro que trae alguna coletilla
inaceptable para mí, y en tal caso es como si no viniese la tal
renuncia . «Sentiré mucho que el Nuncio se equivoque conmigo.
Todo ardid, tratándose conmigo, es ima verdadera tontería. «Este
Congreso deja elegido y preconizado un buen Ar 
 — 79 — zobispo ó deja independizada á Venezuela de todo
contacto con Roma. «Parejo y una Comisión del Clero me han
pedido ir á Trinidad para ayudar al Nuncio. A mí me ha parecido, á
pesar de que todo eso lo creo inútil, que si no accedo á ello, me
expongo á que se diga que no quiero el arreglo. Así es que van, y yo
espero que usted les será útil en todo lo que ellos quieran, pues son
personas sinceras y virtuosas. «Si el Nuncio obtiene la renuncia sin
condiciones, es decir, si con ella tendremos el nuevo Arzobispo en
posesión del Arzobispado antes de que el Congreso termine sus
sesiones, ofrézcale usted el vapor Bolívar para que venga. «Su
afectísimo amigo, (íGuzmán Blanco)). Mientras marcha la Comisión
hacia Trinidad digamos que el señor General Presidente había
ratificado por decreto de 12 de mayo las estipulaciones del contrato
que con el señor J. M. Antomarchi Herreros había celebrado el 27 de
marzo anterior el Agente fiscal de Venezuela en Londres, señor
Doctor José María Rojas para la construcción de un ferrocarril entre
La Guaira y Caracas: que el expresado señor Doctor Rojas había sido
condecorado con una medalla de honor por el arreglo que había
hecho de la Deuda Exterior de Venezuela y la contratación de dicho
ferrocarril (1): que los periodistas que más se habían señalado en la
prensa del país habían sido condecorados con la Medalla del Busto
del Libertador (2); y que el Congreso, en virtud de un mensaje 1. L,a
Medalla sería de oro de cuatro centímetros de diámetro. Contendría
en el anverso una corona de oliva y la siguiente inscripción: Arreglo
di la Deuda Exterior de Venezuela — Ferrocarril de La Guaira á
Caracas, año de 1876. Y en el reverso, con la misma orla, esta otra
inscripción: El General Guzmán Blanco, Presidente de Venezuela, al
Doctor José María Rojas. 2. La condecoración del Busto del
Libertador fue acordada á los siguientes periodistas: Doctor
Laureano Villanueva, General Manuel María Bermúdez, Licenciado
Rafael Seijas, Braulio Barrios, Rafael Hernández Gutiérrez,
Amenodoro Urdaneta, José María Manrique, Manuel María
Fernández, F. González
 — 80 — del señor General Presidente de la República
prorrogó sus sesiones por los veinte días que permitía la
Constitución, para ocuparse de varios asuntos interesantes que
estaban pendientes. Con el nombre de Banco de Caracas se
estableció en la capital de la República un nuevo instituto de crédito,
cuya patente fue expedida el 23 de mayo por el señor Ministro de
Relaciones Interiores. Fueron promotores del nuevo Banco los
señores José Santana, Marcos Sauíana, Juan Rohl, Teodoro Róhl,
Domingo Eraso, Ramón Eraso y Henrique Lord Boulton. Según la
patente expedida el instituto sería de circulación, depósitos, giros,
préstamos y descuentos. Eran los señores promotores individuos que
gozaban de gran crédito en el país, y por esa circunstancia se
esperaban los mejores resultados del nuevo Banco (1). La Junta
encargada por el Gobierno para solicitar y llevar al Panteón los
restos de los Ilustres Proceres de la independencia y hombres
eminentes, había para el 2 de junio cumplido en gran parte su
patriótico y piadoso encargo, pues había depositado en el augusto
templo los de los siguientes: General Rafael Urdaneta, General
Francisco Carabaño, General José Tadeo Monagas, General Juan
Bautista Arismendi, señora Luisa Cáceres de Arismendi, General
Mariano Monti11a, General Francisco de Paula Alcántara, General
Carlos Luis Castelli, General Francisco V. Parejo, Doctor Francisco
Javier Yanes, Doctor José Ángel Álamo, General José María Carreño,
Fermín Toro, General Justo Briceño, General Miguel Zárraga, Doctor
Alejo Fortique, Coronel José Francisco Hurtado, Doctor Miguel
Palacio, Domingo Briceño y Briceño, Guiñan, León L,ameda, Doctor
Agustín Agüero, Jesús María Chirinos Rodríguez, Doctor Diego E.
Chacón, Trinidad Celis Avila, Doctor Raimundo Andueza Palacio,
Doctor Ezequiel María González, Doctor Jesús María Portillo, Luis F.
Briceño, Doctor Pedro de Jesús Godoy, General José María Graterol,
Doctor Trinidad Acuña, General Juan Tomás Pérez, Rómulo M. de la
Guardia y General Julio Gaicano. 1. La Compañía de crédito terminó
su contrato con el Gobierno el 31 de julio.
Doctor José Maria Rojas
 — 81 — ' Doctor Wenceslao Urrutia, General José Manuel
Olivares, Coronel Juan José Conde, Coronel Manuel Blanco, Coronel
Juan de Dios Monzón, Licenciado José Prudencio Lanz y Coronel
José María Delgado Correa. Mientras eran hechos estos sagrados
depósitos en el templo de los inmortales, ocupábase activamente el
señor General Alejandro Ybarra hijo, en los importantes trabajos de
remoción del Monumento del Libertador de la Iglesia Catedral para
llevarlo al Panteón Nacional, y á la fecha de nuestro relato sólo
faltaba levantar la gran lápida que cubría la urna que guardaba los
restos del Fundador de la patria, lo que iba á ser efectuado
próximamente, á cuyo efecto montó guardia en la Catedral un
Regimiento de la Guardia del Presidente. Acercándose el momento
de la traslación, muchos jóvenes de Caracas manifestaron por escrito
al señor General Presidente sus patrióticos deseos de formar im
cuerpo militar que escoltase los venerandos restos al templo de la
inmortalidad, manifestación que aquél aceptó regocijado,
nombrando al señor General Rafael Márquez, Comandante en Jefe
de la Guardia de honor al Padre de la patria (1). El 13 de junio
cerraron sus sesiones ordinarias las Cámaras Legislativas, pero el
mismo día dictó el señor General Presidente un decreto
convocándolas extraordinariamente para que diesen término á las
leyes de Presupuesto anual de gastos, fuerza permanente, ascensos
militares y privilegios de invención, y para elegir el Arzobispo de
Caracas y el Obispo de Mérida tan luego como viniese el arreglo que
se espera1. Ivos jóvenes que iniciaron la formación de la Guardia
fueron los señores Diego Casañas Burguillos, Francisco N. Ybarra, J.
de P. Fernández, G. Terrero Atienza, Marco Antonio Silva Gandolphi,
Adolfo Terrero Atienza, D, Coll Otero, Narciso Coll Otero, Juan
Reverón, Páez L,obo, Silvestre Tovar Toro, Pedro Arnal, Ignacio
Viana, M. A. Pachano, Manuel Vicente Castro, Nicolás Sanabria
Guzmán, Bernabé Planas, José B. Toledo, Luis Blanco Planas,
Benjamín Ponce, Olegario Meneses Martínez, Miguel María Herrera,
hijo, Pablo A. Diez, Ignacio Coll Otero, Francisco de P. Suárez,
Rómulo M. de la Guardia, Salvador Vizcarrondo Rojas, Rodolfo
Reverón, Vicente Marcano, Manuel F. Azpurúa, Rafael Alcántara, J. A.
Blanco, R. Meneses Martínez, G. Martínez, Manuel T. Lander,
Arístides Tello, Miguel Blanco Buroz, Domingo Hernández Noya, V.
Blanco Plaza, Manuel Plaza, Carlos Benito Figueredo, Bernabé
Fizaguirre, Enrique Bauder, G. V. Churión y Tomás Navarro. Tomo xi
—6
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