Save Dundas Street
Nicholas Rogers
The Dundas imbroglio, or how could Toronto City Council get it so wrong?
The decision to erase the name of Dundas from the streets, squares and subway of Toronto
is disappointing and based on erroneous historical evidence. Henry Dundas was a ruthless,
ambitious man and opinion has been divided, then and now, on whether his amendment
for a gradual abolition of the slave trade in April 1792 was a cynical or realistic response to
Wilberforce’s motion to end the slave trade [not slavery].
What is clear is that the Dundas amendment did not by itself extend the slave trade for
another generation. The Lords opposed abolition in any shape or form and so did the king.
Within a year Britain was at war with France, the French Terror had commenced, a
counter-revolution was unleased in Britain silencing radical critics of the existing regime,
and slave insurrection in future Haiti intensified as white and mixed-race planters failed to
reconcile their differences. The conditions for abolition evaporated and so, too, did the
abolition movement, for over a decade. This broad narrative is endorsed by many
historians of slavery who have addressed the issue, including, from quite different political
perspectives, Robin Blackburn and Adam Hochschild. In the light of this narrative, it is
incorrect to scapegoat Dundas for the half a million Africans who were sent into slavery
until 1807. Such an interpretation is simple, reductive and contextless. Scotland’s most
eminent historian, Sir Tom Devine, put this bluntly to members of the Toronto committee,
but his reasoned message did not register. It didn’t fit the agenda.
What is particularly troubling about the historical submission to the Toronto council is the
passing, marginal reference to a 1778 case in which Henry Dundas defended Joseph Knight,
a slave who had tried to run away from his master to marry his lover, a chambermaid who
was pregnant. The lawyers for the slave-owner argued that natural liberties did not apply
to slaves, but Knight’s counsel, including Dundas, argued that the circumstances of African
slavery and the slave trade contradicted this argument. Knight had been denied his natural
rights and coerced into slavery. The result was a landmark decision in Scotland’s Court of
Session declaring that any slave entering Scotland became free. It was a stronger argument
against slavery than Lord Mansfield offered in the better-known case of James Somerset
[1772], south of the border. Dundas’ participation in this case completely repudiates the
argument that he was a slave sympathiser, a moral monster no better than Joseph
Goebbels. Such wild, unsubstantiated accusations have been bandied about the press.
Dundas’ record here also suggests that the historical work done by Toronto council was not
only incomplete, but tailored to enhance the city’s claim to inclusivity. The pressures of
addressing a petition took precedence over any comprehensive historical truth.
Like Toronto, Edinburgh has faced demands to confront the Dundas legacy; in its case a
140- foot commemorative column in the middle of a traffic hub. In fact, the Toronto
petition took its cue from BLM activists in the Scottish capital. But in Edinburgh the city
council adopted a “retain and explain” approach. It sought to educate. It did not try to erase
every trace of Dundas at an anticipated cost of $6m; money that could be better spent
providing services and shelter for the homeless, some of whom are indigenous, and
improving black-based businesses reeling from Covid proscriptions and LRT construction
along Eglinton.
Apart from the lamentably poor historical judgment on which this decision is based, it is
foolhardy for two reasons.
The first is that Dundas Street stretches from Kingston Road in Toronto to the Thames
River in London. There is a distinct town called Dundas and streets named Dundas exist in
other locales like Belleville and Nappanee. As a name Dundas exists in many jurisdictions
and it is beyond Toronto’s capacity to erase it comprehensively.
The second is that changing the commemorative framework of Toronto to promote
inclusivity and racial diversity does pose some problems. It is an admirable goal, but as
currently promoted, impossibly capacious. John Tory’s agenda would mean removing
countless names from the downtown core, starting with Jarvis and Yonge. These streets
were named after public figures who were also slave-owners in an age when slavery in
Canada was legal. One journalist has estimated that the cost of comprehensive re-naming
will stretch beyond $100m.
Revisiting names and artifacts that offend visible minorities is necessary and
commendable, provided there are good historical grounds for doing so. But the “retain and
explain” approach is a more educative and purposive strategy for inclusivity, when
combined with new sites of commemoration honoring marginal communities. We should
uphold the notion of the city as palimpsest, as one that preserves traces of the past,
however uncomfortable that might be by modern standards, as well as celebrating the
present. Coming to terms with the past is an on-going project. There should not be reckless
erasure according to anachronistic criteria and high moralism. Virtually every historical
figure up to World War I will not measure up in some way to modern 21st century
standards. We should be careful what we wish for and how we proceed.
Nicholas Rogers
Emeritus Professor of History
York University, Toronto
Author of Murder on the Middle Passage. The Trial of Captain Kimber (2020) and Blood
Waters. War, Disease and Race in the 18th century British Caribbean (2021).
Joe Martin: Let Dundas Street remain Dundas Street
History needs to understand the difficulties faced by reformers who must confront political
and social realities
Author of the article:
Joe Martin, Special to Financial Post
Publishing date:
Jul 30, 2021 • 41 minutes ago • 4 minute read • Join the conversation
Toronto city council’s recent decision to rename Dundas Street explained why the street was to be
renamed but not why it was called Dundas Street in the first place. Why would what has become a
major artery in Canada’s metropolis be named after Henry Dundas, a powerful British politician of the
late 18th century, the “Uncrowned King of Scotland”?
In fact, why Dundas Street — and also the town of Dundas, near Hamilton — got its name is not hard to
understand: Henry Dundas was a hero to his Canadian contemporaries.
In the 1790s, as a powerful new country consolidated itself to the south, the British colony of Upper
Canada faced what today we would call an existential crisis. When John Graves Simcoe, after whom
Monday’s civic holiday in Toronto is named, arrived in the colony in 1792 his over-riding concern as
Lieutenant Governor was defence against the United States. He was right to be concerned. Upper
Canada had a population of only 14,000 versus neighbouring New York state’s 340,000.
Simcoe’s first action was to move the capital from Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake) to the new
community of York (where modern-day Toronto is). That done, military roads were required: one north
to connect the upper and lower Great Lakes (to be called Yonge Street) and one southwest, a great
military road to connect the Port of Toronto with the Thames River and Detroit, which was still a British
possession. In all these actions, Simcoe was supported by British secretary of war, Henry Dundas, righthand-man to Prime Minister William Pitt. It was only natural that the military road to Detroit acquired
the name Dundas Street, just as Yonge Street was named after his predecessor as minister of war, Sir
George Yonge.
History proved that Simcoe was right to be concerned about American invasion. Less than two decades
after Simcoe’s departure from muddy York the Americans invaded Upper Canada. In April 1813 a large
military force landed west of York. Supported by the guns of the U.S. Navy, the enemy army pushed the
outnumbered defenders eastwards to Fort York. A six-hour battle ended when the British blew up the
fort’s gunpowder magazine and retreated to Kingston.
After the battle, U.S. forces occupied York for six days. Despite agreeing in the terms of capitulation to
respect private property and allow the civil government to continue functioning without hindrance, the
Americans looted dwellings and torched the governor’s home and the buildings where parliament met.
The invaders returned in July to a defenceless York, burned military facilities they had missed in April
and took flour, boats and cannon. The next year, 1814, as peace negotiations began, the British returned
the favour, setting torch to both the White House and the U.S. Capitol.
Apart from organizing the defence of Upper Canada, Simcoe is probably best known for 1793 legislation
outlawing further introduction of slaves into Upper Canada, a measure that reflected his personal
abhorrence of slavery.
In England at the same time Hull’s William Wilberforce was leading the campaign against slavery. Like
Dundas, Wilberforce was a close friend of Prime Minister Pitt. Even so, his original 1792 motion to
abolish the slave trade was defeated 230 to 85 in the House of Commons. But, as amended by Dundas
to include the word “gradual,” it passed 193 to 125 — the first time an abolitionist bill had passed the
Commons. Today there is sharp disagreement between those who condemn Dundas for his pragmatism
and those who support his gradual approach. What is completely clear, however, is that an abrupt
change would not have received a majority in the Parliament of the day.
Former British foreign minister and Conservative Party leader William Hague has argued that Pitt
discussed the amendment with Dundas before Dundas proposed it. Though Pitt himself argued
passionately that the enormous evil of slavery had to be eradicated, that does not mean he had not
suggested the word “gradual” to Dundas. In any case, the compromise allowed the abolitionist cause an
opportunity to register its first winning vote in Parliament.
Martin Luther King said the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice; he didn’t say it takes a right
turn toward justice – because it seldom does. History needs to understand the difficulties faced by
reformers who must confront political and social realities as they persist toward their ends, albeit, in the
terms of Dundas’ amendment, gradually. Given our uncertainty surrounding what went on 230 years
ago and the humility and respect we should always have for our forebears, who faced challenges easily
the equal of our own, the status quo for Dundas St. has a lot to recommend itself.
Joe Martin is former director of business history at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of
Management.
https://financialpost.com/opinion/joe-martin-let-dundas-street-remain-dundas-street
In his heart, Henry Dundas was an abolitionist
He persuaded Scotland’s highest court to declare no man could be a slave on Scottish soil
• The Hamilton Spectator
• 5 Aug 2021
• C.E. (CLARE) CROZIER C.E. Crozier is an amateur historian living in Dundas.
I would like to add my voice to your recent editorial relating to Toronto city
council voting to change the name of Dundas Street and remove the name
from all public assets in the city. Whatever the moral and practical
arguments in favour of abolition of slavery there was a wide range of
defenders of the trade: shipowners, traders, manufacturers of good
exported to Africa, owners of plantations in the West Indies, for whom
slavery was fundamental to their wealth, certain MPs, themselves slave
owners, and surprisingly members of the Royal family. King George III
supported the slave trade, as did his sons. There was in effect a virtual wall
of opposition against abolition.
It took the great anti-slave campaigner William Wilberforce nearly 20 years
(1788-1807) to get a bill passed abolishing slavery in the British Empire.
Wilberforce’s opening parliamentary salvo on slavery fired in 1788 was
defeated. Two years later it was again defeated. The following year Henry
Dundas’ “gradual” amendment overturned the earlier defeat and the bill
passed, becoming the first piece of slave legislation to pass in the House of
Commons. Dundas, who had been instrumental in prohibiting not only
slavery but also native serfdom in Scotland, brought Scotland’s entire 45-
member parliamentary delegation in support of the bill.
The British slave trade would be abolished in four years’ time provided the
Lords or war did not get in the way. Any logical argument suggesting
Dundas’ 1792 gradual amendment delayed abolition is undermined by
Wilberforce’s eight further abolition bills, all defeated before eventual
abolition passed in 1807.
Another piece of evidence that Dundas opposed slavery is the fact that he
represented Joseph Knight, a Jamaican slave who was taken to Scotland,
and went on to fight for his freedom in Scotland’s courts. He led the entire
legal team, pro bono, and persuaded Scotland’s highest court to declare that
no man could be a slave on Scottish soil. When the court rendered its
decision, it was Henry Dundas whose arguments they cited.
Dundas’ influence on Canada is another important area which has been
ignored.
Henry Dundas commissioned John Graves Simcoe, an avowed abolitionist,
to be the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada. He subsequently
oversaw Simcoe’s most famous achievement the passage of the first
antislavery bill anywhere in the British Empire. Dundas showed support for
Indigenous peoples in Canada, whom he respectfully referred to in
correspondence as “nations.” When Simcoe was fortifying Upper Canada
against American marauders, Dundas ordered him to ensure that sufficient
land was set aside for Indigenous nations to sustain themselves
comfortably. Dundas sharply rebuked the governors of Nova Scotia and
New Brunswick after learning that they had refused to respect the rights of
Black Loyalists — former soldiers who had fought alongside the British
during The American Revolution. He ordered them to give the Black
Loyalists the land and benefits they had been promised, and to provide
compensation for the delay. To the Black Loyalists who wished to leave
Canada, he offered free passage to Sierra Leone.
Dundas instructed the governor responsible for Lower Canada to ensure
that the newly-formed Legislative Assembly in Quebec City conducted
debates and passed legislation in both English and French. English
speaking members of the assembly had insisted that English be the only
official language. Dundas put a stop to their oppressive tactics, becoming
the first senior politician to endorse official bilingualism anywhere in
Canada.
Archival evidence 25 years after the crucial parliamentary debates show
abolitionists regretted not following the advice Dundas had given them
privately. Historical records of the 1820s show leading abolitionists,
including the patron of the abolition movement, the Duke of Gloucester,
admitted Dundas had been right all along — that in the late 18th century,
powerful opposing forces would have to be appeased before the government
could abolish the slave trade. They also wished they had taken Dundas’
advice to seek the abolition of slavery and the slave trade together, rather
than focusing solely on the slave trade. If they had, the slave trade and
slavery likely would have ended years if not decades earlier.
While there is no doubt slavery was evil, there is no reliable evidence
showing Dundas supported the slave trade or slavery. At heart he was an
abolitionist.
Our ancestors were part of the times they lived, not our own time. With
calls for statue dismantling and street name changes it’s no longer enough
to have been a man for your time, you must be a man for all time, or higher,
probably an impossible standard for mere mortals.
DUNDAS CONTROVERSY AN EMBARRASSMENT
JULY 1, 2021
JOHN BEST
Toronto Mayor John Tory may have sensed he was stepping into dangerous waters
when he announced that he was in support of a staff report that
recommended the renaming of Dundas Street.
The re-naming issue arose in response to a 14,000-signature
petition, in the heat of the George Floyd aftermath, that accused Henry Dundas, for
whom the street and town were named, of being responsible for the perpetuation of
slavery. Tory had a committee struck to research the issue and it while it may have
been assumed that the committee would sift through the evidence in a dispassionate
manner, that is apparently not what happened. What came back was a
recommendation that critics say, ignored strong scholarly evidence that declared
Dundas to be a staunch opponent of slavery. A man who as a lawyer had successfully
argued a case that led to the freedom of a slave and the subsequent abolition of slavery
in Scotland.
The Dundas legacy centers around a bill that was introduced in the British Parliament
in 1792 to abolish slavery. The same bill had been soundly defeated a year earlier and
there was no reason to believe it would pass this time. As the bill was being debated,
Dundas tabled a petition from Edinburgh residents who supported abolition. He then
went on to affirm his agreement in principle with the motion: “My opinion has been
always against the Slave Trade.” He argued, however, that a vote for immediate
abolition would be ineffective, as it would drive the slave trade underground. He
anticipated, in particular, that merchants from other countries would step in to fill the
gap left by the British. So he inserted the word “gradual” into the motion and it
passed. He later argued that it was better to have a law on the books that opposed
slavery, even with the weakened language that to have the bill suffer another defeat,
and delay abolition even further.
Trying to shoehorn Henry Dundas into the ranks of the slave trade when, without
question he was an abolitionist, is an intellectual absurdity. The entire episode is
further evidence, if we need any, that the most mindless act of civic engagement is the
on-line petition. His own descendants acknowledge their ancestor “certainly wasn’t a
saint and was a very controversial figure. But currently there is only one side of the
man being shown.”
Last year Edinburgh City Council commissioned a panel that eventually had a plaque
appended to the base of a statue to Henry Dundas reading, “In 2020, this was
dedicated to the memory of more than half a million Africans whose enslavement was
a consequence of Henry Dundas’s actions.” The historian, Professor Sir Tom Devine
dismisses the wording on the plaque and condemns the panel as a “kangaroo court.”
Some of the same Canadians who shake their heads condescendingly at the divorce
from reality of the roughly 40 percent of Americans who believe Donald Trump won
the 2020 election; apparently think it is ok to posthumously punish Dundas for
something there is very strong evidence, he did not do. Professor Devine thinks
Edinburgh council will regret their foray into revisionist history and so too may
Toronto’s. If not for the sake of intellectual honesty, at least for the sake of the
thousands of businesses who will incur costs as a result of this exercise in woke-ism
gone mad, this ill-considered decision should be reversed.
Brian Young, Professor of Intellectual History at Oxford University.
Christ Church, OXFORD O X I I D P
“It is almost impossible to imagine why any alteration whatsoever
ought to be made to the inscription on the statue of Dundas in
Edinburgh; the reasons for the statue having being commissioned
remain as sound in 2018 as they did when it was inaugurated.
Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville ensured that Scotland was not
subsumed into a colonial position within Great Britain, ensuring
its parity with England both as a politician and as an international
statesman. He was a politician of vision and integrity. Along with
his ally William Pitt, Dundas was an early proponent of religious
toleration, acting against Presbyterian bigotry in Scotland in favor
both of Roman Catholic and Episcopalian minorities; seizing the
initiative offered by the Quebec Act in tolerating Canadian
Catholics, Dundas sought to apply its provisions across and within
Scotland and Britain as a whole. This was a brave position to take
in a period of religious prejudice, a project that ultimately cost Pitt
his Premiership. What is more, Dundas was a defender of
colonised peoples against corrupt colonial interests: along with
Edmund Burke, he saw the need to impeach Warren Hastings,
Governor of the East India Company, for his highly dubious
activities within British India; again, as with religious reform, so
with the issue of impeachment, Dundas was ahead of a population
and a governing class that favoured imperialist opportunists such
as Hastings: he took an unpopular stand. His activities in Scotland
in withstanding political agitation in the 1790s, a period of war
first with revolutionary and then with Napoleonic France, was
undertaken to preserve the Union and ensure that Scotland did
not suffer the experience that was shortly to befall Ireland: he not
only preserved the Union but strengthened Scotland’s place within
the United Kingdom. A lawyer with a sense of the possible,
Dundas saw that the immediate abolition of slavery was
impossible: there were simply too many established interests, not
least the West Indies Planters. An associate of Wilberforce, an
undergraduate friend of Pitt, Dundas inserted the word ‘gradual’
into abolition legislative proposals in order to ensure that the
legislation would make it to the statute book. The abolition of the
slave trade took place against an all-consuming experience of total
war, and legislation took decades to reach the statute book in this
period; by inserting the word ‘gradual’, Dundas made it infinitely
more likely that abolition would take place. Anything other than
this would have been a provocation that would have put back the
cause of abolition by decades. Far from facilitating the trade,
Dundas enabled it to be abolished more easily than it was in the
United States, for example. The French had been inconsistent on
the matter; abolishing it, and then restoring it. Dundas was a
product and a proponent of the Scottish Enlightenment, and that
entailed his support for progressive politics; war with France made
that cause more difficult to achieve, but Dundas had exactly the
right personal and intellectual qualities to make it possible to
address corruption in British India, to ensure that Scotland played
a prominent role nationally and internationally, and to encourage
the cause of the abolition of slavery. By the standards of his own
times, Dundas was a progressive, scientific Whig who ensured that
Britain defeated Napoleon’s attempt at European hegemony and
who reformed British imperialism in an intelligent and
humanitarian manner. He was not only a statesman but also a
figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, a practical man of ideas. Any
attempt to alter the inscription on his statue would be a profound
injustice to a man who did his utmost to ensure that progressive
politics were realistically promoted in a uniquely difficult period of
British, European, and global history.
Brian Young,
Professor of Intellectual History,
Oxford University
The Times UK:
Henry Dundas was playing long game to
abolish slavery, historian suggests
Sir Tom Devine has intervened in a row over Henry Dundas, a giant of Scotland’s
Enlightenment-era politics
David Leask
Wednesday July 22 2020, 12.01am BST, The Times
Scotland’s most celebrated historian has come to the defence of
a late 18th century statesman whose statue towers above
Edinburgh and stands accused of prolonging the slave trade.
Sir Tom Devine has intervened in an increasingly acrimonious
row over the legacy of Henry Dundas, a giant of Scotland’s
Enlightenment-era politics and law widely blamed for propping
up legal human trafficking.
His analysis will cast doubt on what he called the “conventional
wisdom” that Dundas, the first Viscount Melville, a machine
politician who served in several cabinet positions, stalled the
abolition of the slave trade.
Sir Tom’s remarks come weeks after council ocials in
Edinburgh re-dedicated the 150ft Melville Monument, erected
after Dundas’s death in 1811, to “more than half a million
Africans whose enslavement was a consequence of Henry
Dundas’s actions”. This damning verdict on a man once
described as the “uncrowned king of Scotland” is being
challenged by a descendent, Bobby Melville, the current
Viscount Melville.
At the centre of the dispute is whether those, like Dundas, who
publicly supported “gradual” abolition of the slave trade in the
1790s were speaking in good faith or whether they were
adopting a stalling tactic.
Sir Tom said controversy around the Melville Monument had
spurred him to look at primary sources such as Cobbett’s, a
parliamentary record similar to Hansard. He told The Times:
“The conventional wisdom among most historians is that
Dundas’s gradualist policy was a shield for maintaining the
slave trade for a longer period.
“However, having gone back to the primary materials, three
things occur to me. The first is that there was no majority
support for abolition of the trade in 1792-93 in the House of
Commons. The second is the House of Lords was opposed. The
third thing was the gradualist approach suggested by Dundas
was time-limited, and the Commons agreed to return to the
issue in 1800, later backdated to 1796.”
Sir Tom’s observations could be understood to support the view
of Lord Melville that his ancestor was playing a long, pragmatic
game to deliver abolition. The abolition campaign, Sir Tom
stressed, was interrupted by the war with first revolutionary
and then Napoleonic France in 1793.
Sir Tom said: “International events overtook the process and
postponement was inevitable.”
Politicians, added the emeritus professor at the University of
Edinburgh, would have accepted that there were “more
important matters for the vested interests of the British crown”.
Britain, Sir Tom argued, would not have wished to destabilise
its Caribbean colonies and their slave economies during what
amounted to a war for control of the western world.
“There has been a rush to judgment on Dundas,” Sir Tom
concluded. “Even from my cursory look at the sources there is
enough evidence available in the parliamentary record to
suggest a priori that the accusation of prolonging the slave trade
should be revisited.”
Abolitionists led by William Wilberforce tried and failed to put
a stop to the slave trade from the early 1790s but it was only in
1807 that they succeeded.
Slavery itself was not outlawed in the Caribbean colonies until
1833. Even then slave owners received compensation for their
loss of “property”.
Many historians, including Diana Paton, professor of history at
the University of Edinburgh, a Caribbean expert, continue to
argue that Dundas should be judged by the e ect of his actions,
which they say was to frustrate, not support, Wilberforce.
