The Reflection of The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh
The British had several features, was faced with many conflicts, and presently, several debates are ongoing on its 18th-century affairs. 1735 is a critical date. I chose it because Elizabeth’s birth to a British shipwright father and a mother of Jamaican descent helps describe love relations between British aristocrats and their servants in the British empire. 1756 is an important date I picked because Elizabeth’s capture and life as a hostage in Morocco describe gender relations within the British empire and the international relations between Morocco and Britain. 1769 is an important date. I chose it because Marsh’s ‘travel memoir’ describes the movement of goods and people from one region to another within the British empire. 1776 is equally a crucial period. I picked on it because the end of the inconsistent independent course that Marsh was pursuing on the East Indian excursion relates to globalization. The expansion of British power was a negative development as it incorporated discrimination and manipulation of persons of other races and their resources.
1735
Elizabeth Marsh was born in tumultuous times. The social structure of the society she was born into comprised of two main social classes. There were the Aristocrats, mainly the British, who occupied the masters’ positions over the natives who served as slaves or servants to these imperialists (Colley 6). Her birth to parents of these two different classes reveals that sexual relations existed between masters and their slaves. Linda Colley presents Marsh to be a woman whose origin, race, and status are questionable and further shows how this identity affected her interactions with different people as she traveled around the world. Colley describes the British empire at this time as racial and tells of Marsh as being biracial. Marsh was sometimes perceived to be a member of the ruling aristocracy, while in other instances, she served as a half-slave. Her status is severally confused due to the different worlds from which her parents originate; A father who is a British on the one hand and a mother who is Jamaican. Mash’s conception is a manifestation that slave masters in the British empire would sometimes have sexual relations with their slaves and even get to sire children from these relations.
1756
Marsh lived as a captive in Morocco for three months, having been captured by a Moroccan Corsair. Her position as a sex slave manifests the low status accorded to women and the negligence of women’s rights. Moreover, it illustrates the tumultuous times in which humans faced discrimination based on their race, nation of origin, and social status (Colley 12). Being of a mixed-race and a female, Marsh was deprived of her dignity and treated as an object of pleasure. The misery faced women all across the British empire. People of color were equally discriminated against and treated as lesser humans by being subjected to acts such as slavery. Her capture further worsened the political and economic relations between Britain and Morocco. Both countries treated each other as enemies, and trade relations between them severely deteriorated. The capture of Marsh in Morocco signifies the disregard for women’s rights and the sour relations between Morocco and Britain.
1769
The ‘travel memoir’ published in 1769 shows a life of travel that Marsh lived. Colley puts it that Marsh spent a substantial amount of time in numerous cities. She moved from London to Madras, sometimes in the company of her parents, husband, and sometimes on her missions and often ending up in misery. Colley further details the historical look-alike a google map to each region, including such information as the concentration and style of buildings; the population in terms of racial composition, ethnicity, gender, as well as ethnicity; and glimpses of important recent occurrences such as infections, earthquakes or conflicts (Colley 16). As depicted, the British empire had free movement of people and goods from one region of it to the other. The diverse sections of the empire must have highly integrated through trade. Transport networks were developed mainly in the seas linking the different territories of the British and people and goods easily navigated from one place to the other. So connected were these regions that commodities produced in one area were easily transferable exchanged with those originating from elsewhere. The open borders of the territories enabled economic interdependences among them. The free movement of people within the empire encouraged the growth of new settlements comprising of people of different races and ethnicities. The booming and profitable trade in the empire ultimately resulted in the settlements. The spread of diseases from one region to the other within the kingdom also became accessible due to the free movement of people and goods. These activities show that the areas of the British Empire were interconnected.
The outbreak of wars in one region of the empire equally affected trade. The free flow of trade goods would suffer a blow if war broke out in a region that was key to producing, consuming, or transporting goods. Colley illustrates that the American Revolutionary wars greatly slowed production activities of produce while the export goods lacked buyers. Trade within the empire slumped, and many people lost jobs, including Marsh’s husband. The preceding accounts show that the trade was the reason behind the cohesion among the regions of the British Empire.
1776
The British empire was embroiled in war, especially in the region of the American colonies. Colley portrays the American Revolutions at the time as a ‘world war’ and further intimates that it was a contributing factor to Marsha’s husband losing her employment in far-off Dhaka. The British empire in the 18th century is depicted to be on the path of rapid changes and intense globalization (Colley 17). Very profitable trade that supported the growth of the empire and whose reliance on the American produce suffered when native Americans revolted against imperialism and fought for their independence. The declaration of American independence in 1776 and the resulting job losses in other parts of the British empire points to the interconnectedness of trading activities in the empire. Elizabeth Marshall showed that trade networks experienced globalization in the 18th century, pirates traversed the seas, and there was a lot of travel from one region of the world to the other. Attainment of independence by America had serious effects on other regions of the British Empire.
Conclusion
The British Empire was synonymous with the classification of the inhabitants on racial lines. The British who were the conquerors were deemed superior to the natives of the territories they conquered. The relations between these two classes was largely restricted to that of a master and their slaves. The conception of Marshall to a British father and a Jamaican mother in 1735 points out that the aristocrats sometimes entered into love relations with their servants. The capture of Marshall in 1756 illustrates that women of color, faced degradation and mistreatment in the British empire without any respect for their lives. Marshall’s travel memoir of 1769 gives a picture of the free interaction, particularly through trade and human travel, that existed in the British empire. The job losses and decline in trade parts of the British empire after 1776, shows the interconnectedness of the regions of the empire and how disruption of economic activities in one region could affect the rest of the empire.
Works Cited
Linda Colley. The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History, 2018, pp. 3-19.