Charles Mackenzie (diplomat)

Charles Kenneth Mackenzie (1788–1862) was a Scottish diplomat, writer and journalist.

Life

He was the eldest son of Kenneth Francis Mackenzie,[1] who had plantation interests in the West Indies, and at the time of Fedon's Rebellion acted as president of the council in Grenada;[2] there are sources stating that Charles Mackenzie would have been classified as a Negro in the USA.[3] Colin Mackenzie was his brother.

He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he befriended James Cowles Prichard,[1] and served in the Peninsular War. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1815.[4] He then edited a conservative evening paper, Albion.[1]

Subsequently he was a diplomat in Mexico, Haiti and Cuba;[4] in Haiti at least he did intelligence work.[5] Returning to England, he wrote for The Metropolitan Magazine, under the editorship of Cyrus Redding.[1]

During the latter part of his life he lived mostly in the United States, where he died on July 6, 1862 at a fire at the Rainbow Hotel on Beekman Street[6] in New York.[4]

Mackenzie collected plants for August Grisebach and William Jackson Hooker.[4]

Works

Mackenzie published Notes on Haiti in two volumes (1830), based on his period 1826–7 as British consul there, and including both economic statistics and social observations.[7] Parts were republished shortly by John Brown Russwurm, to publicise the Haitian Revolution.[8]

Mackenzie wrote also for the Edinburgh Review, Quarterly Review, and Encyclopædia Britannica.[9]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Cyrus Redding (1863). Yesterday and To-day. T. C. Newby. pp. 173–7. Retrieved 30 April 2012.
  2. ↑ Douglas Hamilton (21 October 2005). Scotland, the Caribbean And the Atlantic World, 1750-1820. Manchester University Press. p. 164. ISBN 978-0-7190-7182-9. Retrieved 30 April 2012.
  3. ↑ Gerald Horne (December 2011). Negro Comrades of the Crown: African Americans and the British Empire Fight the U.S. Before Emancipation. NYU Press. p. 88. ISBN 978-0-8147-9050-2. Retrieved 30 April 2012.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 JSTOR Plant Science, MacKenzie, Charles Kenneth (1788-1862)
  5. ↑ Gerald M. Sider; Gavin A. Smith (1997). Between History and Histories: The Making of Silences and Commemorations. University of Toronto Press. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-8020-7883-4. Retrieved 30 April 2012.
  6. ↑ Appletons' annual cyclopaedia and register of important events of the year: 1862. New York: D. Appleton & Company. 1863. p. 669.
  7. ↑ Leslie Bethell (30 June 1995). The Cambridge History of Latin America. Cambridge University Press. p. 236. ISBN 978-0-521-39525-0. Retrieved 30 April 2012.
  8. ↑ Winston James; John Brown Russwurm (30 August 2010). The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm: The Life and Writings of a Pan-Africanist Pioneer, 1799-1851. NYU Press. p. 64. ISBN 978-0-8147-4289-1. Retrieved 30 April 2012.
  9. ↑ Joseph Irving, The Book of Scotsmen Eminent for Achievements in Arms and Arts (1881) p. 306; archive.org.

External links