| Authorised form of name | Neave; Sir; Thomas (1761 - 1848); merchant |
| Dates | 1761 - 1848 |
| Nationality | British |
| Place of birth | St. Benet [Benedict Fink, Tottenham, Middlesex [now London], England] |
| Date of birth | 11 November 1761 |
| Place of death | Dagnam Park, Harold Hill, Havering atte Bower, Essex, England, United Kingdom |
| Date of death | 11 April 1848 |
| Occupation | Merchant; banker; plantation and slave owner |
| Research field | Art |
| Antiquities |
| Activity | Career:
Owned plantations in Montserrat, and St Kitts and Nevis that exploited enslaved people for labour; Sheriff of Essex (1794, 1820-1821); Chairman, West India Merchants; Chairman, London Dock Co; Chairman, Hudsons Bay Co; Governor of the Bank of England (1783-1785); Senior partner, Richard & Thomas Neave, West India merchant company
Memberships:
FSA
|
| Membership category | Fellow |
| Date of election | 05/05/1814 |
| Age at election | 52 |
| Relationships | Son and heir of Sir Richard Neave (FRS 1785); succeeded to the baronetcy (1814); married (13 June 1791) Frances Caroline, daughter of the Hon. and Very Rev. William Digby |
| OtherInfo | Neave was a member and chairman of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). Charles II granted the charter establishing the Hudson's Bay Company, officially "The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England, trading into Hudson's Bay," on May 2, 1670. The charter aimed to establish a trade monopoly on the Eastern coast of what is now Canada and claimed 1.5 million square kilometres of land inhabited by Inuit and First Nations communities (everything in the Hudson river network of waterways), this grew to eight million square kilometres which was dubbed Rupert's Land. The 'adventurers' and traders employed by the HBC did the work of colonizing and nation-building, such as mapping British Columbia's interior and charting the Arctic coast, almost always with the help of Indigenous guides. The Company's aim was territorial expansion and geographical knowledge as well as resource extraction. The company depended on Indigenous hunters to bring them the furs they sold in Europe and made the Company shareholders very wealthy. This trading relationship was often cordial and mutually beneficial but introduced and advanced the spread of diseases such as smallpox and tuberculosis, to which Indigenous Peoples had no immunity. Attitudes toward Indigenous Peoples grew more disdainful by the mid-1800s, as HBC officials became more comfortable in the region and relied less on Indigenous knowledge. In 1868, the Rupert's Land Act was passed, an agreement to transfer the region from the HBC to the recently confederated states of Canada disregarding the Indigenous Nations' ownership of the land and their resistance to its transfer to a colonial power. The HBC continued to operate as a commercial company and operated some 100 stores in Indigenous communities into the 20th century, setting low prices for furs and high prices for their goods, a process that kept Indigenous consumers in a perpetual state of debt. The HBC remains a transnational company. |
| Source | Sources:
Bulloch's Roll; thepeeragec.com; UCL LBS
References:
'Sir Thomas Neave 2nd Bart.', Legacies of British Slave-ownership database, http://wwwdepts-live.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/25073 [accessed 17th July 2020] |
| Code | NA3384 |
Archives associated with this Fellow
| RefNo | Title | Date |
| EC/1814/01 | Neave, Sir Thomas: certificate of election to the Royal Society | |