In At Kingdom's Edge: Suriname Struggles of Jeronimy Clifford, English Subject, Jacob Selwood analyzes how an inhabitant of the formerly English South American colony of Suriname, Jeronimy Clifford, came to petition the king of England for support against the Dutch government, which he blamed for his persistent poverty. Clifford had arrived as a child before Suriname was seized by the Dutch. Clifford's father, like many English subjects in Suriname, initially decided to remain under Dutch rule, and Jeronimy Clifford would not definitively return to England until 1696. According to Selwood, Clifford's history of petitioning the Dutch and English governments for redress for the property he lost when he returned to England reveals how his English subjecthood was defined.
Selwood sustains that “Clifford's story, as well as the world within which he traveled, shows the extent to which an array of extralegal factors shaped subjecthood, whether in England, its colonies, or territories conquered by its rivals” (2). Clifford, who came of age in a period in the seventeenth century when Suriname shifted from an English territory to a territory of the Dutch empire, is one of many English subjects whose life reflects the complexity of subjecthood, as he navigated his English identity while becoming the subject of a foreign government. Through a historical analysis of a manuscript Clifford wrote himself by hand, as well as a series of petitions Clifford wrote to the English and Dutch governments pleading for compensation for his loss of property in Suriname, Selwood sustains that Clifford defined and defended his English subjecthood as he moved back and forth from Suriname to England.
At Kingdom's Edge builds on previous research by Selwood, a professor of history at Georgia State University, whose first book, Diversity and Difference in Early Modern London (2010) studies Londoners’ reactions to immigration and the English-born children of immigrants in the early modern period, and how these responses shape our understanding of early modern English national identity. At Kingdom's Edge considers early modern English subjecthood outside of England.
In At Kingdom's Edge, Selwood argues that English subjecthood is shaped through extralegal means, but he does not advance a clear argument concerning what Clifford's case reveals about English subjecthood. Selwood contextualizes Clifford's life within the history of English Suriname (1651–67). Territorial boundaries shifted when the Dutch invaded England in 1688 and King William of Orange became stadholder of the United Provinces. Through it all, Jeronimy Clifford remained loyal to England and continued to claim English subjecthood. After many years of legal conflict and two terms in prison, first over his estranged Dutch wife Dorothy Matson's complaint after he took possession of her land, and later in a conflict with a Scottish planter over possession of an enslaved worker, Clifford was freed by William III and returned to England. However, Clifford lost most of his wealth because he could not transfer it legally to England after the dispute with Matson. The final chapters detail how Clifford's fortunes continued to decline in England and document the paper trail of pamphlets Clifford composed, as well as others composed after his death, in support of his cause to transfer his wealth from Suriname to England.
Jeronimy Clifford is an interesting historical figure who epitomizes what in modern terms would be described as white male mediocrity; however, it is not clear to me how Clifford's life reflects how English subjecthood was shaped as Selwood proposes. At Kindgom's Edge may be of interest to scholars of the English empire in the early modern period and Suriname in particular. Selwood could have reflected on how factors such as the testimony of enslaved persons regarding Clifford's use of violence against Dorothy Matson contributed to the contours of English subjecthood in seventeenth-century Suriname. Selwood also could have reflected on the fact that, for all Clifford's assertions of English subjecthood authorized by his whiteness and his gender, his petitions and pamphlets ultimately failed to achieve his desired ends. Perhaps Clifford's failure is the true ambiguity of English subjecthood that, in theory, should have provided him with legal protection in his cause against the Dutch government.
