Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Macqueen, James

by Gordon Goodwin

MACQUEEN, JAMES (1778–1870), geographer, was born in 1778 at Crawford, Lanarkshire. In 1796 he was resident in Grenada, West Indies, as manager of a sugar plantation, and subsequently made repeated voyages through all the West Indian colonies. His attention was first drawn to African geography, a subject on which he became a leading authority, by the perusal of Mungo Park's 'Travels' (1799). He collected much information concerning the features of the country on the Upper Niger, not only from the Madingo negroes under his charge, but from the merchants and slave agents with whom he had dealings. He was the first to point out, in a treatise on the subject (Edinburgh, 1816, 8vo) that in the Bights of Benin and Biafra the Niger certainly entered the ocean.

By 1821 Macqueen had settled at Glasgow, where he became editor and part-proprietor of the 'Glasgow Courier.' In that Journal, then published three times a week, he ably defended what he regarded as the rights of the so-called 'West India interest.' As a writer he was trenchant and vigorous, and could present statistics attractively. Macqueen also distinguished himself in the projection and organisation of the Colonial Bank and the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. Eventually he settled in London, and wrote largely on politics, geography, economics, and general literature in the newspapers and magazines. He communicated to the Royal Geographical Society several interesting memoirs, many of which were printed in the 'Journal' and 'Proceedings' of the Society. His letters in the 'Morning Advertiser' on Captain Speke's pretended discovery of the source of the Nile were deemed by Captain Sir Richard F. Burton so 'valuable and original' that he obtained permission to reprint them in his memoir on 'The Nile Basin' (1864).

Macqueen died on 14 May 1870 at 10 Norton Street, Kensington. He had prepared two volumes, partly of an autobiographical character, but did not live to publish them.

Apart from pamphlets Macqueen's writings are:

1. 'A Geographical and Commercial View of Northern Central Africa: containing a particular Account of the Course and Termination of the great River Niger in the Atlantic Ocean,' 8vo, Edinburgh, 1821, with maps drawn by himself.
2. 'The West India Colonies: the Calumnies and Misrepresentations circulated against them … examined and refuted,' 8vo, London, 1824.
3. 'The Colonial Controversy, containing a Refutation of the Calumnies of the Anti-Colonists,' 8vo, Glasgow, 1825, letters reprinted from the 'Glasgow Courier.'
4. 'General Statistics of the British Empire,' 8vo, London, 1836.
5. 'A General Plan for & Mail Communication by Steam between. Great Britain and the Eastern and Western Parts of the World,' 8vo, London, 1838.
6. 'A Geographical Survey of Africa, … to which is prefixed a Letter … regarding the Slave Trade,' 8vo, London, 1840, with a map—'the first approaching to correctness'—of the interior of Africa.
7. 'Statistics of Agriculture, Manufactures, and Commerce,' two series, 8vo, London, 1861.
8. 'The War: Who's to Blame? or the Eastern Question investigated from the Official documents,' 8vo, London, 1854, in which he proves the folly of England in going to war with Russia.

To the 'Journals' of the missionaries Isenberg and Krapf (1843) he prefixed a geographical memoir of Abyssinia and south-eastern Africa.

[Proc. of Roy. Geogr. Soc. xiv. 301-2; Morning Advertiser, 17 May 1870, p. 5, col. 2; Markham's Fifty Years' Work of the Roy. Geogr. Soc.]

G. G.