Ambition

Abstract This chapter explores the motivations behind the founding of Britain’s Board of Agriculture in 1793. As we saw in Chapter 2, efforts to document and explain the causes in famine in Bengal were often driven by personal interest amongst Company officials. As soon as the Board of Agriculture was established, accusations that it was a façade serving to conceal the political and financial ambitions of its members filled the pages of Britain’s newspapers. Focusing upon the motivations of founding members of the Board, such as John Sinclair, John Call, Arthur Young, and John Baker Holroyd, the chapter argues that the mission of the Board of Agriculture was both designed to advance the prospects and influence of its members and, at the same time, sincere. The belief that the modern state must use its powers to understand and deliberately guide agricultural policy was shared amongst the Board’s elite, and also found resonance and sympathy with the ties that connected the newly established Board to the East India Company. In the final section, I discuss John Sinclair’s efforts to deflect from the occurrence of hunger and agricultural distress in his own county of Caithness in 1807–8, and the accusations of George Dempster that the Board of Agriculture was failing to highlight hunger and famine conditions occurring in Scotland. The chapter argues that power to explain scarcity in famine wielded by the Board of Agriculture involved both sounding the alarm, and denying or withholding action when politically expedient.