Irish planters & merchants

Alexander MacDonnell [1798-1835]

The son of a surgeon, Alexander MacDonnell was born in Belfast in 1798. He was in Demerara from 1819 until 1824, where he was latterly secretary to the Committee of Inhabitants of Demerara [see details in his evidence to the Privy Council, 1827]. He then returned to London where he was appointed secretary to the pro-slavery Committee of West India Merchants and, in the following year, published Considerations on Negro slavery: With authentic reports, illustrative of the actual condition of the Negroes in Demerara.

MacDonnell was a skilled chess player and is considered to have been briefly (in 1835, the year of his death) the un-official world chess champion.