Whiteness, Polite Masculinity, and West-Indian Self-fashioning: The Case of William Beckford

Abstract

Using alderman William Beckford (1709–1770) as a microhistorical case study, this essay analyses the interconnectedness of polite masculinity, Englishness, and whiteness in mid-eighteenth-century Britain. It argues that Beckford’s failure to perform gentlemanliness made him vulnerable to politically motivated racialised attacks. Analysing a variety of polemical texts by Beckford’s political opponents, the essay suggests that gendered performances of politeness played a crucial and thus far underresearched role in the racialisation of white West Indians. Beckford’s case shows that as an identity yet untethered to biology, white Englishness could be both compensated and endangered by performative displays of polite cultural capital.