Friendly advice to the gentlemen-planters of the East and West Indies. In three parts. I. A brief treatise of the most principal fruits and herbs that grow in the East & West Indies; giving an account of their respective vertues both for food and physick, and what planet and sign they are under. Together with some directions for the preservation of health and life in those hot climates. II. The complaints of the negro-slaves against the hard usages and barbarous cruelties inflicted upon them. III. A discourse in way of dialogue, between an Ethiopean or negro-slave, and a Christian that was his master in America. By Philotheos Physiologus.. . . . by Thomas Tryon
This month’s featured text is Friendly advice to the gentlemen-planters of the East and West Indies. . . by Thomas Tryon (1634-1703). Tryon was born into a large Gloucestershire family and at a young age convinced his father to buy a flock of sheep for him which he tended with great delight and eventually sold for a good profit that allowed him to travel to London and apprentice himself to a hatter (someone who makes hats). His master was an Anabaptist (one of the more radical sects of Protestantism) and Tryon became an Anabaptist in 1652. He then dedicated himself to devotion and learning. In 1657 he had a spiritual revelation which led him to break with the Anabaptists and settled into a reformed and extremely regimented life. He married "a sober young woman" named Susannah in 1661 and they had five children. Tryon travelled throughought Barbados and the Netherlands for the next six years and, when he arrived back in England, decided to become an author. At age 48, he published his first of nineteen titles, A treatise on cleanness in meats, and drinks, of the preparation of food … and the benefits of clean sweet beds; also of the generation of bugs and their cure … to which is added a short discourse of pain in the teeth (1682). Tryon became a popular author and advice giver throughout Britain and its colonies. His final work, Some Memoirs of the Life of Mr. Thomas Tryon, Late of London, Merchant (1705), was published posthumously by some of his Quaker friends and publishers.

Friendly advice to the gentlemen-planters of the East and West Indies. . . was published in 1684. It contains much information about the plants and vegetation of the Caribbean. However, it is best known for its condemnation of European treatment of African slaves. Interestingly, Tryon does not condemn the institution of slavery itself because he believed Africans had fallen from divine grace. He is more concerned that the Europeans are treating their slaves brutally thereby corrupting their own Christian ethics. Tryon sought moral reform of the planters so that they would treat their slaves better and thereby become better Christians. This represents the complexity of thinking about slavery in this period. On the one hand, there were those who saw nothing wrong with the treatment of slaves. On the other, there were those who condemned the practice completely. Tryon represents a middle ground of those who neither condemned the institution of slavery nor condoned the brutal treatment of slaves. Yet, Tryon also believed that the slave trade was against Christian ethics because the English should not use their power to subdue the weak, but rather give them charity. In all, Tryon believed that slaves were equal to servants in seventeenth century society. The good order of the nascent British empire rested on a hierarchy between masters and servants. Servants were bound to obey their masters; masters, in turn were expected to treat their servants fairly. This was how Tryon believed the affairs of the colonies should be run, and to break that order of society was not only detrimental to the running of the empire, but also detrimental to the Christian ethics of individuals.

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