Charles Mackenzie (diplomat)

Charles Kenneth Mackenzie (1788–1862) was a Scottish diplomat, writer and journalist.

Life

He was the eldest son of Kenneth Francis Mackenzie, who had plantation interests in the West Indies, and at the time of Fedon's Rebellion acted as president of the council in Grenada; there are sources stating that Charles Mackenzie would have been classified as a Negro in the USA. Colin Mackenzie was his brother.

He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he befriended James Cowles Prichard, and served in the Peninsular War. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1815. He then edited a conservative evening paper, Albion.

Subsequently he was a diplomat in Mexico, Haiti and Cuba; in Haiti at least he did intelligence work. Returning to England, he wrote for The Metropolitan Magazine, under the editorship of Cyrus Redding.

During the latter part of his life he lived mostly in the United States, where he died on July 6, 1862 at a fire at the Rainbow Hotel on Beekman Street in New York.

Mackenzie collected plants for August Grisebach and William Jackson Hooker.

Works

Mackenzie published Notes on Haiti in two volumes (1830), based on his period 1826–7 as British consul there, and including both economic statistics and social observations. Parts were republished shortly by John Brown Russwurm, to publicise the Haitian Revolution.

Mackenzie wrote also for the Edinburgh Review, Quarterly Review, and Encyclopædia Britannica.

External links

• WorldCat page