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Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire
From a New York Times bestselling author, a gripping account of the slave rebellion that led to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire.
For five horrific weeks after Christmas in 1831, Jamaica was convulsed by an uprising of its enslaved people. What started as a peaceful labor strike quickly turned into a full-blown revolt, leaving hundreds of plantation houses smoking ruins. By the time British troops had put down the rebels, more than a thousand Jamaicans lay dead from summary executions and extrajudicial murder.
While the rebels lost their military gamble, their sacrifice accelerated the larger struggle for freedom in the British Atlantic. The daring and suffering of the Jamaicans galvanized public opinion throughout the empire, resulting in a decisive turn against slavery. For centuries bondage had fed Britain's appetite for sugar. Within two years of the Christmas rebellion, slavery was formally abolished.
Island on Fire is a dramatic day-by-day account of this transformative uprising. A skillful storyteller, Tom Zoellner goes back to the primary sources to tell the intimate story of the men and women who tasted liberty for a few brief weeks. He memorably evokes the sights and sounds of the Caribbean in the 1830s, provides the first full portrait of its enigmatic leader Samuel Sharpe, and gives us a poignant glimpse of the dreams of the many Jamaicans who died for liberty.
For five horrific weeks after Christmas in 1831, Jamaica was convulsed by an uprising of its enslaved people. What started as a peaceful labor strike quickly turned into a full-blown revolt, leaving hundreds of plantation houses smoking ruins. By the time British troops had put down the rebels, more than a thousand Jamaicans lay dead from summary executions and extrajudicial murder.
While the rebels lost their military gamble, their sacrifice accelerated the larger struggle for freedom in the British Atlantic. The daring and suffering of the Jamaicans galvanized public opinion throughout the empire, resulting in a decisive turn against slavery. For centuries bondage had fed Britain's appetite for sugar. Within two years of the Christmas rebellion, slavery was formally abolished.
Island on Fire is a dramatic day-by-day account of this transformative uprising. A skillful storyteller, Tom Zoellner goes back to the primary sources to tell the intimate story of the men and women who tasted liberty for a few brief weeks. He memorably evokes the sights and sounds of the Caribbean in the 1830s, provides the first full portrait of its enigmatic leader Samuel Sharpe, and gives us a poignant glimpse of the dreams of the many Jamaicans who died for liberty.
376 pages, Hardcover
First published May 12, 2020
About the author
Tom Zoellner
15 books100 followersTom Zoellner is the author of several nonfiction books, including Island on Fire: The Revolt that Ended Slavery in the British Empire, and works as a professor at Chapman University and Dartmouth College. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s, The American Scholar, The Oxford American, Time, Foreign Policy, Men’s Health, Slate, Scientific American, Audubon, Sierra, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Texas Observer, Departures, The American Scholar, The Wall Street Journal and many other publications. Tom is a fifth-generation Arizonan and a former staff writer for The Arizona Republic and the San Francisco Chronicle. He is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from The Lannan Foundation, the Corporation of Yaddo, the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
January 5, 2021
Jamaican history for laypeople i.e. not overly academic, but accessible, and compelling. Reads like a novel.
Incredible clarity about the events and political forces that brought about the end of enslavement in Jamaica.
Sam Sharpe’s bravery, cunning, grit, and steadfastness are so clearly drawn.
Read it.
Incredible clarity about the events and political forces that brought about the end of enslavement in Jamaica.
Sam Sharpe’s bravery, cunning, grit, and steadfastness are so clearly drawn.
Read it.
July 30, 2021
The brutal fallout of a failed revolt told in a undramatic manner, which initially had me feeling a way, but I eventually realised its the only way to get through the subject matter.
It becomes very focused on England and English politics showing how the abolition of slavery was 'just' one aspect of a very unsettled political landscape for the Tories at the time.
Worth a read.
It becomes very focused on England and English politics showing how the abolition of slavery was 'just' one aspect of a very unsettled political landscape for the Tories at the time.
Worth a read.
May 16, 2021
There are many insidious myths about slavery. One of them is that the slaves did not fight back or "chose" to be slaves. Another is that slavery was largely benevolent and "everyone" was ok with slavery until "everyone" was an abolitionist. This is a mythbusting history book with value to historical discourse it is hard to overstate. It is also a shame the story has not been told properly before now. This book will keep realize your education was lacking.
June 7, 2020
A detailed, careful telling of a crucial episode from British history that I knew next to nothing about. One of the tricky parts about slave histories, as Zoellner explains in detail, is the lack of written accounts from the perspective of slaves. But this book does its best to make a complete picture out of an incomplete record. The records that West Indian slave-holding plantation owners kept of their own doings are vivid and damning in their own right.
November 16, 2022
Great combination of historical retelling of the revolt and historiographical positioning in the abolition debate.
December 31, 2021
I wrote an Advent reflection largely based on this book. You can read the full thing here. Below are selected excerpts from it:
Jill Lepore in New York Burning notes that: “Thirty-five percent of all slave rebellions in the British Caribbean took place at Christmastime.”
Among the most famous of these Christmas insurrections was the Christmas Uprising or Baptist War of 1831 in Jamaica led by Samuel Sharpe, a Baptist preacher who led a massive general strike in the days following Christmas where thousands of slaves took an oath refusing a return to work in the sugarcane fields. The strike eventually escalated into plantation burnings and then the largest slave insurrection in the history of the British West Indies. Tom Zoellner in his book Island on Fire describes the mood in Jamaica during the Christmas of 1831:
“Nobody who saw them ever forgot the plantation fires. They would burn and reignite across northwestern Jamaica for the better part of two weeks and rain a curtain of ash down on the trees… More than two hundred blazes were reported in the opening days of the revolt, and in the daytime, they magnified the glare of the tropics and tinted the sun with menace as an organized army of enslaved people held their masters hostage and fought off attacks from the volunteer militia… The entire plantation society of Jamaica came under attack in the largest revolt it had ever faced. One of the richest sugar growers in Jamaica, Richard Barrett, watched the fires with mounting fear from a house in Montego Bay. A fierce defender of slavery, he was the cousin of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning and well connected in British society. Barrett scratched out a note to the colonial governor on the fourth night of the insurrection… ‘It is supposed that a hundred plantations and settlements are already in ashes,’ Barrett wrote. ‘If the rebellion spreads, our force is quite insufficient to put it down—all depends on the moral effect of the employment of the King’s troops. Five rebels have been tried by court martial and shot. A woman also condemned was spared—I think she should be hanged.’”
This was not the first of insurrections planned around Christmas. Zoellner describes an earlier Coromantee uprising planned in the wake of Tacky’s 1760 revolt:
“Coromantee met in secret in St. Mary’s Parish to swear an oath of loyalty to each other… They aimed to take Tacky’s revolt further and establish an independent black nation in Jamaica. And they would do it under the cover of the Christmas holiday.”
But Sharpe’s uprising was different in its large-scale mobilization and its apt deployment of Baptist liberation theology that brought in more than thirty thousand (some estimates place it closer to 60,000) enslaved people into the plot, catalyzing an acceleration towards the abolition of slavery throughout the British empire. Sharpe’s homiletics gravitated towards biblical declarations of liberation, as Zoellner writes:
“In his private teachings to his fellow enslaved people, Sharpe emphasized those passages of the Bible explicitly dealing with freedom. Four passages in particular drew his attention: “No man can serve two masters” (Matt. 6:24); “If the Son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8:36); “Ye are bought with a price: be ye not servants of men” (1 Cor. 7:23); “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is nether male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ” (Gal. 3:28). He appears to have neglected all those that seemed to justify slavery or harped upon obedience—the favorite localized theology of the established church.”
Zoellner also points out that in the months leading up to the Christmas Uprising, another enslaved Baptist preacher named Nat Turner was guiding a slave uprising in Virginia. As Du Bois notes in his biography of the Calvinist revolutionary John Brown, the Nat Turner uprising was carefully studied by Brown, who drew lessons from it to formulate a plan for launching a wide-scale slave guerrilla war in the US. While Brown’s plan faltered into his much more modest Harpers Ferry Raid, the raid was still an important event leading up to the Civil War and the eventual abolition of American slavery. That theology might not only be an opiate of the masses, but also contradictorily a liberating force, was what figures like Nat Turner underscored. As Lepore emphasized regarding the 1741 New York insurrection:
“…New Yorkers understood very well, Scripture can counsel obedience, and it can counsel rebellion. In 1730, the New York Gazette reported news of “an Insurrection of the Negroes” in Virginia, occasioned by a report that the new governor “had Direction from his Majesty to free all baptized Negroes.” This inspired baptized slaves to claim their freedom, which, since their owners denied it, meant staging a rebellion.”
While Christmas was about the arrival of a figure of liberation that would bring an end to imperial domination, such sentiments were of course not unique to Christianity but part of a long Jewish tradition of anti-imperial resistance. As Daniel Boyarin writes in The Jewish Gospels:
“The Jews were expecting a Redeemer in the time of Jesus. Their own sufferings under Roman domination seemed so great, and this Redeemer had been predicted for them. Reading the Book of Daniel closely, at least some Jews—those behind the first-century Similitudes of Enoch and those with Jesus—had concluded that the Redeemer would be a divine figure named the Son of Man who would come to earth as a human, save the Jews from oppression…”
The purpose Jesus saw for himself in Luke 4:18, that is the purpose of Advent, of being sent and arriving, came directly from Isaiah 61:1:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.”
If this context of Advent, and Christianity more broadly, is clarified, then it should be relatively unsurprising that so many slave revolts occurred during Christmas time. The arrival of a messiah signified the arrival of a new political order, and the Gospel (the good news) advanced by such a messiah was that the wretched of the earth were invited into inaugurating this new world into existence. The good news was for the poor and the earth was for the meek to inherit. The rich would be sent away empty and the proud scattered. As Jesus said: “Woe to you who are rich” (Luke 6:24).
As Advent and Christmas is a time for remembering the hope that such an arrival occasioned, it also lends itself to reflecting on others who have continued to spread that hope of liberation through the way they have lived their lives collectively with others. Zoellner describes the story of Samuel Sharpe becoming recognized as one of Jamaica’s seven national heroes:
“The committee invited the poet and historian Kamau Brathwaite, then teaching at the University of the West Indies in the Kingston suburb of Mona, to prepare the first modern apologia of Samuel Sharpe, a short book titled Wars of Respect that frames him as an uncompromising social revolutionary, a proto-Marxist fighting a system of capitalist oppression who “had made the discovery—long before his time—of the impact of industrial strike action upon the industrial system.” …“Marxism was the language of the day,” recalled Arnold Bertram, a PNP official who served on the committee. “The wider context was resistance to plantation slavery.”
Though the 1970s rediscovery of Samuel Sharpe came at the time of Jamaica’s relations with Castro and the US attempts to tamper with national elections, there were also other powerful cultural forces at work… The government declared Samuel Sharpe a National Hero on October 1, 1975, an honor that unleashed a number of others. Sharpe’s story was inserted into the public school curriculum all over the island. His face went on the paper currency.”
Little is known about how the general strike organized by Sharpe escalated into the widespread inferno that engulfed so many West Indian sugar plantations, but one interesting oral tradition that Zoellner mentions is:
“an unnamed female slave who touched a lighted torch to the cane leaves with a defiant statement: “I know I shall die for it, but my children shall be free.” Though there is no contemporary documentation… [the slave mother’s story] is recounted on a historical marker in the mountain crossroads of Kensington. About a mile down the hill from this marker, the Jamaican government has built a small amphitheater—painted in the national colors of green, gold, and black—several yards away from the undisputed spot where the first blaze of the insurrection had been set.”
The scholar Verene Shepherd has researched a number of the women involved in the 1831 Christmas “war of liberation” (as she calls it), including women like Catherine Brown, Catherine Clarke, Nancy Wright, and Eliza Lawrence. Shepherd delivered a lecture on these women revolutionaries who are often neglected in other scholarly accounts of the Baptist War (including Zoellner’s).
Zoellner quotes Verene Shepherd describing the unnamed woman rumoured to have started the first plantation fire in the 1831 Christmas Uprising:
“Yes, it led to her death, but it gave birth to abolition within the British Empire. I’m going to rename her tonight. Guess what I’m going to name her? ‘Fire.’ Tonight we christen ‘Fire.’ This time we want to have the flames of passion in our hearts. As I look across the hills, I can almost see the fires lit in 1831. I believe the hills were joyful that night as they witnessed our ancestors stand against oppression and torture.”
Jill Lepore in New York Burning notes that: “Thirty-five percent of all slave rebellions in the British Caribbean took place at Christmastime.”
Among the most famous of these Christmas insurrections was the Christmas Uprising or Baptist War of 1831 in Jamaica led by Samuel Sharpe, a Baptist preacher who led a massive general strike in the days following Christmas where thousands of slaves took an oath refusing a return to work in the sugarcane fields. The strike eventually escalated into plantation burnings and then the largest slave insurrection in the history of the British West Indies. Tom Zoellner in his book Island on Fire describes the mood in Jamaica during the Christmas of 1831:
“Nobody who saw them ever forgot the plantation fires. They would burn and reignite across northwestern Jamaica for the better part of two weeks and rain a curtain of ash down on the trees… More than two hundred blazes were reported in the opening days of the revolt, and in the daytime, they magnified the glare of the tropics and tinted the sun with menace as an organized army of enslaved people held their masters hostage and fought off attacks from the volunteer militia… The entire plantation society of Jamaica came under attack in the largest revolt it had ever faced. One of the richest sugar growers in Jamaica, Richard Barrett, watched the fires with mounting fear from a house in Montego Bay. A fierce defender of slavery, he was the cousin of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning and well connected in British society. Barrett scratched out a note to the colonial governor on the fourth night of the insurrection… ‘It is supposed that a hundred plantations and settlements are already in ashes,’ Barrett wrote. ‘If the rebellion spreads, our force is quite insufficient to put it down—all depends on the moral effect of the employment of the King’s troops. Five rebels have been tried by court martial and shot. A woman also condemned was spared—I think she should be hanged.’”
This was not the first of insurrections planned around Christmas. Zoellner describes an earlier Coromantee uprising planned in the wake of Tacky’s 1760 revolt:
“Coromantee met in secret in St. Mary’s Parish to swear an oath of loyalty to each other… They aimed to take Tacky’s revolt further and establish an independent black nation in Jamaica. And they would do it under the cover of the Christmas holiday.”
But Sharpe’s uprising was different in its large-scale mobilization and its apt deployment of Baptist liberation theology that brought in more than thirty thousand (some estimates place it closer to 60,000) enslaved people into the plot, catalyzing an acceleration towards the abolition of slavery throughout the British empire. Sharpe’s homiletics gravitated towards biblical declarations of liberation, as Zoellner writes:
“In his private teachings to his fellow enslaved people, Sharpe emphasized those passages of the Bible explicitly dealing with freedom. Four passages in particular drew his attention: “No man can serve two masters” (Matt. 6:24); “If the Son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8:36); “Ye are bought with a price: be ye not servants of men” (1 Cor. 7:23); “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is nether male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ” (Gal. 3:28). He appears to have neglected all those that seemed to justify slavery or harped upon obedience—the favorite localized theology of the established church.”
Zoellner also points out that in the months leading up to the Christmas Uprising, another enslaved Baptist preacher named Nat Turner was guiding a slave uprising in Virginia. As Du Bois notes in his biography of the Calvinist revolutionary John Brown, the Nat Turner uprising was carefully studied by Brown, who drew lessons from it to formulate a plan for launching a wide-scale slave guerrilla war in the US. While Brown’s plan faltered into his much more modest Harpers Ferry Raid, the raid was still an important event leading up to the Civil War and the eventual abolition of American slavery. That theology might not only be an opiate of the masses, but also contradictorily a liberating force, was what figures like Nat Turner underscored. As Lepore emphasized regarding the 1741 New York insurrection:
“…New Yorkers understood very well, Scripture can counsel obedience, and it can counsel rebellion. In 1730, the New York Gazette reported news of “an Insurrection of the Negroes” in Virginia, occasioned by a report that the new governor “had Direction from his Majesty to free all baptized Negroes.” This inspired baptized slaves to claim their freedom, which, since their owners denied it, meant staging a rebellion.”
While Christmas was about the arrival of a figure of liberation that would bring an end to imperial domination, such sentiments were of course not unique to Christianity but part of a long Jewish tradition of anti-imperial resistance. As Daniel Boyarin writes in The Jewish Gospels:
“The Jews were expecting a Redeemer in the time of Jesus. Their own sufferings under Roman domination seemed so great, and this Redeemer had been predicted for them. Reading the Book of Daniel closely, at least some Jews—those behind the first-century Similitudes of Enoch and those with Jesus—had concluded that the Redeemer would be a divine figure named the Son of Man who would come to earth as a human, save the Jews from oppression…”
The purpose Jesus saw for himself in Luke 4:18, that is the purpose of Advent, of being sent and arriving, came directly from Isaiah 61:1:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.”
If this context of Advent, and Christianity more broadly, is clarified, then it should be relatively unsurprising that so many slave revolts occurred during Christmas time. The arrival of a messiah signified the arrival of a new political order, and the Gospel (the good news) advanced by such a messiah was that the wretched of the earth were invited into inaugurating this new world into existence. The good news was for the poor and the earth was for the meek to inherit. The rich would be sent away empty and the proud scattered. As Jesus said: “Woe to you who are rich” (Luke 6:24).
As Advent and Christmas is a time for remembering the hope that such an arrival occasioned, it also lends itself to reflecting on others who have continued to spread that hope of liberation through the way they have lived their lives collectively with others. Zoellner describes the story of Samuel Sharpe becoming recognized as one of Jamaica’s seven national heroes:
“The committee invited the poet and historian Kamau Brathwaite, then teaching at the University of the West Indies in the Kingston suburb of Mona, to prepare the first modern apologia of Samuel Sharpe, a short book titled Wars of Respect that frames him as an uncompromising social revolutionary, a proto-Marxist fighting a system of capitalist oppression who “had made the discovery—long before his time—of the impact of industrial strike action upon the industrial system.” …“Marxism was the language of the day,” recalled Arnold Bertram, a PNP official who served on the committee. “The wider context was resistance to plantation slavery.”
Though the 1970s rediscovery of Samuel Sharpe came at the time of Jamaica’s relations with Castro and the US attempts to tamper with national elections, there were also other powerful cultural forces at work… The government declared Samuel Sharpe a National Hero on October 1, 1975, an honor that unleashed a number of others. Sharpe’s story was inserted into the public school curriculum all over the island. His face went on the paper currency.”
Little is known about how the general strike organized by Sharpe escalated into the widespread inferno that engulfed so many West Indian sugar plantations, but one interesting oral tradition that Zoellner mentions is:
“an unnamed female slave who touched a lighted torch to the cane leaves with a defiant statement: “I know I shall die for it, but my children shall be free.” Though there is no contemporary documentation… [the slave mother’s story] is recounted on a historical marker in the mountain crossroads of Kensington. About a mile down the hill from this marker, the Jamaican government has built a small amphitheater—painted in the national colors of green, gold, and black—several yards away from the undisputed spot where the first blaze of the insurrection had been set.”
The scholar Verene Shepherd has researched a number of the women involved in the 1831 Christmas “war of liberation” (as she calls it), including women like Catherine Brown, Catherine Clarke, Nancy Wright, and Eliza Lawrence. Shepherd delivered a lecture on these women revolutionaries who are often neglected in other scholarly accounts of the Baptist War (including Zoellner’s).
Zoellner quotes Verene Shepherd describing the unnamed woman rumoured to have started the first plantation fire in the 1831 Christmas Uprising:
“Yes, it led to her death, but it gave birth to abolition within the British Empire. I’m going to rename her tonight. Guess what I’m going to name her? ‘Fire.’ Tonight we christen ‘Fire.’ This time we want to have the flames of passion in our hearts. As I look across the hills, I can almost see the fires lit in 1831. I believe the hills were joyful that night as they witnessed our ancestors stand against oppression and torture.”
February 1, 2022
When one hears about how slavery ended in the British Empire, one gets a sense that it was all the drive of a few white humanitarians e.g. Wilberforce, Macauley etc. One doesn't hear about the slave uprisings, and the inevitability of the end in sight as slavers saw that slavery was not going to sustain - one doesn't hear of the agency of the slaves. This book narrates the events of the latter, specifically of the uprising of 1831/1832 in Jamaica. It attempts as much as archival material will allow to provide some insight into the people who led the uprising - if they wrote, their writings did not survive, and their stories are told by more powerful tellers. A lot of inferences are drawn (sometimes tediously), but this is important. It also presents other important forces - the end of fake constituencies in Britain and therefore the lost parliamentary power of Tory sugar plant owners, the decreasing price of sugar due to greater global production competition making slave plantations less economically attractive.
June 15, 2021
This books shines in all three sections of its analysis. It shows the underlying causes, the debate itself, and the fallout in great detail. It does a very good job highlighting the hypocrisy at the heart of the slave holders and the lies that they told themselves.
October 15, 2022
Nicely structured with a first section that focused on the context of slavery and life in Jamaica pre-revolt; a section about the revolt itself; and then a section on its impact in Britain and role in ending slavery, though I felt that there was likely much more to say about that.
August 19, 2023
Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire by Tom Zoellner
I have been reviewing various histories of the Caribbean islands and chose this book to learn about Jamaica. Instead, I learned an important chapter in Baptist history that I'd never known before. This is truly a good book for those interested in church history, ethics, and civil disobedience. I've previously reviewed The Sugar Barons covering part of the same topic, but focuses more on Barbados.
The atrocities of the British slave trade in the Caribbean is well-documented, but less-remembered is the martyrdom of missionaries and the burning of churches in the aftermath of the slave rebellion. The entire book moves quickly and is engaging, even though it is well-documented and of a terrible subject matter.
Samuel Sharpe, a slave, was a Baptist deacon whose literacy and commitment to his faith made him dangerous. In 1830s Jamaica, the phrase "Am I not a man, and a brother?" posed a challenge to the white aristocracy that nominally claimed to be Christian but treated human beings like cattle. I listened to an interview where Zoellner compares William Wilberforce's contributions to abolition to Samuel Sharpe's, and Zoellner opined that Wilberforce perhaps has received too much credit. While Wilberforce's noble leadership in the movement to abolish the British slave trade in 1807 ended the capture and tortuous voyage of men and women from Africa to the West Indies, it did not end slavery. Whereas Wilberforce thought it would be the death knell, slavery indeed lingered on in all its brutal fashion. It took actual slaves to ignite the literal spark that resulted in an irrepresible cultural and religious movement to finally abolish slavery in Jamaica and the British colonies. (Wilberforce remained a supporter of abolitionist movement until his death in 1833.)
Zoellner provides a brief history of Jamaica leading up to the 1830s. I was familiar with the story of Port Royal, haven to rum, pirates, and licentiousness; a place said to be so wicked that most missionaries sent there became pagans. The "Sodom of the Indies" and "Dunghill of the Universe" was completely destroyed in cataclysmic fashion by a massive earthquake in 1692 that completely sunk the city. The British were not deterred, however, and Kingston was built inland to take its place as the capital.
Disease and pestilence was rampant in a disagreeable climate, there were few public works, well-built mansions, or institutions of education or culture. The licentiousness remained as before, as Jamaica was a colony for single white British men to spend a few years making a fortune from the sugar plantations before returning to England with newfound wealth made off the backs of a seemingly limitless supply of shipped slaves. Zoellner gives plenty of examples of behavior as the culture is well-documented. The expectation that the proper British male would use women for recreation sex and then discard and often kill them when pregnant or nursing as they could replace her for 50 British pounds rather than deal with the cost of lost labor and feeding another child. Adolescent boys expected to begin sleeping with slaves. Anyone actually respecting slaves as human beings being ridiculed or held in suspicion; missionaries in particular. Baptist missionaries had to be careful not to report what they saw or they'd be banished. Reports that made it out called Jamaica "the suburbs of hell."
Europe had watched Toussaint L'Ouverture's 1780s slave revolt in Haiti with horror and feared the violence would spread. Jamaica's governor reached a deal with L'Ouverture that he would not spread anti-slavery propaganda or send troops onto the island. Baptist and Methodist missionaries spread literacy, which created a danger that slaves would become aware of anti-slavery movements in England and elsewhere, which is certainly something Samuel Sharpe hoped to spread. The suicides and deaths at sea were well documented by slave traders and are undeniable. After 1807, the unlimited supply of cheap slaves ceased and the sugar planters had to adjust. By the 1830s there were still 20 slaves to one white person on the island; 300,000 slaves to 18,000 white militiamen. It was in this environment that Sharpe's subversive preaching began to spread converts -- both for Jesus and for a view that a slave was a man. (Interestingly, Nat Turner's rebellion in Virginia also happened in 1831; and he was also a literate slave and Christian preacher.)
The abolitionist movement had continued in England with stories being published of atrocities in the colonies and movements to boycott sugar. The children of plantation owners sometimes faced discrimination or ridicule when enrolling in prestigious universities for the ill-gotten wages of their parents. Much like the United States, the nation was increasingly divided but with a growing movement toward a solution that ultimately included abolition.
In the interview I heard with Zoellner, he lauded Samuel Sharpe as being over 100 years ahead of Ghandi or Martin Luther King Jr., advocating for a nonviolent protest by slaves-- picking a date on the calendar and holding a sit-in. Whether Sharpe also advocated for violence or not is a matter of debate. Zoellner examines testimony from court documents of the trials of the rebels. Some witnesses testify to violent intent, and others in defense of the witnesses testify to nonviolence. With white juries, the trials were hardly fair-- Zoellner points to a lone female slave's acquittal as an aberration.
The protest began on Christmas Day, 1831. For whatever reason, on the eve of the sit-in protest-- December 27, 1831 -- a torch was lit and a plantatian went up in flames, which could be seen in the dark for miles. Other plantations began to burn and the alarm spread. Zoellner recounts stories of slaves mercifully packing off their masters before sending the home up in flames. There was division among the slaves, with some simply non-violently refusing to work as Sharpe had advocated, while others joined a roving band in outright rebellion, and others continued working. An estimated 60,000 slaves mobilized in rebellion during what would be known as the "Baptist War" or "Christmas War" or "Samuel Sharpe's War." Sharpe became a figurehead and commander of divisions over a five-week running battle with the militia.
The author remarks on the bravery and discipline of the slaves, many of whom had never fired a weapon before. Some falsely believed that the King of England had granted them emancipation and that the planters were simply denying them their freedom. Many took out to hiding in caves and some escaped into territory where they would never be recaptured. Interestingly, a people group of descendants of former Spanish and Spanish slaves on the islands-- called Maroons -- were allies of the Jamaican militia even though Sharpe sought their assistance.
There were many stories of bravery, with extra-judicial killings by panicked militia. As one commander put it, "Christianity is abrogated by martial law." The British took to decapitating slaves and putting the heads on poles as both a warning and because many slaves' African voodoo beliefs taught that a decapitated person could not go to paradise. Even non-rebellious slaves simply encountering the militia units while traveling to their masters' estates or to market were at risk of being shot. Anyone seen fleeing the militia on the road was considered an enemy. There were also many stories of bravery and slaves who refused to surrender. "Jesus Christ has made me free and I will work for no man." An estimated 14 whites and 207 rebels were killed, and Sharpe and his men were eventually captured and later hanged. Sharpe's trial lasted two hours longer than the others, but the result was the same and the British thereafter sought to strike his name from memory-- he was "rediscovered" in the 1970s.
Remarkable to me was the retribution against white missionaries as well as the massive burning of Baptist and Methodist churches, seen as to blame for the uprising and the loss of income. Only when a leading politician of the island had the foresight to see such activity would only make matters worse for the slaveholders with the British Parliament did the violence abide.
Ultimately, there was the rise of the Whig party and political change in England that left Caribbean sugar planters with few representatives in Parliament. In 1833, the Abolition Act was passed which attempted to create a glidepath to emancipation with government payments (worth five percent of British GDP) to slave-owners to indemnify the the sugar planters now facing paid labor. Children were emancipated while others were put under an apprenticeship system where they would essentially be indentured servants for years before freedom. Zoellner writes that the condition under the apprenticeship years were in some ways worse than slavery, as men were still flogged and tortured for not working and their existence depended solely on their masters-- it was no freedom. Finally, on August 1, 1838-- now a national holiday in Jamaica -- an emancipation proclamation was issued.
Zoellner recounts the transition from slavery to freedom and other movements on the island, including an 1865 uprising against British colonial rule. Ultimately, Jamaica would gain its independence and historians began to take an interest in finding national heroes, such as Samuel Sharpe. He also gives an account of August 1 celebrations and how Samuel Sharpe's War is still celebrated in localities on the island. Five stars.
I have been reviewing various histories of the Caribbean islands and chose this book to learn about Jamaica. Instead, I learned an important chapter in Baptist history that I'd never known before. This is truly a good book for those interested in church history, ethics, and civil disobedience. I've previously reviewed The Sugar Barons covering part of the same topic, but focuses more on Barbados.
The atrocities of the British slave trade in the Caribbean is well-documented, but less-remembered is the martyrdom of missionaries and the burning of churches in the aftermath of the slave rebellion. The entire book moves quickly and is engaging, even though it is well-documented and of a terrible subject matter.
Samuel Sharpe, a slave, was a Baptist deacon whose literacy and commitment to his faith made him dangerous. In 1830s Jamaica, the phrase "Am I not a man, and a brother?" posed a challenge to the white aristocracy that nominally claimed to be Christian but treated human beings like cattle. I listened to an interview where Zoellner compares William Wilberforce's contributions to abolition to Samuel Sharpe's, and Zoellner opined that Wilberforce perhaps has received too much credit. While Wilberforce's noble leadership in the movement to abolish the British slave trade in 1807 ended the capture and tortuous voyage of men and women from Africa to the West Indies, it did not end slavery. Whereas Wilberforce thought it would be the death knell, slavery indeed lingered on in all its brutal fashion. It took actual slaves to ignite the literal spark that resulted in an irrepresible cultural and religious movement to finally abolish slavery in Jamaica and the British colonies. (Wilberforce remained a supporter of abolitionist movement until his death in 1833.)
Zoellner provides a brief history of Jamaica leading up to the 1830s. I was familiar with the story of Port Royal, haven to rum, pirates, and licentiousness; a place said to be so wicked that most missionaries sent there became pagans. The "Sodom of the Indies" and "Dunghill of the Universe" was completely destroyed in cataclysmic fashion by a massive earthquake in 1692 that completely sunk the city. The British were not deterred, however, and Kingston was built inland to take its place as the capital.
Disease and pestilence was rampant in a disagreeable climate, there were few public works, well-built mansions, or institutions of education or culture. The licentiousness remained as before, as Jamaica was a colony for single white British men to spend a few years making a fortune from the sugar plantations before returning to England with newfound wealth made off the backs of a seemingly limitless supply of shipped slaves. Zoellner gives plenty of examples of behavior as the culture is well-documented. The expectation that the proper British male would use women for recreation sex and then discard and often kill them when pregnant or nursing as they could replace her for 50 British pounds rather than deal with the cost of lost labor and feeding another child. Adolescent boys expected to begin sleeping with slaves. Anyone actually respecting slaves as human beings being ridiculed or held in suspicion; missionaries in particular. Baptist missionaries had to be careful not to report what they saw or they'd be banished. Reports that made it out called Jamaica "the suburbs of hell."
Europe had watched Toussaint L'Ouverture's 1780s slave revolt in Haiti with horror and feared the violence would spread. Jamaica's governor reached a deal with L'Ouverture that he would not spread anti-slavery propaganda or send troops onto the island. Baptist and Methodist missionaries spread literacy, which created a danger that slaves would become aware of anti-slavery movements in England and elsewhere, which is certainly something Samuel Sharpe hoped to spread. The suicides and deaths at sea were well documented by slave traders and are undeniable. After 1807, the unlimited supply of cheap slaves ceased and the sugar planters had to adjust. By the 1830s there were still 20 slaves to one white person on the island; 300,000 slaves to 18,000 white militiamen. It was in this environment that Sharpe's subversive preaching began to spread converts -- both for Jesus and for a view that a slave was a man. (Interestingly, Nat Turner's rebellion in Virginia also happened in 1831; and he was also a literate slave and Christian preacher.)
The abolitionist movement had continued in England with stories being published of atrocities in the colonies and movements to boycott sugar. The children of plantation owners sometimes faced discrimination or ridicule when enrolling in prestigious universities for the ill-gotten wages of their parents. Much like the United States, the nation was increasingly divided but with a growing movement toward a solution that ultimately included abolition.
In the interview I heard with Zoellner, he lauded Samuel Sharpe as being over 100 years ahead of Ghandi or Martin Luther King Jr., advocating for a nonviolent protest by slaves-- picking a date on the calendar and holding a sit-in. Whether Sharpe also advocated for violence or not is a matter of debate. Zoellner examines testimony from court documents of the trials of the rebels. Some witnesses testify to violent intent, and others in defense of the witnesses testify to nonviolence. With white juries, the trials were hardly fair-- Zoellner points to a lone female slave's acquittal as an aberration.
The protest began on Christmas Day, 1831. For whatever reason, on the eve of the sit-in protest-- December 27, 1831 -- a torch was lit and a plantatian went up in flames, which could be seen in the dark for miles. Other plantations began to burn and the alarm spread. Zoellner recounts stories of slaves mercifully packing off their masters before sending the home up in flames. There was division among the slaves, with some simply non-violently refusing to work as Sharpe had advocated, while others joined a roving band in outright rebellion, and others continued working. An estimated 60,000 slaves mobilized in rebellion during what would be known as the "Baptist War" or "Christmas War" or "Samuel Sharpe's War." Sharpe became a figurehead and commander of divisions over a five-week running battle with the militia.
The author remarks on the bravery and discipline of the slaves, many of whom had never fired a weapon before. Some falsely believed that the King of England had granted them emancipation and that the planters were simply denying them their freedom. Many took out to hiding in caves and some escaped into territory where they would never be recaptured. Interestingly, a people group of descendants of former Spanish and Spanish slaves on the islands-- called Maroons -- were allies of the Jamaican militia even though Sharpe sought their assistance.
There were many stories of bravery, with extra-judicial killings by panicked militia. As one commander put it, "Christianity is abrogated by martial law." The British took to decapitating slaves and putting the heads on poles as both a warning and because many slaves' African voodoo beliefs taught that a decapitated person could not go to paradise. Even non-rebellious slaves simply encountering the militia units while traveling to their masters' estates or to market were at risk of being shot. Anyone seen fleeing the militia on the road was considered an enemy. There were also many stories of bravery and slaves who refused to surrender. "Jesus Christ has made me free and I will work for no man." An estimated 14 whites and 207 rebels were killed, and Sharpe and his men were eventually captured and later hanged. Sharpe's trial lasted two hours longer than the others, but the result was the same and the British thereafter sought to strike his name from memory-- he was "rediscovered" in the 1970s.
Remarkable to me was the retribution against white missionaries as well as the massive burning of Baptist and Methodist churches, seen as to blame for the uprising and the loss of income. Only when a leading politician of the island had the foresight to see such activity would only make matters worse for the slaveholders with the British Parliament did the violence abide.
Ultimately, there was the rise of the Whig party and political change in England that left Caribbean sugar planters with few representatives in Parliament. In 1833, the Abolition Act was passed which attempted to create a glidepath to emancipation with government payments (worth five percent of British GDP) to slave-owners to indemnify the the sugar planters now facing paid labor. Children were emancipated while others were put under an apprenticeship system where they would essentially be indentured servants for years before freedom. Zoellner writes that the condition under the apprenticeship years were in some ways worse than slavery, as men were still flogged and tortured for not working and their existence depended solely on their masters-- it was no freedom. Finally, on August 1, 1838-- now a national holiday in Jamaica -- an emancipation proclamation was issued.
Zoellner recounts the transition from slavery to freedom and other movements on the island, including an 1865 uprising against British colonial rule. Ultimately, Jamaica would gain its independence and historians began to take an interest in finding national heroes, such as Samuel Sharpe. He also gives an account of August 1 celebrations and how Samuel Sharpe's War is still celebrated in localities on the island. Five stars.
April 4, 2021
I can't tell you how amazing this book is. Historically accurate but reads like a novel, it's so exciting. In short the story of Samuel Sharpe who inspired 36-60,000 Jamaicans to March on their slavers. They burnt 200 plantations, captured countless slavers but killed few. They inspired the British working class to demand more rights. Jamaicans united united by moral obligation to liberate themselves from cruelties of slavery. Amazing. His legacy lives on
February 22, 2021
A story little known, now revealed
The author has an easy to follow style that moves the reader along through the events. I liked that he told a piece of history little known outside of academia. His argument was strong and his research extensive, even to include oral history that he recognizes is impossible to substantiate.
The author has an easy to follow style that moves the reader along through the events. I liked that he told a piece of history little known outside of academia. His argument was strong and his research extensive, even to include oral history that he recognizes is impossible to substantiate.
May 14, 2021
A narrative history , drawn from primary sources such as are available , of the slave rebellion of Jamaican sugar cane slaves. Wrestles with the fact that slave voices are hard to verify and find as it was forbidden to teach slaves to read and write. The influence of encouraging a mindset of human dignity from the Christian religion and its ministers is explored , in particular Samuel Sharpe. I felt it needed a more explicit clarification of when in sequences and where on the island the events took place , especially in relation to each other. A map and a timeline would have been useful. The conflict between the gradualist and the action now abolitionists back in London was explained. Consumer boycott of products for political change was first used . Interesting read.
Read
July 30, 2021Excellent story telling, and narration. It feels like a reading a novel, more than a historical account. I really appreciated this insight into the history of Jamaica and the discussions of the wider impacts of the revolt.
The book is constructed using historical evidence and accounts, while I can't comment on the accuracy, the author appears aware of the constraints where sources are limited and/or biased.
Contains graphic descriptions of death and the abuse of enslaved peoples, in many forms, and the the lengths they went to for freedom.
The book is constructed using historical evidence and accounts, while I can't comment on the accuracy, the author appears aware of the constraints where sources are limited and/or biased.
Contains graphic descriptions of death and the abuse of enslaved peoples, in many forms, and the the lengths they went to for freedom.
October 23, 2022
This was an incredibly thorough, well-told, and well-researched book about Jamaica's history, always focused on the enslavement of its work force. The Christmas 1831 freedom efforts organized by Sam Sharpe were intended to be peaceful... he essentially organized a workers' strike that turned violent. While the rebellion did not directly end slavery, it pushed the anti-slavery political discourse in England and Parliament to a new place, and resulted in slavery's abolition. This is, of course, a very different outcome than either Haiti, where enslaved people freed themselves, or the United States, where a war was fought over the issue. Zoellner does an excellent job balancing the larger picture of global politics and events, economics, and other 'big picture' issues like tropical diseases with individual stories and personal accounts from newspapers, trials, memoirs, diaries, letters, and other primary sources to give a reader a full picture of Jamaica's journey.
There were a few moments where I thought that an African American, Black Jamaican, or female writer would write things a little differently. That's not a slam against Zoellner, just a recognition that authors bring their worldview to their work. For example, Elizabeth Barrett Browning is nearly the only woman named, and after a first description of her connection to the island as part of a family of wealthy land- and slave-owners, she is constantly brought up as "poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning," a career that has nothing to do with her commentary on her slave-owning family and certainly didn't need to be repeated - especially since men weren't repeatedly described by their careers. Also, any statement that White men came to Jamaica in order to have copious sex with enslaved women (apparently a thing) is blatantly misnamed. They came to rape women. Enslaved women could not give consent. Get it right.
However, the book is overall fantastic for its breadth of storytelling and wide-ranging history. I learned so much, and am appreciative of this new-to-me window on Black slavery in this hemisphere.
There were a few moments where I thought that an African American, Black Jamaican, or female writer would write things a little differently. That's not a slam against Zoellner, just a recognition that authors bring their worldview to their work. For example, Elizabeth Barrett Browning is nearly the only woman named, and after a first description of her connection to the island as part of a family of wealthy land- and slave-owners, she is constantly brought up as "poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning," a career that has nothing to do with her commentary on her slave-owning family and certainly didn't need to be repeated - especially since men weren't repeatedly described by their careers. Also, any statement that White men came to Jamaica in order to have copious sex with enslaved women (apparently a thing) is blatantly misnamed. They came to rape women. Enslaved women could not give consent. Get it right.
However, the book is overall fantastic for its breadth of storytelling and wide-ranging history. I learned so much, and am appreciative of this new-to-me window on Black slavery in this hemisphere.
June 28, 2023
A moving and powerful account of the 1831-1832 slave uprising led by Samuel Sharpe that hastened the end of slavery in Jamaica and by extension the British Empire.
Zoellner utilized archival research, newspapers, as well as memoirs and documents written by the participants living in Jamaica and Britain during the 18th and early 19th centuries. As he highlights, one of the issues historians and chroniclers of Atlantic slavery face is that there is not one first hand account written by an enslaved person themselves. All have been modified by the dominant voices that have shaped and ultimately published these accounts. In other words, the ultimate motivations of people like Samuel Sharpe (and his contemporary Nat Turner) are largely lost and dominant narratives reflecting the power structures of the day have to be read “against the grain” in order to tease out rebellion and revolutionary leaders’ motives and ideas.
In this highly readable and not overly academic account, Zoellner also highlights the contributions of Christian dissenting movements (Methodists and Quakers) in Britain and their missionary work in Jamaica in order to end slavery and forced labor on the sugar plantations that made Britain wealthy. Some abolitionists encouraged the British people not to consume sugar as that fueled the hellish conditions of the enslaved on Jamaica. What was interesting as well, was the contribution of powerful abolitionist women such as Elizabeth Heyrick, who called for the immediate not gradual abolition of West Indian slavery. Enslaved women also played a role in the 1831-32 Christmas uprising as well. Their achievements have been largely ignored and forgotten by historians.
Ultimately an excellent overview and account of Jamaican history through the lens of a specific event and how the event helped lead to emancipation of slaves throughout Jamaica and the British Empire. In addition, an important comparison to what was happening in Haiti as well as the United States at the same time.
Zoellner utilized archival research, newspapers, as well as memoirs and documents written by the participants living in Jamaica and Britain during the 18th and early 19th centuries. As he highlights, one of the issues historians and chroniclers of Atlantic slavery face is that there is not one first hand account written by an enslaved person themselves. All have been modified by the dominant voices that have shaped and ultimately published these accounts. In other words, the ultimate motivations of people like Samuel Sharpe (and his contemporary Nat Turner) are largely lost and dominant narratives reflecting the power structures of the day have to be read “against the grain” in order to tease out rebellion and revolutionary leaders’ motives and ideas.
In this highly readable and not overly academic account, Zoellner also highlights the contributions of Christian dissenting movements (Methodists and Quakers) in Britain and their missionary work in Jamaica in order to end slavery and forced labor on the sugar plantations that made Britain wealthy. Some abolitionists encouraged the British people not to consume sugar as that fueled the hellish conditions of the enslaved on Jamaica. What was interesting as well, was the contribution of powerful abolitionist women such as Elizabeth Heyrick, who called for the immediate not gradual abolition of West Indian slavery. Enslaved women also played a role in the 1831-32 Christmas uprising as well. Their achievements have been largely ignored and forgotten by historians.
Ultimately an excellent overview and account of Jamaican history through the lens of a specific event and how the event helped lead to emancipation of slaves throughout Jamaica and the British Empire. In addition, an important comparison to what was happening in Haiti as well as the United States at the same time.
September 7, 2023
This book was free with my audible subscription and I downloaded it whilst searching for books on Jamaican history.
I have a reasonable grounding in the history of the slave trade and the events that led to emancipation, having read books by David Olusoga, Stella Dadzie and Kris Manjapra. This book however looked in detail at the last few years (early 1830s) leading up to emancipation and the role of the Baptist War in Jamaica
I found it to be very informative. Not only about Jamaican history in the 1830s but also about the wider context in the world, including politics in Britain. There was still plenty of new information for me, whilst points that were generally well known were not laboured over.
I especially liked the last chapter where Zoellner looks at the other events which have been credited as being the driving force for emancipation in the British Caribbean. At no point did this book feel like it was trying to lead me towards a conclusion, it presents as a statement of the known history. It is careful to point out the potential bias of existing historical evidence.
The only downside I found (which may have been due to it being an audiobook) is that it felt like it jumped around in time towards the start. At some points I had to rewind a bit to confirm where we were in the timeline. This may have been less noticeable if reading a printed copy.
I would definitely recommend this to anyone wanting to know more about emancipation in the British Caribbean and Jamaican history in the 1830s.
Although my copy was free, I wouldn't have felt it a wasted purchase if I had bought it.
I have a reasonable grounding in the history of the slave trade and the events that led to emancipation, having read books by David Olusoga, Stella Dadzie and Kris Manjapra. This book however looked in detail at the last few years (early 1830s) leading up to emancipation and the role of the Baptist War in Jamaica
I found it to be very informative. Not only about Jamaican history in the 1830s but also about the wider context in the world, including politics in Britain. There was still plenty of new information for me, whilst points that were generally well known were not laboured over.
I especially liked the last chapter where Zoellner looks at the other events which have been credited as being the driving force for emancipation in the British Caribbean. At no point did this book feel like it was trying to lead me towards a conclusion, it presents as a statement of the known history. It is careful to point out the potential bias of existing historical evidence.
The only downside I found (which may have been due to it being an audiobook) is that it felt like it jumped around in time towards the start. At some points I had to rewind a bit to confirm where we were in the timeline. This may have been less noticeable if reading a printed copy.
I would definitely recommend this to anyone wanting to know more about emancipation in the British Caribbean and Jamaican history in the 1830s.
Although my copy was free, I wouldn't have felt it a wasted purchase if I had bought it.
June 28, 2022
I grew up in Jamaica during the 70s and half of the eighties, and due to the colonialism hangover that was/is neocolonialism, my knowledge of Jamaican history is paltry at best, bookended by Columbus and the Arawaks (Taino more accurately) and the National Heroes and Independence. This book chronicles a labour strike orchestrated by Samuel Sharpe, one of the seven Heroes, in December of 1831, that led to a fiery uprising amongst enslaved people which precipitated the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1834. The author provides a detailed analysis of Jamaica's early history within the Empire and the political and economic forces that made slavery the scaffolding which held up the wealth of England and her monarchy. (Looking at you Lilibet ;))
This work decenters the white saviour narrative and restores agency to the enslaved Blacks who fought relentlessly for their freedom. My one irritation with this book is the interchangeable use of the words 'slaves' and 'enslaved' to describe Black forced labourers. I've been reading about 'slaves' and Europeans going to Africa to 'get slaves' my entire life, and I welcome the modern turn to humanizing my kidnapped and trafficked ancestors who were not ripe bananas on trees for white people to pluck and force them to work for free. Otherwise, a great read!
This work decenters the white saviour narrative and restores agency to the enslaved Blacks who fought relentlessly for their freedom. My one irritation with this book is the interchangeable use of the words 'slaves' and 'enslaved' to describe Black forced labourers. I've been reading about 'slaves' and Europeans going to Africa to 'get slaves' my entire life, and I welcome the modern turn to humanizing my kidnapped and trafficked ancestors who were not ripe bananas on trees for white people to pluck and force them to work for free. Otherwise, a great read!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 22, 2023
Tom Zoelllner makes an attempt to write an interesting book but at the same time makes some rather cringeworthy statements. He states 'The British grabbed the island in a dishonorable manner.' As far as I am aware there is no honourable way to grab land. He also states 'Conversations between enslaved partners after these encounters must have been excruciating.' Although this statement is part of a quote of a book that is sited as a source of a note at the end of the book. What is excruciating is that such a quote is used in the first place when talking about rape.
Zoellner spends far too much of the book on the British and does not in my opinion give enough attention to Samuel Sharpe and the Uprising.
Zoellner spends far too much of the book on the British and does not in my opinion give enough attention to Samuel Sharpe and the Uprising.
April 17, 2021
Relentless research meets powerful storytelling and moral purpose. In the acknowledgments, the author states that he was encouraged to write the book based on a friend's observation that "one of the most useful responses to a time of social crisis is to write history." So we now have a book about another time of social crisis, when courageous enslaved people challenged the system that bound them, and the repercussions of their actions bettered the world. Tom Zoellner approaches the tale from several angles and works hard and successfully to share the humanity of this story's heroes.
July 29, 2022
In the early 19th century many of Engand’s foremost families were building their fortunes on sugar raised and processed under the most horrific conditions by Jamaican slaves. Zoellner relies on primary sources to lead us step-by-step through the chaotic course of the slaves’ Christmas uprising of 1831. The uprising was brutally put down but its real consequence was back in England where awareness of the rebellion and its causes prompted the abolition of slavery in the British empire. Island on Fire is the best kind of thoroughly researched non-fiction yet it reads like a novel.
December 31, 2022
I listened to the audiobook. It was really good, explores how important sugar was to the global economy and modern diet, and also explains the specific context of slavery in Jamaica and why a revolt there could have such major repercussions.
Also, it has been very disenheartening to learn that British taxpayers were still paying compensation to enslavers until a few years ago? We're out here arguing about statues and the British government is still paying people for the loss of their human property. Abhorrent.
Also, it has been very disenheartening to learn that British taxpayers were still paying compensation to enslavers until a few years ago? We're out here arguing about statues and the British government is still paying people for the loss of their human property. Abhorrent.
October 18, 2021
A detailed examination of the invasion of Jamaica by European colonizers, the birth and rapid rise of an especially brutal form of slavery by British citizens imposed on kidnapped Africans, the rebellion of the tortured enslaved people, the inhuman vicious backlash of the British ruling class, and eventual outlawing of slavery by British parliment, and the delayed emancipation of the enslaved in Jamaica.
I'm an American and knew little about the details of Europeans' enslavement of Africans in other countries, and how those countries were emancipated. The path to freedom for Jamaica was decidedly different than that of America. It's worth contrasting and comparing each country's path.
The path taken by Haiti was yet different again, and Haiti was briefly mentioned in this book, but not nearly enough for me. Time to track down that story.
I'm an American and knew little about the details of Europeans' enslavement of Africans in other countries, and how those countries were emancipated. The path to freedom for Jamaica was decidedly different than that of America. It's worth contrasting and comparing each country's path.
The path taken by Haiti was yet different again, and Haiti was briefly mentioned in this book, but not nearly enough for me. Time to track down that story.
November 8, 2022
The connection between slave revolts led by Samuel Sharpe in Jamaica and the end of slavery in Great Britain are explored. It is not a topic I knew anything about before reading the book. There were really interesting aspects regarding the press (how we can only examine what was and wasn’t covered) and the church (spreading of education and freedom). However, there was something with the writing style that never completely grabbed me.
November 14, 2022
The connection between slave revolts led by Samuel Sharpe in Jamaica and the end of slavery in Great Britain are explored. It is not a topic I knew anything about before reading the book. There were really interesting aspects regarding the press (how we can only examine what was and wasn’t covered) and the church (spreading of education and freedom). However, there was something with the writing style that never completely grabbed me.
October 1, 2023
to be sure, I gained much by reading IOF; maybe the writing could have been better.
The research of the history made it well worth the read.
1831, after 300+ years, they rebelled (the Maroons are another story, as there are others but this book covers the revolt that led to slavery's end in the British empire. I, of course, knew none of this. The Brits walked away from slavery, too bad the US could not have followed suit. WE are still fighting about it. Not sure what "it" is or all it encompasses; it just seems to drive so much of our politics. Historically it is complicated.
The research of the history made it well worth the read.
1831, after 300+ years, they rebelled (the Maroons are another story, as there are others but this book covers the revolt that led to slavery's end in the British empire. I, of course, knew none of this. The Brits walked away from slavery, too bad the US could not have followed suit. WE are still fighting about it. Not sure what "it" is or all it encompasses; it just seems to drive so much of our politics. Historically it is complicated.
October 2, 2021
An excellent recounting of the slave revolt in Jamaica, circa 1832. While it was unsuccessful (being brutally repressed by an armed militia sympathetic to the planter class), it did accomplish the goals of slave emancipation in the British Empire, adopted by Parliament in 1834-29 years before the Emancipation Proclamation in the USA.
September 18, 2023
Chronicle of a, or the, slave revolt in Jamaica in the first half of the 19th century. It seemed disjointed to me. I would have preferred a straight forward, chronological narrative of events. Probably impossible to get a real picture of the leaders but I would have liked more information on each main player.
August 9, 2022
Wow! 4.5 stars! The way Zoellner weaves strong historical evidence yet paints the story of villains and heroes keeps you turning the page. He really honors the enslaved people of Jamaica with dignity. The book gave me chills multiple times.
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