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5a. Did ‘the monster’ really die in 1838?NotetakerWhen encountering a source of evidence, we can ask the following questions:1. Provenance: What type of source is it? Who produced it and why? Does this make it a more or a less reliable source of evidence of the conditions of the enslaved people of Jamaica? Why? 2. What does the source say and what does it reveal of of the conditions of the enslaved people of Jamaica at the time? (*which ‘public’?)3. How valuable (revealing + reliable) is the source as evidence of the conditions of the enslaved people of Jamaica?When encountering an event, we should ask the following questions: 1. What could the event reveal of public opinion towards of the conditions of the enslaved people of Jamaica at the time?2. How confident can we be of this? Why?1760Tacky's RevoltAn uprising of enslaved people on the Island of Jamaica. Named after one of the supposed leaders of the revolt, an 'Akan' man kidnapped from the 'Gold Coast', it was the largest uprising by enslaved persons on Jamaica in the 18th century. Over the course of eighteen months the rebels killed as many as sixty whites and destroyed many thousands of pounds worth of property. During the suppression of the revolt over five hundred black men and women were killed in battle, executed, or committed suicide. Another 500 were transported from the island for life. Colonists valued the total cost to the island at nearly a quarter of a million pounds.Source A: Historian and Jamaican Slave Owner Edward Long publishes a book about Jamaica entitled - ‘History, Vol. 2’ – in 1774Context: Edward Long was a Jamaican planter/ slave owner, pro-slavery activist and self-styled ‘Historian’. His ‘Histories’ – published in multiple volumes – were written soon after the Mansfield Judgement in the Somerset Case (1772).Although initially well read, his work became even more popular after the abolition of Slavery by racist theorists, scientists and philosophers in Britain such as Thomas Carlyle in 1847. Some even used it as justification for British colonialism in West Africa in the late 19th Century.left43619500CH: Long, E. History of Jamaica, Vol. 2, p. 2671781 -3Zong MassacreThe killing of more than 130 African slaves by the crew of the British slave ship on and in the days following 29 November 1781. Enslaved persons were murdered (being thrown overboard) in order to claim insurance payments. Such everyday brutality was typical of the system. However when the insurers refused to pay out to the ship's owners, the resulting court cases instigated some public horror at the system in Britain. 1795"Second Maroon War in Jamaica"The agreement between West Indians and the Maroons that had lasted since the First Maroon War broke down. The prospects of a general slave revolt (the fear of St. Domingue provided a horrifying warning to the planters), meant troops were sent immediately to Montego Bay. Maroon efforts to incite slaves to revolt were, however, largely unsuccessful, most slaves having little liking for the Maroons. Eventually many Maroons did surrender, and over 500 were transported to Nova Scotia.1807Abolition of the Slave Trade ActAfter years of failed attempts led by Clarkson and 'the Society' in public, and William Wilberforce in Parliament, the Act made it illegal to engage in the slave trade throughout the British colonies. This, it was hoped by abolitionists, would force Slave Owners to improve their treatment of Enslaved Persons as 'replacement' labour would become illegal. However trafficking between the Caribbean islands continued, regardless, until 1811 and within islands remained legal up until 1833. Slavery in the British Empire, however, was still legal. Source B: James Hakewill’s Plate depicting a monument to Thomas Hibbert on his plantation Agualta Vale in Jamaica (1820-21)Context: James Hakewill, an English Architect and acclaimed painter took the opportunity to tour Jamaica, trust on the hospitality of planters and ultimately impress upon them the merits of having their estates immortalized. In the early 1820s when these paintings where being engraved the institution of slavery under serious pressure, facing heavy criticism from a new wave of abolitionists. Painting discontented slaves would do the sugar barons’ cause no good. Similarly the slave villages were always shrouded or entirely out of view in these paintings so as not to juxtapose them with the Great Houses. To the economists who were against slavery as it was an obsolete model of capitalism that no longer profits them, the slaves were painted as being industrious, able bodied workers.So as to encourage further investment into sugar from merchants in the metropolis the estates were shown to be well managed (ripe, neat fields, buildings in good repair). To persons who might be considering to migrate to the tropics the environment was depicted as healthy contrary to popular consensus that it was a white man’s grave.left34163000Chandra Smellie.Source : Plate depicting a monument to Thomas Hibbert on his plantation Agualta Vale in Jamaica. Artist James Hakewill. A Picturesque Tour of the island of Jamaica, from drawings made in the years 1820 and 1821 ? The Boston Public Library.1823Canning ResolutionsA series of measures proposed by the British government for the improvement, or 'amelioration', of conditions for the enslaved in the Caribbean. Foreign Secretary George Canning had consulted members of the proslavery lobby – the Society of West India Planters and Merchants – and the measures were limited. However the Jamaica Assembly was particularly resistant to the changes because they argued that these measures undermined the principle that each colony should legislate for its own internal affairs.Source C: A pamphlet written by Robert Hibbert Jnr in 1825 entitled ‘Hints to the young Jamaica Sugar Planter’. Context The 1820s saw a reenergising of the abolitionist movement and subsequently a reaction from the pro-slavery voices in Britain and Jamaica. Nephew of ‘the founding’ Hibbert – Thomas - Robert Hibbert Jnr wrote a widely read pro-slavery pamphlet in 1825 'Hints to the young Jamaica Sugar Planter’.Hibbert of course had considerable economic interest in the preservation of Slavery in Jamaica – including his cousins continued acquisition of enslaved persons and plantations (see source B).1831 -2Baptist WarAlso known as the Christmas Rebellion, it was an eleven-day rebellion that mobilized as many as sixty thousand of Jamaica’s three hundred thousand slaves in 1831–1832. Considered the largest slave rebellion in the British Caribbean and the most notable since Tacky's in 1760. Led by an enslaved Baptist preacher Samuel Sharpe, the uprising is seen by many historians as a catalyst for the Abolition of Slavery Act that came a year later.1833Abolition of Slavery ActIn 1833 Parliament passed an act abolishing slavery in the Caribbean, Mauritius and the Cape of Good Hope. A period of apprenticeship was forced upon the formerly enslaved people of 5 years (in effect to pay back their owners for the 'skills' they'd acquired from them). The British government also paid out ?20 million of compensation to the slave-owners- approximately 40 per cent of government's annual expenditure at the time.1838 +Enforcement of 'Free Labour' in JamaicaIn an agriculturally abundant island like Jamaica, plantation owners were fearful that they would be unable to force to emancipated to continue to work on their land- or that they would have to pay them well in order for them to do so. Indeed emancipated workers were keen to develop economic independence and avoid working for white planters. Across Jamaica various measures were put in place after 1833 to ensure planter supremacy - vagrancy laws that made it effectively illegal to not work, or travel beyond your parish, land prices were exaggerated to prevent Black ownership, 'indentured labourers' were trafficked fromelsewhere in the empire (India and China) to create competition between workers for jobs. Source D: William Knibb’s memoirs published by J H Hinton (1847) – extracts from events in 1824 & 1838.ContextWilliam Knibb, (1803 - 1845) was an English Baptist minister and missionary to Jamaica who took up the cause of abolition as he arrived in Jamaica and saw the conditions of those enslaved. He was regularly threatened by pro-slavery activists and planters. These extracts are taken from his memoirs, published by J H Hinton (an English author and fellow Baptist Minister who knew Knibb) in 1847– after his death and with some editing. They were created using a collection of his diaries and letters. Both Knibb and Hinton are pictured in the World Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 and were notable abolitionists. 1824 [Extract]‘The cursed blast of slavery has, like a pestilence, withered almost every moral bloom. I know not how any person can feel a union with such a monster, such a child of hell. I feel a burning hatred against it and look upon it as one of the most odious monsters that ever disgraced the earth . . . the iron hand of oppression daily endeavors to keep the slaves in the ignorance to which it has reduced them.’1838 [Extract][describing events on as the clock struck midnight on August 1st 1838]He point to the fact of the clock, and said, “the hour is at hand the monster is dying.” Having heard its first note, he exclaimed, “The clock is striking;” and having waited for its last note, he cried out, “The monster is dead: the negro is free.” During these few moments the congregation had been as still as death, and breathless wieth expectation ; but when the last word had been spoken, they simultaneously rose, and broke into a loud and long-continued burst of exultation. “Never,” says Knibb, writing to Dr. Hoby, “never did I heard such a sound. The winds of freedom appeared to have been let loose”.Source E : Evidence submitted by Thomas Cooper to the Lords Committee on the Condition and Treatment of the Colonial Slaves of Reverend (1833)Context: Robert junior’s Jamaica-born cousin Robert consolidated the family interest in western Jamaica through the purchase of two estates (plantations) in Hanover – Georgia and the Great Valley in 1815. In 1817 there were 380 enslaved people on the latter – 195 women and 185 men. Dundee estate, with its workforce of 226 enslaved people was bought just over a decade later.Like his cousin (see source B), the acquisition of Georgia resulted in Robert becoming involved in the abolition controversies. In 1817 he sent a Unitarian missionary, Revered Thomas Cooper, to his estates to preach to the enslaved workers. The move, conceived of as an ameliorative gesture of a benevolent planter, backfired when Cooper published a critical account of his time in Jamaica. Initially the issues he raised were focused on the lack of access to religion and education, as opposed to extreme brutality. But soon enough Cooper gave scathing reports on the conditions of the enslaved, despite the implementation of the Canning resolutions. In 1832 when Cooper gave evidence to the House of Lords. Adapted from Donington, Katie, The bonds of family: Slavery, commerce and culture in the British Atlantic world (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019). Chapter 2 ‘Jamaica’. P.23:A young woman came up to him and told him to look at her. She turned around, and all across she was cut in a dreadful manner, and the blood running. They were removing dung and she could not keep up with the rest. She had no idea the driver did it out of spite; he might or he might not.Evidence submitted by Reverend Thomas Cooper in 1833 to Parliament. Abstract of the Report of the Lords Committee on the Condition and Treatment of the Colonial Slaves and of the Evidence Taken by Them on that Subject (London: J. Hatchard & Son, 1833), p. 114.1843Jamaican Assembly passes Towns and Communities ActOne of several laws passed by the Jamaican Assembly to regulate the congregation / assembling of people in Jamaica - it helped enforce the criminalisation of vagrancy and a system that benefitted the remaining plantation owners who were anxious to ensure the required labourers for their land. -264015555726Source F – 1843 Jamaican Assembly passes Towns and Communities Act (Page 15-16)left1364627001846Equalization of Sugar Duties beginsWestminster passed the Sugar Duties Act, eliminating Jamaica's (and other sugar producers in the British West Indies) traditionally favoured status as its primary supplier of sugar. This infuriated the West India lobby who had agreed to end the apprenticeship system early in return for the maintenance of protectionn. Jamaica's sugar economy was adversely affected and many of the formerly enslaved struggled to find sufficient work.1863Jamaican ElectionsIn the election of 1863 only 1,457 people on the entire island met the property qualifications required to vote, and the Jamaican Assembly was controlled by a white elite made up of the same old families and plantation owners who had run the island before emancipation1865Morant Bay RebellionConditions for the formerly enslaved population of Jamaica had failed to improve - many were forced to work on the same plantations they had worked on before the 1830s. Discontent grew and a small protest march in south-east Jamaica to a courthouse led by preacher Paul Bogle ended violently and left dozens dead on both sides. In response, Governor Eyre of Jamaica instituted 'martial law', sending in troops to indiscriminately execute up to a thousand. Such a response revealed the limits of freedom for the formerly enslaved and their descendants in Jamaica. 1866Jamaican House of Assembly replaced by Legislative Council and Crown Colony statusThe Morant Bay rising so alarmed the white planters that governor Edward John Eyre and the Colonial Office succeeded in persuading the two-centuries-old assembly to vote to abolish itself and ask for the establishment of direct British rule (something West Indian Planters had previously declared an imposition on their liberty). The practice of barring non-whites from public office was reinstated and an unstated alliance – based on shared color, attitudes, and interest – between the British officials and the Jamaican upper class was reinforced in London, where the West India Committee (a renamed version of the London Society of West India Planters and Merchants) lobbied for Jamaican interests.Source G: An anonymous placard posted on a cotton tree on a main road in Morant Bay on 11 August 1865.Context : On 11 August 1865, an anonymous placard was posted on a cotton tree on the main road in Morant Bay (South-East of Jamaica). It was an exhortation: 2 months later, the ‘Morant Bay War’ occurs.People of St Thomas ye East, you have been ground down too long already. Shake off your sloth, and speak like honourable and free men at your meeting. Let not a crafty, jesuitical priesthood deceive you. Prepare for your duty. Remember the destitution in the midst of your families, and your forlorn condition. 1944Universal Suffrage grantedFull adult franchise granted, after major strikes & disturbances of 1938, led at first by sugar workers on Tate and Lyle’s Frome Estate, the adult franchise was finally granted (in 1944) and government reform initiated. Prior to that, the right to vote was determined by the amount of wealth or property a man held (excluding many Black Jamaicans), and women were not allowed to vote at all. The new system extended voting rights to adults irrespective of their race, sex, or social class.1962Jamaican IndependenceJamaica became an Independent Nation and a member of the British Commonwealth, with The Queen as Head of State. On that day, the Union Jack was ceremonially lowered and replaced by the Jamaican flag throughout the country. ................
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