The Enigma of Jamaica in the 1790s: New Light on the Causes of Slave Rebellions

Abstract

HE history of resistance to slavery in the British Caribbean reveals a remarkable paradox. It was precisely during the "Age of Revolution" (1776-I815), when French St. Domingue experienced the most successful slave revolt of all time, that the frequency of slave rebellions and conspiracies reached an all-time low in the British colonies. The case of Jamaica appears especially enigmatic. That island's slaves made an impressive record of violent resistance from the seventeenth century to the i830s. Yet the slave regime there seems hardly ever to have been so stable as during the 179oS,1 a decade that brought not only the massive uprising in neighboring St. Domingue but also the epochal abolition of slavery by the French Republic. At first sight, Jamaica in the 1790s would appear to have been the most vulnerable of all slave societies to the inflammatory example of St. Domingue and attempts of proselytizing agents to spread its message. Although not quite as close to St. Domingue as were its Spanish neighbors, Cuba and Santo Domingo, Jamaica possessed by far the largest concentration of slaves within a day's sail of the scene of revolt. Moreover, while Spain and the French Republic were allies after 1795, the imperial rulers of Jamaica and St. Domingue were at war during almost all the period in view. British planters had additional cause for alarm in the progress of the antislavery campaign in Britain, which was much discussed in Jamaica and in England almost led to parliamentary abolition of the slave trade six months after the uprising began in St. Domingue.2