Chapter 10 - Empire and Evidence in Armadale and the Morant Bay Rebellion

Summary

Rather than expressing Wilkie Collins’ perspective on the Morant Bay Rebellion, Armadale [GK10]existed in a dialogic relation to the crisis, which occurred year into its serialization. This article illuminates that relationship by placing Armadale [GK11]in dialogue with the story of Sidney Levien, an English Jew, falsely charged with inciting the rebellion. It documents the parallels between Collins’ heroic mixed-race West Indian protagonist and the mixed-race Jamaican George William Gordon, illegally executed after the rebellion, and between Collins’ exposé of the dangers unreliable evidence and conspiracy and the conspiracy and misuse of evidence in the cases brought against Gordon and Levien. It concludes that the Rebellion transformed Armadale [GK12]into a critique of Eyre and Empire, and that British newspapers, because they covered Armadale [GK13]and Morant Bay in close proximity, invited readers to apply Collins’ lessons on evidence to Britain’s investigation into Eyre and thereby to recognize the government’s failure to uncover Eyre’s conspiracy with white planters against Gordon and Levien.