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Slavery and Freedom in the British West Indies, 1823–33: The Role of Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Olwyn Mary Blouet
Olwyn Mary Blouet*
Affiliation:
History Department at the College of William and Mary
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Extract

“Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves; Britons, never, never, never, shall be slaves.” So ran the popular eighteenth-century, nationalistic, freedom song. The people of Britain were proud of their liberties and would fight to uphold them against the hated French enemy. But would slaves ever be Britons? Would slaves ever be free? These questions were very real because during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries hundreds of thousands of black, African slaves were transported to the British West Indian colonies, where the majority labored on sugar plantations.

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Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , Winter 1990 , pp. 625 - 643
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1. The song was adapted from Thomson's, James poem Alfred, 1740, act 2, sc. 5.Google Scholar

2. See Dunn, Richard S., Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1972).Google Scholar

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32. Educational data are derived from “Extracts from Returns Relating to the Slave Population in the West Indies,” Parliamentary Papers (hereafter PP), 1831–32, vol. 47, 1–88 and appendices. For further details consult Turner, Slaves and Missionaries, 87–88, and Blouet, Olwyn M., “To Make Society Safe for Freedom: Slave Education in Barbados,” Journal of Negro History 65 (Spring 1980): 126–34.Google Scholar

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60. PP, 1831–32, vol. 20, pp. 68–69.Google Scholar

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66. Ibid., 255. Knibb estimated he had about 2,500 “inquirers.”Google Scholar

67. Reverend Charles Cummins to Jackson, John, 4 Sep. 1834, Inwards, F. C., British and Foreign Bible Society Archives. Total population figures are taken from Jerome S. Handler, Unappropriated People: Freedmen in the Slave Society of Barbados (Baltimore, 1974), 18–19.Google Scholar

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69. Many people believed that the end of slavery was a long time away. Only in 1831 and 1832 did the idea of immediate abolition gain widespread support. See Davis, , “Emergence of Immediatism,” 229. Several factors were important in this change in attitude, including West Indian legislative prevarication concerning amelioration, and the actions of the slaves themselves, demonstrated in the Jamaica Rebellion of 1831. The Reform of Parliament in 1832 was crucial to the cause of anti-slavery, as were petitions and organized support in England. For a recent listing of factors, see Blackburn, Robin, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848 (London, 1988), 465. For parliamentary details see Gross, Izhak, “The Abolition of Negro Slavery and British Parliamentary Politics, 1832–33,” Historical Journal 23 (Mar. 1980): 63–85. See also Reckord, Mary, “The Colonial Office and the Abolition of Slavery,” Historical Journal 14 (1971): 723–34; and Richard Hart, Slaves Who Abolished Slavery (Mona, Jamaica, 1980).Google Scholar

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79. PP, 1831–32, vol. 20, p. 199, Evidence of Vice Admiral Fleming, Charles. The oral and print culture existed side by side. Graff, The Legacies of Literacy, 331.Google Scholar

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