![]() ![]() ![]() At 1,000-strong, it was the largest rebellion in the British Empire that century. For 18 long months between 17, slaves turned the whip on their masters. ![]() But slaves were perfectly capable of fighting for their own freedoms, as the Harvard historian Vincent Brown shows in Tacky’s Revolt, his careful reconstruction of an understudied footnote in Jamaican history. It’s from this civilised viewpoint, top-down and half the world away, that we still tell the story of the abolition movement, William Wilberforce and the House of Commons, the great breakers of chains. Masters routinely raped their slaves, punished minor wrongdoings by forcing one to shit in another’s mouth and even burnt some at the stake while growing the cane destined to sweeten the tea tables of London salons, Oxbridge dons or Hampshire parsons. In the shadows of the British Enlightenment lurked the Caribbean sugar plantations. ![]()
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