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The Demerara uprising (depicted here in a
sanitised version of events by colonist
Joshua Bryant) breathed new life into the
abolition movement in Britain,
argues Thomas HardingCaribbean. And white people are still benefiting from those legacies.
Of course, it’s a complicated issue, and there are other challenges at
play such as wealth and class, but I believe that white people have a
special responsibility for what happened. As a society, we need to
address the debt that is owed from this horrific slave society that we
ran for hundreds of years.9J[YCUVJG&GOGTCTCWRTKUKPIUWEJCUKIPKECPVOQOGPVKPVJG
story of slavery and abolition?
It’s estimated that between 12,000 and 15,000 people took part in the
uprising, which at the time was the largest slave uprising anywhere in
the British empire. But it was significant for its impact as well as its
size. The anti-slavery movement in Britain was in the doldrums in the
early 1820s; it had lost momentum. But when news of the uprising in
Demerara hit Britain, there was a huge controversy, particularly
around the trial of John Smith and accounts of horrific treatment of
the enslaved people. This conversation was taking place not just in
parliament, where there was a two-day debate, but across the country.
Newspaper articles printed trial transcripts verbatim and hundreds of
thousands of people signed petitions calling for abolition.
The anti-slavery movement was re-energised to the extent that,
by the mid-1820s, it was a force to be reckoned with. And in 1834, the
Abolition of Slavery bill was enacted, leading to the emancipation
of more than 600,000 enslaved people across the British Caribbean.
Freedom wasn’t immediate, though. Many enslaved people had
to serve apprenticeships, and, even then, conditions remained
exploitative. Meanwhile, more than 60,000 British slaveholders were
compensated for their financial loss.
The Demerara uprising was very much
at the centre of this shift in fortunes for
enslaved people in the Caribbean. That’s
why those involved should be thought
of as abolitionists and need to be remem-
bered for their heroic role in the story of
emancipation.up and shoot them. Within a couple of weeks, at least 500 people,
including those at Batchelor’s Adventure, had been killed. After that,
there were court martial trials, in which at least 50 people were found
guilty. They were hanged in the old parade ground in downtown
Georgetown, their heads cut off and put on spikes and placed both in
Georgetown and at the entrance to plantations, as a message to the
enslaved people across the colony. The massacre at Bachelor’s Adven-
ture and the events that followed are a real stain on British history.You visited Guyana to speak to people about this history and its
legacy today. So how was that experience?
Researching this story, I felt I had to go to the places where it happened,
to walk the land and to meet people. I was lucky to meet some of the
top historians in Guyana, who were very generous in sharing their
research. Travelling through Guyana, I was struck by how the history
is still remembered, not only by memorials, but in the names of the
places and streets. Murray Street, named after the governor at the
time of the uprising, is now Quamina Street, named for one of the
leaders of the uprising. The legacy of the horror has been passed down
the generations and is still remembered. Every year, there is a ceremo-
ny called Maafa, which commemorates the tens of thousands of
enslaved people who were transported from Africa to Demerara.The title of your book is White Debt. Could you explain the
meaning behind that title?
The people of Britain benefited enormously from the wealth that came
from enslavement for hundreds of years. The vast majority of those
who were involved with the slave system (transporting enslaved
people, running plantations, shipping commodities back to Britain)
were white. So too were the people who profited from those imported
commodities (like my own family, who had a tobacco business), as
well as the general population who benefited from the wealth that
poured into the country from the Caribbean.
According to the descendants of enslaved people I spoke with, the
legacies of slavery are still being felt both in Britain and in theMORE FROM USListen to an extended
version of this interview
with Thomas Harding
on our podcast at
historyextra.com/podcast