The Guardian Weekly 14 January 202258 Culture
T
he word Demerara may mean little
to you, other than being the name of
a large-grained golden brown sugar.
But Demerara is a place, or it was. Now
called Guyana , Demerara was, in the 19th cen-
tury, a British colony of sugar plantations. It was
one of the most lucrative colonies, owing to the
high yield of the land and high productivity of
the enslaved people who worked on it.
The enslaved outnumbered the white
colonists signifi cantly, and had not been inden-
tured for as long a time as others in the Caribbean,
so it was thought that their treatment needed
to be particularly harsh, so as not to encourage
rebellion. It came anyway, in 1823.
Thomas Harding tells the story of one of the
lesser-known uprisings of the colonial
enslavement era, but his book is not
just a work of narrative nonfi ction, it
is an attempt to illustrate that Britain
needs to acknowledge how much of its
greatness it owes to the exploitation
of enslaved people.
For Harding, it’s personal. His
ancestors benefi ted from slavery. But
Harding is also Jewish, and descended
from Germans who either perished in
the Holocaust or were forced to fl ee
and had their properties stolen. Hard-
ing received a sum in restitution from
the German government, and these
reparations compelled him to examine the other
part of his family’s legacy. “If I was willing to iden-
tify as a victim in my father’s family, to receive
reparations from the German government, then
surely I had better understand Britain’s role in
slavery,” he writes.
Harding understands how much of Britain’s
history is skewed towards narratives that placeT
im Bergling – the Swedish DJ and
producer known as Avicii – killed him-
self in Muscat, Oman , in April 2018 at
the age of 28. The successful but trou-
bled electronic dance music star had retired
from relentless touring in 2016 to focus on his
wellbeing. He had weaned himself off opioids- prescribed by doctors when bouts of alcohol-
induced pancreatitis led to debilitating pain
and, later, surgery. He had a therapist, friends,
donated to charities. He meditated.
Having crossed over from pure
party music to making tracks along-
side stars such as Coldplay and Nile
Rodgers , Bergling was working on
new m aterial he was excited about. A
documentary about his meteoric rise
and stress levels – Avicii: True Stories –
was broadcast in 2017, seemingly with
a happy ending.
Stardom has always come at a high
price but, in EDM, capitalising on your
hot streak seemed especially urgent.
it as the virtuous protagonist in the account of
slavery because the actual protagonists, the
enslaved themselves, were never the centre of
their own stories. He corrects this by carefully
researching the characters of those enslaved on
Demerara, and paying attention to how they are
described. He replaces the N-word with “negro”,
and refers to slaves as “enslaved”, as well as put-
ting in quotation marks all markers of ownership- “purchased”, “belonged”, “owned”. Those who
participated in the uprising he refers to as “abo-
litionists” – the term “rebels” implies that they
were challenging a legitimate system. The eff ect
is striking, demonstrating that slavery was a daily
aberration in which one class actively suppressed
another. With these small but hugely considered
edits, Harding delivers a masterclass
in how authors of history can play an
active role, for good and for bad, in
how these moral questions are framed.
The account of the uprising itself
centres on its participants, their
domestic lives and stirring hopes for
emancipation. As the uprising surges
and then is violently suppressed,
I found myself asking : why didn’t
I know about this? Why are we so
familiar with the drawl of the Ameri-
can slave “owner” and the caricatures
of slavery in movies such as Django
Unchained , but not with the large cast
of British characters?
The answer is that it is those characters who
got to write British history. And through slav-
ery, they amassed such wealth and infl uence
that they managed to launch themselves from
humble beginnings into political aristocracy.
White Debt is written sparingly – there are no
sanctimonious lectures on the evils of slavery or
White Debt:
The Demerara
Uprising and
Britain’s Legacy
of Slavery
By Thomas HardingBIOGRAPHYHISTORYDeath of a DJ
An intimate study oftroubled Avicii who,
despite stepping away
from the club scene,
took his own lifeNo sugar coating
In telling the story of
the Demerara uprising,
the author reveals that
Britain’s version of its
involvement in slavery
is not the whole truth
By Kitty EmpireBy Nesrine MalikAside from the usual hedonism, the hours an
ambitious, in-demand DJ had to keep were
gruelling: multiple gigs in one night, sometimes
in diff erent countries , and scant basic self-care.
Tim: The Offi cial Biography of Avicii retells
Bergling’s story, adding considerable context and
lashings of pain: parents Klas and Anki Bergling
are major sources. Written by Swedish journalist
Måns Mosesson and translated by a US academic,
Brad Harmon, the book’s slightly wide-eyed tone
fi nds strai t-laced grown ups grappling
with the extremes of youth, from
World of Warcraft – an obsession of the
younger Bergling – to club culture, via
the monomaniacal perfectionism of
digital music-making.
M osesson is very good on the path
to fame and the wider ecosystem
around Avicii. A shy, curious, stub-
born youngster who feared he would
get cancer, he suff ered from serious
acne and social anxiety, aff ecting his
self-esteem. An interest in the esotericTim: The Official
Biography of Avicii
By Måns Mosesson ,
translated by
Brad HarmonBooks