16 saturday review Saturday January 1 2022 | the timesplantation to plantation, gathering follow-
ers and placing their overseers in stocks
used to punish slaves. Gladstone insisted,
however, that colonists should not other-
wise be harmed. The insurrection event-
ually encompassed 30 estates and about
12,000 slaves, making it the largest such
revolt in British history. It was, however,
always doomed. On the third day the rebels
encountered a unit of 200 local militia,
disciplined and well armed. After 15 min-
utes of concentrated fire hundreds of
slaves lay dead. Not a single militiaman was
injured. The insurrection was over.
Then came the reprisals. Rebels were
hunted down, given a quick “trial” and
shot, lynched or decapitated. Others were
imprisoned and tried over the following
months. The few who avoided the death
penalty were given punishments of up to
1,000 lashes. If they survived, they were
sent to a workhouse prison for the rest of
their lives. Harding estimates that between
500 and 1,000 were killed, probably more
than at Amritsar in 1919. That massacre is
familiar, yet hardly anyone today knowsbooks
ALAMYSlavery: me and
my white guilt
I
n December 1823 the shopkeeper
John Cheveley returned to Demerara
(now part of Guyana) after a short
break in England. Georgetown, the
capital, was still under martial law after
a slave revolt in August. Turning a corner,
he came across a dozen decapitated heads
stuck on pikes, a warning to would-be
insurrectionists. Around another corner
he encountered the body of Quamina, an
alleged ringleader, hanged from a gibbet.
His corpse had hung there since Septem-
ber, the flesh falling away. A colony of
wasps, having taken up residence in his
abdomen, were flying in and out of his jaw.
That image is brutal, but so was slavery.
In 1833, when slavery was abolished across
the British Empire, more than 46,000
Britons owned slaves. They received a
total of £20 million in compensation for
their loss of property, or about £17 billion
in today’s money. Given the passage of
time and the proliferation of descendants,
it’s safe to assume that almost everyone in
Britain has a slaveholder perched some-
where in their family tree.
Thomas Harding’s family didn’t own
slaves, but as tobacco merchants they
profited hugely from the institution. “My
ancestors chose financial advancement
over compassion for other human beings,”
he writes. “They benefited from slavery.
They benefited from other people’s suffer-
ing. For this, I am very sorry.” White Debt
is his atonement.
Harding’s history is complicated. “My
family has been persecuted for being
Jewish,” he writes, “and... my Jewish
family benefited from slavery.” His father’sparents fled Nazi oppression, a subject he
wrote movingly about in The House by the
Lake. His latest book is his mea culpa for
the slavery connection on his mother’s
side of the family. “Writing about all this
makes me deeply uncomfortable,” he
confesses. “There’s also shame.”
Harding sought atonement by research-
ing the Demerara uprising of 1823. He
intersperses that story with reflections
about his own process of reckoning. He’s
not a historian, nor indeed an expert on
imperialism or slavery. “I am reminded...
how much I have to learn,” he admits at
one point. The gaps in his knowledge are
sometimes astonishing and his naivety
occasionally painful to behold.
He charts the uprising through the
intersecting lives of four men. The first
is Jack Gladstone, a young slave who
launched the rebellion after his frustration
at the cruelty of slavery overflowed. The
second is John Smith, a newly arrived mis-
sionary. Before embarking for Demerara,
he was told that his role was to render his
parishioners the “most diligent, faithful,
patient and useful servants... and make
them the most valuable slaves on the
estates”. Smith was torn between that
remit and the everyday brutality he wit-
nessed. While writing sermons, he could
hear slaves being whipped. “Every three
seconds a crack, another scream of pain.”
Harding also introduces John Glad-
stone, the father of the future prime minis-
ter William Ewart Gladstone. He owned
seven sugar plantations in Demerara and
1,778 slaves. Although he had never set foot
in the colony, he was certain that his slaves
were a “contented and happy people” who
lived in “roomy and commodious” dwell-
ings and were well fed. Finally, Harding
tells the story of Cheveley, whose connec-
tion to the uprising is marginal but who
conveniently left a memoir behind.
The rebellion was launched on August 18.
Led by Jack Gladstone, rebels moved fromabout Demerara. “I am truly shocked by
the brutality and scale of the British mili-
tia’s response to the uprising,” Harding
writes. Anyone familiar with empire
would not be shocked.
Jack Gladstone was found guilty of incit-
ing the insurrection, but he avoided execu-
tion when John Gladstone urged leniency
among his friends in parliament. He feared
that adverse publicity might be exploited
by the abolitionist movement, which
would endanger the viability of his human
property. For him, Harding writes, “it was
always about money”. As for Smith, he
was accused of encouraging the revolt by,
among other things, preaching about how
enslaved Israelites had won their freedom.
Found guilty of treason, he was sentenced
to death. A reprieve was eventually grant-
ed, but not before he died in prison.
The Demerara episode graphically
reveals the cruelties of colonialism, not to
mention British myopia towards the atroc-
ities. Harding tells the story with impress-
ive drama and detail, but relies heavily on
the research of unsung black historians
who are the real experts on this subject.
There’s something slightly sordid about a
bestselling white author taking this story
from black historians, especially given
Harding’s avowed purpose of atonement.
It pains me to criticise this book because
I sympathise with its purpose. Slavery was
unquestionably evil and should be exposed
as such. Nor should slavery be safely con-
fined to the past, when moral standards
were supposedly different. The issue re-
mains relevant today. As Harding argues,
“The roots of today’s systemic racial
inequality are found buried in Britain’s
colonial past.” That’s undoubtedly true.
A reckoning is needed. That might
involve a formal apology or even repara-
tions, as Harding advocates. Meaningful
closure, however, does not necessitate
taking possession of guilt, as the author is
inclined to do. A story about black suffering
becomes instead a story about white guilt.
Harding’s self-indulgent diatribes about his
own emotional journey are sanctimonious,
cloying and frequently cringeworthy.
At one point Harding speaks to the artist
Hew Locke, who has roots in Guyana. “If
white people talk about slavery,” Locke
argues, “they should do so sensitively: it
shouldn’t be all about ‘me and my white
guilt’.” A certain self-awareness is neces-
sary to understand that message.This story of Britain’s
biggest slave revolt is
made too personal,
says Gerard DeGroot
White Debt
The Demerara Uprising
and Britain’s Legacy
of Slavery
by Thomas HardingWeidenfeld & Nicolson,
300pp; £20doomed Georgetown’s
monument to the
Demerara Uprising