The Morant Bay Rebellion
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rebellion that broke out in Jamaica on 11th October 1865 when Paul Bogle (1822-65) led a protest march from Stony Gut to the courthouse in nearby Morant Bay. There were many grounds for grievance that day and soon anger turned to bloodshed. Although the British had abolished slavery 30 years before, the plantation owners were still dominant and the conditions for the majority of people on Jamaica were poor. The British governor suppressed this rebellion brutally and soon people in Jamaica lost what right they had to rule themselves. Some in Britain, like Charles Dickens, supported the governor’s actions while others, like Charles Darwin, wanted him tried for murder.
Guests
-
Matthew J Smith No other episodes
Professor of History and Director of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at University College London -
Diana Paton No other episodes
The William Robertson Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh - Lawrence Goldman
10 episodes
Emeritus Fellow in History at St Peter's College, University of Oxford
Reading list
-
The History of Jamaica
Clinton V. Black (Collins Educational, 1983) Google Books → -
The Economy of Intellectual Prestige: Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and the Case of Governor Eyre
Catherine Hall (Cultural Critique, 1989) -
Free Jamaica: An Economic History, 1838-1865
Douglas Hall (Yale University Press, 1959) -
The 'Killing Time': The Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica
Gad Heuman (University of Tennessee Press, 1995) Google Books → -
The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832-1938
Thomas Holt (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991) Google Books → -
Colour for Colour, Skin for Skin: Marching with the Ancestral Spirits Into War Oh at Morant Bay
Clinton A. Hutton (Ian Randle, 2015) Google Books → -
Jamaica's Morant Bay Rebellion: Brutality and Outrage in the British Empire
Richard Huzzey (History Extra, October 2021) -
A Jurisprudence of Power: Victorian Empire and the Rule of Law
R. W. Kostal (Oxford University Press, 2005) Google Books → -
No Bond but the Law: Punishment, Race, and Gender in Jamaican State Formation, 1780-1870
Diana Paton (Duke University Press, 2004) Google Books → -
The Governor Eyre Controversy
Bernard Semmel (MacGibbon & Kee, 1962) Google Books → -
On the Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica and the Governor Eyre-George William Gordon Controversy, 1865-70
Sarah Winter (BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History, ed. Dino Franco Felluga, May 2012)
Related episodes
-
The Gordon Riots
2 May, 2019 940 History of Europe -
The Haitian Revolution
23 Oct, 2014 970 History of North America -
The Jacobite Rebellion
8 May, 2003 940 History of Europe -
The Zong Massacre
26 Nov, 2020 320 Political science -
1848: Year of Revolution
19 Jan, 2012 900 History -
The Peasants’ Revolt
16 Nov, 2006 940 History of Europe -
The Irish Rebellion of 1798
8 Dec, 2022 940 History of Europe -
The Fable of the Bees
25 Oct, 2018 330 Economics -
The Indian Mutiny
18 Feb, 2010 950 History of Asia -
The Shimabara Rebellion
11 May, 2023 950 History of Asia -
The Putney Debates
18 Apr, 2013 320 Political science -
Slavery and Empire
17 Oct, 2002 900 History -
The Poor Laws
20 Dec, 2018 360 Social problems and social services -
The Treaty of Limerick
7 Nov, 2019 940 History of Europe -
Wilberforce
22 Feb, 2007 320 Political science -
The Glorious Revolution
19 Apr, 2001 940 History of Europe -
The Battle of Bannockburn
3 Feb, 2011 940 History of Europe -
The Trial of Charles I
4 Jun, 2009 940 History of Europe -
The Corn Laws
24 Oct, 2013 330 Economics -
The Covenanters
12 Mar, 2020 940 History of Europe
Programme ID: m001dnlr
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001dnlr
Auto-category: 972.92 (Jamaica - History - 19th century)