Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1915824 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 232 pages

Hispanic American Historical Review, 1984.
"Mary Turner's work is a sound, well-argued contribution to the debate over abolition. It is well written, thoroughly researched, and should be of interest to all scholars of slave society, abolition, and religion as a social force." Hispanic American Historical Review, 1984.

James Walvin, Times Literary Supplement, 15 July 1983.
"Mary Turner's valuable and important book will, among other things, force historians once more to reconsider its impact on the ending of black slavery in the West Indies. This book, written in a crisp and economical style, and with its wider arguments and particular details rooted in a wealth of research, will compel others to consider two main issues above others. First and obviously what were the socially and politically disruptive results of the missionary work undertaken primarily by Baptists and Methodists in Jamaica? Secondly and in many respects this is an even more tantalizingly difficult question what role did the slaves themselves play in securing their own freedom." James Walvin, Times Literary Supplement, 15 July 1983.

From the Back Cover
On 27 December 1831 a fire on Kensington Estate in St James, Jamaica signalled the start of one of the largest slave revolts in the Caribbean. Its leaders were leaders also in the mission churches and the independent sects, and their followers expected the missionaries to support them in their bid for wage work and free status. The missionaries, however, sent to save souls from sin in the face of planter hostility, were explicitly committed to neutrality on the slavery issue.

This book traces the response of all classes in Jamaican society to mission work, focusing in particular on the dynamic interplay between slaves and missionaries.

Embraced as fellow sinners, assured of spiritual equality of all before God, their intellectual equality with whites demonstrated in schools and classes, the slaves imbued Christianity with political purpose and questioned why blacks and whites were equal after death but slave and master in life.

The slaves transformed the question into action in the political circumstances created by the decade-long campaign for abolition, and in doing so made the missionaries themselves into committed anti-slavery campaigners.