Thesis on the Religious Motivations Behind the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865

The average person when asked to name a country with a significant culture of protest would likely point to France. French citizens are well-known for taking to the streets and making themselves heard in times of frustration. Another obvious answer might be America, a nation which first tasted political protest with the onset of American Revolution and seemingly never felt the need to stop. Considerably fewer people would think to mention Jamaica. This makes sense. Jamaica is a small former British colony in the Greater Antilles of the West Indies, 237 miles south of Cuba. The island nation now boasts a population of approximately 3 million people and is known primarily for its white sand beaches, reggae music, Olympian track runners, and Rastafarianism. Less well-known is that Jamaica has historically had more slave rebellions than anywhere else in the British Caribbean and on a much larger scale than any in North America. Jamaica’s protests regularly had hundreds, if not thousands, of participants.’ For context— in 1831 Nat Turner managed to rally at most 70 people behind him for his infamous slave rebellion in Virginia. That very same year enslaved Baptist Deacon Samuel Sharpe of the Native Baptist church in Jamaica led approximately 60,000 slaves from 200 different estates in a rebellion which later became to be known as the Baptist War of 1831. It is with this culture of protest in mind that I am arguing for the inclusion of the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865 (and perhaps other religiously-motivated post-Emancipation, pre-Independence social justice movements of its kind) within the existing recognized “canon” of global religiously-motivated social justice movements. Within this canon, acts of civil disobedience— like Martin Luther King Jr.’s non-violent direct action protests which were intended to enact legislative change without disrupting the existing system— stand on equal ground with more revolutionary acts— such as Gandhi’s use of Satyagraha to gain India’s independence from Britain and establish Indian self-rule.