On 10 April 1832, the British House of Commons ordered copies of further communications from Lord Belmore, Jamaica’s governor, about the recent rebellion. This parliamentary record follows the 1831 Baptist War, which had already been put down by colonial force. The request shows how British lawmakers gathered information from colonial officials after enslaved Jamaicans challenged slavery. The surviving record centers government correspondence; it does not preserve the rebels’ voices on equal terms.
The British trade ban took effect, ending legal British participation in the transatlantic slave trade. In Jamaica, this did not end slavery or plantation labor. Enslaved people continued to be...
The Jamaican legislature passed a law requiring a more particular return and enrolment of enslaved people. The measure was presented as a way to guard against illegal imports after the British trade...
The registry required enslavers to submit lists of the people they claimed as property. Jamaica's returns recorded names, ages, sex, colour, African or Creole status and, in some cases, mothers' names...
A register for Spring Garden Estate in Saint George, Jamaica, documents named people, ages and changes in the enslaved population. Such registers make plantation slavery visible through archival...
Armed rebellion spread through Jamaica's western parishes after enslaved workers began refusing plantation labor. Baptist deacon Sam Sharpe had organized a mass strike to demand freedom and wages; the...
👉 The Commons orders additional reports on Jamaica’s rebellion
Current
10 April 1832
On 10 April 1832, the British House of Commons ordered copies of further communications from Lord Belmore, Jamaica’s governor, about the recent rebellion. This parliamentary record follows the 1831...
A House of Commons return dated 18 April 1832 requested the names of teachers, preachers and people connected with missionary establishments in Jamaica who had been arrested, along with the charges...
Sam Sharpe was executed in Montego Bay after the rebellion was suppressed. He had organized a strike intended to press for freedom and paid work, and became one of Jamaica's central symbols of...
On 22 June 1832, the House of Commons ordered a copy of a Jamaica House of Assembly committee report investigating the causes of the recent rebellion and the damage it caused, together with sworn...
The Slavery Abolition Act received royal assent, setting a legal timetable for emancipation across most British colonies. The act did not bring immediate full freedom for most Jamaican adults: it...
The Act took effect in Jamaica. Children under six and people born after the appointed date were free, but most adults were reclassified as apprentices and required to keep working under former...
