Morant Bay Rebellion

Crown colony rule is soon established in other British colonies.

In the constitutional reorganization of the late nineteenth century, only Barbados manages to retain its representative assembly.

Jamaica and the Windward Islands join Trinidad as colonies fully administered by the crown, while the Leeward Islands experiment with a federal system.

With periodic adjustments, crown colony government will endure until the middle of the twentieth century.

Despite its paternalistic rhetoric, and many practical reforms in the social, educational, and economic arenas, it retards political development in the West Indies by consistently denying the legitimacy of political organizations while elevating the opinions of selected individuals.

By so doing, it narrows rather than broadens the social base of political power.

The limited political opportunities offered by service in the various municipal councils and parish vestries emphasizes the inadequacies of the system of appointed councils in which social considerations overrode merit as the primary basis for selection.

Appointed members have no political constituency—the basis on which they are chosen—and therefore no responsibility to the majority of the people.

Because there are no elected assemblies to represent the islands' interests, opposition to the crown colony system of government comes more often from the local level alone.

The wealthy planters had generally sent their children abroad, mainly to Britain, but a surprisingly large number had gone to study in British North America.

As early as 1720, Judah Morris, a Jew born in Jamaica, had been a lecturer in Hebrew at Harvard College.

Alexander Hamilton, born in Nevis in 1755, had attended King's College (present-day Columbia University), where his political tracts had attracted the attention of George Washington.

Other students had attended such colleges as the College of William and Mary in Virginia and the College of Philadelphia.

Jamaica's Morant Bay Rebellion of October 1865 brings about the end of the old representative assemblies.

The "rebellion" is really a protest of rural black peasants in the southeastern parish of St. Thomas.

The conflict has unmistakable racial and religious overtones, pitting George William Gordon and Paul Bogle, who are black Baptists, against the custos (senior vestryman), a German immigrant named Baron Maximilian von Ketelholdt; the rector of the established church, the Reverend S.H. Cooke; and the governor of the island, Edward John Eyre, a hostile incompetent with limited intelligence but long service in minor colonial posts.

The original demonstrators are protesting what they believe to be unjust arrests at the courthouse in Morant Bay when, failing to obey an order to disperse, they are fired on by the militia, and seven protesters are killed.

The crowd now riots, burning the courthouse and killing fourteen vestrymen, one of whom is black.

Bogle and Gordon, arrested in Kingston, are tried by court-martial in Morant Bay and hanged. (In 1965 the Jamaican government—an independent and representative entity—will declare the two to be its first "national heroes.")

Altogether, Governor Eyre orders nearly five hundred peasants executed, six hundred brutally flogged, and one thousand houses burned by the troops and by the Maroons, descendants of former runaway slaves with whom the government has a legal treaty.

In December 1865 the House of Assembly abolishes itself, making way for crown colony government.

The act is the final gesture of the old planter oligarchy, symbolizing that it does not wish to share political power in a democratic way with the new groups.

Eyre is recalled for brutality; his successor, John Peter Grant, enacts a series of social, financial and political reforms while aiming to uphold firm British rule over the island, which becomes a Crown Colony in 1866.

In 1872 the capital is transferred from Spanish Town to Kingston.

The British population on Jamaica, as in many other British colonies, is fearful of a black uprising, following the massacres of Europeans during the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

A two-year drought preceding 1865 has made economic conditions still worse for the population of former slaves and their descendants, and rumors have began circulating that white planters intend to restore slavery in Jamaica.

Early in 1865, Dr. Edward Underhill, Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society of Great Britain, had written a letter to the Colonial Office in order to express Jamaica's current poor state of affairs.

This letter had later been shown to Jamaica's Governor Edward Eyre, who had immediately tried to deny the truth of its statements, and Jamaica's poor blacks had begun organizing in "Underhill Meetings."

Peasants in St. Ann parish had sent a petition to Queen Victoria asking for Crown lands to cultivate as they cannot find land for themselves, but it had passed by Eyre first and he had enclosed a letter with his own comments.

The Queen's reply had left no doubt in the minds of the poor that Eyre had influenced her opinion—she had encouraged the poor to work harder, rather than offering any help.

George William Gordon, a wealthy mulatto politician, had begun encouraging black Jamaicans to find ways to make their grievances known.

One of his followers is a church deacon named Paul Bogle.

On October 7, 1865, a black man is put on trial and imprisoned for trespassing on a long-abandoned plantation, creating anger among black Jamaicans.

When one member of a group of black protesters from the village of Stony Gut is arrested, the protesters become unruly and break the accused man out of prison.

When he returns to his home, Bogle learns that he and twenty-seven of his men have warrants issued for their arrest for rioting, resisting arrest, and assaulting the police.

A few days later, on October 11, Randall Brown marches with a group of protesters to Morant Bay.

When the group arrives at the court house, they are met by a small and inexperienced volunteer militia.

The crowd begins pelting the militia with rocks and sticks, and the militia opens fire on the group, killing seven black protesters before retreating.

The black protesters then close in and attack, killing eighteen people (including white officials and militia) and taking control of the town.

In the days that follow, some two thousand black rebels roam the countryside, killing two white planters and forcing others to flee for their lives.

Governor John Eyre sends government troops, under Brigadier-General Alexander Nelson, to hunt down the poorly armed rebels and bring Paul Bogle back to Morant Bay for trial.

The troops are met with no organized resistance but kill blacks indiscriminately, many of whom had not been involved in the riot or rebellion: according to one soldier, "we slaughtered all before us… man or woman or child".

In the end, four hundred and thirty-nine black Jamaicans are killed directly by soldiers, and three hundred and fifty-four more (including Paul Bogle) are arrested and later executed, some without proper trials.

Paul Bogle is executed "either the same evening he was tried or the next morning." (The Jamaica Prosecutions. Further Examinations of Colonel Nelson and Lieutenant Brand." The Illustrated Police News: Law-Courts and Weekly Record. [London] Feb. 23, 1867: 1.)

Other punishments include flogging for over six hundred men and women (including some pregnant women), and long prison sentences.

Gordon, who had had little—if anything—to do with the rebellion is also arrested.

Though he is arrested in Kingston, he is transferred by Eyre to Morant Bay, where he can be tried under martial law.

The speedy trial sees Gordon hanged on October 23, two days after his trial.

He and William Bogle, Paul's brother, "were both tried together, and executed at the same time."