1. The song was adapted from Thomson's, James poem Alfred, 1740, act 2, sc. 5.Google Scholar

2. See Dunn, Richard S., Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1972).Google Scholar

3. The Leewards include St. Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat, and Antigua.Google Scholar

4. Higman, B. W., “Slavery and the Development of Demographic Theory in the Age of the Industrial Revolution,” in Slavery and British Society, 1776–1846, ed. Walvin, James (Baton Rouge, La., 1982), 167.Google Scholar

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7. For details about amelioration, see Murray, D. J., The West Indies and the Development of Colonial Government (Oxford, 1965); Mathieson, William Law, British Slavery and Its Abolition, 1823–1838 (London, 1926); and Klingberg, Frank J., The Anti-Slavery Movement in England: A Study in English Humanitarianism (New Haven, Conn., 1926).Google Scholar

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9. William Shrewsbury to Methodist Missionary Society, 11 Sep. 1820, M.M.S. Archives, London.Google Scholar

10. Educational development has been seen as social reform, social control, and, most recently, as social and cultural “hegemony.” See especially Johnson, Richard, “Educational Policy and Social Control in Early Victorian England,” Past and Present 49 (Nov. 1970): 96–119; Thompson, F. M. L., “Social Control in Victorian Britain,” Economic History Review 34 (May 1981): 189–208; Wiener, Martin J., ed., “Humanitarianism or Control? A Symposium on Aspects of Nineteenth-Century Social Reform in Britain and America,” Rice University Studies 67 (Winter 1981): 1–84; Graff, Harvey J., The Legacies of Literacy: Continuities and Contradictions in Western Culture and Society (Bloomington, Ind., 1987), 11 Antonio Gramsci's term “hegemony” appears too subtle to be used in the context of the source material for this article, although I am aware of its interpretive value.Google Scholar

11. Patterson, Orlando, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 1–101. Patterson's thesis is controversial, and slaves certainly had social relations that were not considered legitimate.Google Scholar

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15. Augier, F. R. and Gordon, Shirley C., comp., Sources of West Indian History (London, 1962), 94.Google Scholar

16. Dunn, , Sugar and Slaves, 249. Catholicism did not demand Bible reading and lettered instruction, and Dunn thinks this partly explained different religious practice in Latin America, where slaves were routinely baptized.Google Scholar

17. Patterson, , Slavery and Social Death, 73.Google Scholar

18. Stone, Lawrence, “Literacy and Education in England, 1640–1900,” Past and Present 42 (Feb. 1969): 78.Google Scholar

19. Genovese, Eugene D., Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1976), 561.Google Scholar

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21. Turner, Mary, Slaves and Missionaries: The Disintegration of Jamaican Slave Society, 1787–1834 (Urbana, Ill., 1982), 30.Google Scholar

22. Mission work and anti-slavery intersected. See Duncan Rice, C., “The Missionary Context of the British Anti-Slavery Movement,” in Slavery and British Society, 1776–1846, ed. Walvin, , 150–63.Google Scholar

23. For details see Bolt, Christine and Drescher, Seymour, eds., Anti-Slavery, Religion, and Reform: Essays in Memory of Roger Anstey (Folkstone, 1980); Eltis, David and Walvin, James, eds., The Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Origins and Effects in Europe, Africa, and the Americas (Madison, Wis., 1981); and Davis, David Brion, Slavery and Human Progress (Oxford, 1984).Google Scholar

24. Murray, , The West Indies and the Development of Colonial Government, 127–45.Google Scholar

25. Craton, Michael, “Christianity and Slavery in the British West Indies, 1750–1865,” Historical Reflections 9 (Fall 1982): 403–19.Google Scholar

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27. Murray, , The West Indies and the Development of Colonial Government, 131.Google Scholar

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29. Turner, Mary, “The Bishop of Jamaica and Slave Instruction,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 26 (Oct. 1975): 363–78.Google Scholar

30. Turner, , Slaves and Missionaries, 86.Google Scholar

31. I focus on developments in Jamaica, Barbados, and Antigua that together had over half the total slave numbers in the British West Indies at emancipation.Google Scholar

32. Educational data are derived from “Extracts from Returns Relating to the Slave Population in the West Indies,” Parliamentary Papers (hereafter PP), 1831–32, vol. 47, 1–88 and appendices. For further details consult Turner, Slaves and Missionaries, 87–88, and Blouet, Olwyn M., “To Make Society Safe for Freedom: Slave Education in Barbados,” Journal of Negro History 65 (Spring 1980): 126–34.Google Scholar

33. Laqueur, Thomas Walter, Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and English Working Class Culture, 1780–1850 (New Haven, 1976).Google Scholar

34. PP, 1831–32, vol. 47, pp. 6–20 and Enclosure no. 6.Google Scholar

35. Ibid., 25–30.Google Scholar

36. Turner, , Slaves and Missionaries, 87.Google Scholar

37. PP, 1831–32, vol. 47, p. 76.Google Scholar

38. Ibid., 6.Google Scholar

39. In the parish of St. Paul, Antigua, it was noted “on almost every estate the children are instructed in the Church catechism, and are taught by some of the better informed negroes to read.” Ibid.Google Scholar

40. “Report from the Select Committee on the Extinction of Slavery throughout the British Dominions,” PP, 1831–32, vol. 20, p. 533.Google Scholar

41. PP, 1831–32, vol. 47, Enclosure no. 6. In Barbados the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel ran a Sunday school on its Codrington estate from 1795 and an updated day school from 1819. See Harry Bennett, J., Bondsmen and Bishops: Slavery and Apprenticeship on the Codrington Plantations of Barbados, 1710–1838 (Berkeley, Calif., 1958).Google Scholar

42. Church Missionary Society, West Indies Mission, C.W./03, Jamaica Auxiliary CMS Minutes and Correspondence, 1830–36, Microform, E. P. Google Scholar

43. “Bishop Coleridge's Notebook 1824–28,” X10/2, 56 and 195, Barbados Archives.Google Scholar

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45. Shrewsbury to Methodist Missionary Society, 20 Dec. 1820, MMS Archives. Methodists were not popular with the Barbadian planters. Shrewsbury's chapel was destroyed, and he fled the island in 1823.Google Scholar

46. Turner, , Slaves and Missionaries, 72.Google Scholar

47. PP, 1831–32, vol. 47, p. 25.Google Scholar

48. Porteus, Bishop to Seaforth, Lord, 15 Oct. 1801, reel 6, vol. 16, Fulham Papers, London, University Microfilms.Google Scholar

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50. For general information about teaching methods consult Gosden, P. H. J. H., comp., How They Were Taught (Oxford, 1969); and Hurt, John, Education in Evolution: Church, State, Society, and Popular Education, 1800–1870 (London, 1971).Google Scholar

51. CMS “Barbados Colonial Charity School, Lesson 21,” C.W./04, Microform, E. P. Google Scholar

52. SPCK Annual Report (London, 1828). The items included Bibles, prayer books, and the National Society elementary school books. Some would be used in schools for whites and free coloreds.Google Scholar

53. Christian Faith Society, F/2, 1 and 61, Lambeth Palace Library. The Society for the Conversion and Religious Instruction of the Negro Population was founded originally in 1794. It was revived in 1823 by members of the West India Committee to finance curates and teachers in the West Indies. See Turner, , “Bishop of Jamaica,” 368. From 1835 it became known as the Christian Faith Society, and its primary documents are listed under that heading.Google Scholar

54. Ibid., 171.Google Scholar

55. Quoted in Turner, , Slaves and Missionaries, 88.Google Scholar

56. PP, 1831–32, vol. 20, p. 51.Google Scholar

57. Ibid., 255. For details about Knibb, William, consult Wright, Philip, Knibb “The Notorious”: Slave's Missionary, 1803–1845 (London, 1973).Google Scholar

58. In Barbados, for instance, slaves had to be baptized and instructed in the Christian religion to be eligible to give evidence. See Levy, Claude, “Barbados: The Last Years of Slavery, 1823–33,” Journal of Negro History 44 (Oct. 1959): 308–45.Google Scholar

59. This was also the case in the Southern United States. See Anderson, James D., The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1988). Anderson refers to independent “native” schools. I have not found any reference to similar schools in the West Indies but, after emancipation, many “private schools” were operating.Google Scholar

60. PP, 1831–32, vol. 20, pp. 68–69.Google Scholar

61. Turner, , Slaves and Missionaries, 89–90.Google Scholar

62. PP, 1831–32, vol. 47, pp. 1–88. Teachers were from four groups: 1. Europeans sent over by nonconformist missionary societies or the Church of England; 2. whites engaged in the colonies; 3. adult free-colored and free black locals; 4. slaves who had received education in local schools.Google Scholar

63. PP, 1831–32, vol. 20, p. 257, Evidence of William Knibb.Google Scholar

64. Craton, Michael, Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies (Ithaca, N.Y., 1982). Slaves would not have to read books to be considered literate.Google Scholar

65. PP, 1831–32, vol. 20, pp. 170–71. Thorp was in favor of teaching slaves to read. He noted that oral instruction was common in the Anglican areas of Jamaica. He visited twenty-four estates to see how the catechists (mostly “free browns”) operated. Thorp pointed out that the Methodists were very active, with three institutions in his own parish, although he did not know how successful they were at imparting literacy.Google Scholar

66. Ibid., 255. Knibb estimated he had about 2,500 “inquirers.”Google Scholar

67. Reverend Charles Cummins to Jackson, John, 4 Sep. 1834, Inwards, F. C., British and Foreign Bible Society Archives. Total population figures are taken from Jerome S. Handler, Unappropriated People: Freedmen in the Slave Society of Barbados (Baltimore, 1974), 18–19.Google Scholar

68. Rooke, Patricia T., “The Pedagogy of Conversion: Missionary Education to Slaves in the British West Indies, 1800–1833,” Paedagogica Historica 18 (1978): 372. Rooke emphasized that missionaries were “Pedagogues whose goals required pedagogical means, systematized instruction and discrete content” (356). See also her “The World They Made: The Politics of Missionary Education to British West Indian Slaves, 1800–1833,” Caribbean Studies 18 (Oct. 1977/June 1978): 47–67. Rooke minimized the conservative social stance of missionaries and saw them as powerful change agents.Google Scholar

69. Many people believed that the end of slavery was a long time away. Only in 1831 and 1832 did the idea of immediate abolition gain widespread support. See Davis, , “Emergence of Immediatism,” 229. Several factors were important in this change in attitude, including West Indian legislative prevarication concerning amelioration, and the actions of the slaves themselves, demonstrated in the Jamaica Rebellion of 1831. The Reform of Parliament in 1832 was crucial to the cause of anti-slavery, as were petitions and organized support in England. For a recent listing of factors, see Blackburn, Robin, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848 (London, 1988), 465. For parliamentary details see Gross, Izhak, “The Abolition of Negro Slavery and British Parliamentary Politics, 1832–33,” Historical Journal 23 (Mar. 1980): 63–85. See also Reckord, Mary, “The Colonial Office and the Abolition of Slavery,” Historical Journal 14 (1971): 723–34; and Richard Hart, Slaves Who Abolished Slavery (Mona, Jamaica, 1980).Google Scholar

70. PP, 1831–32, vol. 20, pp. 257–58.Google Scholar

71. Disturbances were widespread and occurred in Demerara, and Jamaica, (1823–24) and in Antigua, Bahamas, Jamaica, and Tortola (1831–33). Craton, , Testing the Chains, 335–39. Planters blamed education and Christianization, and imperial government interference, for fueling the flames of resistance.Google Scholar

72. Ibid., 312–16. See also Turner, , Slaves and Missionaries, 148–78.Google Scholar

73. Craton, , Testing the Chains, 317–18.Google Scholar

74. Turner, Mary, “The Baptist War and Abolition,” Jamaican Historical Review 13 (1982): 31–41.Google Scholar

75. Many of the rebellious slaves combined membership in a missionary Baptist church in Jamaica, with leadership in the independent Baptist sect known as “Native Baptist.” See Turner, , Slaves and Missionaries, 152 and 58.Google Scholar

76. Ibid., 152.Google Scholar

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79. PP, 1831–32, vol. 20, p. 199, Evidence of Vice Admiral Fleming, Charles. The oral and print culture existed side by side. Graff, The Legacies of Literacy, 331.Google Scholar

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85. Ibid., 199. Fleming did not think that many slaves could yet read in the West Indies.Google Scholar

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