Рет қаралды 421
Background
The rebellion was the result of years of political, economic and racial tensions in Jamaica. The island was in the grip of an economic decline, but had also faced years of epidemics, floods and droughts. The island’s enslaved population had been emancipated on 1 August 1834 but were initially placed in ‘apprenticeship’ to their former ‘masters’, another form of bonded labour, for a period of four to six years. Apprenticeship was abandoned in 1838, but over the next three decades Black estate workers and peasants bore the brunt the economic crises, receiving few civil or religious freedoms from Jamaica’s white (and to a lesser extent, mixed race) elites,