The Christmas Rebellion
The Christmas Rebellion, also known as the Baptist Rebellion, was an eleven-day rebellion that mobilised as many as sixty thousand of Jamaica’s three hundred thousand slaves in 1831–1832. The planning and organisation of the revolt came from enslaved literate leader Samuel “Daddy” Sharpe, who had been given limited freedom to move around the island. Sharpe used this freedom, especially his literacy and ability to travel, to discuss and plan for the actual revolt. Even though, it was to be a peaceful strike, on December 27, 1831, a fire, started by a woman, broke out on the Kensington Estate in St. James, would lead to the event that would be considered the largest slave rebellion in the British Caribbean.
Additional Knowledge
BOOKS
Daddy Sharpe: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Samuel Sharpe by Fred W. Kennedy
Island on Fire by Tom Zoellner
Liberties Lost: The Indigenous Caribbean and Slave Systems by Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd
Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Comparative Studies by Barbara Bush
Slavery, Emancipation and the Creole World View of Jamaican Colonists, 1800–1834 by Christer Petley
The Economics of Emancipation: Jamaica and Barbados, 1823–1843 by Michael Craton
The Jamaican Slave Rebellion of 1831: Past and Present by Mary Reckford
Two Jamaicas: The Role of Ideas in a Tropical Colony, 1830-1865 by Philip D. Curtin
FICTIONAL BOOKS
The Book of Night Women by Marlon James
The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins
These Ghosts Are Family by Maisy Card
ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS
The Roots of Rebellion and Rasta Theology in Jamaica by Noel Erskine
ARTICLES
The Baptist War (831-1832) by Samuel Momudu
DATABASE
PUBLIC LECTURES
Women in Sam Sharpe’s Army: Repression, Resistance, Reparation presented by Dr. Verene Shepherd