An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean

Abstract

Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided: The American and the Caribbean (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 374 pagesAndrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy in An Empire Divided: The American and the Caribbean gives the following goal as his justification for writing this book: redress the omission of the West Indies from the scholarship of the American Revolution (p. xii). Such a claim fails to recognize competing studies or unknowingly misrepresents them. It is true that United States historians of the American have ignored the West Indies. However, it is not true that the contribution of Caribbean historians to the study of the American has concentrated solely on the period after 1783. One major book, Selwyn H. H. Carrington, The West Indies during the American (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Foris Publications, 1988) deals in significant detail with most of the major themes raised in O'Shaughnessy's book.Hence, the obvious questions that arise are: What is new about An Empire Divided? What contribution has it made to the historiography? The most significant contribution of this study to Caribbean historiography is its analysis of the education of sons of the elite planters who were ideologically linked to the colonial system. However, the author does not show the precise role of these British Sojourners in maintaining the loyalty of the Caribbean colonists during the American Revolution. O'Shaughnessy's treatment of Black Majorities is also significant but not new. Caribbean historians have covered in their studies most of the themes examined in this chapter.Of course, his thesis, arising out of this discussion, is that because of this large black majority, the fear of rebellion maintained loyalty among the planter class. Here, loyalty is given a very limited interpretation. There was only one planned revolt of enslaved persons of any consequence in the colonies throughout the War of American Independence. It was considered dangerous because the enslaved in the houses organized it. Richard B. Sheridan deals with this rebellion very adequately. Robert Lindsay, a minister, in reporting this to Dr. Robert Robertson, a Scottish author, linked the planned rebellion to the open disloyalty of the white population in Jamaica. Once this was quelled, there was no serious attempt at revolt. Even the outbreak of revolution in St. Domingue in 1791 did not cause any grave concern that the enslaved majority would join in the revolt. Planters were more worried over the 1791 Petition of the People of Colour demanding equal rights and privileges as white persons.In Barbados, the enslaved persons remained loyal and tractable. The William Senhouse Diaries speak of the loyalty and caring affection of the enslaved population during the hurricane of 1780 when the whites were at the mercy of those they had enslaved brutally for centuries. The Leeward Islands were unaffected by revolts at this time. The Windward Islands and Tobago may have had a measure of restlessness, primarily because of the political conflict between English- and French-speaking colonists. Unfortunately, the literature and the available evidence do not support O'Shaughnessy's thesis.Failure to join the Americans in a war does not show a lack of support for their cause. The fact that the sugar colonists remained loyal to Britain does not weaken the claims that there was a desire for liberty and that their political infighting exhibited pro-republican sentiments. West Indians chose another path towards their goals. Unlike the Americans, they did not desire independence. Ironically, their continued relationship with Britain and their protestations of loyalty enabled them to support the War of American Independence in numerous ways, aptly detailed in Carrington's West Indies. O'Shaughnessy naively assumes that rebelliousness on the part of the American colonists was the true sign of liberty and freedom. …