Emancipation Theology and the British West Indian Plantocracy

Abstract

In a previous paper, I looked at the role of the Bible in the British abolition of slavery. Evangelical Protestants, led by the Quakers and the Clapham Sect, launched a massive campaign against slavery during the latter part of the eighteenth right into the early half of the nineteenth century, which eventually resulted in the emancipation of the slaves of the British empire. Most of these slaves were in the British West Indies: now the Englishspeaking islands of the Caribbean, together with Guyana in South America. In this reflection, I will be looking at the way in which the ruling planter class in the Caribbean responded to the idea that the slaves should be instructed in the Bible, how the slaves resisted oppression, and how the evangelical missionaries fared in the West Indian colonies. Missions among the Slaves Quite paradoxically, though the home missionary societies in Britain were populated with anti-slavery supporters, the missionaries in the British West Indian colonies sang a contrary tune. While the anti-slavery movement in the mother country was propagating its Biblical arguments against slavery, the situation in the West Indies among those very evangelical churches was radically different. The missionaries did not work towards the emancipation of the slaves; on the contrary, they took pains to prove to the ruling planters – the plantocracy – that their exposition of scripture was specifically geared to keep the slaves in docile contentment with their