‘Mr Gordon met his fate in the religious spirit’: A letter, empire, Christianity and the death of George William Gordon

Abstract

One of the more important letters issuing from the Morant Bay Uprising of 1865 was written by George William Gordon, just before he was hanged on 23 October 1865. An examination of this letter and the circumstances of its writing gives an insight into the workings of Empire in the Caribbean, particularly the implications of the Christian faith for one Native Baptist, who squared off against the corrupt officials of Empire and the local elite. It exposes the Christian and colonial networks at play, providing indications of the important material and literary exchanges between metropole and colony, especially letters, which were the key communication technology of the era. Individual subjects engaged with the agents of Empire to solicit justice through telling their stories, even post mortem. Gordon’s letter emerged at a critical moment in which the British nonconformist missionary project in the West Indies was being rethought. Indeed, one key outcome in the aftermath of the Rebellion was a new relationship between nonconformist missionaries and the civil authorities to ‘civilise’ the Jamaican population to prevent another eruption of ‘the savagery’ of Morant Bay. Such efforts have reverberations for Jamaicans and the Jamaican state even till today.