The Ultimate Sin: Christianising Slaves in Barbados in the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

My article traces the changing attitudes toward slave conversion in seventeenth-century Barbados – from hesitant discomfort in the mid-seventeenth century, to virulent rejection in 1680 – and argues that the attempted rebellion of 1675, which was widely blamed on Quaker proselytising efforts, played a pivotal role in the development of an antagonistic attitude toward missionaries in Barbados. The 1675 attempted rebellion, I suggest, linked slave conversion with slave rebellion in a new and decisive way that had repercussions throughout the British West Indies.