Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire.

• Author: Uneke, Okori

Zoellner, Tom. Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2022. 363 pages. Paperback, $18.79.

Island on Fire is a pulsating narrative of the events and resulting consequences of a five-week slave revolt in Jamaica in 1831-1832 that prompted the end of slavery in the British West Indies. The Christmas 1831 Rebellion, which started as a peaceful labor strike for wages for slave labor, quickly degenerated into a violent uprising. The lead character was an inspirational enslaved Baptist deacon, Samuel Sharpe. Sharpe declared that the objective of the protest was only to end the practice of forced labor and that life was not to be sacrificed, except in self-defense. Nonetheless, a harsh crackdown by the colonial militias, executing slaves who refused to work without pay, led to their defiance spiraling into a violent revolt. Zoellner believed that Sharpe's intention was anchored in nonviolent idealism, probably, inspired by Baptist salvation theology. That only fourteen English settlers were killed in the insurrection, compared to more than 1,000 enslaved Blacks, summarily executed on the spot, is evidence of Sharpe's nonviolent ideology. To this end, the author highly praised Sharpe as a forerunner of two twentieth century icons: Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Furthermore, Zoellner's carefully documented account of the Rebellion brings into limelight, outside of Jamaica, another heroic slave revolt besides that of Toussaint Louverture in Haiti and Nat Turner, also in 1831, in Virginia.

The book, comprising thirteen chapters plus epilogue, can be compartmentalized into three parts. The first five chapters (A Suburb of Hell, Deacon Sharpe, King Sugar, The Door of No Return, and The Plot) laid the foundation in England and the settler colony of Jamaica. nineteenth-century England was marked by advances in technology, as well as an emerging middle class pushing for political representation. In Jamaica, vast amounts of money could be made from sugar that changed fortunes even for settlers from humble backgrounds. The mass production and supply of sugar tried to meet its avid demand by English and European consumers. Zoellner vividly details the harsh cruelty English planters meted to Black slaves. Against the backdrop of the growing antislavery movement on both sides of the Atlantic, Zoellner discusses the impact of Protestant missionaries spearheaded by Quakers, Baptist...