When he was not trying to sweep slavery and colonialism under the rug – lest a whisper of reparations arises – the former UK culture secretary Oliver Dowden wanted you to believe that it was in the gift of the British to bestow liberty on the world. The official mythology has morally superior Englishmen abolishing slavery before anyone else and at their own whim; and, when they eventually grant independence to their former colonies, leaving behind orderly societies with railways and parliaments. Voluminous research over the past 100 years has debunked this self-flattering distortion, showing that the transformation of this system of exploitation was driven not by the enlightened benevolence of colonial elites, but sustained revolt by the enslaved and the colonised themselves. Meanwhile, thousands of personal stories, literary accounts and scholarly works have exposed the ways empire and colonialism were devastating not only to the colonies, but to life, law and politics in Britain.
Three recent history books are worthy additions to this body of literature. Vincent Brown’s Tacky’s Revolt and Thomas Harding’s White Debt recount two slave rebellions in former British territories on either side of the more prominent Haitian revolution against French colonial rule (1791-1804). Tacky’s Revolt, named after one of the leaders of the insurrection, is a virtuosic account of an uprising (or what Brown terms a “slave war”) in Jamaica in 1760, while White Debt weaves together the story of a slave revolt in Demerara (today’s Guyana) in 1823 with reflections on the contemporary legacy of slavery in Britain. Kojo Koram’s Uncommon Wealth similarly explores the ricocheting effects of colonialism in Britain, tracing the role of empire – and its disintegration – in the rise of contemporary austerity, inequality, poverty, brutality, corruption, and the cartoon sovereignty of Brexit.
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