Robert Wedderburn: British Insurrectionary, Jamaican Abolitionist

Abstract

Robert Wedderburn (1762-1834/5) was one of the most charismatic and radical intellectuals of the eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Black Atlantic. Among the few abolitionists bold enough to publicly call for the enslaved in the British West Indies to rise up and violently overthrow their colonial ‘masters’, Wedderburn was also among the most outspoken and – for an increasingly repressive British establishment – dangerous advocates for domestic political reform and working-class rights. Since the 1980s, Wedderburn has been celebrated by historians for his uncompromising and self-consciously ‘unrespectable’ transatlantic radicalism as much as for his extraordinarily eventful life. Academic interventions on Wedderburn have traditionally focused on his unique approach to generating spaces of solidarity between British radicals and the enslaved in the West Indies. Over the past decade, a new generation of scholars and activists have become interested in Wedderburn as an inspirational and compelling example of early nineteenth-century Black radical political consciousness in the imperial metropolis. This book is the first every biography of a figure who is increasingly recognized as central to the evolution of Black radical political thought in the Revolutionary Atlantic. It contains a raft of newly-rediscovered evidence detailing Wedderburn’s extraordinary life and his intimate family connections to enslaved women, colonial elites and London’s destitute poor, along with fresh analysis of his major contributions to British political thought and activism.