Comparing The Indian Mutiny And The Morant Bay Rebellion

After two years in Glasgow where there are countless Victorian buildings, statues and fountains erected to celebrate the achievements of Britain, this mémoire is an opportunity for me to learn more about the times when its imperial rule was not so glorious. The Indian Mutiny and the Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica are two exemplary episodes of the colonial unrest faced by the British Empire during the nineteenth century. Both events came as a protest against aspects of British colonial rule and in both cases these contestations were severely repressed, but Britons did not all show exactly the same support for these repressions. Condemnation of the 1857 Indian Mutiny was unanimous on the British side and no measure was judged harsh enough to to put it down and to take revenge for it. As for the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion, while some people did support the severe repression ordered by Governor Eyre in roughly the same
The ‘Jamaica Question’, as the debate came to be called, therefore started as a case of coloured colonised people versus White colonisers but turned into a verbal fight among Britons. These religious, social, economic, political and ethical divergences of opinion set up, and were fuelled by, the political context of Britain at the time; they reflected the perceived potential threats on an international scale to Britain's might. As things are for now, I see this mémoire as a sort of case study of the perceptions of national and colonial identities by Britons within the Empire through the examples of the Indian Mutiny and the Morant Bay Rebellion. I believe that studying the tensions generated by revolts is a good means of getting to the bottom of one's