Morant Bay Rebellion Analysis

Cheryl M. Cassidy takes a journalistic approach to deal with the Morant Bay Rebellion this time, but reverses the focus, choosing to work on the press written by, and for, the White population of Jamaica. She is interested in showing that even though expatriates were familiar with the context of the colony, close contacts with coloured people who might have been involved in the uprising and its repression did not prevent racism. On the contrary, White Jamaicans displayed the same feeling of superiority prevailing in the metropolis and indistinctly condemned Black people, some of whom had actually rebelled, and Brown ones who had not taken part in the riots. Cassidy explains that ‘how a culture views itself is often dependent upon its definition
Instead, he is interested in the purely political aspect of the issue, leaving aside Carlyle, Mill and their cliques to focus on how official bodies of the British government responded. Based on primary sources which include correspondence between members of the government and Eyre, he documents the evolution of the reactions of politicians as the unfolding of the Rebellion was gradually disclosed. Nevertheless, if he illustrates his study with these primary sources, Knox does not exploit the fact that officials who asked Eyre in writing to account for himself provided explanations and advice on what the good conduct of a governor should be; in so doing, they showed their personal visions of what a Briton, especially in a position of power, was expected to do and what should be avoided. Knox offers a real insight into how British politics worked during the nineteenth century – and especially in times of crisis like the Rebellion, and even more so the Mutiny. He also measures what was at stake for the government in how it responded to the controversy: which version of the event should be accredited, how to deal with opposed factions within Parliament, in what ways Eyre had indeed ‘done his duty’ and what this very notion entailed, etc. Yet he does not draw conclusions
She analyses the circulation of narratives about the brutalities endured by British women in India during the conflict, using British newspapers as her primary material. In this way, like Catherine Hall, she works from a perspective that focuses on gender studies and puts little emphasis on colonial theories. Blunt's research on the reception of the Cawnpore massacre of women and children shows the importance for Victorians of the notion that one duty of men was to protect women. She explains that ‘in the context of masculine discourses of honour, heroism, and revenge, the prestige of the British army and its success in reestablishing British rule were inextricably linked to its ability either to protect or to avenge British women’ (409). Public opinion was outraged upon reading about the allegedly treacherous slaughter of British men, women and children abandoning the city to the mutineers after a promise of safe passage. Beyond the emphasis put on the horror and baseness of such an event, the press condemned the rebels on the grounds that men who dared to attack and murder in cold blood defenseless women and children lost their masculinity – and their humanity altogether. Concurrently, Hall remarks that Carlyle feminised Black Jamaicans in his ‘Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question’ to emphasise how helpless he considered them to be when they were not