Jamaica and the Saint Domingue Slave Revolt, 1791-1793 1
Once the two largest sugar colonies in the slave-owning Caribbean, Jamaica and Haiti trace their separate paths of development back to the revolutionary struggles of the 1790's. While the French colony of Saint Domingue was transformed in a way few societies have ever been, Jamaica remained seemingly untouched by the conflagration that consumed its neighbour. When the slaves and free coloureds of Saint Domingue rebelled in the autumn of 1791, Jamaican society faced the greatest challenge of its history. The dramatic spectacle of violent self-liberation was acted out almost before the eyes of its blacks and mulattoes, while the ruling white elite experienced a dilemma that seemed to oppose its prosperity to its survival. This paper looks at the reaction of different social groups in the island in an attempt to explain its continuing stability.