Jubilee's Experiment
The British West Indies and American Abolitionism

Measuring the success of emancipation in the British West Indies became crucial in the struggle against slavery in antebellum America.

Dexter J. Gabriel (Author)

9781108845502, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 April 2023

388 pages
23.5 x 15.2 x 2.7 cm, 0.64 kg

'Jubilee's Experiment is a marvellous study. Dexter Gabriel shows that the resistance of Black Caribbeans to the half-way measures of Britain's abolition of slavery had a profound impact upon the assumptions and demands of American abolitionists. This is Atlantic history at its best.' Edward Rugemer, author of The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War

Dexter J. Gabriel's Jubilee's Experiment is a thorough examination of how the emancipated British Caribbean colonies entered into the debates over abolition and African American citizenship in the US from the 1830s through the 1860s. It analyzes this public discourse, created by black and white abolitionists, and African Americans more generally in antebellum America, as both propaganda and rhetoric. Simultaneously, Gabriel interweaves the lived experiences of former slaves in the West Indies – their daily acts of resistance and struggles for greater freedoms – to further augment but complicate this debate. An important and timely intervention, Jubilee's Experiment argues that the measured success of former slaves in the West Indies became a crucial focal point in the struggle against slavery in antebellum North America.

Introduction
1. The anxieties of emancipation
2. Fears of British emancipation in America
3. The benefits of free labor
4. The problems of apprenticeship
5. The experiment and its challenges
6. Reform and the experiment
7. African Americans and British emancipation
8. A West Indian Jubilee in America
Epilogue.

Subject Areas: General & world history [HBG]