New Struggles and Old Ideas, 1813–1833
This chapter explores the immediate years leading up to the emancipation of Britain’s enslaved population in 1833 and that period’s effect on mixed-race migrants. It contends that Britain was an increasingly hostile place for Jamaican migrants of color, as family and class position no longer sufficiently modified racialized oppression. This is seen in both family correspondences as well as in the experiences of political radicals such as Robert Wedderburn, whose mixed ancestry and social marginalization informed his activist ideologies in London. In Jamaica, however, mixed-race migrants who had returned to the Caribbean made advancements. Not only did the assembly improve the legal position of free people of color, but it promoted British-trained individuals of color in anticipation of the emancipation of enslaved Jamaicans. In particular, emancipation appeared to spell the doom of a permanent, growing white population. A British-educated class of color was now seen as the proper replacement for a declining white cohort.