George William Gordon

George William Gordon (* around 1820 in Jamaica , † October 23, 1865 in Morant Bay ) was a former slave and later politician who was involved in the Morant Bay uprising . He is revered today as the national hero of Jamaica.

Life

Gordon was born a slave, became in 1838, when the British colonialists , the slavery officially abolished, his freedom and was landowner and businessman in Jamaica. Gordon was a member of the National Assembly of Jamaica and attracted attention there for criticizing the colonial policy of Great Britain . He maintained contacts with Protestant church circles in the British motherland that were critical of the colonial era and founded a Baptist church.

Slavery had been abolished, but the former slaves were still deprived of civil rights , and their living conditions were still catastrophic in the 1860s as most of the property was firmly in the hands of the colonial Europeans. There was also a two-year drought that made the already miserable conditions even worse. The desolation culminated in the Morant Bay uprising led by Gordon's comrade Paul Bogle . Gordon was not directly involved in the acts of violence, but was considered by many whites to be the spiritual behind him because of his struggle for humane living conditions for blacks. The Morant Bay uprising was and is therefore sometimes referred to in Jamaica as the "Gordon Riot". During the uprising, Gordon tried to use his political influence to achieve a peaceful solution and to move the colonial administration to an accommodation in order to improve the situation of the former slaves in the medium term.

After Governor Edward John Eyre had bloodily suppressed the uprising, he had Gordon imprisoned in Kingston, where the martial law proclaimed by Eyre did not apply, and brought to Morant Bay. There he was sentenced to death by a court martial and hanged two days later, on October 23, 1865 .

Afterlife

Gordon's execution led to an outcry from the liberals of Europe, notably John Stuart Mill was involved in this case, trying to Governor Eyre criminally prosecute.

Gordon is considered to be one of the masterminds of Jamaican nationalism , and in 1965 he and Bogle were declared Jamaica's national hero in a festive ceremony in Morant Bay . Roger Mais processed the historical figure literarily in his drama George William Gordon , in which he draws parallels to Jesus .

literature

• Black, Clinton Vane De Brosse Black: History of Jamaica . Livingstone, Churchill, ISBN 0582038987 especially Chapter 17

Footnotes

1. ↑ Wolfgang Binder: " From someone who pretended to get to know the Caribbean while trying to save the Empire." Imperial mechanisms of justification in James Anthony Froude's "The English in the West Indies" (1888) . In: Walther Bernecker, Gertrut Krömer (ed.): The rediscovery of Latin America. The experience of the subcontinent in travelogues of the 19th century . Vervuert, Frankfurt am Main 1997. 3-89354-738-XS 291-307, here p. 293.

Web links

• www.jis.gov.jm Description of Gordons on the Jamaican Information Service website , last visited on March 2nd, 2008