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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

Stephen Fuller, Jamaican planter, British Ambassador, closet abolitionist

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Department

History

Abstract

The 1780s witnessed the rise of abolitionism within the British Empire. In its Two Reports…from the Committee of the Honourable House of Assembly of Jamaica (1788), the Jamaican government, which greatly profited from slavery and the slave trade, responded to claims made against its treatment of slaves. The report attempted to demonstrate by logic and eyewitness testimony that slavery was valuable and consistent with moral principles. Shortly thereafter, Jamaica’s ambassador to British Parliament, Stephen Fuller, published Notes on the Two Reports from the Committee of the Honourable House of Assembly of Jamaica (1789). This tract, which did not contain Fuller’s name in the original, attacked the House of Assembly’s Two Reports and condemned the way slaves were treated in the West Indies. The question is obvious: why did Fuller so forcefully speak out against the body he was meant to represent?

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