Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-mzp66 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-10T08:19:11.583Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Introduction

Robert Wedderburn, Romanticism, and Black Geographies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2025

Katey Castellano
Affiliation:
James Madison University, Virginia
Get access

Summary

Robert Wedderburn was deeply influenced by his enslaved mother and grandmother, who raised him in Jamaica. After migrating to London, he became a key figure in ultraradical circles and was prosecuted by the British government for blasphemous libel. Wedderburn’s vision for abolition from below sought to forge a transatlantic alliance between English agrarian radicals and enslaved people in the Caribbean. Wedderburn’s influence was documented in Robert Cruikshank’s caricature, A Peep in the London Tavern, which depicted him challenging the proto-socialist Robert Owen. After a review of existing scholarship that places Wedderburn within ultraradical circles or focuses on his mixed-race identity, the Introduction argues that understanding Wedderburn’s advocacy for land-based insurrection requires dialogue with scholarship in Black geographies. Wedderburn’s insights about place-based resistance to slavery are then illustrated in a reading of James Hakewill’s Picturesque Tour of the Island of Jamaica.

Type
Chapter
Information
Robert Wedderburn, Abolition, and the Commons
Romanticism's Black Geographies
, pp. 1 - 24
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Introduction
  • Katey Castellano, James Madison University, Virginia
  • Book: Robert Wedderburn, Abolition, and the Commons
  • Online publication: 09 January 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009523875.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Introduction
  • Katey Castellano, James Madison University, Virginia
  • Book: Robert Wedderburn, Abolition, and the Commons
  • Online publication: 09 January 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009523875.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Katey Castellano, James Madison University, Virginia
  • Book: Robert Wedderburn, Abolition, and the Commons
  • Online publication: 09 January 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009523875.001
Available formats
×