Reliance on Christian mission networks limited the revolt’s reach among slaves

Evidence

Sharpe, credited with a near-charismatic presence in the colonial inquiries—Bleby said Sharpe had “the feelings and passions of his hearers completely at his command,” was apparently incapable of securing complete adherence to what W. L. Burn appropriately characterized as “a skeleton plot for a strike after Christmas.” In part, this seems to have been a consequence of his having to work through mission networks to which only some slaves were culturally and ideologically identified. Since his ideological material, according to Reckord, “was no doubt the language of radical Methodists in England,” there were many slaves in the five parishes of concern who were not sympathetic to that tradition. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 807

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes how ideology must be carried through existing social infrastructure to take hold — parallels the reader’s institutional work on trust and reputation systems.