Slaves translated metropolitan abolition debates into rebellion as their own political expression.

Evidence

This struggle, however, was not confined to Parliamentary acts, or limited to public discussion in the British Isles. As it proceeded toward the capture of the English public and the domination of state policy, its heat radiated out to the peripheries of the British mercantilist Empire. In the West Indies, colonial papers rehearsed the controversy, colonial assemblies hysterically and vehemently denounced their opponents, and public debate anticipated what could only be understood as the end of the colonial order. The African slaves in the British West Indies, of course, were also listening, a quieter party whose interest in these questions was as profound as any other. Having been given little occasion or opportunity to articulate their position, some secured for themselves an older form of expression: rebellion. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 787

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the abolitionist-moral-panic parallels in the immodesty article and to how subaltern groups appropriate elite discourse.