The 1823 Guiana rebellion killed 100 enslaved while only 2 whites died

Evidence

Guiana’s rich soil had been the basis for the intensive application of sugar cultivation. For the slaves, this had the result of appreciably subverting the conditions under which they labored. Discipline, prosecuted by an ever-vigilant white minority, was harsh and often arbitrary. The cruelty that the planters found necessary inevitably exceeded the latitudes indulged by the more humanitarian fractions of the plantocratic society. Some, it seems, found it impossible to restrain from criticizing the planters’ open hostility toward the British Parliament and the Colonial Office, and their disregard for the minimal interests of the enslaved population. One of their numbers, the London Missionary Society’s pastor, John Smith, was particularly vocal in the characterization of planter greed, what he perceived to be their treasonous claims, and their unchristian attitudes toward their human property. A slave rebellion broke out in August, 1823. Fifty estates and perhaps as many as 30,000 Africans were involved. In two weeks, it was over: two whites killed, 100 slaves killed with the executions of many others to follow. In the next five months, rebels were tracked down, executed, and in some instances tried. Among its victims, the reaction claimed John Smith. Smith died in prison of consumption. Quamina, a rebel leader whose association with Smith was as chief deacon, “was tracked down with Indians and dogs, shot on 10th September, and gibbeted at the roadside in front of [Gladstone’s] Success estate.” The planters and the British Parliament blamed the missionary and the Registry for the rebellion, but not slavery. Following that logic, Craton notes: “The overall effect was to slow the pace of emancipationism.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 802