The Demerara Rebellion
(Click image for a larger view)- Description
In 1823 rebels demanding better treatment, and mistakenly believing that the King had granted emancipation, started an uprising in the colony of Demerara (now Guyana). Joshua Bryant, an English engraver working in Demerara at the time, wrote and illustrated an account of the events. The 1st West India Regiment was one of the British Army regiments ordered to put down the rebellion. This regiment comprised former enslaved men, purchased by the Army to protect British interests in the Caribbean. Rebel leaders were sentenced to death.
Credit: The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, (RHO) 535.12 r. 28
Portal-Jubiloo (Grave Good for Major-General John Murray)
Mahdy Abo Bahat
- Read more
What if there were an object – a portal – that could collapse and then converge two moments in history: the aftermath of the Platinum Jubilee in 2022, and the aftermath of a slave insurrection in 1823? What if witness accounts were told by objects surrounding us? What if colonialism was not just a history, but a symptom of an illness swelling on the remains of British culture? This work is a ‘grave good’ and a votive deposit for Major-General John Murray, the Governor whose forces suppressed the Demerara revolt. May it shake his slumbers in colonial paradise.