ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the moment of transition from slavery to freedom in the British Caribbean, on the island of Jamaica, and on the constitution of two particular sets of identities: that of a new-style colonizer, the emancipatory missionary, and two new colonial subjects, the freed man and the freed woman. It briefly examines the case of the Baptist missionaries in Jamaica, especially William Knibb, and their belief in the possibility of creating Africans anew, as new Christian subjects, babes in Christ washed clean, capable of transformation into labouring men and domesticated women. Emancipation was linked in the missionary mind with conversion. Emancipation gave men and women their political, social and economic freedom. But only conversion gave them a new life in Christ, the possibility to be born anew, to be new Black subjects, washed clean of old ways, new Black men and women.
