Notes

The transformation of slaves into freedmen and freedwomen who were able to learn trades, acquire land and homes, and live in at least modest comfort as families, never to be separated by a master’s whim, is an inspiring one. In helping to achieve this aim,

the missionaries spent decades living thousands of miles from their homes, friends and kin, endured a physically challenging environment, risked their health and even their lives, incurred hostility and even violence from the white community, and worked tire-

lessly for very little financial reward. But it is possible to laud the efforts of these missionaries without overlooking the fact that, while their ascetic lifestyle presented a striking contrast with that of the typical West Indian planter, the former were in

many ways just as determined as the latter to control the lives of Africans and AfroCaribbeans.46 Nonconformist missionaries were ardent and open in their conviction that all men were brothers, and that people of African descent were men and women who were not significantly different from white people, but at the same

time, whether or not they were always aware of it, they were intellectually committed to a view of the world characterised by racial hierarchy. Many would likely have echoed the words of a visitor to Sligoville that the former slaves were ‘eminently grateful, both

to Christians, who worked for, and to the God who gave them freedom’.47 That the freedpeople had no agency in their change of status, and that they were and should be grateful to Christians and their god for their liberation, passed without question.