Robert Wedderburn

British Insurrectionary, Jamaican Abolitionist

Ryan Hanley

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Hardback

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English

Yale University Press
13 June 2025

Biography: historical, political & military; Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900; Slavery & abolition of slavery

Series: Black Lives

The first-ever biography of the ultra-radical thinker Robert Wedderburn, from his native Jamaica to metropole London, by an award-winning historian

Robert Wedderburn (1762–1834/5) was one of the most charismatic, irascible, and radical intellectuals of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Atlantic world. Born to an enslaved woman and a slavemaster in Jamaica, and moving in the radical working-class circles of London, Wedderburn made his name as a fiery political writer and orator—before dying, forgotten, in poverty.

Among the few abolitionists bold enough to publicly call for the enslaved in the British West Indies to rise up and violently overthrow their colonial ""masters,"" Wedderburn was also among the most outspoken and—amid an increasingly repressive British establishment—dangerous advocates for domestic political reform and working-class rights.

From award-winning scholar Ryan Hanley, this is the first full-length biography of a man increasingly recognized as central to Black radical political thought in the Revolutionary Atlantic. Tapping newly rediscovered sources, Hanley details Wedderburn's extraordinary public and private life, explores the central influence of enslaved women on his political ideas, and offers fresh analysis of his contributions to British political thought and activism.

By: Ryan Hanley
Imprint: Yale University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm,
ISBN: 9780300272352
ISBN 10: 0300272359
Series: Black Lives
Pages: 248
Publication Date: 13 June 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Ryan Hanley is lecturer in modern British history at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Beyond Slavery and Abolition: Black British Writing, 1770–1830 and coeditor of Britain’s History and Memory of Transatlantic Slavery. He is the winner of the Alexander and Whitfield Prizes and the Philip Leverhulme Prize. He lives in Bristol, UK.

Reviews for Robert Wedderburn: British Insurrectionary, Jamaican Abolitionist

“A significant contribution to British working-class, abolitionist, and Atlantic history.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Hanley masterfully reconstructs the fascinating life and underworld milieu of Wedderburn, the biracial seaman, tailor, blasphemer, preacher, pornographer, brothel-keeper, and outspoken opponent of the British regimes of slavery and labor.”—Vincent Carretta, author of Equiano, the African “Ryan Hanley’s extensive research on activist Robert Wedderburn is well-deserving of prominence in the growing pantheon of black lives brought back into the attention of scholars and lay readers.”—Gretchen Gerzina, author of Black England