Unlike slaves in other parts of the world, the slaves of Jamaica were particularly passionate about fighting for their freedom. With rebellions becoming more and more common, tensions were running high. As the rebellions become increasingly violent, the white residents of Jamaica begin to fear for their lives, eventually leading to them fearing for their safety. With their safety becoming such a concern, and the slave population of Jamaica turning more hostile, emancipation shortly follows but even that isn’t enough to appease the Jamaican slaves.

The slaves of Jamaica had not been concerned with murdering their masters, instead their primary tactic of rebellion was to target what kept them in their vicious cycle of hard, manual labor. They targeted property. The rebellion which began shortly after Christmas of 1831 left more than two hundred estates in shambles. However, slaves would not destroy growing sugar canes (sugar cane was the primary crop of Jamaica) so they could use them for themselves. In Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea the severity of racial tensions was very apparent when the Coulibri estate had been burned down. With a large crowd growing outside of the estate, Mr. Mason rushes to calm them down and is met with a barrage of rocks being thrown at him, and after that smoke from one of the estate’s rooms is visible. The house is being burned down by the angry slaves. Even the servants of the estate had been plotting against the estate. This really goes to show just how discontent the slaves had become with how they were being treated in Jamaica.

However, it wasn’t just the slaves who were angry. Even some of the children from Jamaica were lashing out against the white population. Antoinette, who serves as the protagonist for the novel is often bullied by other children. Especially Tia, who is one of the local kids. Not only does she steal Antoinette’s clothes, steal from her and insult her, but shortly after the Coulibri estate is burned down she throws a jagged rock directly as Antoinette which results in her face being covered in blood. It isn’t just Tia either, early on in the novel another random local girl follows Antoinette around referring to her as a “white cockroach” and telling her to go away. Even after their estate is burned down and Antoinette and her family relocate, she is still constantly bullied by the children in her new school who go so far as to threaten to hurt her. Being white in Jamaica was definitely not safe at the time with how tense race relations had become.

After all the opposition and rebellion, in 1834 slavery was finally abolished in Jamaica by the British government. However, some slaves were still not very content, because despite the fact that they had received freedom, a new law was put in place to turn former slaves into “apprentices” so they could learn and become productive members of society. So, they had still gotten the freedom they had desired but were put back to work and in many ways the new apprenticeship system harkened back to how things were during slavery. Realizing this, the apprentices would still often rebel and commit acts of violence. With tensions once again becoming a problem, in 1835 resolutions were passed to establish schools to educate the Jamaican people.