A New Look at the Zong Case of 1783

The murder of 132 African captives on the Zong in November 1781 and its subsequent publicity as an insurance case which showed the inhumanity of the slave trade in graphic detail was a cause célèbre in the history of eighteenth-century abolitionism. What is often forgotten is that this event occurred in the seas south-west of Jamaica at a period when Jamaica was at its lowest ebb, during the American Revolution. This article looks at the Jamaican context of the atrocity and connects what happened on this infamous ship with changing commercial and wartime conditions in Jamaica, arguing that this is as much an event in Jamaican as in British history.