‘A huge human drama’: how the revolt that began on the Gladstone plantation led to emancipation

The Retreat of Lt Brady, a plate from an account of the Demerara Rebellion. Photograph: John Carter Brown Library

The Demerara Rebellion of August 1823 was a pivotal event in the abolition of slavery in the British Empire.

While the transatlantic slave trade, the largest forced migration in human history, was outlawed by Britain in 1807, slavery continued across the colonies. Conditions were brutal in Demerara, one of three provinces that made up British Guiana, where sugar plantations were among the most profitable in the world.