Robert Wedderburn: British Insurrectionary, Jamaican Abolitionist [Hardcover]

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 (17621834/5) 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 oratorbefore 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 andamid an increasingly repressive British establishmentdangerous 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 Wedderburns 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.

AHistory TodayBook of the Year 2025

“A significant contribution to British working-class, abolitionist, and Atlantic history.”—Kirkus Reviews(starred review)

Absorbing, eloquent, and poignant.John Coffey,American Historical 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 ofEquiano, the African

“RyanlÓ!