18 Quotes by Tom Zoellner

No correlation exists between sugar and nutritional benefit. Its presence in food assures the tongue that energy and protein reside within, but sweet foods deliver a benign-tasting venom. A crowning irony of the sugar-slave symbiosis was that it was not fatal just to Africans; it could also be fatal to their masters.

Before the night was over, Bleby, Morris, and thousands of others watched awestruck as new fires spread on neighboring plantations, in an unstoppable chain, as if the universe itself was answering the first call of flames and setting free some beautiful and terrifying spirit that could not be called back.

The slaves themselves were powerless to create any written record of what they witnessed, or to publicize it in any way beyond the discreet oral circles of plantation life. What can be known of Sharpe's method and motives must be seen through the lens of the Jamaican prosecutorial narrative, which sought to understand him only to the point of gathering sufficient evidence to justify his hanging.

The question also had an ominous spiritual dimension. To which God would they submit? There was the one proclaimed by the Baptists who said they could no longer serve two masters, and that freedom was a birthright. And then there was the one of the Church of England who commanded them to obey their masters and serve in thankfulness and humility.

[Sharpe's] only goal had been to make people free, he said, and what had been a peaceful movement had spun out of control. But he remained defiant to the end about the idealism of his cause, if not the means.'I would rather die upon yonder gallows than live in slavery!' he said. Belby reported that Sharpe's frame expanded, his spine stiffened, and his eyes seemed to 'shoot forth rays of light' when he said this.

The Jamaican violence had given humanitarians powerful evidence that the institution was costing Britain far more than it was giving back, and the humanitarians could now make extended pragmatic arguments as well as moral ones.

For enslaved people who had spent their entire lives under the shadow of the whip, without any military training of experience with guns, to one day pick up a firearm or a machete or even a rock and oppose a superior force must have taken an extraordinary level of nerve. The thirst for liberty was powerful enough to overcome even the fear of probable death.

The growth of literacy was sparking an awakening – welcome to some, dreadful to others – across the slave-empire of Jamaica. Reading seemed to ignite a hidden store of fuel within an enslaved person.

...Her boyfriend gives her a Mercedes, [her friends] say, 'Oh, that's nice.' But her boyfriend gives her a diamond, they say, 'Oh, he's serious.' It's not just the gift of love-it's the gift of commitment. She's not jumping up and down because she got a diamond ring but because she got a guy! There are those who say you don't need diamonds. I say they're right. Just like you don't need sex.