Jamaica’s slavery petition packed with years of research

Jamaica’s petition inviting King Charles III to refer to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council questions regarding Britain’s seizure, transportation, chattelisation, and enslavement of the island’s ancestors from the mid-17th century to 1834 is packed with heavy and emotive information gathered through extensive research conducted over at least 17 years. “It is estimated that over a period of more than 300 years, at least 15.4 million Africans were forcibly captured and transported across the Atlantic. It is recorded that approximately 1.2 million people were transported to Jamaica alone,” the petition states in the opening section outlining the background to the application.

Filed on September 7, 2026 by a delegation headed by Culture Minister Olivia Grange, the petition gives overwhelming information about the cruelty and inhumane treatment meted out to captured Africans who were sold into slavery. “The staggering numbers of those who arrived in Jamaica, chilling in themselves, obscure the additional detail of the significant numbers of Africans who were killed, in particular on the infamous ‘Middle Passage’. Mortality rates on the ‘slavers’, that is the ships that transported the enslaved, were extremely high in the early years of the trade in enslaved persons.

By way of example, on arrival in Jamaica in 1732, the Saint Michel recorded a shocking mortality rate of 96.5 per cent,” the petition states. “The depravity of the mercantile enterprise that systematically transformed humans into commodities was laid bare in a 1783 case about another slaver, the Zong (Gregson v Gilbert 99 ER 629). Serious navigational errors caused the voyage of the ship to become protracted, and to imperil all onboard.

A number of the 442 enslaved Africans who started the journey died en route. “The poor physical condition of those still alive as the vessel neared Jamaica meant that as ‘perishable goods’, they would have little resale value on arrival. A deliberate decision was made by those in charge of the ship to drown some 134 captive Africans in three batches.

The ship’s owners argued, in order to make good a claim for insurance, that this calculated decision was not murder. Rather, the argument went, it was merely the preservation of healthy ‘cargo’ by removing the contaminants; by disposing of the frail and the infirm. There was, according to the case report in Gregs…