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WiredJA News Team Culture & Lifestyle

CARIBBEAN | Enslaved Africans Were Neither Savages Nor Brutes — John Wesley Proved It in 1774

How John Wesley’s “Thoughts Upon Slavery” demolished 250 years of colonial propaganda — and why Ambassador David Comissiong wants the Caribbean to use it to win the reparations argument. In 1774, John Wesley posed seven questions about the transatlantic slave trade and answered each one with the testimony of travellers, jurists, and scripture.

Together, they constitute the most systematic demolition of slavery propaganda ever assembled in a single document. Ambassador David Comissiong’s 2026 Sarah Ann Gill Memorial Lecture invites the Caribbean to use them as weapons in the reparations campaign. Here is the full weight of that arsenal.

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica, May 30, 2026 |Calvin G. Brown  |  History & Culture  |  The word most commonly attached to enslaved Africans in the literature of the Atlantic slave trade was “savage.” It appeared in legal documents, parliamentary debates, plantation manuals, newspaper advertisements, and the journals of ships’ captains.

WiredJA News Team Culture & Lifestyle
John Wesley is depicted as a young preacher in this sculpture by Adam Carr located in Melbourne, Australia. Public domain photo by Adam Carr/Wikipedia.

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