Narrative, of a five years' expedition, against the revolted Negroes of Surinam, in Guiana, on the wild coast of South America, from the year 1772, to 1777...

(London: Printed for J. Johnson ... & J. Edwards, 1796)

John Gabriel Stedman

1744-1797

John Gabriel Stedman arrived in the Dutch slave colony of Suriname, South America, in 1773. He was among hundreds of troops called in to fight against rainforest communities of runaway and insurgent slaves known as Maroons. Stedman recorded his experiences in a journal, which formed the basis of this Narrative, published in London two decades later. The Narrative was lavishly illustrated with engravings, based on Stedman’s drawings, by London’s foremost engravers, including Francesco Bartolozzi

(1727–1815) and William Blake (1757–1827). The subjects of these plates ranged from botanical illustrations to violent and voyeuristic images of slave torture.

The frontispiece displayed here contains a portrait of Stedman himself, standing over the body of a dying Maroon. In the background is the burning village of Gado Sabi, which was attacked by Dutch forces in 1774. In the face of this violence—which Stedman describes as a scene of “beautiful horror”— the verse below portrays Stedman as a sentimental man of feeling:

From different Parents, different Climes

we came,

At different Periods; Fate still rules

the same.

Unhappy Youth while bleeding on

the ground;

‘Twas Yours to fall—but Mine to

feel the wound.

Like Stedman’s pointing hand, these words invite readers to share in the spectacle of the fallen man’s suffering. The Narrative was not intended as an abolitionist text, and

Stedman’s original manuscript was heavily revised by a proslavery editor. Yet it became important to the antislavery cause, due in large part to the shocking images of cruelty it contained.

F2410 S81 1796+ Oversize

Yale Center for British Art

http://collections.britishart.yale.edu/vufind/Record/2035511

Related Media

J. G. Stedman, Narrative of a Five Years' Expedition John Gabriel Stedman, Narrative, of a five years' expedition, against the revolted Negroes of Surinam, in Guiana (London: Printed for J. Johnson ... & J. Edwards, 1796), frontispiece. Yale Center for British Art