The Jamaica Rebellion Summary

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The treatment of the Jamaica Rebellion by Punch cultivated the same celebration of the British military, but the values that were praised in the whole army fighting in India were embodied only in the figure of Governor Eyre. The mere soldiers are rarely singled out, although the magazine exhorts the British government to defend the men who served under his command, because it seems unbelievable to let ‘officers [be] attacked for obeying the orders of their superiors.’ (“Punch's Essence of Parliament”, 23 Feb. 1867). Doing one's duty for the Crown was deemed by Punch more important than the means of doing it, but not everyone in Britain agreed, and the intentions of the Jamaica Committee were allegedly to ‘bring a great public criminal to justice.’ …show more content…

1872) Some soldiers among the punitive expedition sent by the governor had actually served in India during the Mutiny (Johnson 199). Parallels are therefore drawn between the massacre that occurred in Cawnpore and what might have happened in Morant Bay, had Eyre not reacted; they play on the trauma caused by the massacre in India to appeal to the feelings of Punch's readers and entice them to side with the Governor. Likewise, those who support Eyre are indebted to ‘one, from maddened brutes' fury / Who saved Englishwomen, and Englishmen's lives’ because, unlike the members of the Jamaica Committee, they are ‘Britons who value their daughters and wives.’ (“The Revolt League against Eyre”) Budil contends that ‘for Eyre, the assumed rebellion should have been equal in scale and ferocity to the Indian Mutiny just eight years ago,’ (18) which determined the extremity of his reaction. In containing the Rebellion, Punch and the other supporters of the ‘gallant Eyre’ (“The Revolt League against Eyre”) argued, he nobly re-secured Britain's hold of Jamaica, as well as preserved innocent lives, and ought to be treated like a hero instead of as a

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