Island on Fire: The extraordinary story of Laki, the volcano that turned eighteenth-century Europe dark

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I bought this book after my trip to Iceland in June 2014. Iceland is a fascinating country and so was the book.

Dazzling...as funny as it is poignant, nostalgic as it is sharp." —Carley Fortune, New York Times bestselling author of Every Summer After I love science when it tells how things work. I hate science when it makes me feel like I got no control. The latter is how I feel after reading Island on Fire. I truly understand there is an arrogance in humans. We believe we are far more in control than we are. I don't know if this is a by product of consciousness where we understand how to reason. But then turn it around and having so little control we demand to have it. The need for control is why people need conspiracy theories or decide to ignore issues and problems that are so big, like climate change, that we deny their existence. Cunningham’s explanation of the causes of the uprising foreshadow the conclusions in the best account of any enslaved rebellion, that made by Emilia Viotti Da Costa in Crowns of Glory (1994), where she argues that “rebellion was the product of many contradictory historical forces,” or that it arose from “voices in the air.” As Richard Sheridan argues in “The Jamaican Slave Insurrection of 1776 and the American Revolution” ( The Journal of Negro History, 1975) about the 1776 Hanover slave conspiracy in Jamaica, “slaves needed no borrowed ideology and motivation but only favourable circumstances to rise against their oppressors.”

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The meaning of this chain of fire was instantly clear to the watchman, Col. George Lawson, who had been – like the rest of his militia unit – in a state of high tension for the previous week because of credible evidence that the slave population of the northwest shore of Jamaica was about to rise up in revolt. At Zócalo Public Square, read Zoellner’s overview of the enduring lessons of Jamaica’s 1831–2 “Christmas Uprising” He then added a postscript, knowing that one company of a badly-trained militia would not be sufficient to prevent the white population from being massacred. I love the preface about the islanders on Heimaey bravely fighting the lava to save their homes and livelihood, and against the odds succeed. At least to a degree. But the introduction underlines, which I guess was the authors’ intent, how powerless we are to even a relatively minor hiccup from below.

But Sharpe’s uprising was different in its large-scale mobilization and its apt deployment of Baptist liberation theology that brought in more than thirty thousand (some estimates place it closer to 60,000) enslaved people into the plot, catalyzing an acceleration towards the abolition of slavery throughout the British empire. Sharpe’s homiletics gravitated towards biblical declarations of liberation, as Zoellner writes:From a New York Times bestselling author, a gripping account of the slave rebellion that led to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. An important contribution to our understanding of what Saidiya Hartman has described as the ‘afterlife’ of slavery. Zoellner documents in vivid detail the base violence and inhumanity of institutionalized slavery in plantation-era Jamaica. But he also tells a story of irrepressible resistance and self-organization that generated the slave rebellion of 1831… His storytelling ability makes this history extremely readable, if not less painful. ” —Abigail Bakan, Jacobin

On Fire Island is told from the perspective of Julia, a book editor who passed away at the young age of 37. We follow along with Julia as she experiences her final summer on Fire Island - as an observer that nobody else can see. We meet a delightful cast of characters and get to know them through Julia's eyes. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.” New Yorkers understood very well, Scripture can counsel obedience, and it can counsel rebellion. In 1730, the New York Gazette reported news of “an Insurrection of the Negroes” in Virginia, occasioned by a report that the new governor “had Direction from his Majesty to free all baptized Negroes.” This inspired baptized slaves to claim their freedom, which, since their owners denied it, meant staging a rebellion.” The abolitionist movement had continued in England with stories being published of atrocities in the colonies and movements to boycott sugar. The children of plantation owners sometimes faced discrimination or ridicule when enrolling in prestigious universities for the ill-gotten wages of their parents. Much like the United States, the nation was increasingly divided but with a growing movement toward a solution that ultimately included abolition.Island on Fire is a gripping account of the five weeks when Jamaica burned in a rebellion led by enslaved preacher Samuel Sharpe. Tom Zoellner recounts these dramatic events with great energy and detail, crucially setting Sharpe’s story—which until now has not been well known away from the island—in the wider context of the struggle for abolition on both sides of the Atlantic. ” — Carrie Gibson, author of Empire’s Crossroads