Robert Wedderburn was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1762, the illegitimate son of Scottish sugar planter James Wedderburn and an enslaved woman named Rosanna, whom his father sold while she was pregnant, stipulating that her child be born free.
Raised by his maternal grandmother, Wedderburn witnessed both his mother and grandmother being whipped, memories that would later fuel his anti-slavery writing; he left Jamaica as a young man to serve in the Royal Navy before settling in London in 1778, working as a tailor.
In London, Wedderburn became involved in radical working-class politics, undergoing a spiritual conversion and becoming a licensed Unitarian preacher before joining the Spencean Philanthropists, followers of Thomas Spence's plan for common land ownership and social equality.
After the Spenceans' leaders were arrested on suspicion of treason in 1817, Wedderburn became the group's de facto leader, publishing fiery periodicals advocating revolution and, in 1817, the pamphlet The Axe Laid to the Root, addressed to the enslaved people of Jamaica and calling for insurrection.
In 1824 Wedderburn published his autobiography, The Horrors of Slavery, drawing directly on his childhood memories to influence the abolitionist movement; he was imprisoned multiple times for blasphemy and sedition over his radical activities before his death in London around 1835 or 1836.
- Published The Axe Laid to the Root, 1817, calling for slave insurrection in Jamaica
- Became de facto leader of the Spencean Philanthropists radical movement
- Published his influential autobiography, The Horrors of Slavery, 1824
- Used first-hand testimony of his family's enslavement to advance abolitionist argument
- Personal history can become political ammunition. Wedderburn used his own family's suffering under slavery as the emotional core of his political writing.
- Radicalism often carries a personal cost. Wedderburn was repeatedly imprisoned for blasphemy and sedition because of his uncompromising activism.