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The Slave Revolution in the Caribbean: A Fight for Freedom
The Caribbean islands, once idyllic paradises, bear the scars of a brutal history: the transatlantic slave trade and the subsequent, often violent, struggles for liberation. This post delves into the complex tapestry of slave revolts in the Caribbean, exploring the causes, key events, and lasting legacies of these courageous uprisings against the yoke of oppression. We’ll examine pivotal moments, analyze the strategies employed by enslaved people, and consider the far-reaching impact these revolutions had on the region and the world. Prepare to uncover a critical, often overlooked, chapter in global history.
H2: The Seeds of Rebellion: Factors Fueling Caribbean Slave Revolts
The brutal realities of plantation slavery provided fertile ground for rebellion. The dehumanizing conditions, coupled with the inherent inequalities of the system, fueled resentment and a desperate yearning for freedom. Several key factors contributed to the frequent outbreaks of resistance:
H3: The Brutal Reality of Plantation Life: Enslaved Africans faced unimaginable cruelty – backbreaking labor, starvation rations, and the constant threat of physical violence and sexual assault. This inhumane treatment created a deep-seated desire for revenge and emancipation.
H3: The Influence of African Culture and Resistance Traditions: Despite attempts at cultural suppression, enslaved Africans maintained aspects of their cultural heritage. This included knowledge of warfare and organizational strategies that proved invaluable in planning and executing revolts. Their collective memory of resisting oppression in Africa provided a crucial framework for rebellion in the New World.
H3: The Promise of Freedom: The Enlightenment ideals of liberty and equality, though hypocritical in their application to the enslaved population, still resonated among the oppressed. News of successful revolts in other colonies, and the promise of freedom, offered powerful incentives to fight for liberation.
H2: Key Slave Revolts in the Caribbean: From Maroon Communities to Full-Scale Uprisings
The Caribbean saw numerous slave revolts, varying in scale and impact. Some were small-scale acts of defiance, while others evolved into large-scale uprisings that threatened the very foundation of colonial power.
H3: The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804): Arguably the most significant slave revolt in history, the Haitian Revolution resulted in the establishment of the independent Republic of Haiti, the first Black-led nation in the Americas. Led by figures like Toussaint Louverture, this revolution dramatically altered the geopolitical landscape of the region and served as an inspiration for future rebellions.
H3: The Jamaican Slave Rebellion of 1831-32: Led by Samuel Sharpe, this rebellion involved thousands of enslaved people and significantly contributed to the eventual abolition of slavery in the British Empire. Sharpe's organized approach, involving coordinated actions across multiple plantations, demonstrated the potential for large-scale, effective resistance.
H3: Maroon Societies: Throughout the Caribbean, escaped slaves formed independent maroon communities in remote mountainous regions. These communities, often highly organized and militarily skilled, consistently challenged colonial authority through guerrilla warfare and raids. Their existence served as a powerful symbol of resistance and a refuge for those seeking freedom.
H2: Strategies of Resistance: From Passive to Active Rebellion
Enslaved people employed a range of strategies to resist their oppression, varying in intensity from subtle acts of defiance to outright rebellion.
H3: Passive Resistance: This included feigning illness, slowing down work, sabotage of equipment, and the subtle undermining of plantation efficiency. These seemingly minor acts cumulatively weakened the plantation system and demonstrated the enslaved people's refusal to be fully subjugated.
H3: Active Resistance: This ranged from individual acts of escape and self-harm to organized rebellions involving coordinated attacks on plantations and colonial authorities. These actions often involved detailed planning, military strategies, and intricate communication networks.
H2: The Legacy of Caribbean Slave Revolts
The slave revolts in the Caribbean profoundly impacted the region and the world. They contributed significantly to the abolition of slavery, inspired anti-colonial movements, and reshaped the social and political landscape of the Caribbean. The legacy continues to influence discussions about race, justice, and equality.
Conclusion:
The slave revolts in the Caribbean represent a testament to the resilience and determination of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable oppression. These courageous acts of defiance, though often met with brutal suppression, ultimately played a crucial role in the dismantling of the slave system and laid the foundation for future struggles for freedom and equality. Understanding this history is not merely an academic exercise; it's a critical step in confronting the enduring legacies of slavery and building a more just and equitable world.
FAQs:
1. What were the most significant outcomes of the Haitian Revolution? The Haitian Revolution resulted in the abolition of slavery in Haiti, the establishment of an independent nation, and a powerful blow to the institution of slavery globally. It significantly inspired other abolitionist movements.
2. How did Maroon communities contribute to resistance? Maroon communities provided safe havens for escaped slaves, served as bases for attacks against plantations, and demonstrated the possibility of self-governance and freedom outside of colonial control.
3. What role did religion play in slave revolts? Religion played a complex role; sometimes used by slaveholders to control enslaved people, it was also adopted and adapted by the enslaved to forge solidarity and inspire hope for freedom. Religious beliefs often fuelled the belief in a just and liberating future.
4. Were women involved in the slave revolts? Absolutely. While often underrepresented in historical accounts, women played significant roles in planning, participating in, and supporting slave rebellions, often assuming crucial roles in sustaining the resistance movements.
5. How do the legacies of Caribbean slave revolts continue to affect the region today? The legacy continues in ongoing struggles for social and economic justice, reparations for historical injustices, and the ongoing fight against systemic racism and inequality. The memory of these revolts fuels ongoing efforts to reclaim the narratives of the enslaved and to create a more just society.
| slave revolution in the caribbean: Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804 Laurent Dubois, John D. Garrigus, 2016-09-02 This volume details the first slave rebellion to have a successful outcome, leading to the establishment of Haiti as a free black republic and paving the way for the emancipation of slaves in the rest of the French Empire and the world. Incited by the French Revolution, the enslaved inhabitants of the French Caribbean began a series of revolts, and in 1791 plantation workers in Haiti, then known as Saint-Domingue, overwhelmed their planter owners and began to take control of the island. They achieved emancipation in 1794, and after successfully opposing Napoleonic forces eight years later, emerged as part of an independent nation in 1804. A broad selection of documents, all newly translated by the authors, is contextualized by a thorough introduction considering the very latest scholarship. Laurent Dubois and John D. Garrigus clarify for students the complex political, economic, and racial issues surrounding the revolution and its reverberations worldwide. Useful pedagogical tools include maps, illustrations, a chronology, and a selected bibliography.--Publisher description. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: A Colony of Citizens Laurent Dubois, 2012-12-01 The idea of universal rights is often understood as the product of Europe, but as Laurent Dubois demonstrates, it was profoundly shaped by the struggle over slavery and citizenship in the French Caribbean. Dubois examines this Caribbean revolution by focusing on Guadeloupe, where, in the early 1790s, insurgents on the island fought for equality and freedom and formed alliances with besieged Republicans. In 1794, slavery was abolished throughout the French Empire, ushering in a new colonial order in which all people, regardless of race, were entitled to the same rights. But French administrators on the island combined emancipation with new forms of coercion and racial exclusion, even as newly freed slaves struggled for a fuller freedom. In 1802, the experiment in emancipation was reversed and slavery was brutally reestablished, though rebels in Saint-Domingue avoided the same fate by defeating the French and creating an independent Haiti. The political culture of republicanism, Dubois argues, was transformed through this transcultural and transatlantic struggle for liberty and citizenship. The slaves-turned-citizens of the French Caribbean expanded the political possibilities of the Enlightenment by giving new and radical content to the idea of universal rights. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: Curaçao in the Age of Revolutions, 1795-1800 , 2011-01-01 From 1795 through 1800, a series of revolts rocked Curaçao, a small but strategically located Dutch colony just off the South American continent. A combination of internal and external factors produced these uprisings, in which free and enslaved islanders particiapted with various objectives. A major slave revolt in August 1795 was the opening salvo for these tumultuous five years. While this revolt is a well-known episode in Curaçao an history, its wider Caribbean and Atlantic context is much less known. Also lacking are studies sketching a clear picture of the turbulent five years that followed. It is in these dark corners that this volume aims to shed light. The events discussed in this book fall squarely within the Age of Revolutions, the period that began with the onset of the American Revolution in 1775, was punctuated by the demise of the ancien régime in France, saw the establishment of a black state in Haiti, and witnessed the collapse of Spanish rule in mainland America. All of these revolutions seemed to converge by the late eighteenth century in Curaçao. The seven contributions in this volume provide new insights in the nature of slave resistance in the Age of Revolutions, the remarkable flows of people and ideas in the late eighteenth-century Caribbean, and the unique local history of Curaçao. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: The Haitian Revolution Toussaint L'Ouverture, 2019-11-12 Toussaint L’Ouverture was the leader of the Haitian Revolution in the late eighteenth century, in which slaves rebelled against their masters and established the first black republic. In this collection of his writings and speeches, former Haitian politician Jean-Bertrand Aristide demonstrates L’Ouverture’s profound contribution to the struggle for equality. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 3, AD 1420-AD 1804 David Eltis, Stanley L. Engerman, Keith R. Bradley, Paul Cartledge, Seymour Drescher, 2011-07-25 The various manifestations of coerced labour between the opening up of the Atlantic world and the formal creation of Haiti. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804 Laurent; John D. Garrigus Dubois, 2006 |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: Slave Revolt on Screen Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, 2021-05-28 Recipient of the 2021 Honorary Mention for the Haiti Book Prize from the Haitian Studies Association In Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games author Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall analyzes how films and video games from around the world have depicted slave revolt, focusing on the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804). This event, the first successful revolution by enslaved people in modern history, sent shock waves throughout the Atlantic World. Regardless of its historical significance however, this revolution has become less well-known—and appears less often on screen—than most other revolutions; its story, involving enslaved Africans liberating themselves through violence, does not match the suffering-slaves-waiting-for-a-white-hero genre that pervades Hollywood treatments of Black history. Despite Hollywood’s near-silence on this event, some films on the Revolution do exist—from directors in Haiti, the US, France, and elsewhere. Slave Revolt on Screen offers the first-ever comprehensive analysis of Haitian Revolution cinema, including completed films and planned projects that were never made. In addition to studying cinema, this book also breaks ground in examining video games, a pop-culture form long neglected by historians. Sepinwall scrutinizes video game depictions of Haitian slave revolt that appear in games like the Assassin’s Creed series that have reached millions more players than comparable films. In analyzing films and games on the revolution, Slave Revolt on Screen calls attention to the ways that economic legacies of slavery and colonialism warp pop-culture portrayals of the past and leave audiences with distorted understandings. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: Jamaica in the Age of Revolution Trevor Burnard, 2020-04-03 A renowned historian offers novel perspectives on slavery and abolition in eighteenth-century Jamaica Between the start of the Seven Years' War in 1756 and the onset of the French Revolution in 1789, Jamaica was the richest and most important colony in British America. White Jamaican slaveowners presided over a highly productive economic system, a precursor to the modern factory in its management of labor, its harvesting of resources, and its scale of capital investment and ouput. Planters, supported by a dynamic merchant class in Kingston, created a plantation system in which short-term profit maximization was the main aim. Their slave system worked because the planters who ran it were extremely powerful. In Jamaica in the Age of Revolution, Trevor Burnard analyzes the men and women who gained so much from the labor of enslaved people in Jamaica to expose the ways in which power was wielded in a period when the powerful were unconstrained by custom, law, or, for the most part, public approbation or disapproval. Burnard finds that the unremitting war by the powerful against the poor and powerless, evident in the day-to-day struggles slaves had with masters, is a crucial context for grasping what enslaved people had to endure. Examining such events as Tacky's Rebellion of 1760 (the largest slave revolt in the Caribbean before the Haitian Revolution), the Somerset decision of 1772, and the murder case of the Zong in 1783 in an Atlantic context, Burnard reveals Jamiaca to be a brutally effective and exploitative society that was highly adaptable to new economic and political circumstances, even when placed under great stress, as during the American Revolution. Jamaica in the Age of Revolution demonstrates the importance of Jamaican planters and merchants to British imperial thinking at a time when slavery was unchallenged. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World David P. Geggus, 2020-02-14 The effect of Saint Domingue's decolonization on the wider Atlantic world The slave revolution that two hundred years ago created the state of Haiti alarmed and excited public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic. Its repercussions ranged from the world commodity markets to the imagination of poets, from the council chambers of the great powers to slave quarters in Virginia and Brazil and most points in between. Sharing attention with such tumultuous events as the French Revolution and the Napoleonic War, Haiti's fifteen-year struggle for racial equality, slave emancipation, and colonial independence challenged notions about racial hierarchy that were gaining legitimacy in an Atlantic world dominated by Europeans and the slave trade. The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World explores the multifarious influence—from economic to ideological to psychological—that a revolt on a small Caribbean island had on the continents surrounding it. Fifteen international scholars, including eminent historians David Brion Davis, Seymour Drescher, and Robin Blackburn, explicate such diverse ramifications as the spawning of slave resistance and the stimulation of slavery's expansion, the opening of economic frontiers, and the formation of black and white diasporas. They show how the Haitian Revolution embittered contemporary debates about race and abolition and inspired poetry, plays, and novels. Seeking to disentangle its effects from those of the French Revolution, they demonstrate that its impact was ambiguous, complex, and contradictory. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: The 1812 Aponte Rebellion in Cuba and the Struggle against Atlantic Slavery Matt D. Childs, 2009-01-05 In 1812 a series of revolts known collectively as the Aponte Rebellion erupted across the island of Cuba, comprising one of the largest and most important slave insurrections in Caribbean history. Matt Childs provides the first in-depth analysis of the rebellion, situating it in local, colonial, imperial, and Atlantic World contexts. Childs explains how slaves and free people of color responded to the nineteenth-century sugar boom in the Spanish colony by planning a rebellion against racial slavery and plantation agriculture. Striking alliances among free people of color and slaves, blacks and mulattoes, Africans and Creoles, and rural and urban populations, rebels were prompted to act by a widespread belief in rumors promising that emancipation was near. Taking further inspiration from the 1791 Haitian Revolution, rebels sought to destroy slavery in Cuba and perhaps even end Spanish rule. By comparing his findings to studies of slave insurrections in Brazil, Haiti, the British Caribbean, and the United States, Childs places the rebellion within the wider story of Atlantic World revolution and political change. The book also features a biographical table, constructed by Childs, of the more than 350 people investigated for their involvement in the rebellion, 34 of whom were executed. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: Avengers of the New World Laurent DUBOIS, Laurent Dubois, 2009-06-30 Laurent Dubois weaves the stories of slaves, free people of African descent, wealthy whites and French administrators into an unforgettable tale of insurrection, war, heroism and victory. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery Barbara Lewis Solow, Stanley L. Engerman, 2004-07-08 The proceedings of a conference on Caribbean slavery and British capitalism are recorded in this volume. Convened in 1984, the conference considered the scholarship of Eric Williams & his legacy in this field of historical research. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex Philip D. Curtin, 1998-02-13 Over a period of several centuries, Europeans developed an intricate system of plantation agriculture overseas that was quite different from the agricultural system used at home. Though the plantation complex centered on the American tropics, its influence was much wider. Much more than an economic order for the Americas, the plantation complex had an important place in world history. These essays concentrate on the intercontinental impact. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: The Common Wind Julius S. Scott, 2018-11-27 Winner of the 2019 Stone Book Award, Museum of African American History A remarkable intellectual history of the slave revolts that made the modern revolutionary era The Common Wind is a gripping and colorful account of the intercontinental networks that tied together the free and enslaved masses of the New World. Having delved deep into the gray obscurity of official eighteenth-century records in Spanish, English, and French, Julius S. Scott has written a powerful “history from below.” Scott follows the spread of “rumors of emancipation” and the people behind them, bringing to life the protagonists in the slave revolution.By tracking the colliding worlds of buccaneers, military deserters, and maroon communards from Venezuela to Virginia, Scott records the transmission of contagious mutinies and insurrections in unparalleled detail, providing readers with an intellectual history of the enslaved. Though The Common Wind is credited with having “opened up the Black Atlantic with a rigor and a commitment to the power of written words,” the manuscript remained unpublished for thirty-two years. Now, after receiving wide acclaim from leading historians of slavery and the New World, it has been published by Verso for the first time, with a foreword by the academic and author Marcus Rediker. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: Black Spartacus Sudhir Hazareesingh, 2020-09-03 The definitive modern biography of the great slave leader, military genius and revolutionary hero Toussaint Louverture The Haitian Revolution began in the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue with a slave revolt in August 1791, and culminated a dozen years later in the proclamation of the world's first independent black state. After the abolition of slavery in 1793, Toussaint Louverture, himself a former slave, became the leader of the colony's black population, the commander of its republican army and eventually its governor. During the course of his extraordinary life he confronted some of the dominant forces of his age - slavery, settler colonialism, imperialism and racial hierarchy. Treacherously seized by Napoleon's invading army in 1802, this charismatic figure ended his days, in Wordsworth's phrase, 'the most unhappy man of men', imprisoned in a fortress in France. Black Spartacus draws on a wealth of archival material, much of it overlooked by previous biographers, to follow every step of Louverture's singular journey, from his triumphs against French, Spanish and British troops to his skilful regional diplomacy, his Machiavellian dealings with successive French colonial administrators and his bold promulgation of an autonomous Constitution. Sudhir Hazareesingh shows that Louverture developed his unique vision and leadership not solely in response to imported Enlightenment ideals and revolutionary events in Europe and the Americas, but through a hybrid heritage of fraternal slave organisations, Caribbean mysticism and African political traditions. Above all, Hazareesingh retrieves Louverture's rousing voice and force of personality, making this the most engaging, as well as the most complete, biography to date. After his death in the French fortress, Louverture became a figure of legend, a beacon for slaves across the Atlantic and for generations of European republicans and progressive figures in the Americas. He inspired the anti-slavery campaigner Frederick Douglass, the most eminent nineteenth-century African-American; his emancipatory struggle was hailed by those who defied imperial and colonial rule well into the twentieth. In the modern era, his life informed the French poet Aimé Césaire's seminal idea of négritude and has been celebrated in a remarkable range of plays, songs, novels and statues. Here, in all its drama, is the epic story of the world's first black superhero. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: Island on Fire Tom Zoellner, 2020-05-12 Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award “Impeccably researched and seductively readable...tells the story of Sam Sharpe’s revolution manqué, and the subsequent abolition of slavery in Jamaica, in a way that’s acutely relevant to the racial unrest of our own time.” —Madison Smartt Bell, author of All Souls’ Rising The final uprising of enslaved people in Jamaica started as a peaceful labor strike a few days shy of Christmas in 1831. A harsh crackdown by white militias quickly sparked a full-blown revolt, leaving hundreds of plantation houses in smoking ruins. The rebels lost their daring bid for freedom, but their headline-grabbing defiance triggered a decisive turn against slavery. Island on Fire is a dramatic day-by-day account of these transformative events. A skillful storyteller, Tom Zoellner uses diaries, letters, and colonial records to tell the intimate story of the men and women who rose up and briefly tasted liberty. He brings to life the rebellion’s enigmatic leader, the preacher Samuel Sharpe, and shows how his fiery resistance turned the tide of opinion in London and hastened the end of slavery in the British Empire. “Zoellner’s vigorous, fast-paced account brings to life a varied gallery of participants...The revolt failed to improve conditions for the enslaved in Jamaica, but it crucially wounded the institution of slavery itself.” —Fergus M. Bordewich, Wall Street Journal “It’s high time that we had a book like the splendid one Tom Zoellner has written: a highly readable but carefully documented account of the greatest of all British slave rebellions, the miseries that led to it, and the momentous changes it wrought.” —Adam Hochschild, author of Bury the Chains |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: A Turbulent Time David Barry Gaspar, David Patrick Geggus, 1997-03-22 Stimulating, incisive, insightful, sometimes revisionist, this volume is required reading for historians of comparative colonialism in an age of revolution. —Choice [An] eminently original and intellectually exciting book. —William and Mary Quarterly This volume examines several slave societies in the Greater Caribbean to illustrate the pervasive and multi-layered impact of the revolutionary age on the region. Built precariously on the exploitation of slave labor, organized according to the doctrine of racial discrimination, the plantation colonies were particularly vulnerable to the message of the French Revolution, which proved all the more potent because it coincided with the emergence of the antislavery movement in the Atlantic world and interacted with local traditions of resistance among the region's slaves, free coloreds, and white colonists. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: Haiti's Influence on Antebellum America Alfred N. Hunt, 2006-08-01 The Haitian Revolution began in 1791 as a slave revolt on the French colonial island of Saint Domingue and ended thirteen years later with the founding of an independent black republic. Waves of French West Indians -- slaves, white colonists, and free blacks -- fled the upheaval and flooded southern U.S. ports -- most notably New Orleans -- bringing with them everything from French opera to voodoo. Alfred N. Hunt discusses the ways these immigrants affected southern agriculture, architecture, language, politics, medicine, religion, and the arts. He also considers how the events in Haiti influenced the American slavery-emancipation debate and spurred developments in black militancy and Pan-Africanism in the United States. By effecting the development of racial ideology in antebellum America, Hunt concludes, the Haitian Revolution was a major contributing factor to the attitudes that led to the Civil War. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: The World That Fear Made Jason T. Sharples, 2020-07-17 A thought-provoking history of slaveholders' fear of the people they enslaved and its consequences From the Stono Rebellion in 1739 to the Haitian Revolution of 1791 to Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831, slave insurrections have been understood as emblematic rejections of enslavement, the most powerful and, perhaps, the only way for slaves to successfully challenge the brutal system they endured. In The World That Fear Made, Jason T. Sharples orients the mirror to those in power who were preoccupied with their exposure to insurrection. Because enslavers in British North America and the Caribbean methodically terrorized slaves and anticipated just vengeance, colonial officials consolidated their regime around the dread of rebellion. As Sharples shows through a comprehensive data set, colonial officials launched investigations into dubious rumors of planned revolts twice as often as actual slave uprisings occurred. In most of these cases, magistrates believed they had discovered plans for insurrection, coordinated by a network of enslaved men, just in time to avert the uprising. Their crackdowns, known as conspiracy scares, could last for weeks and involve hundreds of suspects. They sometimes brought the execution or banishment of dozens of slaves at a time, and loss and heartbreak many times over. Mining archival records, Sharples shows how colonists from New York to Barbados tortured slaves to solicit confessions of baroque plots that were strikingly consistent across places and periods. Informants claimed that conspirators took direction from foreign agents; timed alleged rebellions for a holiday such as Easter; planned to set fires that would make it easier to ambush white people in the confusion; and coordinated the uprising with European or Native American invasion forces. Yet, as Sharples demonstrates, these scripted accounts rarely resembled what enslaved rebels actually did when they took up arms. Ultimately, he argues, conspiracy scares locked colonists and slaves into a cycle of terror that bound American society together through shared racial fear. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: Blood on the River Marjoleine Kars, 2022-04-28 THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE BERBICE SLAVE REBELLION Winner of the 2021 Cundill History Prize Winner of the 2021 Frederick Douglass Prize 'A gripping tale about the human need for freedom ... spellbinding' NPR 'Impressively detailed ... Kars provokes the reader into seeing the many sides involved in this bloody and desperate struggle with empathy and pity ... excellent' Paterson Joseph, actor and author of The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho 'A masterpiece ... a story for the ages' Elizabeth Fenn, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Encounters at the Heart of the World In February 1763, thousands of slaves in the Dutch colony of Berbice - in present-day Guyana - launched a massive rebellion - and very nearly succeeded. For an entire year, they fought their enslavers, dreaming of establishing a free state, what would have been the first Black republic. Instead, they vanished from history. Blood on the River is the explosive story of this forgotten revolution, an event that almost changed the face of the Americas. Historian Marjoleine Kars draws on long-buried Dutch interrogation transcripts to reconstruct a rich day-by-day account of this extraordinary event, providing a rare look at the political vision of enslaved people at the dawn of the Age of Revolution. An astonishing original work of history, Blood on the River will change our understanding of revolutions, slavery and the story of freedom in the New World. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: Caribbean Slave Revolts and the British Abolitionist Movement Gelien Matthews, 2006 Focusing on slave revolts that took place in Barbados in 1816, in Demerara in 1823, and in Jamaica in 1831-32, Matthews identifies four key aspects in British abolitionist propaganda regarding Caribbean slavery: the denial that antislavery activism prompted slave revolts, the attempt to understand and recount slave uprisings from the slaves' perspectives, the portrayal of slave rebels as victims of armed suppressors and as agents of the antislavery movement, and the presentation of revolts as a rationale against the continuance of slavery. She makes use of previously overlooked publications of British abolitionists to prove that their language changed over time in response to slave uprisings.. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: Claims to Memory Catherine Reinhardt, 2006-04-01 Why do the people of the French Caribbean still continue to be haunted by the memory of their slave past more than one hundred and fifty years after the abolition of slavery? What process led to the divorce of their collective memory of slavery and emancipation from France's portrayal of these historical phenomena? How are Martinicans and Guadeloupeans today transforming the silences of the past into historical and cultural manifestations rooted in the Caribbean? This book answers these questions by relating the 1998 controversy surrounding the 150th anniversary of France's abolition of slavery to the period of the slave regime spanning the late Enlightenment and the French Revolution. By comparing a diversity of documents—including letters by slaves, free people of color, and planters, as well as writings by the philosophes, royal decrees, and court cases—the author untangles the complex forces of the slave regime that have shaped collective memory. The current nationalization of the memory of slavery in France has turned these once peripheral claims into passionate political and cultural debates. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: White Fury Christer Petley, 2018 The story of the struggle over slavery in the British empire -- as told through the rich, expressive, and frequently shocking letters of one of the wealthiest British slaveholders ever to have lived. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti, Comprehending a View of the Principal Transactions in the Revolution of Saint Domingo Marcus Rainsford, 2018-10-10 This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: Tree of Liberty Doris Lorraine Garraway, 2008 On January 1, 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared the independence of Haiti, thus bringing to an end the only successful slave revolution in history and transforming the colony of Saint-Domingue into the second independent state in the Western Hemisphere. The historical significance of the Haitian Revolution has been addressed by numerous scholars, but the importance of the Revolution as a cultural and political phenomenon has only begun to be explored. Although the path-breaking work of Michel-Rolph Trouillot and Sibylle Fischer has illustrated the profound silences surrounding the Haitian Revolution in Western historiography and in Caribbean cultural production in the aftermath of the Revolution, contributors to this volume argue that, while suppressed and disavowed in some quarters, the Haitian Revolution nonetheless had an enduring cultural and political impact, particularly on peoples and communities that have been marginalized in the historical record and absent from the discourses of Western historiography. Tree of Liberty interrogates the literary, historical, and political discourses that the Revolution produced and inspired across time and space and across national and linguistic boundaries. In so doing, it seeks to initiate a far-reaching discussion of the Revolution as a cultural and political phenomenon that shaped ideas about the Enlightenment, freedom, postcolonialism, and race in the modern Atlantic world. Contributors: A. James Arnold, University of Virginia * Chris Bongie, Queen's University * Paul Breslin, Northwestern University * Ada Ferrer, New York University * Doris L. Garraway, Northwestern University * E. Anthony Hurley, SUNY Stony Brook * Deborah Jenson, University of Wisconsin, Madison * Jean Jonassaint, Syracuse University * Valerie Kaussen, University of Missouri * Ifeoma C.K. Nwankwo, Vanderbilt University |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: Contested Bodies Sasha Turner, 2017-05-05 It is often thought that slaveholders only began to show an interest in female slaves' reproductive health after the British government banned the importation of Africans into its West Indian colonies in 1807. However, as Sasha Turner shows in this illuminating study, for almost thirty years before the slave trade ended, Jamaican slaveholders and doctors adjusted slave women's labor, discipline, and health care to increase birth rates and ensure that infants lived to become adult workers. Although slaves' interests in healthy pregnancies and babies aligned with those of their masters, enslaved mothers, healers, family, and community members distrusted their owners' medicine and benevolence. Turner contends that the social bonds and cultural practices created around reproductive health care and childbirth challenged the economic purposes slaveholders gave to birthing and raising children. Through powerful stories that place the reader on the ground in plantation-era Jamaica, Contested Bodies reveals enslaved women's contrasting ideas about maternity and raising children, which put them at odds not only with their owners but sometimes with abolitionists and enslaved men. Turner argues that, as the source of new labor, these women created rituals, customs, and relationships around pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing that enabled them at times to dictate the nature and pace of their work as well as their value. Drawing on a wide range of sources—including plantation records, abolitionist treatises, legislative documents, slave narratives, runaway advertisements, proslavery literature, and planter correspondence—Contested Bodies yields a fresh account of how the end of the slave trade changed the bodily experiences of those still enslaved in Jamaica. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: Freedom's Mirror Ada Ferrer, 2014-11-28 Studies the reverberations of the Haitian Revolution in Cuba, where the violent entrenchment of slavery occurred while slaves in Haiti successfully overthrew the institution. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: Rituals, Runaways, and the Haitian Revolution Crystal Nicole Eddins, 2021-10-28 A new analysis of the origins of the Haitian Revolution, revealing the consciousness, solidarity, and resistance that helped it succeed. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: Capitalism and Slavery Eric Williams, 2014-06-30 Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide. Eric Williams advanced these powerful ideas in Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944. Years ahead of its time, his profound critique became the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development. Binding an economic view of history with strong moral argument, Williams's study of the role of slavery in financing the Industrial Revolution refuted traditional ideas of economic and moral progress and firmly established the centrality of the African slave trade in European economic development. He also showed that mature industrial capitalism in turn helped destroy the slave system. Establishing the exploitation of commercial capitalism and its link to racial attitudes, Williams employed a historicist vision that set the tone for future studies. In a new introduction, Colin Palmer assesses the lasting impact of Williams's groundbreaking work and analyzes the heated scholarly debates it generated when it first appeared. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: The Price of Slavery Nick Nesbitt, 2022-03-24 The Price of Slavery analyzes Marx’s critique of capitalist slavery and its implications for the Caribbean thought of Toussaint Louverture, Henry Christophe, C. L. R. James, Aimé Césaire, Jacques Stephen Alexis, and Suzanne Césaire. Nick Nesbitt assesses the limitations of the literature on capitalism and slavery since Eric Williams in light of Marx’s key concept of the social forms of labor, wealth, and value. To do so, Nesbitt systematically reconstructs for the first time Marx’s analysis of capitalist slavery across the three volumes of Capital. The book then follows the legacy of Caribbean critique in its reflections on the social forms of labor, servitude, and freedom, as they culminate in the vehement call for the revolutionary transformation of an unjust colonial order into one of universal justice and equality. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: The Haitian Revolution , 2014-09-03 A landmark collection of documents by the field's leading scholar. This reader includes beautifully written introductions and a fascinating array of never-before-published primary documents. These treasures from the archives offer a new picture of colonial Saint-Domingue and the Haitian Revolution. The translations are lively and colorful. --Alyssa Sepinwall, California State University San Marcos |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: The Oxford Handbook of Slavery in the Americas Robert L. Paquette, Mark Michael Smith, 2016-01-28 A series of penetrating, original, and authoritative essays on the history and historiography of the institution of slavery in the New World, written by a team of leading international contributors. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: Empire's Crossroads Carrie Gibson, 2014-07-01 In October 1492, an Italian-born, Spanish-funded navigator discovered a new world, thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean. In Empire's Crossroads, Carrie Gibson, unfolds the story of the Caribbean from Columbus's first landing on the island he named San Salvador to today's islands - largely independent, but often still in thrall to Europe and America's insatiable desire for tropical luxuries. From the early years of settlement to the age of sugar and slavery, during which vast riches were generated for Europeans through the enforced labour of millions of enslaved Africans, to the great slave rebellions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the long, slow progress towards independence in the modern era, Gibson offers a vivid, panoramic view of this complex and contradictory region. From Cuba to Haiti, from Jamaica to Trinidad, the story of the Caribbean is not simply the story of slaves and masters - but of fortune-seekers, tourists, scientists and pirates. It is not only a story of imperial expansion - European and American - but also of life as it is lived in the islands, both in the past and today. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean Randy M. Browne, 2017-06-30 A groundbreaking study of slavery and power in the British Caribbean that foregrounds the struggle for survival Atlantic slave societies were notorious deathtraps. In Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean, Randy M. Browne looks past the familiar numbers of life and death and into a human drama in which enslaved Africans and their descendants struggled to survive against their enslavers, their environment, and sometimes one another. Grounded in the nineteenth-century British colony of Berbice, one of the Atlantic world's best-documented slave societies and the last frontier of slavery in the British Caribbean, Browne argues that the central problem for most enslaved people was not how to resist or escape slavery but simply how to stay alive. Guided by the voices of hundreds of enslaved people preserved in an extraordinary set of legal records, Browne reveals a world of Caribbean slavery that is both brutal and breathtakingly intimate. Field laborers invoked abolitionist-inspired legal reforms to protest brutal floggings, spiritual healers conducted secretive nighttime rituals, anxious drivers weighed the competing pressures of managers and the condition of their fellow slaves in the fields, and women fought back against abusive masters and husbands. Browne shows that at the core of enslaved people's complicated relationships with their enslavers and one another was the struggle to live in a world of death. Provocative and unflinching, Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean reorients the study of Atlantic slavery by revealing how differently enslaved people's social relationships, cultural practices, and political strategies appear when seen in the light of their unrelenting struggle to survive. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: A Concise History of the Caribbean B. W. Higman, 2021-05-27 A compelling account of Caribbean history from colonization to slavery and revolution, through the tumult of hurricanes and climate change. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: The Making of Haiti Carolyn E. Fick, 1990 The present work is an attempt to illustrate the nature and the impact of the popular mentality and popular movements on the course of revolutionary (and, in part, postrevolutionary) events in eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue. --pref. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: Maroon Nation Johnhenry Gonzalez, 2019-06-25 A new history of post†‘Revolutionary Haiti, and the society that emerged in the aftermath of the world’s most successful slave revolution Haiti is widely recognized as the only state born out of a successful slave revolt, but the country’s early history remains scarcely understood. In this deeply researched and original volume, Johnhenry Gonzalez weaves a history of early independent Haiti focused on crop production, land reform, and the unauthorized rural settlements devised by former slaves of the colonial plantation system. Analyzing the country’s turbulent transition from the most profitable and exploitative slave colony of the eighteenth century to a relatively free society of small farmers, Gonzalez narrates the origins of institutions such as informal open-air marketplaces and rural agrarian compounds known as lakou. Drawing on seldom studied primary sources to contribute to a growing body of early Haitian scholarship, he argues that Haiti’s legacy of runaway communities and land conflict was as formative as the Haitian Revolution in developing the country’s characteristic agrarian, mercantile, and religious institutions. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: The Great African Slave Revolt of 1825 Manuel Barcia, 2012-06-06 In June 1825 the Cuban countryside witnessed a large African-led slave rebellion -- a revolt that began a cycle of slave uprisings lasting until the mid-1840s. The Great African Slave Revolt of 1825 examines this movement and its participants for the first time, highlighting the significance of African warriors in New World plantation society. Unlike previous slave revolts -- led by alliances between free people of color and slaves, blacks and mulattoes, Africans and Creoles, and rural and urban populations -- only African-born men organized the uprising of 1825. From this year onwards, Barcia argues, slave uprisings in Cuba underwent a phase of Africanization that concluded only in the mid-1840s with the conspiracy of La Escalera, a large movement organized by free colored men with ample participation of the slave population. The Great African Slave Revolt of 1825 offers a detailed examination of the sociopolitical and economic background of the Matanzas rebellion, both locally and colonially. Based on extensive primary sources, particularly court records, the study provides a microhistorical analysis of the days that preceded this event, the uprising itself, and the days and months that followed. Barcia gives the Great African Revolt of 1825 its rightful place in the history of slavery in Cuba, the Caribbean, and the Americas. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: An Empire Divided Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy, 2015-12-14 There were 26—not 13—British colonies in America in 1776. Of these, the six colonies in the Caribbean—Jamaica, Barbados, the Leeward Islands, Grenada and Tobago, St. Vincent; and Dominica—were among the wealthiest. These island colonies were closely related to the mainland by social ties and tightly connected by trade. In a period when most British colonists in North America lived less than 200 miles inland and the major cities were all situated along the coast, the ocean often acted as a highway between islands and mainland rather than a barrier. The plantation system of the islands was so similar to that of the southern mainland colonies that these regions had more in common with each other, some historians argue, than either had with New England. Political developments in all the colonies moved along parallel tracks, with elected assemblies in the Caribbean, like their mainland counterparts, seeking to increase their authority at the expense of colonial executives. Yet when revolution came, the majority of the white island colonists did not side with their compatriots on the mainland. A major contribution to the history of the American Revolution, An Empire Divided traces a split in the politics of the mainland and island colonies after the Stamp Act Crisis of 1765-66, when the colonists on the islands chose not to emulate the resistance of the patriots on the mainland. Once war came, it was increasingly unpopular in the British Caribbean; nonetheless, the white colonists cooperated with the British in defense of their islands. O'Shaughnessy decisively refutes the widespread belief that there was broad backing among the Caribbean colonists for the American Revolution and deftly reconstructs the history of how the island colonies followed an increasingly divergent course from the former colonies to the north. |
| slave revolution in the caribbean: Secret History; or, the Horrors of St. Domingo Leonora Sansay, 2022-09-04 DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of Secret History; or, the Horrors of St. Domingo by Leonora Sansay. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature. |
Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804: A Brief History …
In this article, we reveal the meanings of hegemony and colonization of the Caribbean islands. How was this achieved? What are the tools for that? What processes took place during this period?
Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804: A Brief History …
Sep 2, 2016 · Get the true story of the slave revolutions that reconstructed the geographies of the American from 1789 to 1804 through the primary sources included in Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804.
Slave revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804 : a brief history …
In this broad selection of documents, the authors clarify for students the complex political, economic, and racial issues surrounding the revolution and the wave of revolts elsewhere in the French Caribbean.
Slave revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804 - Archive.org
Oct 23, 2021 · Slave revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804 : a brief history with documents by Dubois, Laurent, 1971-Publication date 2006 Topics Slave insurrections -- West Indies, French -- Sources, West Indies, French -- History -- Sources Publisher Basingstoke ; New York : …
Slave revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804 - Archive.org
This volume details the first slave rebellion to have a successful outcome, leading to the establishment of Haiti as a free black republic and paving the way for the emancipation of slaves in the rest of the French Empire and the world.
Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804 - Google Books
Sep 2, 2016 · Slave Revolution in the Caribbean tells the story of the slave revolutions that reconfigured the political geography of the Americas between 1789 and 1804 with a selection of primary sources...
Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804 (text only) 1st …
Jan 1, 2006 · Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804 (text only) 1st (First) edition by L. Dubois,J. by D. Garrigus Paperback – January 1, 2006
Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804 a Brief History …
Victims of our [own] credulity and indulgence for fourteen years; defeated not by French armies, but by the pathetic eloquence of By November 1803, Saint-Domingue's rebel forces, led by Jean-Jacques their agents' proclamations; when will we tire of breathing the air that Dessalines, had driven the last of the French army out of the col they bre...
[PDF] Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804: A Brief …
Feb 1, 2006 · Enslaved Africans in the Caribbean embraced ancestral spirituality and esotericism to counteract the dehumanization strategies of European enslavers, to forge Pan-African bridges across ethnic… Why Was Jeannot Executed? A Possible Plan for General Liberty, Independence, and a Black-Coloured Alliance at the Beginning of the Haitian Revolution.
Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804 : a Brief History …
Summary: This volume details the first slave rebellion to have a successful outcome, leading to the establishment of Haiti as a free black republic and paving the way for the emancipation of slaves in the rest of the French Empire and the world.
Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804: A Brief History …
In this article, we reveal the meanings of hegemony and colonization of the Caribbean islands. How was this achieved? What are the tools for that? What processes took place during this period?
Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804: A Brief History …
Sep 2, 2016 · Get the true story of the slave revolutions that reconstructed the geographies of the American from 1789 to 1804 through the primary sources included in Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804.
Slave revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804 : a brief history …
In this broad selection of documents, the authors clarify for students the complex political, economic, and racial issues surrounding the revolution and the wave of revolts elsewhere in the French Caribbean.
Slave revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804 - Archive.org
Oct 23, 2021 · Slave revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804 : a brief history with documents by Dubois, Laurent, 1971-Publication date 2006 Topics Slave insurrections -- West Indies, French -- Sources, West Indies, French -- History -- Sources Publisher …
Slave revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804 - Archive.org
This volume details the first slave rebellion to have a successful outcome, leading to the establishment of Haiti as a free black republic and paving the way for the emancipation of slaves in the rest of the French Empire and the world.
Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804 - Google Books
Sep 2, 2016 · Slave Revolution in the Caribbean tells the story of the slave revolutions that reconfigured the political geography of the Americas between 1789 and 1804 with a selection of primary sources...
Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804 (text only) 1st …
Jan 1, 2006 · Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804 (text only) 1st (First) edition by L. Dubois,J. by D. Garrigus Paperback – January 1, 2006
Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804 a Brief History …
Victims of our [own] credulity and indulgence for fourteen years; defeated not by French armies, but by the pathetic eloquence of By November 1803, Saint-Domingue's rebel forces, led by Jean-Jacques their agents' proclamations; when will we tire of breathing the air that Dessalines, had driven the last of the French army out of the col they bre...
[PDF] Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804: A Brief …
Feb 1, 2006 · Enslaved Africans in the Caribbean embraced ancestral spirituality and esotericism to counteract the dehumanization strategies of European enslavers, to forge Pan-African bridges across ethnic… Why Was Jeannot Executed? A Possible Plan for General Liberty, Independence, and a Black-Coloured Alliance at the Beginning of the Haitian Revolution.
Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804 : a Brief History …
Summary: This volume details the first slave rebellion to have a successful outcome, leading to the establishment of Haiti as a free black republic and paving the way for the emancipation of slaves in the rest of the French Empire and the world.
