Caribbean Slave Revolts, Ft. Saint Andrew

to cover rather broad topic. I don't even know if it's gonna be released before the end of February, probably not, But in honor of Black History Month, UM, I wanted to cover the history of Caribbean resistance to slavery on the different ways that manifested across the Caribbean. For those who don't know, UM, slavery in the Caribbean took place for several hundred years, beginning with the enslavement of the Amerindians the and continuing up until the abolition of slavery

in three four, at least in British territories. UM. Before then, there were multiple struggles against the institution, both passive and active, and in every step of the process. UM. And then, of course post slavery, they were also multiple rebellions and insurrections and strikes that took place in the region. But I can't cover the well about seven thousand islands in the Caribbean, give or take. But I can't cover the histories of all of those for the past couple of

thousand years. But I will try to cover fairly generally the different forms of resistance that took place, starting with, of course, the resistance that took place in Africa. I mean even before enslaved people were put on these ships, even before they were captured, there were measures they were

taken to protect themselves from enslavement. There was of course flight in the sense of running away um, but there was also evidence of Africans moving their villages to inaccessible areas like mountains or um or deeper into the forest were less accessible for enslaved people. UM sorry for enslavers to try to capture their people. One of the more

famous enslaved people um Luarda Aquino. He founded a society in Britain after being enslaved and taken to the Caribbean and eventually moving to Britain after becoming a freedman and starting the Sons of Africa abolitionist group. He had written his own autobiography the interesting narrative of the life of Lada Aquino In and he detailed some of the horrors of slavery from an enslaved person's perspective, and so a lot of what we knew about slavery and how it

could ah comes from his personal account, among others. Of course, so he spoke about some of the measures that were

taken in his own village to defend against capture. But um he after being captured, of course, from the Kingdom of Nian around seventeen forty five, he ended up being taken on the slave ships, separated from his families and carried with four other people across the Atlantic to Barbados, and then eventually taken to Virginia, and then from Virginia being bought by a Royal Navy lieutenant and eventually being freed. During the voyages that it could and they were multiple

during the whole Triangle trade. It has been said that one in ten of all Atlantic crossings through the Middle prop passage had some kind of rebellion, whether it be through taking control of the ships and attempting to seal them back to Africa with the assistance of the crew without all of Africans battling against other ships um or in one case in Amistat, in some Africans were taken captive above aboard a cargo ship and they free themselves, killed the captain and the cook, and forced them to

take them back to Sierra Leone, but instead the owners of the ship ended up taking them to the United States, where they were captured by the coast Guard. Jesus, yeah, it's a lot um one slaveship surgeon guy named Alexander

Falconbridge became an abolitionist because he saw well. The first of all, he saw the horrible conditions that were present on those ships in the Middle Passage, where you know, hundreds of people were shackled together and crammed into these tight enclosed, dark, wet, infected spaces for weeks on end, were being taken across. And of course a lot of the so called cargo, the people who were on route to be enslaved, were killed by the conditions presidents on

those slave ships. However, despite the fact that you know, so many people were dying from the terrible conditions of the ships, the slave trade was so profitable for the enslavers and for the economies of the colonial nations that it was still they were still not They were still not only able to break even but profit massively from

the excursions. And even though the Middle Passage got more and more dangerous for cruise as rebellions became more and more expected, production for more shackles, more weaponry to keep captives secured a rose in England and helped to secure some of their travels. Of course, they were also times where Africans would burn the ships they were on, or

where they would jump off of the ships. As I'm sure many people remember kill Monker's famous final words in Black Panther, And from what I remember, the first enslaved people who arrived in Hispaniola immediately ran away and we're able to escape before being recaptured. Once UM and slave people arrived in the horrible conditions at the various colonies in the Caribbean, one of the major projects of their colonial overlords was to convert them. While in the process

of you know, enslaving them. Of course, a lot of enslaved people were dying very rapidly due to the diseases and the terrible working conditions they had to endure. Right for those who did survive, UM separated from their families, from their ties to kinship, from really their home and

everything that came along with it. As displaced indigenous people, they had to fear out ways to maintain and protect their cultures um from you know, naming conventions, to craftsmanship, to language, to philosophy too believes, to music, to dance. These were all elements of African cultures that would provide psychological support for captives who need to resist the process of enslavement, because enslavement is an act of breaking the

will and erasing the humanity of the enslave. Practices like voodoo um in Haiti or obia in Trinidad and Jamaica, we're able to strengthen the revolutionary efforts of rebellious Africans, and so in the Haitian Revolution, you know, they were fueled by voodoo and the ceremonies that occurred then, and we're able to eventually, you know, free the people of Haiti and established the first independent black republic in the

New World. You need to go four. So other forms of cultural resistance, and one of the main forms of culture resistance was the preservation of African culture through too pre realization, through the melding and the hiding in some cases of elements of African culture with um European cultural forms to create these new cultures and new languages. Um Ciol is one example, particularly Antillian Creole, which is related

to Haitian Creole. These languages helped to maintain UM some measure of identity for people who will be actively being

stripped of it. Women in particular played a major role in this process of cultural resistance and cultural preservation because in African societies they were African societies often made trilineal and mature lucal, and women played a key role in passing traditions onto their daughters and other young women and to the community at large through storytelling and through um the sharing of skills and beliefs and ideas, and so African women played a major rule in keeping the tradition

going on at lineage going maintaining the memory of people like a Nancy and Rare Rabbits and Mamadalu and Skant and all these other folkloric figures who bavy marks of African traditions. Women under slavery also had to do what they could to resist the consistent, consistent UM violence, sexual violence that was UM being done to them by their clear masters. UM abortion and UM birth control, UM and other forms of resistance against sexual assault, resisting their masters,

feeling illness. All these things worked too, not necessarily protect them, but two keep them going and try to steve off the worst elements of violence it was being done to them. As I mentioned the Haitian Revolution and being fueled by voodoo and whatnot. It really scared planters across the Cribban and across the world, really like this is the first time something I just said have happened before. And I'm sure, uh the U s audience knew. Was a bit about

the consequences in the US. How you know southern slave masters were so terrified by creation of aolution, how France um imposed restrictions on Haiti, and how the US and other European powers were complicit in that attempts to strangle the first Black Republic. But there were cases and other parts of the Caribbean where planters um, in their terror, used the Haitian Revolution has an excuse to crackdown on the enslaved um, for example in Trendad in the Christmas

of eighteen o five. The Hassian Revolution ended in eighteen o four. So in Christmas of eighteena five, UM the planters were so afraid and had really seen some acts of poisoning that we're occurring on some of the estates because part of the cultural resistance involved the passing down of certain recipes and poisons and concoctions, and so many enslavers, you know, felt victim couldn't quote to poisoners, and so they had to try to find a way to prevent

what they saw was a planned uprising. They basically invented this idea of a conspiracy in their paranoia that was meant to wipe out this entire slave owning population during that in one go. So of course, as historians have uncovered, the conspiracy most likely didn't actually exist or maybe perhaps not today the scale that um the slave owners thought, But it was more so an attempt by the planters

to impose greater authoritarian rule. As Christmas they needs, you know, five approached, the details of this conspiracy, of this plot started to be uncovered by the planter is Um they thought that, you know, at this place called Chance Estate,

enslaved people we're organizing to launch their revolution. And of course this terrified them because at that point in time, the enslaved population was somewhere around whereas the white slave owning class it was like half that number, and so the authorities declared martial law and apprehended those involved if they were even involved. Oftentimes they were not. But it does bring attention to an important part of enslave resistance, and that being the conspiracy and actual existence of slave

secret societies. Secret societies are something that, ah, It's something that's common in the African Madan land, where tribal rights and initiations and advancements through those rights um in secret groupings where it could um to sort of denote levels of Ranco maturity, and so in slave society, as different tribes mixed and mingled and plantations for security reasons. These secret societies continued but had assimilated some European systems of

order and designation. So they gave themselves names like major or Captain and describe their societies as regiments and the echoes. The descendants of those societies still exists to this day. In turn Dad, they are highly obscured. I honestly don't know much details about them. I just know that I have some friends whose relatives um involved in those secret societies, and in some places like for example Grandcouver where and stay people seize the land and sort of held that

land and kept it and passed it down across the generations. Um, such secret societies and membership in such secret societies is not unhood of so is what the the modern ish versions of them do? Like what what what? What what are they doing? I guess like these days if if there's something that is I don't know much about about them or how they operate. Yeah, and so I don't think all secret societies and turned that are descended from

enslave secret societies like obviously not. There are other um secret societies, their societies of doctors and of lawyers and different trades. Um. There of course Mason groups as well, and I well you knew was um superficial details of most of these groups. Essentially thing that comes up a look that there there's a whole bunch of like these sort of secret society groups that like wind up being

part of an engine leve and revolution in China. But they sort of, like most of them, kind of go bandit like after the revolution happens, and so it's it's interesting to see, I guess like different contexts where they don't seem to have, like just over Italy turned into organized crime groups. Right, what's the like organized crime groups descended from secret societies in China, try ads for example. Yeah, I actually don't think the triers send it from them.

A couple of them joined the Communists, a lot of them kind of got wiped out in the sort of just general warlord fighting, and then some of them kind of got stumped up by the Communists because they were basically turned into organized like their own or a crime of things we're sort of distinct from the other ones existed. But right, there were seven major rebellions in the Colony of Jamaica between sixteen seventy three and six six, and several others in Antigua, in Nevus, in Fujian Islands, in

you know, Barbados, in just across the Caribbean. There was continual African resistance and rebellion and that really is what struck fair in these slaveholders at the time. In one case, um in seventeen thirty three during the Amino Rebellion on St. John which is part of the Danish Fusion Islands, or

was part of the Danish Fusian Islands. The African instlugience took control of the island for six months before being defeated, and the most slavery reelliance really ac could in Jamaica, in fact, more than all the other colonies, more than all the other British colonies in the Caribbean combined. One of the most famous of the Jamaican rebellions was one of the Sudden seventeen six day by a man known as Tachi, and it lasted for over a year before

being suppressed by British colonial forces. Because Jamaica's population was massively overwhelmingly black in comparison to the very small minority of large slavehooling white, they were more likely to launch

and more likely to succeed in slave refools um. Slave refolds are more likely to happen, of course, where slaves of number white, where masters are absent, where there's economic distress, where they are split within the ruling elite um and when you know large numbers of Native one Africans from one area of brought in one time, which is why they often have to split up there the people that they captured, so they wouldn't be able to collaborate with

their can We often remember the flashy of forms of revolts, such as the revolt in St. Joseph in seven led by Dagger, who was a former African chief in Guinea and the leader of the first British West India regiment Um. He mutinied along with two men, and although they were taken into custody and sentenced to death, they marked just one example of this sort of bold actions that were taken by in state of people in Tobago Um in

the year seventeen seventy. There were numerous armed revolts over the next eleven years, from seventeen seventy eighteen o one, six armed revolts, one by led by an enslaveman named Sandy in seventeen seventy two in seventeen seventy one, one in June, yet in August, one in seventeen seventy three, another in seventeen seventy four, another in eighteen o one. And so these revolts are a constrat didn't one specific ear of the island. They would happen in some cases

over the entire island. Tobago is of course separate from Trained Dad until nine where it became a ward of Trina Tobago. But and so their history is the history of Trian Island history of Tobago. We're separate, running separately for the first couple hundred years of the age of qualization, but Tobago's history of resistance is still connected in some ways to trend Dad's history of resistance in the sense of the bold actions that were taken by and slave people.

Of course, not all resistance to slavery was so bold. Day to day resistant was by far the most common form of opposition to slavery, whether it be through feigning illness, staging slowdowns, pretending ignorance, deliver a carelessness awesome and sabotage

breaking tools. These sorts of expressions, while they reinforced previously held perceptions of enslaved Africans at the time, they also ways of enslaved people to express their alienation and to sort of carve some level of space or breathing room, or to give themselves some sense of catharsis in that

brutal period. And so what we see is a sort of continuum of resistance from that sort of individual level of slowing down or feeling ignorance or what or whatever, to the sort of broader cultural methods of passive resistance, such as you know, cultivating and passing down culture and cultural memories, to the more bold aspects of resistance, which as revolts and rebellions and revolutions. And of course there was the practice of maroonage, both petite and grand maroonage.

Petite maroonage was an effort by individuals or groups of enslaved people to escape from their plantations permanentally sometimes but usually for a limited amount of time, to escape mistreatment, to negotiate better treatment, or to even just catch a break. Honestly. Grand moonage is more commonly understood and recognized where communities of fugitive slaves would establish communities on the fringes in the swamps of Louisiana, for example, or in the mountains

of Jamaica. And these moon communities have been established since the very beginning, since the early sixteenth century, when the fullest and slave African support to the Caribbean by the Spanish. They would often unite with Amerindians, whether it be you know Tinos or Kalinago's, or go to base and unite with them in their resistance in carving out settlements or strongholds of safety. For example, in fifty six in Hispaniola, they were over seven thousand Maroons among a slave population

of tight thousands. After the island was split between the French santoming which is later which is now known as Haiti and the Spanish Santo Domingo which is Dominican Republic in six Maroons took advantage of the hostility between France and Spain to maintain settlements along the border between the two throughout the period of slavery. Addition, there were ruins in Cuba, in Puerto Rico, and in some cases with

Puerto Rico. Fugitive slaves from the Virgin Islands would literally set sail to Puerto Rico to settle and escape the enslavemand Yeah. In Jamaica, of course, there are many ruined communities, and in fact, there is still an active Maroon community in Jamaica to this day that has persisted and maintained their traditions UM in sant Kitts in Antigua, in Barbados, in Martinique and Quada Loup. All of these islands have had Maroon community established UM. However, as European cultivation of

the islands increased. As Europeans ventured further and further into the islands, into the taps of the islands, it became more and more difficult to establish Moon settlements because if you look at some of the smaller islands, it's kind of difficult to hide or to establish any sort of sustainable community on the fringes of an island that you could easily jog from one side to the other, or

you know, walk from one side to the other. Of course, even on those smaller islands, there were still attempts to maintain Moon settlements, such as in St. Vincent or Dominico. In St. Vincent, the Garifuna, which an indigenous group mixed who mixed with Africans, preserved they depend their independence against both French and the British, and they ended up spreading to if I recorded correctly, Central America as well, and so the Garifona community is still very much alive and

well to this day. In Jamaica and Cuba and Guadeloup and Hispaniola, Marion communities were able to last longer because they had um more mountainous terrain to hide in, particularly in Jamaica. Um but they were also Maroon communities on the South American mainland. You know, in Brazil there was the famous Maroon community or quilombo known as peal Mares,

which has existed for nearly years. From sixteen o five to six, there is a certain invasion by both the Dutch and Portuguese and had at least ten thousand organized um members ready to defend their population. They were governed by a king who used the political traditions drawn from Central Africa, but they unfortunately were eventually destroyed in the Guyana's French Guyana Um, British Guyana which is now called

Guyana Um, Dutch Guyana which is now called Suriname. Marion communities were also able to establish themselves and they still persist to this day due to the um Amazon rainforest and the river wheels that allowed them to conceal themselves from colonial encroachment. Of course, in the US there were all Summaron communities like the Black Seminoles of Florida or the Marion communities in Um I believe it was the

Louisiana It's most places. Of course, Maroon communities were not very large um or often did not last very long. They're usually small thriller bands led by an elected chief. But of course these war bands in there, although they were small, that sort of protected them to some extent

from detection and from recapture. In Cuba, for example, they were hundreds of small Maroon communities and they were guarded, and they were and they had their settlements guarded by ditches and steaks and secret paths, and these settlements communicated with each other while remaining isolated so they could grow their own crops and hunt and fish and trade in peace, sometimes with other islands in order to prevent again capture

and destruction. I think there's a lot that we can learn from the different forms of resistance, small and large that instead of people, and it took throughout the period of colonial settlements and expansion and enslavement, elements of their practices that I think could be applied to these struggles.

Do you have any thoughts before wrap? Yeah? One thing I kind of want to plug is Russell Maroon Shows wrote a really interesting I don't know exactly what the name for essay, I guess called The Dragon and the Hydra,

which is a study. Yeah, yeah, it's called Dragon the Hydra study of historical study of organizational methods, and it's about basically a comparison of like different different kinds of resistance to colony landsman enslavement that talks a lot about the Roan movement, talks about sort of the problems that these sort of like highly centralized, top down movements ran into versus the kind of stuff that the that these sort of more decentralized, less hierarchical Moroon movements face. And

it's it's really interesting and it's pretty short. Everyone should just read it because it's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He covers the us p T, Suriname and Jamaica, and you know how those different Moon communities dealt with their conditions. I'm pretty sure you brought this from prison too, if I'm remembering my timeline history correctly. Yes, I highly recommend folks give that a read. I mean, I don't want to give the impression that Buring communities where these like

valiant utopias. I mean, in some cases moreon communities were manipulated UM against the other and often in exchange for maintaining their autonomy, they were made to sign treaties where they would have to turn in UM fugitives. So it was not by any means are perfect situation to be in. But they were trying to cough out their survival. Yeah, I guess do you want to plug your stuff? So you can find me on Twitter, at on discore seeing True and on YouTube seeming to a tourism where I

have lots of stuff. I mean, if you were interested in, for example, the details of how spirituality played a role in African resistance, I have a video on that. If you're interested in you know, how Wada Equa New established the Sons of Africa group and how that was one of the foundations of what eventually became the Pan Aftanist movement. I have a video on Pan Afganism that you could check out. So, yeah, that's it for me. That was great.

I didn't know there were still marine communities actually yeah, yeah, the one in Jamaica, the one in Suriname. They are still very much alive. And well, yeah, that's fascinating. Ah, Saint Andrew, thank you for that. That was wonderful. And

that's that's our episode for today. So go home and doom scroll for several hours probably, or or do something productive or something pet a cat, bake some cookies, hand out food to people, who were hungry, you know, bake some cookies and then handle the cookies to people who need or doom scroll, you know, all productive things that are some significantly more productive. Alright, friends, that's uh, that's the episode piece. It Could Happen Here is a production

of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.