Slave Trade- 4. Resistance
Resistance (18th
century) and end of the slave trade
In Barbados, where slave plantations
began in the 17th century, there were repeated attempts to run away and
sporadic but unsuccessful rebellions occurred in 1649, 1675 and 1672.
Elsewhere the British faced
the Maroons - these were runaway slaves who had set up hidden
communities beyond white control, who harassed the planters from time to
time and
offered sanctuary to other runaways. For 70 years, the British failed to subdue
the
Maroons and were forced to make treaties with both Leeward and Windward
island groups.
The first major 18th century slave revolt
broke out in April 1760 in Jamaica under rebel leader Tacky,
involving some 30,000 slaves at its height. It was eventually suppressed in October 1761
with the support of mercenary Maroons. 60 whites had been killed and over
400 rebels. Many of the captives were tortured to death while others suffered horribly. For example, one captive was sat on the ground and
"fire was applied to his feet. He uttered not a groan as he saw his legs
reduced to ashes..."
By mid-1550s, the Spanish
or their diseases had killed off nearly all the native Indians in
Hispaniola. The Spanish then brought in African slaves to toil in the
plantations. In 1697, France captured the western part of Hispaniola from the
Spanish, calling it Saint Domingue. By 1790, this territory became the
wealthiest colonial possession in the Americas, producing much coffee,
cotton, indigo and rum with the labour of 450,000 slaves. Many slaves, individuals or
in small groups,
revolted or ran away. But there were few organised mass revolts until 1791
when a major a slave revolt broke out. France sent a huge army of Germans,
Dutch, Swiss, etc. to quell it. In 1793, the first British troops landed in St Domingue
and were welcomed as saviours by the embattled French planters. But the
revolutionaries had enough power to declare slavery abolished in August 1793 and the Paris
Convention endorsed this decision for all French possessions in February 1794. By
1795, "a greater part of the Negroes in the west Indies were in open
revolt".
In that year, a British expeditionary force of some 30,000 men had to confront
the revolutionary army led by former slave Toussaint L’Ouverture. The
European masters were defeated - the only case of an enslaved people
overcoming a colonial power militarily. The whole Caribbean campaign 1793-98
had cost the British over 55,000 casualties. French leader, Napoleon, made
another attempt to reconquer St Domingue and restore slavery. But he failed and
in January1804, the blacks declared a new republic with the name, Haiti.
Slave trade abolished
The slave revolt in the French colony, St Domingue,
in 1791 inspired by the French revolution (1789), in turn hastened British
efforts to end the trade. William Wilberforce introduced an abolition bill
in parliament the same year but it was defeated. In 1792, a bill for the gradual abolition of the slave
trade was defeated in the House of Lords. In 1805, an abolition bill passed
in the Commons but was rejected in the Lords. Finally, on 25 March 1807, the
bill to abolish the trade succeeded in both houses. The US followed in 1808.
Resistance (19th century)
and end of slavery
Many planters thought that with the
official ending of the slave trade, slave unrest would abate and slaveholding
could continue. But three great revolts - in Barbados (1916), Demerara (1823)
and Jamaica (1831) demonstrated that maintaining slavery was proving too
costly and could not be sustained.
Barbados & Demerara
On Easter Sunday, 14 April 1816, the slaves revolted in Barbados,
engulfing more than half the island. The rising was quelled within
four days but mopping continued until June. As many as 1000 slaves were
estimated to have been killed - in fighting, shot in reprisal and later
executed whether men, women or children. One white man was killed and a
quarter of the sugar cane was destroyed by fire.
Demerara was one of three
Dutch territories ceased in 1803 to become British Guiana. The plantation
regime was one of the cruellest in the hemisphere; the planters believed the
slaves had to be ruled by terror and "the whip was used with an unsparing
hand". The revolt began on 18 August 1823 on the Success plantation, one of
seven owned by John Gladstone (father of the future British Prime Minister)
and quickly spread to some 60 plantations, involving around 12,000 slaves.
the rebels preferred to imprison or expel the whites rather than kill them.
The governor , Major General John Murray, met a party of 40 rebels and
promised reforms. But the rebels demanded freedom. The revolt was put down
savagely, with over 200 rebels killed during the fighting or shot randomly
and a further 33 were executed after a summary trial. The heads of ten
slaves were displayed on poles at the most heavily involved estates. Rev
John Smith, of the London Missionary Society in the colony, who taught the
story of Moses and the Exodus was arrested and held in the most appalling
conditions in prison until his death 6 months later. In 1834, when the
brutal conditions on John Gladstone's estates were criticised in the House
of Commons, William, the future PM, sprang to his father's defence saying
"he deprecated slavery; it was abhorrent to the nature of Englishmen...". It
was his maiden speech, displaying all the hypocrisy that was to mark his
long career.
Jamaica
The planters were refusing to implement reforms recommended by the
British government, such as limiting flogging to men and not more than 39
lashes at a time. These rules were usually ignored. Christmas holidays had
been cut from 3 to 2. 1831, a drought year, brought a cut in the slaves' own
rations.
The slaves were aware of the growing abolitionist movement in Britain and
decided it was time to strike. The more privileged slaves from a number of
estates got together to hatch a plan with covert support from the black
Baptist church. The white missionaries of the official Baptist church, on
the other hand, preached the message of obedience and resignation. The
leader of the conspiracy was Samuel Sharpe, the chief deacon at the
colony's most important chapel. He was a powerful preacher and
motivated other slaves to
rebel. Once won over, the new recruits swore on the Bible only to return to work
as free men and women.
The signal to strike was
setting fire to the sugar trash on one of the estates on 27 December 1831.
The strike grew into the most serious revolt in British history, involving some
60,000 slaves and covering an area of up to 750 square miles. As the slaves
had few weapons, they decided to burn down the estates, resulting in a
loss of over one million pounds to the planters. The revolt was
crushed by the first week of January 1832. Official number of slaves
killed was set at 201 but the actual count was probably double this.
Floggings and summary executions followed. 14 whites were killed. Sharpe
himself was hanged on 23 May 1832.
Slaves freed but
tied to apprentice scheme
The Jamaica revolt made it
clear that slavery could no longer be sustained and it was formally abolished on 1
August 1834, setting free some 750,000 men, women and children but largely on
the planters' terms. The slave
owners were generously compensated; the slaves received nothing. Instead they had to
submit to an apprenticeship scheme, whereby ex-slaves were obliged to serve
their former masters 40 hours a week without pay. Domestic slaves
were tied to the scheme for four years and agricultural slaves for six
years. Apprenticeships were opposed by strikes in Jamaica, Trinidad and St
Kitts and were finally abolished four years later on 1 August 1838.
Slavery was abolished in the French empire in 1848, in the US in 1863,
Spanish Cuba in 1863 and Brazil in 1888.
Reference
1. John Newsinger,
The Blood Never Dried: a People's History of the British Empire
(Bookmarks 2006)
2. Richard Gott, Britain's vote to
end its slave trade was precursor to today's imperialism
(Guardian 17 Jan 2007)