Enslaved Resistance

Question 1

Revolt

Answer 1

An extreme act of resistance. Typically involved use of force and violence, usually creates a new equilibrium in society. Something that is fundamental and widespread in the changes of power dynamic

Question 2

Resistance

Answer 2

The refusal to accept or comply with something

Question 3

Rebelliousness

Answer 3

Rebelliousness is not simply a violent act (or conspiracy) rather it denotes resistance to the system of slavery

  Different forms of resistance, violent and non-violence

Question 4

Rebel

Answer 4

Someone who is going against authority – connotes any resistance to the system of slavery

Question 5

Different forms of resistance, violent and non-violence…

Answer 5

Any act of protest initiated and/or performed by enslaved persons aimed at challenging or disrupting slaveholding

Question 6

Vincent Brown argues they were not just aftershocks of Tacky’s rebellion….

Answer 6

It was the product of “genuine strategic intelligence” that utilised the distinct geography of Jamaica.

Question 7

Historiography tends to only

Answer 7

focus on examples of resistance that have high numbers of white casualty

Question 8

Progressive School:

Answer 8

Ulrich Phillips (American Negro Slavery) and James Anthony Froud (The English in the West Indies)

Paternal and benevolence of the slave system

Seen as overtly racist

Question 9

Post WW2 Counter-Progressive School

Answer 9

Stampp, Elkins, David Brion Davis, Orlando Patterson, Frank Tannenbaum

Regarded as the ‘transitional point’ by arguing against the racist methodology of the Progressive school while prioritising the testimony of enslaved person

Question 10

Post-Counter-Progressive

Answer 10

Resistance becomes a key theme and deomnstrated in works by

John Blesssingame

Eugene Genovese, Michael Mullin

Gerald Mullin

Colin Palmer

Leslie Rout Jr.

Question 11

Egerton: Slaves to the Marketplace (2006)

Answer 11

Enslaved rebels throughout the Americas (particularly in early national and antebellum US) revolted not just because of the opportunity to organise or the city geographies but because it gave them a better understanding of cash power

Question 12

Edward Rugemer: Slave law and the politics of resistance in early Atlantic World 2018

Answer 12

Laws allow us to understand the nature and extent of slave resistance, as well as the sophisticated appratus of social control that masters created to control enslaved people

Question 13

Antonio Bly:

Slave Resistance in the Middle Passage 1998

Answer 13

Mutinies on slave ships were common and well documented; slaves resisted their conditions in a host of ways but it was just one facet of resistance

Question 14

David Richardson:

Shipboard Revolts, African Authority, and Atlantic Slave Trade 2001

Answer 14

Slave resistance transcended Africa, the Middle Passage, and the Americas. To focus on plantation based resistance is just one element in a spectrum. The fact that slave revolts occurred on one in ten ships is in fact misleading as it under represents their significance in relation to the scale and structure of slave trade travel

Question 15

John Hope Franklin:

Runaway Slaves: rebels on the Plantation 1999

Answer 15

The conditions and factors that prompted slaves to run away were varied and numerous as the human experience. The variety of ways and reasons for slave resistance allows us to have a better understanding of the different lived experiences of slaves

Question 16

David Greggus:

The Haitian Revolution in Atlantic Perspective

Answer 16

The widespread demographic created and imbalance and this coupled with the numbers involved made it impossible to suppress the revolt

Question 17

Herbert Klein:

Slavery in Brazil

Answer 17

A basic part of the slave system was the permanent sensation of violence on the part of all members of that society.

The growth of sense Afro-Brazilian identity and community essential for the survival of the society but no matter what there was an underlying sense of uncertainty and hostility – resistance was the only option for those unable to conform

Question 18

Carolyn Flick

The Making of Haiti 1990

Answer 18

Voodoo was not only significant in Saint Domingues slave society but vital to the Haitian revolution. Voodoo wasn’t just a form of resistance, it was both a cultural and politically ideological force.

Question 19

Michael Laguerre

The Place of Voodoo in the Social Structure of Haiti

Answer 19

Although colonists had control over the material life, they did not have control over religious symbols and religious life of the slaves

Question 20

Walter Rucker

Conjure, Magic and Power 2001

Answer 20

Obeah served as an important impetus to slave resistance for a variety of reasons (89)

Derived from the Akan which was an African language

Conjurer in the Americans served as a cultural bridge, with the ability of transcending cultural differences between African groups (91)

Question 21

Neil Roberts

Freedom as Marronage (2015)

Answer 21

Sees resistance as the pursuit of freedom, and freedom as the act of resisting rather than the destination, finding a space that exists between slavery and freedom, rather than these concepts as solely opposite

Question 22

Forms of Resistance

Answer 22

Fugitivity
Culture
Shipboard
Religion
Others (Day to day/Open defiance)

Question 23

Fugitivity: Death of a master

Answer 23

Death of an owner or overseer was only one of the conditions that prompted slaves to run away

Others included fear of being sold, dissatifcation with the new master, unhappiness with persons appointed by the court to direct work

To examine motives does injustice to the human experience. Yet, to analyse this allows us to understand the attitudes of slaves and the inhumane nature of the Souths peculiar institutions

Question 24

Fugitivity: Simply to be free

Answer 24

Many slave runaways did not do it once or twice but frequently, and they simply did it despite all the punishments that might occur

Habitual runaways

Did not care about the consequences of their action

Dave, slave in alabama, who was 40, was shot once while trying to escape his new master, once he had been retrieved, he escaped again, and then a third time, in total he only worked about one week in the nine months he was there, on the third time he was caught and executed

Question 25

Fugitivity: Other

Answer 25

Cruel Punishments

The Plantation Household

Slaves exploited situations in households such as lackadaisical attitudes, excessive drinking, marital problems etc and often responded by running away

Excessive drinking by slave owners was frequent and gave them the opportunity to escape

Question 26

Day to day resistance

Answer 26

Crimes against property

Pulled down fences, sabotaged farm equipment, broke implements, damaged boats, vandalised wagons and other destructive acts

Set fires

Stole

Harvesting crops in a way that would damage the plant

A lot of slaves drank

These all varied from region to region, plantation to plantation

Question 27

Open Defiance

Answer 27

Slavery, by nature, created interracial conflict

Verbal and physical confrontation occurred regularly, without regard to time or place

Some slaves were known in areas to be vicious and violent

Question 28

Hired slave dissatifaction

Answer 28

Some hired slaves were incredibly independent

Failed to show up on time, avoided work when they got there, and left without permission, kept a portion of their wages, and visited family and friends

Ellen, a slave of 26, poured mercury in the apple to give to her mistress who only found it when she cut it open to give to the children

Question 29

Shipboard revolts

Answer 29

There are 485 documented acts of violence from Africans against slaves ships and their crew (Richardson 2001)

Includes 93 instances of attacks from the shore

392 on ship

Question 30

Bight of Biafra

Answer 30

Common stereotype was they are likely to commit suicide or revolt

Question 31

Amount of slaves killed in revolts on ships (average)

Answer 31

10-25% on board (doesn’t account for injury)

Question 32

Mutilate themselves..

Answer 32

One slave cut open own throat, when sown back together, would rip it open to die

Question 33

Religion in Jamaica

Answer 33

Obeah was a crime while people in other slave societies did not.

Spiritual, occult, means and that physical substances (poisons) could be incolved in attacks`

Question 34

Ways in which Obeah was controlled in Jamaica

Answer 34

Legislation in English colonies dealt with drumming in the African religious practices

Question 35

Jamaica’s laws for Obeah

Answer 35

Act to remedy the evils arising from irregular assemblies of slaves - 1760

Question 36

‘Act to remedy the evils arising from irregular assemblies of slaves’ - quotes

Answer 36

“suffer death” to ‘any practicers’

Question 37

Religion in Haiti

Answer 37

Voodoo, both a sacred dance and a religion, was expressly forbidden in the French colonies, and from the very beginning, the colonists tried in vain to crush it

Question 38

In fact more than one planter often…

Answer 38

found it necessary to give in to so vital elements of slaves’ culture and at least tacitly tolerate the dances

Question 39

Voodoo served to bind more closely the…

Answer 39

loose psychological ties arising out of the common experience of organised plantation labour….raising to form a collective consciousness

Question 40

Voodoo was the source of…

Answer 40

psychological liberation in that it enabled them to express and reaffirm that self-existence they objectively recognised through their own labour

Question 41

Voodoo gave the slaves…

Answer 41

a sense of human dignity and enabled them to survive

Question 42

Edict Noir of 1685…

Answer 42

Made it illegal for the slaves to practive their African religions openly, and under stiff penalties to the contrary - order all masters to have slaves converted to Christianity

Question 43

Tacky’s Rebellion - Events

Answer 43

7 April 1760 – July 1760

Tacky was a king of his village. He himself had sold off rivals as spoils of war to the British, but ironically the same would happen to him

Tacky spoke fluent English, which was common for the Fantes ruling class

Easter Monday 7 April 1760, Tacky began revolt and easily took over the Frontier and Trinity plantations while killing their masters

Obeah used – obeahmaster said he could not die, and gave powder to protect from death but was killed and hanged for all to see

Other small rebellions occurred over the next year, 60 whites lost their lives while 400 or so black slaves

Question 44

Sasha Turner Bryson on Tacky’s Rebellion

Answer 44

Legislative changes reflected Jamaican authorities’ obsessive efforts to control, and eradicate Obeah

Question 45

Diana Paton – Withcraft, Poison, Law, and Atlantic Slavery 2012

Answer 45

Seen as ethnic African rebellion, due to its organisation through networks of Akan speakers

Question 46

Vincent Brown – Spiritual Terror and Sacred Authority in Jamaican Slave Society – 2003

Answer 46

Tacky’s rebellion threatened British control of the island for the first time since the Maroon wars of the 1730s

Question 47

Brown on Obeah

Answer 47

Obeah emboldened the enslaved to resist the supremacy of their masters and allowed blacks more generally to believe they could challenge whites

Question 48

Important revolutions:

Answer 48

Haiti and Nat Turner