Enslaved Resistance Flashcards
Revolt
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
Resistance
The refusal to accept or comply with something
Rebelliousness
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
Rebel
Someone who is going against authority – connotes any resistance to the system of slavery
Different forms of resistance, violent and non-violence…
Any act of protest initiated and/or performed by enslaved persons aimed at challenging or disrupting slaveholding
Vincent Brown argues they were not just aftershocks of Tacky’s rebellion….
It was the product of “genuine strategic intelligence” that utilised the distinct geography of Jamaica.
Historiography tends to only
focus on examples of resistance that have high numbers of white casualty
Progressive School:
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
Post WW2 Counter-Progressive School
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
Post-Counter-Progressive
Resistance becomes a key theme and deomnstrated in works by
John Blesssingame
Eugene Genovese, Michael Mullin
Gerald Mullin
Colin Palmer
Leslie Rout Jr.
Egerton: Slaves to the Marketplace (2006)
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
Edward Rugemer: Slave law and the politics of resistance in early Atlantic World 2018
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
Antonio Bly:
Slave Resistance in the Middle Passage 1998
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
David Richardson:
Shipboard Revolts, African Authority, and Atlantic Slave Trade 2001
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
John Hope Franklin:
Runaway Slaves: rebels on the Plantation 1999
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
David Greggus:
The Haitian Revolution in Atlantic Perspective
The widespread demographic created and imbalance and this coupled with the numbers involved made it impossible to suppress the revolt
Herbert Klein:
Slavery in Brazil
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
Carolyn Flick
The Making of Haiti 1990
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.
Michael Laguerre
The Place of Voodoo in the Social Structure of Haiti
Although colonists had control over the material life, they did not have control over religious symbols and religious life of the slaves
Walter Rucker
Conjure, Magic and Power 2001
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)
Neil Roberts
Freedom as Marronage (2015)
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
Forms of Resistance
Fugitivity Culture Shipboard Religion Others (Day to day/Open defiance)
Fugitivity: Death of a master
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
Fugitivity: Simply to be free
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
