How Did Slave Resistance End The Slave Trade?

Question 1

Types of slave resistance

Answer 1

. Involved attacks from the shore
. Insurrections aboard ships
. Suicide - refusing to eat, dying in despair, jumping off slave ships
. Keeping alive their African religious beliefs, names, languages, music and stories
. Haitian slaves fused their African religion with Catholicism and created vodoo
. Slaves practised their own beliefs and it seemed to their owners they practiced Christianity

Question 2

How many mutinies occurred between 1699 and 1865?

Answer 2

. Over 50 major mutinies occurred on slave ships in the Middle Passage between 1699 and 1865

Question 3

What % of ships experienced an insurrection

Answer 3

As many as 10% of slave ships experienced an insurrection

Question 4

How many acts of violent resistance by Africans against slave sips occurred?

Answer 4

. 485 acts
. 93 cases attacks from the shore, by ‘free’ Africans against ships or longboats
. 392cases of shipboard revolt by the enslaved

Question 5

What % of insurrections took place from 1698 to 1807 and how many were planned rebellion?

Answer 5

. 90%
. Involved more than 360 ships
. 22 instances of planned rather than actual rebellion

Question 6

What happened to rebellion participants?

Answer 6

. Publicly killed ‘by progressive mutilation, slow burnings, breaking on the wheel.’
. Slaves were also ‘tortured or starved to death in cages.’

Question 7

What happened to slaves on Antigua who rebelled?

Answer 7

77 slaves were burned alive in 1736

Question 8

Tacky

Answer 8

400 were executed for joining Tacky, a slave who led a rebellion in Jamaica in 1760

Question 9

Barbados resistance

Answer 9

. In 1649 on Barbados, the Africans planned to free themselves and establish an independent African territory by killing the white population of the island
. The plot failed and the ringleaders were executed

Question 10

How much had the African slave population grown on colonies and what did this mean?

Answer 10

. By 1700 the African population had grown in the colonies by 80%.
. This also meant an increase in uprisings

Question 11

Why was resistance difficult?

Answer 11

Enslaved Africans who escaped were often quickly recognised as runaways and returned to be punished by their owners

Question 12

Average amount of slave revolts on the Carribean

Answer 12

. There were hundreds of slave revolts.
. In the Caribbean, they averaged at least 2 per year during the period 1789-1815

Question 13

Where did the pattern of resistance continue to?

Answer 13

Continued in the West Indies, South America, and along the east coast of North America

Question 14

Haiti background

Answer 14

. Haiti was France’s wealthiest overseas colony largely because of its productions of sugar + coffee
. There were 30,000 free black people in 1789 and the slave population was close to 500,000

Question 15

When and where did the Haitian Revolution begin?

Answer 15

Uprising began in 1791 in the French colonial territory of St Domingue

Question 16

Why did the Haitian Revolution begin?

Answer 16

Partly a consequence of the French Revolution and partly a backlash against the brutality of slave owners

Question 17

What happened to L’Overture?

Answer 17

Napoleon Bonapart dispatched General Charles Leclerc + 40,000 French troops to capture L’Overture who was taken to France where he died in prison in 1805

Question 18

How did the Haitian Revolution fighting end?

Answer 18

Jean Jacques Dessalines, one of L’Overture generals led the revolutionaries at the Battle of Vertieres on November 18th 1803 where French forces were defeated

Question 19

Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the UK

Answer 19

Slowed down abolition in the UK as it became patriotic to own slaves

Question 20

Who withdrew his support from Wilberforce’s campaign in Parliament as a result of the Haitian Revolution?

Answer 20

William Pitt, prime minister

Question 21

How did the British governing body in the Caribbean react to the Haitian Revolution?

Answer 21

Colonial Assembly in Jamaica resolved to abandon the use of metal collars for shackling slaves whilst also strengthening the militia/armed force.

Question 22

What was the colonial assembly in Jamaica?

Answer 22

A formal gathering of official representatives of the British Crown in each colonial possession.

Question 23

Where in the British Caribbean did a slave revolt occur in 1790?

Answer 23

British Virgin Islands

Question 24

Which parliamentary leader died in 1806?

Answer 24

William Pitt

Question 25

Who became prime minister in 1806?

Answer 25

William Grenville

Question 26

What was the wheel?

Answer 26

Thea form of torture where bones were dislocated and the body pulled apart on a wheel

Question 27

What did a group of enslaved Ashanti do?

Answer 27

In 1767 they cut their own throats following their sale

Question 28

What did L’Overture do at the start?

Answer 28

Led a slave army which burned the plantations defeating both militias + French troops

Question 29

When did the slaves first rebel and what progress did they make?

Answer 29

August 21st 1791, controlled 1/3 of island in 1792

Question 30

What happened in 1793?

Answer 30

The slaves held off the French forces and the British who arrived to conquer the colony

Question 31

Why did the slave withdraw and when?

Answer 31

1798 after a series of defeats by L’Overture forces

Question 32

What did L’Overture do in 1801?

Answer 32

Expanded the revolution beyond Haiti conquering the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo

Question 33

What was the result of the Haitian revolution?

Answer 33

. On January 1st 1804 Dessalines declared the nation independent naming it Haiti
. France was the first to recognise its independence and it emerged as the first black republic in the world

Question 34

What was Haiti the first of?

Answer 34

. First independent state in Latin America
. First Nation to be created as a result of a successful slave rebellion
. But was one of the most impoverished states