Resistance
Depiction of a battle during the Haitian Revolution.
Many enslaved people did their utmost to resist slavery.
This could include working inefficiently, secretly maintaining African cultural and religious traditions, trying to escape and helping others to escape. As well as individually seeking freedom, people organised and risked their lives in uprisings.
The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), in which enslaved people overthrew the French colonial government, was the largest and only successful such revolution in the Americas. Following the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire in 1807, and the success of the Haitian Revolution, there were uprisings in Barbados, Guyana and Jamaica which were brutally suppressed by the British colonial authorities.
The rising in Jamaica in 1831-32 was the largest act of collective resistance in the British Caribbean, involving around a fifth of Jamaica’s enslaved people. The leaders came from the Baptist Church which was beyond the control of English missionaries, so it became known as the ‘Baptist War’. Drawing from the Bible, they justified their resistance with the slogan ‘No man can serve two masters’. Although the rising was violently suppressed and hundreds of people were executed, it helped prompt Britain’s new government to propose the abolition of slavery.
Letter describing the Haitian Revolution of 1791
News of the Haitian Revolution reached Aberdeenshire within a few months. In this letter to Charles Gordon of Cairness, his sugar importers in London express their fears that the revolution would inspire similar risings across the Caribbean.
Click here to read a transcript of the document.
- London, October 31st 1791
- The following is an extract from a letter just come to hand, from a friend of ours in Jamaica: Kingston September 17th 1791: We are at present very much alarmed at the accounts recently received from our neighbour island of Hispaniola, where a most dreadful rebellion has broken out among the slaves, who have burnt, & laid waste a very extensive & fertile part of the island, & massacred all the white people of every age, & sex, who had the misfortune to fall into their power: the white people however as soon as they could collect into any sort of force, have punished the rebels, & made a terrible slaughter of them, it is now, to the amount of ten, or twelve thousand, but this has not intimidate them, as they still continue in Rebellion, & are daily increasing in their numbers, & committing murders & depredation wherever they go: How this business will terminate it is not yet possible to say: Every thing it seems thank God seem tranquil at present in this Island, but how long we may remain so, time alone must discover. It is totally impracticable to keep the knowledge of the Rebellion in Hispaniola from our slaves in Jamaica, who, in all probability will determine their conduct by the ultimate fate of their brethren, in the former island.
- Another friend of ours, in his letter from Jamaica, dates Sept. 4th, says, I hope that the Minister immediately on the arrival of the packet, will be requested, to send us at least another regiment, & two or these frigates without any delay; so that they may be here by Xmas, which is our most dangerous time: the mischief is so near us, that we cannot well escape it. We have got, however, some warning to prepare.
- These are surely dismal & alarming accounts the probable consequences of them will be, an advance in the prices of sugar, & in the disposal of yours, you may rest assured, we shall act for you, just the same as if they were our own: so dull has the sugar market been for some time part, that no business at all has been done in it.
- We understand some of the rebels had arrived in small vessels in Jamaica, from Hispaniola & that part of them had been apprehended immediately on [page ripped] landing; danger of a rebellion in Jamaica is to be feared [page ripped] the intercourse of some of those, who have already [page ripped] apprehension, & from others who may hereafter [page ripped] with the slaves in the island: there is no doubt [page ripped] will be soon waited upon, & requested to send such force without delay to Jamaica, as shall seem necessary.
List of people punished for resisting slavery
This list entitled ‘Account of increase and decrease of slaves’ on the Georgia Estate (1832) includes four men ‘Tried by Court martial for acts of Rebellion & sentenced to workhouses for Life’. The men, John Baillie, John Kelly, Robert Lamont and Thomas Reid, were probably involved in the Baptist War.
A record of people who escaped slavery
Daphne and Hawke were recorded as ‘runaways’ presumed dead after having escaped many years ago, revealing another form of resistance.
