CXC CARIBBEAN

HISTORY
THEME: RESISTANCE
AND REVOLT
Resistance and revolt:
DEFINING RESISTANCE
• WHAT IS RESISTANCE?

• Resistance is the act of defying the established order. Slaves resisted

from the time they left the shores of Africa through the Middle Passage.
Slaves resisted every single day of their lives until emancipation.

• Historian Franklin Knight: “Slaves ‘naturally’ resisted their enslavement

because slavery was fundamentally unnatural.”
 FORMS OF RESISTANCE
• Slave resistance may be divided
into insurrectionary (violent) and
non- insurrectionary (non
insurrectionary) ways:
A) Insurrectionary
B) Non-insurrectionary
 WHY RESIST?
• “Im a slave from a land so far, I was brought here from Africa, Im dying,
Im crying.”
• You are frustrated given increased workloads and meagre rations
• You would never see your family leaving behind your native land Africa
• You are punished daily on the plantation.
• You have no rights and treated as chattel
• Your master has rights over your body
• Our family is separated on another plantation
• You are forced to forget all your roots, practices of your mother country.
• Your freedom is being with held
Different ways slaves resisted
Ways Enslaved Resisted (cont’d)
• MARRONAGE
• Enslaved persons who ran away escaped to the Maroon communities in the hills of
Jamaica where they go undetected.
• Ultimate form of resistance Why?
• Leader: Cudjoe and Nanny
• Accompong, Nanny Town, Cockpit Country
• Fought two Maroon Wars with the Europeans 1732, 1795
• Significant treaty 1739: Europeans recognized the Maroon community, given lands
600 hectares with a promise not to attack whites/raid plantations for food, they
agreed to return any slave runaways who fled to Maroon hills.
Ways the Enslaved Resisted

• Bush Negroes: -Suriname. Dutch

made truce: granted right to occupy

interior once whites not attacked, stir

slave revolts or raid plantations.

Cultural resistance

•In the Caribbean and in many slave societies in the Americas, one of the most important
aspects of resistance to slavery was the retention of African culture or melding African,
American and European cultural forms to create new ones such as the Kweyol languages
(Antillean Creole)he importance of African culture – names, craftsmanship, languages,
scientific knowledge, beliefs, philosophy, music and dance, was that it provided the
psychological support to help the captives resist the process of enslavement. Obvious
examples would be the use of Vodun (Voodoo) religious beliefs in the Haitian Revolution
and the employment of Obeah to strengthen the Jamaican Maroons in the struggles
against the British.
•.
Cultural Resistance (cont’d)
• Rebel leaders such as Nanny in Jamaica and Boukman and Mackandal
in St Domingue (Haiti) were also religious or spiritual leaders.
Religious beliefs should perhaps be seen as also providing the
enslaved Africans a way of understanding the world and giving them
simultaneously a whole belief system, a coping mechanism and a
means of resistance.
How did the Females Resist the Institution of
Slavery?
Female resistance was often referred
to a “petticoat rebellion.: Most of
their resistance was non
insurrectionary:
Back-chatting masters/quarrelling-
numerous court
Feigning illness admitting themselves
to estate hospital.
to avoid work : Malingering.
Prolonged lactation increased stay at
home time
Infanticide .
Female Resistance (cont’d)
 Culturally-deliberately passed on traditions, obeah, religious practices.

 Sang satirical songs about master.

 Strike, lay down tools to lodge complaints in court.

 Legal complaints about their master-knew their rights.

 Gynecological resistance: abortions, herbal birth control

Women and resistance (Cont’d)
• Made an important contribution to both routine non- cooperation
with the labour regime and organised slave resistance.
• Nuisance value –established by refusing to accept slavery like dumb
animals, by regularly raising their voices, women in their own way
allowed their presence to be felt and chipped away at slavery, hence
contributing significantly to eventual emancipation.
• Present everywhere-Formed backbone of field slaves, domestics
were ideally placed to frustrate their masters in numerous ways from
everyday acts of non -cooperation, malingering, sabotage to more
serious acts such as running away, poison, revolting.
Women and Resistance (cont’d)
• Determination! Harsh conditions stimulated rather than squashed
their resolve.
• Quiet woman stereotype- they were in a better place than men to
coordinate subversive activities. Europeans didn’t know to keep an
eye on them which made them least suspect especially in the last
years of slavery.
• Don’t be fooled-slave owners, nor slave communities didn’t consider
women to be the less rebellious sex. Slave owners were fearful,
suspicious, distrustful of their potential activities as men and so gave
them equal punishment.
Women and Resistance (cont’d)
• Resistance was ingrained in enslaved women since they were
accustomed to resisting certain forms of oppression in traditional
societies and acts of insurrection and defiance part of their social
behaviour patterns.

• Plantation resistance should not be studied as though it started on the

plantation. Rather, it was a culmination of a long process of antislavery
struggle which began in Africa.
Women and Resistance (cont’d)

• As in all other forms of resistance, women played an important role in cultural

resistance, especially in the transmission of African culture from one generation
to the next.

• They were also particularly noted for their insubordination: when in 1823 a law
was introduced in Trinidad outlawing the whipping of enslaved women, it was
strongly opposed by slave owners on that grounds that, without such
punishment, women would be impossible to control. Enslaved women were
often more likely to be in a position to engage in infanticide and in acts of
poisoning.
Women and Resistance (cont’d)
• Female strategies of resistance included economic independence. Female slaves,
for example, seem to have been particularly adept at developing forms of economic
independence by growing their own provisions and through trading. This helped the
enslaved women to maintain some level of financial independence.

• Women were also leaders of several rebellions: one, known as Cubah, the 'Queen
of Kingston', was prominent during Tacky's Rebellion in Jamaica in 1760, while
Nanny Grigg was one of the leaders of the 1816 rebellion in Barbados.
Types of Resistance - Non-Insurrectionary
Suicide
Pretending ignorance
Sabotage of plantation and equipment
Malingering/Go slow
Petticoat rebellion (women’s strategies):
Cultural resistance-passing on African traditions
Refusing to do certain tasks/quarrelling with master
Feigning illness to avoid work-malingering
Prolonged lactation
Gynecological resistance: voluntary abortion, repressing reproductive system by drinking herbal concoctions.
Living up to lazy stereotype
Backchatting/Singing satirical songs
Types of Resistance- Insurrectionary
Burning down the plantation/Arson

Maroonage

Armed attack

Killing the master or his family members

Rebellions

Revolution
Insurrectionary (cont’d)
Revolt vs Revolution?
• A revolt is usually seen as an unsuccessful revolution.
• A revolt/rebellion was a one in which the slaves tried to get their freedom
by destroying planter property, killing masters. There were numerous revolts
as the enslaved Africans made attempt after attempt to gain their freedom.
• Significant rebellions which occurred in the Caribbean include:
• 1763 Berbice
• 1823-Demerara Guyana
• 1816 Barbados
• 1831 Jamaica
The only successful black slave revolution was the HAITIAN REVOLUTION 1791
 THE END
•Thanks for attending. May
you have every success in
your examinations!