ABSTRACT
Slave rebellions have been a feature of slavery from its beginnings. This was the case for slavery in Greece and Rome as well for subsequent systems of slavery elsewhere. In the case of the Americas, slave rebellions have characterised slavery from the onset of European settlement in the sixteenth century to the end of slavery nearly four centuries later. While rebellions differed substantially in scale and in scope across the Americas, they often terrified slave owners. In the face of rebellions, many slave masters fled to the safety of towns, where they could be protected by the military authorities. In the most massive of all rebellions, the Haitian Revolution, there was no sanctuary for slave owners even in the island’s towns; thousands of planters therefore fled to other parts of the Caribbean and to the United States. Yet it was not just planters who felt the consequences of the slave rebellion in Haiti. The enslaved across the Americas were aware of the outcome of the slave revolt in Haiti and saw it as an inspiration to rebel against slavery. Rebellions had another effect: they forced slave owners to construct powerful
mechanisms of control. In the first instance, this meant organising militias and having military forces available to put down rebellions. It also involved drafting slave codes to police the institution of slavery; in addition, masters devised severe punishments for those who rebelled. The drastic nature of those punishments was evidence of the planters’ fears of the enslaved. In the end, abolitionists pointed to these brutally repressive measures to highlight the barbaric nature of slavery itself. Planters’ attempts to control the enslaved population and to put down rebellions did
not rest solely on force. One of the intriguing aspects of slave rebellions involved the attitudes of those of the enslaved who did not rebel. In the midst of rebellions, some of the enslaved carried on working as usual. Others were armed by the authorities to help them defeat the rebels. In many outbreaks, members of the slave community themselves provided advance warnings of the plots to overthrow the system. Slave rebellions provide further evidence, then, of the complexity of a system that lasted for hundreds of years in the Americas. This chapter provides an overview of slave rebellions, including conspiracies
that were discovered before they could develop. The chapter first examines the conditions that were more likely to lead to rebellions, then discusses Africanand creole-led rebellions. It also focuses on the role of religion in the outbreak of rebellions.
