Q: Which Black slave revolts in the Americas resulted in the most casualties?
– Black History Questions and Answers Admin Team
A: The most violent revolt among enslaved Blacks in all of the Americas was the rebellion in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, better known today as the Haitian Revolution. Outside of that, the next most violent grassroots rebellion was one called Tacky’s War, which erupted in the British colony of Jamaica. Other rebellions during the time of legalized slavery were fought in defense of established Black colonies. These became known as “Maroon Wars.” The most deadly of these wars were also fought in Jamaica.
In the second volume of the Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion (2006) is an overview of “violent and nonviolent approaches to resistance.” E. Valerie Smith writes in this entry that the most violent rebellions in all of the Americas happened in two places: Brazil and the Caribbean.
However, in terms of singular events, the tally of documented White casualties alone during rebellions in Brazil does not seem to support a narrative of large-scale violence during the height of slavery. Rather, it was the frequency and spread of violent resistance to enslavement all throughout the Americas, which underlies this sentiment and its repetition among scholars studying the subject.
To illustrate this point, California State University professor Joseph E. Holloway, who operates the site slaverebellions.org, found in his research that there were thousands of revolts in Brazil and other parts of Latin America, compared with just over 300 in what is now the United States. In the British Caribbean alone, there were at least 75 major instances of slave resistance and more rebellions took place in Jamaica than all of the these colonies combined.
But believe it or not, we do not know of many mass rebellions in Brazil and when they did occur, the rebels did not take many lives on the side of their oppressors. Between the years 1807 and 1830, there were about 21 outbreaks of violence among the enslaved in Brazil (Jamaican historian Franklin W. Knight identified a similar number of insurrections in the Caribbean between 1789 and 1832). This pattern of rebellion culminated in an uprising of Muslims in 1835 called the Malê Revolt. While this is the most significant of all rebellions in Brazil, the actions of its 1,500 participants resulted in the deaths of only 7 enemy combatants.
Maroon colonies who isolated themselves in vast wetlands and forests, like we find in Central and South America, were not particularly concerned with launching regular assaults on colonial settlements or freeing all of their enslaved brethren. Out of necessity, they were far more invested in their own survival.
In the small, mountainous and wooded islands of the Caribbean, however, there is no scarcity of evidence pertaining to the violent resistance of Maroon people, who saw the persistent expansion of the slave economy as a threat to their autonomy.
The First, Second, and Third Maroon Wars in Jamaica all testify to this fact.
According to the Maroons themselves, they were engaged in the resistance struggle since 1655, when they allied with the Spanish against the British, who were then cementing their claim of authority over Jamaica. Eighty-four years later, a peace treaty was signed to end the First Maroon War. One study by Jonathan Brooks, while an undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington, found that there were at least 3,000 confirmed fatalities on the British side of these wars; Maroon losses only reached a maximum of 200!
On a 2018 episode of the Dig history podcast, co-host and State University of New York (SUNY) Buffalo professor Sarah Handley-Cousins stated that the British lost 60,000 troops in defense of their colonies during the last decade of the 18th century. More specifically, she says these men were “killed” in the conflicts of that period. Included in this tally would be soldiers who fought in the Second Maroon War during the years 1795 and 1796.
The ultimate source for this statistic is almost certainly Sir John W. Fortescue‘s volumes of research on the History of the British Army, published at the turn of the following century. By his estimate, 40,000 British soldiers perished between the years of 1793 and 1798. However, a study of contemporary reports in addition to Fortescue’s work reveals that a total of 97,000 soldiers and mercenaries had served in the Caribbean, and of this number, 70,000 died there. These figures do not take into account the 5,000 mortalities among Black recruits (the majority of whom were maintained in a status of enslavement until 1807). But it is especially important to note that less than 10% of all deaths are considered to have been the result of wounds inflicted in battle. That brings the number of deaths in the British army attributable to wars with Black insurgents and White infantries in the Caribbean down to about 7,000. Thus, 3,000 British deaths in the Maroon Wars appears to be a reasonable estimate after all. An additional 350,000 soldiers had suffered serious injuries, debilitating diseases or were declared missing in action.
The 1978 study by University of Connecticut (UConn) professor Roger N. Buckley concludes that a number of scholars have either misinterpreted Fortescue’s data or were overconfident in his analysis, leading them to a false understanding of British military history.
Thus, there has been a tendency for some to credit the destruction of the British Army almost entirely to runaway rebels in Jamaica. The Brigand War was a greater cause for these calamities. This was a war in which radical Whites like Victor Hughes in Guadeloupe and free Coloreds (mixed-race persons) like Julien Fédon in Grenada, lead revolutions against the British and were joined by enslaved Blacks in large numbers.
Still, with respect to the Maroons in Jamaica, their efforts proved a formidable threat to British rule, diverting much of the forces which had been assigned to promote and protect British interests in Haiti and other Caribbean colonies.
Right under the Maroon Wars of Jamaica, we can rank the First and Second Carib Wars, which involved another group of Maroon warriors on the island of Saint Vincent.
The Black Caribs, whose descendants are known today as the Garifuna, were a fearsome foe who kept British planters in constant dread of invasion. This group also consisted of African peoples, most of whom owed their origins to the survivors of slave ships or plantations scattered across the Caribbean.
During the First Carib War, which reached its climax in 1772, the Black Caribs killed around 50 British soldiers and wounded over 100. An additional 428 were sent to the hospital for a number of reasons.
Then came the capture of St. Vincent from the British in 1779.
On their death march towards the capital at Kingstown, not one soul was spared. Initially, captives from the White militia were quartered alive (the arms and legs were separated from the body leaving only the head and the trunk). Then, as the Caribs gained ground, every Brit was dispatched with urgency. Some were blasted where they stood; some were butchered. In British memory, even the Blackest of slaves discovered on that bloody soil were risking life and limb.
Under the leadership of Chief Joseph Chatoyer and his brother Duvallé, the Second Carib War, which kicked off in 1795, was far deadlier than the first. British sources record that when the dust had settled, 185 soldiers lay dead or dying.
Many of the atrocities were so great that the details were not even recorded.
As such, actual British battlefield losses during the wars and interim struggles against the Black Caribs may have been as high as 500 privates and officers.
Slave wars in the Western Hemisphere were not born in a vacuum. Even without the presence of such thinkers as Jefferson or Robespierre, the Middle Passage was an incubator of revolutionary ideals and, as Towson University professor Nathan McNew rightly identified, the Americas were fertile grounds for revolutionary activities. By the middle of the 18th century, island colonies were pregnant with the politics of European (and African) expansionism. These clashes were part of a larger power struggle between England and France, which rocked the Caribbean cradle from the time of the French invasion of Saint Kitts in 1689 and persisted throughout the Seven Years War in the early 1760s. Europe was now in labor and soon they would deliver.
To paint a general picture of the severity of the situation, one British regiment lost 863 men within a year of their arrival in Saint Lucia, including 22 officers. At the time, the slaves had driven out both the army and the planters. The total number of casualties reported in the effort to retake the island was 566 (Of the British combatants involved, 65 were killed, 343 wounded, and 120 missing in action).
When we compare these estimates with those from other regions across the Americas, we can see how fiercely African people resisted their oppressors in the Caribbean.
It is no wonder that one British lieutenant remarked:
Posterity will hardly believe the number of lives lost in these islands.
Robert Bassett, as quoted in Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies (1982) by Michael Craton
In fact, “Great” Britain lost a full three-fourths of its army to its campaigns in Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent. And that does not include the number of slave-owners and settlers who were actively culled in the process.
When it comes to the United States, we find something just as remarkable: yet another insurgency of Maroons. This group, known as the Black Seminoles, holds the third-highest record on our roll of rebels.
In what has come to be called the Black Seminole Wars (or Gullah Wars), fought in the former Spanish colony of Florida, a total of 1,590 White American soldiers perished. As the Black Seminoles and their formerly enslaved allies (who comprised about half of their forces) constituted an estimated 25% of the Seminole armies, J. B. Bird, who has done extensive research on the Seminole Wars, arrives at an estimate of 400 White American deaths attributable to the efforts of the Black resistance.
Bird’s logic invites us to re-examine the numbers attributable to the Black Caribs in St. Vincent as well.
We can say with even more certainty that the Carib Wars qualify as Black slave rebellions.
This is true for four reasons.
First and foremost, slavery was the central issue.
The British were fighting to expand it into new frontiers. The Black Caribs were fighting to keep the European brand off their own. The Black conscripts in the British army were fighting for the freedom promised to them post-discharge or for plantations of their own (as the first to clear Carib lands, some believed they, too, were entitled to them).
Secondly, the Black Caribs were not a minority in the rebel army.
The Black Caribs, who fought alongside the French against the British, consistently comprised at least 60% of the allied armies. The leadership of the Maroons was Black, including the two chiefs previously mentioned. There was also a large presence of Blacks in the French Revolutionary Army. These men were there in answer to a proclamation of freedom to slaves who joined the French-born Victor Hughes against British colonial rule in Dominica, Guadeloupe, Grenada, St. Martin, St. Vincent, and St. Lucia. Of notable mention are three officers of mixed-race: Jean-Louis Marin Pedre, who served as commander of the Carib resistance; General Marinier, who had previously served as commander-in-chief of the French forces in St. Lucia before joining the other “brigands” in St. Vincent; and Captain Louis Delgrès, who would later sacrifice his life in defense of Guadeloupe.
Thirdly, the Black Caribs were not a minority in the Carib community.
Not only were they the dominant Carib community on the island, who were known to have significantly reduced the population of their Carib rivals in a series of petty skirmishes, their rivals made a decision to sit out the Second Carib War. Despite their prejudices against the Black Caribs and their expressed loyalties to the British, these “Red Caribs” received the same treatment as their Afro-Amerindian counterparts: they were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands for the cultivation of sugar plantations.
And, most of all, the Black Caribs had proven their competence.
We must consider that in addition to the fact that they were well armed, thanks to their French allies, they had also received plenty of training under the most accomplished members of this same company, who testified of their exceptional marksmanship and discipline. Even after taking into account their allies’ substantial contributions (a familiarity with British military strategies and years of experience in open combat) and adjusting for their numbers in proportion to that of the overall army, a prominent place on any index of freedom fighters is well deserved.
Of equal importance to the subject of Black resistance to White enslavement as the Maroon rebellions are grassroots rebellions, in which both the planning and the recruitment of rebels were organized from scratch. In these instances, there were no pre-existing communities of African people to pull from, as was the case for leaders in the Maroon settlements.
Tacky’s War, fought in 1760 and 1761, holds the top spot in this category with a count of 60 White colonists killed.
Not far off is the infamous 1831 insurrection of Nat Turner in Southampton, Virginia, which claimed the lives of at least 55 White men, women, and children.
The Berbice Rebellion of 1763 is next with almost 50 White deaths at the hands of the rebels, some of whom became Maroons and joined their counterparts in nearby Suriname.
The violence of these rebellions sent a strong message to the powers of Europe and their scions in the Americas – the enslavement of African people has no place in our world.
– Omri Coke, Black Researchers United Admin Team
Read More on this topic here:
https://theblackresearcher.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-other-black-revolutions.html
