![]() However, underneath these two well-documented cases, lie hundreds of others. We can look back at famous struggles, such as the Nat Turner rebellion and the successful Haitian Revolution which led to the establishment of the first and only slave society in the New World. Slave insurrections on the plantations were an overt form of resistance. Resistance also came in the form of practising one’s traditional culture, to full-blown insurrections, to merely resting. It was so frequent that over time it became an accepted part of slave society. This refers to the act of slaves leaving their plantation for a short period of time to visit friends or family on nearby plantations. These aid networks allowed maroon communities to flourish and some are still present today, such as the Saramaka, or “Bush Negroes,” who are the largest surviving maroon community, located in Suriname.Īs well as full marooning, “petit-marronage” was a common practice during slavery. As well as Natives, maroons worked alongside slave populations in order to smuggle arms, intelligence and other objects from the plantations. The maroons often had contact with the Native populations through skill-sharing, trade or merely through mutual suffering – although, the two parties did not always unite. The people of these communities practised successful guerrilla warfare against the colonists (sometimes in the form of plantation raids, which were especially frequent in Suriname) gained economic independence and established trade networks, for example by selling crops such as yams, sweet potatoes, plantain, sugar cane, tobacco, cotton and many other plants and vegetables and held onto their African culture through customs such as the spiritual practice of Obeah. Their settlements were birthed in inhospitable areas within the bushy wilderness and impenetrable jungles surrounded by pits or swamps. ![]() Maroon communities were established mostly by first generation slaves who still had visions of Africa. ![]() Maroon communities were so widespread that they were referred to as “the chronic plague” of the New World. They were the antithesis to white European colonial expansion and the oppressive slavery system in the Americas. Maroon communities were settlements of runaway slaves. ![]() Maroon communitiesĪnother method of revolt during slavery was the formation of maroon communities, following the Africans’ arrival in the New World. As well as major revolts on board ships, the Africans on board the vessels also rebelled in individual acts of violence, refusing to eat, or jumping off board to suicide in resistance to being controlled. The Amistad was but one case in a pool of many other slave ship rebellions, such as the mutiny on the Clare, the Meermin, the Creole and the Little George, to name a few. The case led to their repatriation.Īn estimated 15-20% of all slave ships that left the shores of Africa never reached the Americas due to on-board insurrections Schooner Amistad” which deemed that the 43 African survivors were free people who acted to defend their liberty. The case of La Amistad was significant as it led to the famous Supreme Court case “United States v. The Africans were tricked and the ship was seized in New York. The revolt on La Amistad took place during a voyage from Havana, Cuba to the Cuban plantations in which 53 newly-captured Africans (the Mende people) from Sierra Leone, including leader Joseph Cinqué, took control of the ship and ordered it to be taken back to their homeland. The most famous slave ship rebellion was in 1839 on La Amistad (which inspired the 1997 Steven Spielberg film “Amistad”). Africans – some of whom were warriors – mutinied against their white oppressors during the Middle Passage, sometimes killing the crew and sailing back to freedom. Slave ship mutiniesĪlthough the exact number cannot be certain due to insufficient records, an estimated 15-20% of all slave ships that left the shores of Africa never reached the Americas due to on-board insurrections. When, in reality, Black people have been rebelling with might since their capture. The structure of white supremacy feeds off the narrative of the ‘docile slave.’ Painting Black people in history as submissive beings upholds the white conscience it tapes over white people’s historical and present reliance on oppression for their mental stability and superiority, by suggesting that Black people were willingly inferior. ![]()
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