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The African reaction to Enslavement

The African reaction to enslavement took two main forms:

- Revolt; and

- Escape/Marronage.

We will examine these two forms in turn.

Live Free or Die

There have been revolts by enslaved persons for as long as there has been slavery. For example, in Ancient Rome there were what became known as the Servile Wars – three revolts between 135 BCE and 73 BCE. The last one, also known as the Revolt of the Gladiators was led by Spartacus and was the largest, longest and most devastating, almost dealing a severe defeat to Roman forces.
Then there was the Zanj Rebellion which was a major revolt against the Abbasid, which took place from 869 until 883. Begun near the city of Basra in present-day southern Iraq led by Ali ibn Muhammad who claimed direct lineage to the Prophet Mohammed. Interestingly, the insurrection involved both enslaved and freed Africans who had been kidnapped from the coast of Southern Africa.

In the Caribbean, the enslaved, whether Native American or African, whether born into slavery in the Caribbean or recently arrived from Africa, always conspired or plotted to gain their freedom by eliminating the white establishment that oppressed them. Conspiracies, insurrections, plots, rebellions, revolts and uprisings occurred regardless of the situations in which the enslaved found themselves whether on an agricultural plantation, harvesting timber, diving for pearls or laboring in a mine. The reaction of the enslaved was the same whether the oppressors were Danish, Dutch, English, French or Spanish. The enslaved Native Americans and Africans demonstrated an unquenchable thirst and an irrepressible desire for freedom.

Staging a revolt or even planning a revolt required tremendous courage, determination and fortitude. The punishments that awaited unsuccessful insurrectionists were brutal including flogging involving hundreds of lashes even flogging to death, hanging, imprisonment, branding, gibbeting, dismemberment, disemboweling, having their noses slit, being maimed (having the tendons of their ankles cut), being burned alive, being boiled in oil, being beheaded, being drawn, hung and quartered, being hung in irons and starved, being broken on the rack, broken at the wheel, being mutilated, and being shot by firing squad. Female maroons and insurrectionists faced the additional prospect of gang rape.

These brave souls embodied the sentiment expressed by François-Noël Gracchus Babeuf in his defense of the Conspiracy of Equals in April 1797 "better that we should die on our feet rather than live on our knees" and also expressed by the Mexican Revolutionary Emiliano Zapata "I'd rather die on my feet, than live on my knees."

The institution of slavery was based on terror. In order for slavery to endure, the slave state had to instill a sense of terror in the enslaved to ensure that they lived with constant fear and dread. That is why even the mildest challenge to the slave system was met by barbaric, brutal forms of punishment and insurrections or even conspiracies were savagely repressed.

While these methods of execution to our modern sensibilities seem barbaric and unnecessarily cruel, it should be remembered that these forms of killing the condemned were not devised in the Caribbean or anywhere in the Americas. Europeans had been using these gruesome methods of execution for centuries against other Europeans and others in the 'Old World' and simply imported their
'barbaric' methods to the Caribbean.

Flight and Fight

There have been escapes by enslaved persons for as long as there has been slavery. For example, in the 3rd century BCE in Ancient Greece, an enslaved man named Drimakos escaped from captivity with several others and established what would be considered a maroon settlement on the island of Chios which is part of the North-Eastern Aegean Islands. As would happen almost two thousand years later with other maroon communities in the Americas, Drimakos arrived at a modus vivendi with the Chians whereby they accepted the independence of his community and he, for his part, would limit his group’s predations against the citizens on the island. Again, as would happen thousands of years later in the Americas he also promised to only accept any future fugitives who had been unjustly treated by their masters.
In the Middle East, there was  the ‘Zanj Revolt’, which began in September 869.For a period of fourteen years, the formerly enslaved Africans were able to combat the superior arms of the Abbasid government by waging guerrilla warfare against their opponents. These maroons became adept at raiding towns, villages and enemy camps (often at night), seizing weapons, horses, food and captives and freeing fellow enslaved Africans, and burning the rest to cinders to delay retaliation.

In the Caribbean, the maroons chose flight followed by fight. They usually did not go very far from the European settlements. Like their precursors thousands of years before in the 'Old World' they almost always remained within striking distance, constantly mounting raids on the plantations or mines.

Prisoners of War have a duty to try and escape from their captors. If we classify the enslaved Africans as Prisoners of War, which in essence they were, then they also had a duty to try and escape from their captors.

The enslaved Africans demonstrated an unquenchable thirst and an irrepressible desire for freedom. Escaping or even planning an escape required tremendous courage, determination, and fortitude. The dangers included being tracked by Black Miskito/Miskito Zambo trackers and being torn apart by Cuban “Bloodhounds” which were not actually bloodhounds but were attack dogs (Dogo Cubano) bred specifically to hunt Africans.

As The Mighty Sparrow sang with such feeling in the 1963 calypso "The Slave" 
"I study night and day how to break away
Ah got to make a brilliant escape
But every
 time ah tink 'bout de whip an' dem dogs
Meh body does start to shake"

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