Racisms by Bethencourt Francisco

Author:Bethencourt, Francisco
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2013-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 14.4. Anonymous, slave revolt in Saint Domingue, print, c. 1791.

© RMN, Grand Palais; Agence Bulloz; Bibliothèque nationale de France

In the British colonial world, the 1816 Barbados revolt, which destroyed plantations but killed virtually no masters, slowed down the antislavery movement in England, while the fierce repression of the Demerara revolt in 1823, with hundreds of executions along with the detention and death in prison of a white missionary who supported the slaves, struck a sensitive cord among the British, arousing indignation and further abolitionist action. Jamaica’s “Baptist War” in 1831–32 repeated the pattern of the Demerara revolt on a larger scale, with the restraint shown by the slaves contrasted with brutal repression and executions, further fueling abolitionism in the United Kingdom and leading to the emancipation of slaves in 1833. The extension of abolitionism to India was, by contrast, a top-down operation sparked by British public opinion, but was initially opposed by the colonial authorities, fearing the reaction of local elites. In 1843, the British decided to suppress the legal framework sustaining slavery, making it a criminal offense to sell captives. In the United States, although slave revolts were few in the decades that preceded secession (1860) and Civil War (1861–65), the Union’s declaration of freedom for Southern slaves dramatically increased the flight of slaves from the Confederation. This led the Union to recruit two hundred thousand former slaves as soldiers, who contributed to the northern victory. The final abolition of slavery in the United States (1865) put an end to the internal slave trade and heralded the end of slavery in the Americas. In this case, a massive mobilization of northern abolitionists after the 1830s, supported by a significant number of European migrants who shared the ideal of free soil, contrasted with a no less determined and massive mobilization of proslavery opinion in the southern states.47

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