To Hell or Barbados by O'Callaghan Sean;

Author:O'Callaghan, Sean; [Sean O'Callaghan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1275066
Publisher: The O'Brien Press
Published: 2013-09-02T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Revolts and Rebellions

“Whereas it hath been taken notice that several of the Irish Nation, free men and women, who have no certain place of residence … do wander up and down from Plantation to Plantation, as vagabonds, refusing to labour… and endeavouring by their example and persuasion to draw servants and slaves unto them of said Nation to the same wicked courses…”

Daniel Searle, governor of Barbados (1657)

THE IRISH, BOTH servants and slaves, were at the centre of many of the rebellions in Barbados up to the end of the seventeenth century. This is borne out by several statements from governors and the Assembly that some of the Irish were trying to incite their compatriots in the fields to rebellion. The one great fear of all the whites in Barbados, merchants, planters, militia, assemblymen and government officials alike, was that the slaves would revolt and take over the island.

A general uprising took place in Barbados in November 1655. On the sixth of that month, Captain Richard Goodall and Mr John Jones informed the Barbados Council that several Irish servants and slaves, together with some black slaves, had run away from their masters’ estates, and were “out in Rebellion in ye thicket and thereabouts”. There is no mention of the numbers involved, but they must have been considerable as the Council ordered Lieutenant Colonel Higginbotham “to raise any of the companies of Colonel Henry Hawley’s regiment, to follow ye said servants and runaway slaves, and if he shall meet with any of them, to cause them forthwith to be secured, and to send them before the Governor or some Justice of the Peace. But if any of the said servants and runaway Negroes make any opposition, and resist his forces, then to use his utmost endeavours to suppress or destroy them.”

It appears from the minutes of the Council that Lieutenant Colonel Higginbotham cannot have been very successful as there are records of runaway servants and slaves launching attacks on the persons and properties of their masters. Planters were ambushed, dragged from their coaches and hacked to pieces with machetes used in cutting the cane. The runaways took the arms of the planters and coachmen and apparently used them to good effect on the militia hunting them down.

The Assembly was particularly concerned about the burning of the sugar fields, the mills and the outhouses, as it struck at the very heart of the economic structure of the island. The number of runaway servants and slaves, both Irish and black, became so great that the governor was asked by the Assembly to mobilise the entire militia. An act was passed on 2 September 1657 to that effect, making it lawful to “kill and destroy such runaways”. Several engagements took place; the servants and slaves fought to the bitter end, and often sought death, knowing the tortures that awaited them if taken alive. In one engagement in October of 1657, twenty of the runaways were captured after putting up a fierce resistance, in which twelve militia men and thirty of the runaways were killed.

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