A gripping account of the largest slave revolt in the
eighteenth-century British Atlantic world, an uprising that laid bare
the interconnectedness of Europe, Africa, and America, shook the
foundations of empire, and reshaped ideas of race and popular
belonging.
In the second half of the eighteenth century, as European imperial
conflicts extended the domain of capitalist agriculture, warring
African factions fed their captives to the transatlantic slave trade
while masters struggled continuously to keep their restive slaves
under the yoke. In this contentious atmosphere, a movement of
enslaved West Africans in Jamaica (then called Coromantees) organized
to throw off that yoke by violence. Their uprising—which became
known as Tacky’s Revolt—featured a style of fighting increasingly
familiar today: scattered militias opposing great powers, with
fighters hard to distinguish from noncombatants. It was also part of
a more extended borderless conflict that spread from Africa to the
Americas and across the island. Even after it was put down, the
insurgency rumbled throughout the British Empire at a time when
slavery seemed the dependable bedrock of its dominion. That certitude
would never be the same, nor would the views of black lives, which
came to inspire both more fear and more sympathy than before.
Tracing the roots,
routes, and reverberations of this event across disparate parts of
the Atlantic world, Vincent Brown offers us a superb geopolitical
thriller. Tacky’s Revolt expands our understanding of the
relationship between European, African, and American history, as it
speaks to our understanding of wars of terror today.
