Reviews in American History

In 1760 and 1761, slaves rose up in Jamaica, killing dozens of people, burning estates, and raising questions about the durability of English domination and the institution of slavery on the island. Petrified slaveowners and their dependents feared for their lives and for the demise of the brutal system that enriched them. Vincent Brown has written an extraordinary history of what came to known as “Tacky’s Rebellion,” providing a fine-grained account of the conflict, with special attention to geography. But his contributions move far beyond an insightful analysis of the rebellion itself. Brown also establishes a new cartography of slave resistance, revealing the connections between this and other uprisings across the Americas and the Caribbean and their deep roots in Africa. Tacky’s Revolt is a tour-de-force that excels on all fronts and offers numerous new lines of inquiry for historians of slavery.

The uprising began when slaves, most of them West African or “Coramantees,” plundered sugar plantations in the eastern part of the island. They moved quickly, recruiting allies and seizing weapons and food. Many of the rebels, including the leader of the first stage of the rebellion, Tacky, had military experience in Africa. English colonial forces employed militias, maroons, and the Army and Navy to counter them. Within a week, a maroon marksman, Lieutenant Davy, had killed Tacky; authorities displayed his head in Spanish Town. Tensions smoldered, however, and in May the uprising resurrected in the west of the island. Slaves took advantage of the dense Hanover Mountains and other forests, descending to ransack estates and then to retreat and regroup, employing classic guerrilla tactics. The war lasted for over a year. At some point in late July or August 1761, militia forces executed rebel leader Wager, also called Apongo. They also killed thousands of rebels. Surrounded, many insurgents took their own lives. The rebellion, at least its first stage, was over.

The violence unnerved slaveowners, who understand the fragility of their system of domination in a Caribbean island where slaves constituted the [End Page 29] majority of the population. Immersed in the Seven Years’ War, the English took measures to prevent further unrest, tightening social control in plantations and urban centers and restricting all Blacks’ mobility. In addition, they asserted greater control of the management or governance of the island. Jamaica’s elite by and large accepted the new arrangement, considering it a necessary concession for the security it offered and going so far as to express their gratitude to King George. Similar measures would prompt quite different reactions in England’s North American possessions.

Historians have long understood Tacky’s Revolt as a major slave uprising. They recognize its intensity and ferocity, its impact across Jamaica and beyond. Many have seen it as one more battleground of the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), a curious side-note to the global struggle between England and France. Brown provides a vivid account, akin to war corresponce, of the guerrilla warfare: the ambushes, counterattacks, and incessant pursuit for supplies and allies.

Yet, this book is much more than microhistory. Brown also reveals how the uprising formed part of a transatlantic world of slave resistance that stretched across the Americas and the Caribbean. The author proposes that four confrontations overlapped and shaped the bloody struggles over slavery in the Atlantic World: wars in Africa where Europeans’ search for slaves collided with and redirected prior conflicts and alignments; the incessant conflict between slaves and slaveholders; disputes among Black populations; and the Seven Years’ War itself. In order to understand the convergence of these conflagrations and tensions in mid eighteenth-century Jamaica, Brown’s analysis encompasses Africa, the Atlantic slave world, Jamaica and the Caribbean, the 1760–61 rebellion itself, and its legacy. That kind of geographic and analytical scope is a tall order, but Brown achieves his objective of plotting out the transatlantic nature of slave revolts, while also presenting a masterful...