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Essay On Resistance To Slavery In The Caribbean

2177 Words9 Pages

Day 1

It’s the first day of my four day journey to where I was born an enslaved person in the Caribbean. I became the leader of a rebellion and my experiences of the rebellion itself were dreadful. This was not by plan but was due to “normal reactions to the transatlantic slave trade.”
According to slave owners, ‘slaves were notoriously lazy and ill disposed to labour ’, which demonstrate that every day battle. The enslaved also engaged in acts of non-cooperation, petty theft and sabotage, as well as countless acts of insubordination.

At times enslaved Africans would resort to more open or violent means of conflict, including the poisoning of animals and owners, at times turned it against them by committing infanticide, self-mutilation and suicide. It was not strange for slaves to absent themselves from enslavement for a few hours or a few days, regardless of the penalty they might receive on their return. It is estimated that about 10% of all the enslaved took such action, which sometimes involved moving temporarily to another location or, for those held captive in the Caribbean, even to another island. Resistance to slavery had …show more content…

One of the earliest I documented is the correspondence of the Kongo ruler Nzinga Mbemba, who wrote to the king of Portugal, João III, in 1526 to demand an end to the illegal depopulation of his kingdom. The Kongolese king's successor Garcia II completed similar ineffective protests.
Other African rulers took a stand. Anti-slavery motives can also be found in the activities of the Christian leader Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita (1684–1706) in Kongo. Several major African states took measures to limit and suppress the slave trade, including the kingdoms of Benin and Dahomey. Agaja Trudo, the king of Dahomey (r. 1708–40), banned the slave trade and even went as far as attacking the European forts on the

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