Tacky′s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War
Vincent Brown in conversation with Maya Jasanoff
It was the night of 7th April in 1760 when the northern parish of Saint Mary on the island of Jamaica rose in rebellion. It was a revolt that began in one of the most important colonies of the British Empire. The enslaved Coromantees moved in the middle of the night and reached the thinly defended Fort Haldane, captured the ammunition that was kept there, and continued to be on the move, from one plantation to another, furiously burning them down and sending a signal to all others: the revolt has begun.
In a captivating conversation at #JaipurLiteratureFestival2021, Professor Vincent Brown discussed his book Tacky's Revolt with Professor Maya Jasanoff. The focus of the book resides in a slave revolt that occurred in the middle of the 18th century in Jamaica. The revolt happened in the midst of the Seven Years War between Britain and its imperial enemies.
Brown said that this event has often been ignored and not considered as a battle that occurred during the Seven Years War; nor has it been wrestled with as a major event in the history of the empire. To shed light on this moment of history, Brown wrote this book, and it became the first long account of the revolt since Edward Long, the polemic defender of slavery, who wrote his contemporary account of the events in 1774.
During 1760-61, Jamaica was a colony where 90% of the population was enslaved. Most of the enslaved population had come from the Gold Coast, a war-torn section of Africa. Europeans had a history of trading ammunition in exchange for enslaving populations from this region. Due to the heavy import of firearms into the coast, conflicts increased, and those who lost in these conflicts were held as captives, enslaved, and sent to the British colony of Jamaica. There, the enslaved would be subjected to incredibly hard conditions. They were employed to grow sugar, which was the most profitable crop during the time – as Brown calls it, it was the 'microchip' of the 18th century! Profitable as it was, sugar was a tremendously hard crop to work with, and it was the enslaved Africans who were made to work under harsh conditions to grow sugar.
As the White enslavers continuously attempted to further such conditions, the enslaved organised themselves in a rebellion to throw off that yoke. Under the patronage of a Fanti warlord called Tacky, this rebellion came to be known as 'Tacky's Revolt' or 'Tacky's War,' and it is this revolt which Brown covers in his fascinating book. To write the account, not only did he investigate textual sources but also consulted other things, like geography.
"Geography was very important for me…I really wanted to tie different regional histories together…to use geography as a source to plot their movements to see if I can discern from their movement, their intention," said Brown and further claimed it was from studying the movements of those who revolted which helped him discern some things which textual sources would not have.
Jasanoff claimed that if one is to look at the history of the British Empire in the 18th-19th centuries, there is a war every year – it is just one of these kinds of conflicts that get subsumed under terms like 'revolt' or 'rebellion.' "I think if you were to look at British actions against the many forces of resistance they met in modern imperial history, you find that they actually were not that good at it" – she noted that the minute their technological advantage collapsed, they lost. She added that what Brown's book does is provide us with a prequel to a big rethinking that needs to happen: to understand that imperial power was contested.
Brown claimed that the rebellion had left many Black people divided, there were political calculations made between the enslaved, whether or not to ally with the British or to take their chances and stage insurgencies. Many of the captives were exiled from the island, some of them were sent to far-off regions where other rebellions were staged. In popular imagination, the enslaved remembered this rebellion and the story was told time and time again; even 40 years after the revolt, the tale was narrated in the enslaved African communities of Jamaica.
Jasanoff said that the reason she appreciates the book is because "it's so aware of the big fault lines that we still struggle with in our society today and yet incredibly sensitive to the nuances and complications that get in the way of organising in the face of injustice." To this, Brown added that "as historians, we know the past never repeats itself but we also know that some of the processes which underlie historical events are continuous and ongoing. It is easy to see that some of the problems initiated by conquest, colonialism, slavery, and racism are certainly not over."
