Then, after some years of financing the trade from London, he retired to an affluent life as a planter in Jamaica, Britain’s most profitable colony.
Cope spent a tumultuous few years in West Africa, taking the opportunity of internecine African strife to enhance his fortunes in the British slave trade. Wager’s enigmatic life story encompasses an unlikely journey from the administrative councils of Gold Coast statecraft and trade to the British Royal Navy at war, and from the sugar plantation fields of Jamaica to leadership of a massive slave uprising, and finally to his execution on the public gibbet. We can glimpse the outlines of this transatlantic struggle through the entangled lives of Wager (or Apongo, as he was originally named), John Cope, and Arthur Forrest, which embodied the nature of African insurrection in Jamaica as a war within a network of wars. But the caricature bore no resemblance to the black fighters who stood toe-to-toe with whites in encounters all across the war-torn world of Atlantic slavery, from West Africa to the Americas. That icon of abjection has shaped the prevailing understanding of bondage and race to this day. In response, late 18th century abolitionists would rally around the image of a kneeling supplicant begging to be recognised as a man and a brother, as if the condemnation of evil required the meek innocence of its victims. Slaveholders cited black militancy as a justification for their brutality. This provides a different perspective on slaveholders, as well: their interactions with militant Africans highlight the failures of European command as much as mastery, the brittleness and insecurity that colonists could overcome only with massive displays of force. By contrast, recalling their roots in West Africa reminds us to consider their goals, initiatives, and maneuvers. Starting with the image of slaves in Jamaica, or elsewhere in the Americas, encourages us to fixate on their suffering black bodies and see only their reactions to bondage. African history was already joined to the history of the Americas.īeginning the story of American slave revolt with West Africa’s entanglement with European empire allows a shift in perspective, taking in the wider geography that shaped the course of the insurgency and the political imagination of its participants. Yet this uncertain aspect of the story suggests its most important point of departure: many Africans came to the Americas with firsthand experience of Europe’s imperial expansion.
It is unclear exactly what they knew about white colonists, about the power of European empires, or about the best strategies and tactics for fighting them. Although the revolt was a response to the African rebels’ predicament in Jamaica, they drew upon lessons learned long before they crossed the Atlantic Ocean. The Jamaican slave uprising of 1760–1761 did not begin in Africa, but that is where its story starts. Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Įxcerpted from Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War by Vincent Brown, published by Harvard University Press.Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window).Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window).Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window).
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