Laura Birkinshaw is a Postgraduate Researcher with the Leverhulme Doctoral Centre for Water Cultures and the Wilberforce Institute, investigating maritime quarantine and transatlantic slavery. Here she recounts her collaboration with Wilberforce House Museum, where she has researched and mapped resistance to transatlantic slavery.
For many years the abolition of the transatlantic trade (1807) and Atlantic slavery in the British colonies (1833) was accredited largely to the efforts and dedication of British abolitionists. Triumphalist portrayals of Britain’s role in the end of the slave trade, such as the anti-slavery efforts of Britain’s West Africa Squadron - as shown in the above print by Samuel Walters and Edward Duncan – have dominated public perceptions of abolition.
However, the overwhelming focus on the contribution of British abolitionists to the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade and Atlantic slavery has garnered criticism for failing to acknowledge the agency of the enslaved, and their significant contribution to the dismantling of Atlantic slavery.
Some historians have attempted to redress this omission. For example, G. Matthews’ Caribbean slave revolts and the British abolition movement (2006) identified the symbiotic relationship between British abolitionism and Caribbean slave resistance. It is indisputable that numerous slave revolts were inspired or influenced by the abolition movement in Britain. Many insurrectionists cited the abolition of the slave trade and abolitionists calls for the enslaved to be freed, as a key motivating factor in their decision to resist their enslavement. Nonetheless, the occurrence of multiple slave revolts in the Caribbean, following the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, was cited by British abolitionists as evidence the prevalence of discontent amongst the enslaved, thus supporting their arguments for the end of the practice of slavery in the British colonies.
This has not always been fully understood.
Throughout the duration of the transatlantic slave trade, numerous contemporary accounts by benefactors of the trade, such as those by plantations owners and overseers, attempted to justify slavery by presenting enslaved Africans as ‘docile’ and ‘happy’ in their enslavement. Thus, when slave revolts did occur, a narrative of ‘exceptionalism’ was promulgated by proponents of slavery. In the case of the Nat Turner Rebellion (21-23 Aug, 1831), coverage and media representations of the rebellion focused on the actions and motivations of Nat Turner. As with other contemporary responses to slave revolts, by focusing, and attributing blame for slave revolts on central figures, such as revolt leaders or key conspirators, supporters of slavery attempted to minimize the threat of slave resistance and justify the continuance of the practice of slavery (A. Mazzaferro (2022) “A Nat Turner in Every Family”: Exemplarity and Exceptionality in the Print Circulation of Slave Revolt’, The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, 10, 2).
In reality, as shown in the map below, now on display in Wilberforce House, slave resistance occurred throughout the duration of the transatlantic slave trade, on land and at sea, in the Caribbean, the Americas and in Africa. Many Africans resisted from the moment of their enslavement. This is shown in the vigilance taken by slaving vessel crews against the threat of slave insurrections, as shown by the strict supervision, and often brutal punishment, of the enslaved aboard slaving vessels. Furthermore, as shown in E.R. Taylor’s If we must die: shipboard insurrection in the era of the Atlantic slave trade (2006), shipboard slave revolts were a recognised, and frequent, threat to the lives of slaving vessel crew members and captains and their successful completion of slaving voyages.
My study of slave resistance, completed on behalf of the Wilberforce House Museum and shown in the map pictured here, portrays a small selection of uprisings and acts of resistance against Atlantic slavery. Based on the survey of a collection of excellent research conducted by scholars in slave resistance, this map demonstrates both the crucial role, and persistent presence, of enslaved resistance. Its illuminates not only the geographic scope and varying nature of enslaved resistance but epitomises enslaved Africans’ continual resistance throughout the duration of the transatlantic slave trade, across all nations engaged in Atlantic slavery.
Laura Birkinshaw's map of slave revolts is currently on display in Wilberforce House Museum, 23-25 High Street, Hull HU1 1NQ