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In Eugene Genovese’s detailed, strategic chapter “Slave Revolts in Hemispheric Perspective,” rebelling slaves in the Western Hemisphere are portrayed as black Davids attempting to slay the well-armed, well-funded, white Goliaths. These rebels risked it all for a shot at freedom- they typically have few supplies, few allies, and little detailed intelligence about their foes. However, as Michael wrote earlier today, not all rebelling slaves had equal chances of success, as “major differences” separated the regions that could support broad slave revolts from those that could not. The rebellious slaves of the Caribbean and South America had a slim, but viable, chance of victory thanks to volatile island diplomacy and their vast outnumbering of the white captors. Bands of guerrilla runaways, known as maroons, would harass the colonizing classes and form their own communities based on traditional African culture. (3) However, the slave ringleaders of the British Colonies and United States faced an even more stacked deck. Due to the large number of whites, the paternalist slave society, and the white public’s horrific fear of slave uprisings, Genovese surmises that all revolts planned by black slaves in the United States were doomed to fail.
Genovese goes into extensive, if not overreaching, detail concerning the slave revolts of the Caribbean from 1500 to 1900 (including Latin America, Brazil, and Guiana). The European powers viewed these colonies less as opportunities for colonial resettlement and more as possibilities of wealth and mercantile prestige through sugar cultivation. These “thoroughly bourgeois” colonies generally contained a small amount of white businessmen and a large number of black slaves (mostly African-born) who worked under pitiful conditions in the sugar fields. (2) The Pan-African identity, supported by sheer numbers and the natural island geography, encouraged dozens and dozens of revolts throughout the Indies and the mainland. The runaways who survived the initial outbreak became formidable adversaries, forming themselves into guerilla armies. They sometimes gained support and protection from nations at war with their owners, augmenting their political clout as independent bodies. However, these successes were few and far between- many European nations allied amongst themselves to assist each other in putting down slave revolts and suppressing conspiracies as statements of their dominance over the region. (21)
The circumstances of rebellion in the United States made a slave revolt a difficult proposition, with American slaveholders “in a position of unusual strength”. (23) The Americanization of slavery after the abolition of slave importation created a more paternalistic culture, with traditional African identity losing its strength in the nineteenth century, especially compared to that of the Caribbean. The population balance simply did not favor the rebels, nor did the geography support the thought of a guerilla war. While his citations are not provided, it is evident that Genovese focused on utilizing the dialogue of both slave leaders and ordinary slaves in his analysis of the revolts. He claims that many slaves deemed the proposition of revolt to be suicidal, and wonders how they had any uprisings at all. (50) To Genovese, Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, and Gabriel Prosser were a radical minority while most slaves “shifted away from revolt to other forms of resistance”. (49) While Genovese chronicles the ill-fated rebels in detail and scope, he fails to analyze what this alternative resistance might be, and therefore fails to answer an important question: Did American slaves have any political speech beyond violence? In my opinion, slaves played an instrumental role in the economic, religious, and cultural development of the African-American identity; for that, I believe the answer is yes.