Slave rebellion
A desire for freedom and the dream of successful rebellion is often the greatest object of song, art, and culture amongst the enslaved population.
Ancient Sparta had a special type of serf called helots who were often treated harshly, leading them to rebel.
Slavery remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter the Great converted the household slaves into house serfs.
[4] During the 16th and 17th centuries, runaway serfs and kholops known as Cossacks, ("outlaws") formed autonomous communities in the southern steppes.
In the 9th century, the poet Ali bin Muhammad led imported East African slaves against the Abbasid Caliphate in Iraq during the Zanj Rebellion.
[8] On 9 July 1595, Rei Amador, and his people, the Angolars, allied with other enslaved Africans of its plantations, marched into the interior woods and battled against the Portuguese.
In the first decades of the 17th century, there were frequent slave revolts in the Portuguese colony of São Tomé and Príncipe, off the African shore, which damaged the sugar crop cultivation there.
[citation needed] The Mamluk Sultanate reigned for centuries out of a slave rebellion[dubious – discuss] in Egypt.
[citation needed] Drapetomania was a supposed mental illness invented by American physician Samuel A. Cartwright in 1851 that allegedly caused black slaves to run away.
[citation needed] The 1811 German Coast Uprising, which took place in rural southeast Louisiana, at that time the Territory of Orleans, early in 1811, involved up to 500 insurgent slaves.
[citation needed] Although only involving about seventy slaves and free blacks, Turner's 1831 rebellion is considered to be a significant event in American history.
[19] White fear led to new legislation passed by Southern states prohibiting the movement, assembly, and education of slaves, and reducing the rights of free people of color.
[20] The abolitionist John Brown had already fought against pro-slavery forces in Bleeding Kansas for several years when he decided to lead a raid on a Federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
They also evacuated slaves from New York, taking more than 3,000 for resettlement to Nova Scotia, where they were recorded as Black Loyalists and given land grants.
William Snelgrave reported that the slaves who revolted on the British ship Henry in 1721 claimed that those who had captured them were "Rogues to buy them" and that they were bent on regaining their liberty.
[32] Another example that Richardson gives is that of James Towne who gives the account of slaves stating that Europeans did not have the right to enslave and take them away from their homeland and "wives and children".
The crews of these ships, while outnumbered, were disciplined, well fed, and armed with muskets, swords, and sometimes cannons, and they were always on guard for resistance.
[35] The slaves on board revolted while the ship was anchored off the coast and all but two of the crew, including Captain Millar, had succumbed to disease.
[35] After having defended themselves with muskets for several days below decks the crew lowered a small boat into the river to escape.
In 1812 enslaved sailors joined a revolt on board the Portuguese ship Feliz Eugenia just off the coast of Benguela.
[47] His incumbency began in 1552 and lasted until 1554 after a failed attempt to take Barquisimeto city was killed by Spanish forces.
[citation needed] Between 1538 and 1542, a Guaraní slave from present-day Paraguay named Juliana killed her Spanish master and urged other indigenous women to do the same, ending up executed by order of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.
[citation needed] San Basilio de Palenque in Colombia, 16th century to the present, led by Benkos Biohó.
[52] The most successful slave uprising was the Haitian Revolution, which began in 1791 and was eventually led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, culminating in the independent black republic of Haiti.
Slaves were brought to the isthmus from many regions in Africa, including the modern day countries of the Congo, Senegal, Guinea, and Mozambique.
Immediately before their arrival on shore, or very soon after, many enslaved Africans revolted against their captors or participated in mass maroonage or desertion.
They began a long guerrilla war against the Spanish Conquistadores, sometimes in conjunction with nearby indigenous communities like the Kuna and the Guaymí.
[citation needed] Tacky's War (1760) was a slave uprising in Jamaica, which ran from May to July before it was put down by the British colonial government.
[citation needed] The Suriname slave rebellion was marked by constant guerrilla warfare by Maroons and in 1765–1793 by the Aluku.
[54] Brown's efforts have shown that the slave insurrection in Jamaica in 1760-61 was a carefully planned affair and not a spontaneous, chaotic eruption, as was often argued (due in large part to the lack of written records produced by the insurgents).
