038840engo 2

Negro resistance to slavery and the Atlantic

slave trade from Africa to Black America

113

disturbances in 1810, 1819, 1831, 1834-35, 1851, 1856 and 1860. The Negroes
revolted in Florida in 1820 (Talbot Island) and in 1856 (Jacksonville). Other
revolts occurred in Alabama, in 1837, and Mississippi, in 1835.
Louisiana was also the scene of frequent insurrections. There was one
in 1804, in New Orleans, two in 1805 and nearly 500 Negroes marched on
New Orleans in 1811. There were revolts on the sugar-cane plantations in 1829,
1835, 1837, 1840, 1841, 1842 and 1856. Tennessee, Kentucky and Texas had
their share in 1831, 1856 and 1857.
All this is a far cry from the submissive 'Uncle Tom' so readily imagined
by American authors.

Conclusion

In recent years some progress has been made in historical research as a result
of the studies of a number of African, West Indian and Afro-American research
workers, who have tried to analyse slave society in depth. If such studies are
to be continued and if these links between Africa and America and these
sources are to be taken fully into account, group pluridisciplinary research
will have to be envisaged.
The aim should be to build up an historical anthropology bringing in
history, geography, sociology, economics and ethnology. A study of the slave
trade and of slavery as it relates to Negro resistance is essential to the under-
standing of the economic, political and ideological implications of the slave
trade for Africa and its effect on societies and powers. Incidentally it enables
one to measure the demographic implications for the African continent and
to evaluate all that the economies based on slavery gained from the slave
trade.

Notes

1. Charles Frostin, in a recent thesis, 'Le Sentiment d'Autonomisme des Colons de Saint-
   Domingue, XVIIe-XVIIIe Siècles ', goes so far as to maintain that the Negro slaves
   accepted their condition and that only the white colonists revolted against the royal
   power in Santo Domingo.


2. cf. Gabriel Debien, Les Esclaves aux Antilles Françaises, Chap. XX, Fort-de-France,
   Société d'Histoire de la Guadeloupe, Basse-Terre et la Société d'Histoire de la
   Martinique, 1974.


3. cf. P. D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade, Madison, Wis., University of Wisconsin
   Press, 1969.


4. We are indebted to Fernand Braudel for the term ' geohistory'.


5. cf. for example, Gilberto Freyre, Casa Grande e Senzala, Rio de Janeiro, 1943. (Coleçao
   Documentos Brasileños No. 36, 36a), in which it is maintained that the slaves were
   better fed than the whites and that they enjoyed their work.


6. Marginal because they refused to how to the constraints of the method of slave
   exploitation.