Continuous Warfare
Enslaved people organized insurrections from the early sixteenth century through the nineteenth century. Although these rebellions became the most visible form of resistance against slavery, not all enslaved persons elected collective revolts as the main method to fight for better working conditions and freedom.
Most enslaved people actually fought to survive slavery by using the means available to them.80 Local and international contexts that could either contribute to or prevent insurgencies also varied across time and regions. But in the areas of the Americas where Black people and African-born enslaved people outnumbered the white population, there were often favorable conditions for insurrection. The leading roles played by freed Africans and African-born bondspeople in rebellions demonstrates the connections between their previous experiences in the homeland and their participation in slave rebellions in the Americas, evidence of their determination in joining other countrymen to fight for freedom. The study of several rebellions in which African-born bondsmen were involved suggests that these men brought with them to the Americas previous knowledge of warfare from West Central Africa and West Africa. There was also a sacred dimension attached to wartime, which is why drumming and the guidance of religious specialists were important in periods of rebellion. Bondswomen also actively participated in slave rebellions in a variety of roles, but their presence remained less visible than that of enslaved men. One hopes that further studies will shed greater light on the participation of enslaved women in these insurrections.As discussed in this chapter, slave rebellions started two centuries before the Saint-Domingue slave rebellion and persisted long after the birth of Haiti. Even though no other slave revolt was successful in dismantling slavery, in its way each insurrection destabilized the societies where they emerged. This persistence eventually paid off. As we will see in chapter 16, during the second half of the nineteenth century, the three largest and last slave societies in the Americas eventually abolished slavery.