May Day special: Tacky’s Revolt – Lessons for modern labour from a slave uprising

By Christopher D. Reid

Part 1: History and pre-history of a rebellion

‘When you make men slaves, you deprive them of half their virtue, you set them, in your conduct, an example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war; and you complain that they are not honest or faithful.’

This wonderfully perspicacious passage was written by the Black British abolitionist Olaudah Equiano in his The Interesting Narrative. Modern scholars have often invoked Equiano’s ‘state of war’ phrase as an edgy and provocative way to describe Atlantic slavery. However, few – with the notable exceptions of Gerald Horne, Vincent Brown, and Ben Hughes – have taken up the whole of Equiano’s meaning in this passage. I take Equiano’s words to be a warning to his primarily white metropole audience that enslaved Africans observed carefully the world of their enslavers, possessed wide knowledge of it, and planned ways to act for their own benefit within it – with the same ruthlessness as their oppressors.

Equiano’s own story, as told in The Interesting Narrative, illustrates the variousness of experience among African captives in the Atlantic. It tells of the many episodes, encounters, and incidents that stirred men and women like him to rebel. Equiano witnessed the systematic violence of racialised slavery on the slave ship and in its varied forms on Caribbean and North American plantations. He came to see the Atlantic economy’s dependence on coerced Black labour. After serving as a crewmember on a British warship, which engaged a French ship-of-the-line in battle, he understood that white men were perpetually at war with both Black slaves and one another. The Interesting Narrative, though published in 1789, gives critical insight into many of the historical conditions in the mid-18^th century British Atlantic that sparked the 1760 slave insurrection in Jamaica known as Tacky’s Revolt.

The militarised zone

British Jamaica was a slave society. But if we are to reckon with the circumstances surrounding Tacky’s Revolt, we must also view it as an outpost of empire.

Britain’s intermittent wars with other European states – France and Spain in particular – were fought not only on the European continent and on the high seas but also in overseas territories. In the mid-18^th century, the nation’s largest and most prosperous settlements were in the Western Atlantic. Britain itself, with its enclosed farmlands, increasingly crowded towns, and highly regulated trade industries, was becoming a progressively more difficult place for those without connections or inherited fortunes to make a living. It was in Barbados, Jamaica, the Leeward Islands, and the eastern seaboard of North America that Britons of different social classes could earn money. Many of these settlers were veterans of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748). They were men with combat experience, men well-practiced in dealing out death and brutality.

Such soldiering would be put to good use in the West Indies in particular. Jamaica was a fortified commercial outpost with a ‘garrison government’ that prioritised order and security. All free white men (and by this time nearly all white men on the island were free) were expected to muster and drill regularly with the colonial militia. Though the politics of the 18^th century British militia are complicated and cannot be gone into here, it will suffice to say that very few (among them Quakers) refused this service on principle. To counter external threats and slave rebellions, Jamaican governors invoked martial law and took command of the colonial militia, British Army regulars based on the island, and Royal Navy warships on patrol.

Europeans were not the only ones in the Atlantic basin who knew war. Like states in Europe and Asia, Africa had also undergone a Military Revolution in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. Short-lived battles had given way to highly destructive wars of territorial expansion, creating large numbers of homeless, vulnerable, and displaced persons. By our period, a number of imperial dynasties in West Africa had embarked on wars of conquest against their neighbours. These wars occurred mostly among the Akan people, located in present day Ghana, Togo, and Ivory Coast. European states – Portugal, Netherlands, and Britain – involved themselves by offering guns and other manufactures to West African merchants. The latter purchased POWs and displaced persons as well as kidnap victims from African war parties, and then sold these people to European slavers in an intricate value exchange system.

By the mid-18^th century, the British had become the most prolific European slave traders. So focussed were these traders in human flesh on the health and physical characteristics of their captives that they paid no mind to the life experiences of the individuals they manacled and brutalised. The African entrepreneurs sold them not only innocent youths such as Equiano but battle-hardened soldiers, among whom must have been the equivalent of officers trained to organise and lead groups of men using small unit tactics.

The resurrected

In her book, Saltwater Slavery, Stephanie Smallwood describes the experience of African captives sent to slave fortresses for shipment to the Americas as ‘social death…a new category of marginalization, one not of extreme alienation within the community, but rather of absolute exclusion from any community.’ The sifting and shuffling of different peoples for the purpose of packaging and marketing them to meet slaver standards no doubt led to such psychological trauma. But the experience of the Middle Passage and the plantation machine – the ‘factories in the field’ as C.L.R. James called them – led to a kind of social resurrection.

In their endeavour to survive the floating dungeon that was the slave ship, and to occasionally mutiny against the crew, African captives formed new bonds, new communities, and distinct new cultures, while retaining their old heritages. This social and cultural pragmatism – the continual testing of new practices to determine whether effects match desired aims – served them well in the New World, as they had to adapt quickly to the brutal labour regimen and racialised political order of plantation society.

The colonial racial state

Though Jamaica was conquered – which consisted only of defeating the Spanish troops and overthrowing the Spanish colonial government then present on the island – by the Cromwellian army in 1655, it lagged behind Barbados and the Leeward Islands in sugar production until the early 18^th century. But once the island’s planter elites adopted the integrated sugar plantation model, Jamaica quickly surpassed the Lesser Antilles in generating this profitable crop.

Sugar cultivation, processing, and production required a large and steady labour force and strict managerial control. The work was hard, exhausting, unhealthy, and dangerous. The insatiable appetite of Jamaican planters for African slaves owed to the high mortality rates among these workers. Enslaved people were literally worked to death. And the insalubrious environment – a combination of overwork, tropical disease, poor diet, and venereal disease (spread mostly by the widespread rape of Black women by white men) – kept birth rates low.

Black labourers also had to contend with the colonial racial state. This consisted of the legal, military, surveillance, and disciplinary infrastructure that had been developed over the decades to enforce white solidarity and to keep intact white domination. The colonial racial state was formed to pre-empt Black rebellion or, failing that, to put it down. The threat of Black insurrection was no mere imaginary. In Jamaica alone, there had been a yearlong slave revolt from 1685 to 1686. Smaller revolts occurred in 1694, 1702, and 1704. And then there were the Maroon wars of 1720 to 1739 (I will say more about the Maroons below). The colonial racial state was meant to constrict and control the movements and actions of all Black people, but especially those who were enslaved. It was meant to make the latter feel the constant presence of white eyes on them and instill a fear of harsh white discipline should they commit even the slightest infraction. The ultimate function of the colonial racial state was to protect the production of lucrative crops and ensure their export to British and European markets so that planter and merchant elites in the Americas and venture capitalist merchants in Britain could get wealthier.

These violent impositions did not have the desired universal effect. Slaves rebelled anyway. They were aware of the unnaturalness of their status, they were angered and indignant about their treatment, they understood the value of their labour in the Atlantic economic system, they knew things did not have to be as they were, they imagined new ways of organising social and economic affairs, and they were alert to opportunities for overthrowing the existing order.

Uprising!

In 1760, Britain had been at war with France for six years. The conflict started in 1754 with a skirmish in the Ohio River Valley, which was then firmly controlled by indigenous nations, but was part of a western frontier bordering French and British settlement communities. The skirmish itself involved an ambitious Virginia planter and land speculator named Major George Washington. An ill-judged provocation on the part of the British colonials led to a shoot-out with French colonial agents and their indigenous allies. This helped set off the French and Indian War.

Two years later realignments among European nations broadened the conflict into a worldwide conflagration between two European military blocs – one led by Britain, the other by France – known as the Seven Years’ War. The war raged in North America, Europe, and the Pacific. Thus far, the Caribbean had remained silent. Britain’s prized Jamaica colony operated undisturbed, white domination held, and the sugar flowed.

That changed in the early morning hours of April 8^th, 1760. Fort Haldane was located on the northern coast at the eastern end of the island. It sat on the bluff commanding the entrance to Port Maria Harbour – which still exists in present day Jamaica. The fort was a formidable structure, with a barracks large enough to accommodate 60 men. But it was also a place known for its overly humid and suffocating air and was thus lightly defended that night.

Just after midnight, a lone sentinel was killed and soon after the fort was overtaken by nearly one hundred Black fighters. The insurgents seized gunpowder, musket balls, and small arms. They broke into a nearby store and took pistols, dry goods, and Madeira wine. Over the next several days, the rebel army killed, burned and raided across the parish. They stunned white Jamaica with the suddenness, ferocity, and coordination of their attacks, as well as their ability to recruit other slaves to their cause.

Within a few days the insurrection had swelled to several hundred. Governor Henry Moore declared martial law and mobilised the local militia, two regiments of British regulars stationed on the island, and free Black rangers. The rebels fought using small unit tactics commonly employed in the forest warfare of West Africa. This made the open field, massed army approach of the British regulars and militia ineffective in countering their advance. It was the free Black rangers and a unit of Maroons that finally cornered the rebels and killed their leader, known as Tacky, in a final battle on the 20^th or 21^st of May. Those rebels not killed or taken prisoner fled to the woods.

Governor Moore reported to Prime Minister William Pitt that the uprising had been suppressed and order restored. He spoke too soon. Four days after Tacky was killed, enslaved people rose up in Westmoreland Parish at the western end of the island. Moore quickly dispatched the Royal Navy and British regulars to assist the local white militia. It had little effect. On May 29^th, the militia was routed, and the rebel army continued seizing territory. Once again, the same combination of Black rangers and Maroons were required to defeat the insurgents – which the latter finally did on June 2^nd.

Back in the east, another uprising occurred, which was put down by a detachment of Kingston militia and British marines. Slave plots were uncovered in the central and northwest parishes of Jamaica. And it was not until July that the colony was pacified, though it took another year to round up the insurgents who had fled to the woods.

Understanding the revolt

What did the rebels want? Why did they rise up when they did? These are two obvious questions to ask. The second is the simplest to answer. Given all that I have said about the experience of Africans in war, and their awareness of British Atlantic politics and economy, it is clear that they saw a strategic advantage in fighting their oppressors while the latter’s armies and resources were engaged elsewhere.

Discerning what the rebels were after will take a bit more analysis. They left no written documentation of their intentions. And the reports and correspondence of the white colonists must be read with care and scepticism. In fact, the very fact that the uprising is called Tacky’s Revolt is down to the attempt of the British to trace its cause to a ‘Bad Negro’ named Tacky who poisoned the minds of otherwise ‘Good Negroes’. To get to the bottom of the rebels’ political aims, we must consider what was realistically possible and what they actually did during those three months.

The first thing to note is that most slave rebellions of the early modern period were organised and led by Akan peoples, who, as I mentioned before, had been involved in imperial wars of conquest amongst themselves. The British called them Coromantee. They had cultural affinities, a common language, and other ethnic bonds. But such ethnic cohesion did not automatically forge political solidarity. Different ambitions, divergent interests, and personal disagreements shaped the aims and strategy of Akan plots and military action. However, they had long experience, which took the form of institutional knowledge, in making war in the West African interior and in interacting with Europeans along the coast. They knew how to unite competing factions to achieve common interests and to oppose the impositions of common foes. In short, the uprising of 1760 was carried out by people practiced in the art of strategic thinking.

The historian Ben Hughes argues that slave rebellions followed three general patterns. The first can be grouped as rebellions that aimed at regime change. An example of this type occurred on the Danish colony of St. John, Virgin Islands in November 1733. The rebels – led by a cohort of Akan from Akwamu – were highly organised. They were careful to preserve the island’s infrastructure, including sugar plantations and other buildings. Their intent was to run the island as it had been run, with surviving whites and Blacks from other islands as slave labourers. The rebels held complete control of the island for a good six months. A combined army of Danish, British, and French forces was required to defeat the rebels and take back power. The strategic intent of this uprising was achievable because there was a large enslaved majority on the island and its rather flat topography gave the rebels a fighting chance to hold it.

A second type of Akan-led slave rebellion consisted of the pure desire for revenge or the satisfaction of honour after especially cruel treatment by whites. Such score-settling was the only option in northern colonies where whites heavily outnumbered the enslaved Black population. An example of this is the New York City slave revolt of 1712, in which newly arrived Akan slaves conspired to set fires throughout the city. There was significant property damage but no whites were killed.

The Jamaica uprising falls under the third pattern described by Hughes. Akan rebels often fought to wrest certain areas of a Caribbean island from European control with the aim of establishing independent polities. Again, we cannot say for sure that this was the express purpose of the 1760 rebels. However, Jamaica already had a rather large and commercially thriving Maroon community in the island’s mountain interior. The Maroon communities were descended from the original Africans brought to Jamaica as slaves by the Spanish. When armies from Cromwell’s Protectorate invaded Jamaica in 1655, as part of the Lord Protector’s bid for empire, the enslaved saw their opportunity for freedom. They fought alongside the Spanish, and when the latter folded, they escaped to the mountains and continued their resistance to the English and later the British. After decades of tension, intermittent conflict, and all-out war in the 1720s and 30s, the Maroons and the British government ended hostilities by signing a treaty that would give the former a measure of autonomy in exchange for a number of concessions, including service as an auxiliary army against slave rebellion.

The Akan rebels had the Maroons as a model of what they might accomplish in creating more Black-controlled settlements. We might even speculate that that they had it in mind to replicate the West African political model in Jamaica: the co-existence of independent principalities – some controlled by African peoples, others by Europeans. Their destruction of commercial infrastructure could have been a way of clearing the ground for a new form of economic organising, one shaped by their own priorities and imperatives.

A struggle for power

That people who themselves had worked under the yoke of slavery would seek to enslave others may seem shocking. But we must remember that slavery was common in the early modern Atlantic and elsewhere. The African combatants in Tacky’s Revolt threatened to keep enslaved those who did not fight with them. It does not follow that these revolutionaries would have commodified the bodies of other Africans or Europeans – that they would have continued the torture, rape, and death-by-overwork system of racialised slavery.

We cannot say what slavery, or labour relations in general, would have been like in an African-controlled post-colonial Caribbean of the time. Perhaps the Akan leaders would have attempted to not only replicate the independent principalities of West Africa but the master-slave relations of the region as well, which were deeply complex and often included rights and freedoms for slaves and restrictions on the actions of masters.

To even speculate on such matters, and to fully grasp the geopolitics of the 18^th century Atlantic, we must move beyond the all too familiar ‘Black resistance’ framework. The Atlantic world did consist solely of aggressors and victims and wildly arbitrary violence and destruction. African captives did not merely react to the conditions of enslavement. They consciously acted with vision, purpose, and strategy as they pursued their interests according to the accepted, though diverse, values of the time.

The Black enslaved, like indigenous nations, were in a political struggle for power with the British planter and merchant elite over the future of the Caribbean and North America. The latter responded with operationalised white supremacy – the racial state – which was a combined early warning and counter assault mechanism carefully designed to mitigate the risk of Black revolution – to keep secure Capital’s control over Labour. And so, the struggle went on throughout the early modern and modern periods and continues to the present day.

Part 2: Lessons for modern labour movements

There are at least two lessons that modern labour movements can learn from the 1760 uprising.

Building on a legacy of revolt

As has been said, the Akan leaders of the rebellion used the political and military skills they learned in West Africa to organise and execute the campaign against the British. This was one legacy they built on. Another was the history of insurrection on the island itself. The slave army did not consist entirely of peoples recently arrived from Africa. The majority were bounded workers who had lived in Jamaica long enough to hear stories or songs of past slave rebellions, or who had grown up hearing such tales. Such geographically-situated legacies of resistance can forge a tradition of radicalism that is passed from one generation to the next, which can be fortifying when direct action campaigns are needed and called for.

Practicing pragmatic activism

It can hardly escape our notice that free Black people were used to suppress the aspirations of enslaved Black people. The Maroons and free Blacks living within the white settlements had negotiated a stake in white supremacy in Jamaica. There are too many complexities to sort through to explain this. But it is interesting to speculate that if Akan leaders had more time, patience, and opportunities for communication with free Black people they may have brought a good many of them into their camp. They had after all managed to build a coalition amongst their enslaved comrades whose views, interests, and beliefs were no doubt diverse.

I said before that African captives pragmatically forged new social bonds while in the holds of the slave ship. They must have used the same method to build coalitions for rebellion.

Pragmatism is a philosophic method of truth-seeking. It was originally developed by American philosophers Charles Sanders Pierce, William James, and John Dewey at the turn of the 20^th century to settle metaphysical disputes, but it can be applied more broadly. I think it a useful concept for understanding how the most effective activists and revolutionaries forge enough consensus among people with dissimilar views to turn them toward sustained action.

In this context, pragmatism can be seen as a method of reconciling clusters of varying ideas held by individuals and groups of individuals, of getting the minds of such individuals into valid, concrete, and satisfactory – satisfactory here meaning that one’s ideas hold together and guide action for a specific purpose – relations with the world by the continual testing and revising of beliefs and assumptions in light of new and verifiable facts.

The Akan leaders of the Jamaica rebellion may have had a political vision of the kind of society they wanted to create and how they meant to get there. They clearly had a plan for extirpating white rule in parts of the island they claimed as their own. But none of their ideas could have been put into action if they did not do the pragmatic work of reconciling them with ideas and interests within the larger enslaved community. Slaves may have all suffered under the same tyranny of forced labour and the racial state, but they were nevertheless manifold in their beliefs, assumptions, and aspirations.

This is another lesson that modern worker activists can take from Tacky’s Revolt: the importance of pragmatic activism.

Any worker-centred political movement should start by making itself about the self-interest of workers. Most wage earners – including salaried employees – in the 21^st century do not see themselves as part of a class. Though I agree in principle with Marxist intellectuals who insist on finding ways to disabuse working people of this illusion, I think their efforts futile. There is some truth in the popular cliché ‘We must meet people where they are.’ Most workers see themselves as individuals striving to earn a living and they take current economic conditions for granted. They nevertheless want decent pay, reasonable working hours, safe working conditions, time off for holidays, access to health care, and a range of other material conditions that make life not only bearable but somewhat enjoyable. While most wage earners are resigned to the appropriations of capitalism, they are not fools: they are aware of a status divide between themselves and the bosses and they try, as best they can, to squeeze as much out of the company as the company squeezes out of them. This tension can often serve as a starting point for organising.

It is also important for activists to recognize that many wage earners long to become entrepreneurs themselves. This does not make such people believers in capitalism. Small business enterprise is not the same as capitalism. Capitalism is inherently monopolistic and works to bring small businesses and every other entity and person – the entire ecology of the planet – into consolidated, concentrated, and exploitative global systems of production and consumption designed to enrich a relatively small group of owners. The capitalist model is not the only one in which businesses can be efficiently organised. Entrepreneurs who are truly independent in spirit may seek to form small business associations that can act as a bulwark against capitalist expropriations. Here is not the place to contend with whether, under a standard Marxist analysis, such independence is even possible. My point is that although capitalism is at present the most predominate social form of economic organisation and thus a powerful condition of business enterprise, it should not be conflated with business itself or the logical possibilities of running one.

Activists should not look askance at those who do not want to be wage earners forever. They should instead make the case that workers, while serving in this capacity, ought to receive fair compensation, reasonable security in their job, and a say in their working conditions; that they should also have the right to act as a political bloc to enforce these economic rights and any social rights they may lay claim to. Capitalists form corporations to protect their interests. Workers should have the right to organise through trade unions and other labour collectives to defend theirs. Making worker rights a matter of practical and material self-interest will speak to the attitudes, hopes and dreams of large numbers of wage earners. A recent article in The Guardian about Brazilian delivery drivers presents a test case for this approach.

Now, pragmatic activism does not require one to ignore the larger horrors, immoralities, and threats – particularly the resurgence of fascism – in the world. Nor does it require one to give up one’s ideological commitments. The anarchist, communist, non-affiliated Marxist, or democratic socialist can all be pragmatic activists. Indeed, the words and deeds of many progressive heroes – including Lenin, Trotsky, W.E.B. DuBois, Helen Keller, Sylvia Pankhurst, Claudia Jones, George Padmore, Huey P. Newton, and Elaine Brown – show them to be users of the pragmatic method. For the pragmatic activist, all that is required is that they use such ideas or ideals as an aid to connect with the material interests of the worker, because the latter is bound to ask the essential pragmatic question: ‘Let us say that a thing is wrong and immoral, what possible difference can it make to the protection of my livelihood? Why should I exert myself on behalf of some other cause?’

These are not unreasonable questions. They deserve answers, and it simply will not do to dismiss the person who asks them as morally blind or an idiot. It is incumbent upon the pragmatic activist to link national and global politics to the material interests of workers. I will offer two examples.

Let us start with identity politics, which is a persistent bugbear in the national public sphere. Whiteness is the original identity politics. It arose with the British Empire. All peoples who are not white have had to struggle against the hierarchy of power established by the idea of whiteness. There is really no way round identity politics unless one is willing to accept that what most benefits white people – and only white people – is the standard to which the whole of society must subscribe. When right-wing politicians rail against identity politics, they understand this logic and use it to rally white voters. Unfortunately, too many on the left also denounce identity politics. Their motives are more noble. They think that going on about such things breaks-up class solidarities and turns otherwise well-meaning people to the right. But to think this way elides the issue of why it is done in the first place. A specific example will demonstrate my meaning.

Britain has had a racialised migration system since the early 20^th century. Fighting racialised migration policy can be linked to the self-interest of domestic workers on two fronts. First, because such racialised policy-making targets mostly other workers. Second, because the aim of such policy-making is to reinforce white solidarity, the sole purpose of which is to protect the interests of the capitalist elite.

The second example comes from the realm of global politics. Workers in Britain and elsewhere should make common cause with the Palestinian people against Israeli imperial violence not only because genocide is a moral outrage that cries out for action but because the tactics used against a disenfranchised underclass at the periphery will soon be employed by domestic security forces against workers in the metropole. This is often done to stop them from forming political blocs that could potentially disrupt Capital’s appropriation of their labour. As Gaza is the source of a large labour reserve for Israeli Capital, it is not difficult to connect the slaughter of the Palestinians who live there to what may, in the near future and in a much milder form, be inflicted on workers in the West.

This has happened before. The tactics used by The Met during the 1980s miner strikes were adaptations of what British colonial authorities did to rebellious workers earlier in the 20^th century. This sort of thing continues to this day with police given the power to carry out secret surveillance on so-called dissident activist groups.

In short, connecting material interests consciously embraced by workers to other social movements can be done, if one approaches the matter pragmatically. The making of all such strategic alliances should start with putting the fundamental struggle between Labour and Capital in the foreground.

A story for May Day

In summary, I want to make a few things clear about all that I have written here. I am not proposing a new post-colonial theory of liberation. I must leave that to proper social and political theorists. I am a historian. And as I have said elsewhere, history, as its name suggests, involves narrative and story-telling. It supplies us with a scale of values we might relate to; it also allows us to reach tenable conclusions about peoples similar to ourselves and conditions similar to our own, or at least recognisable. Through history, we learn that not every success or defeat is permanent, and that our opponents are not invulnerable and not always implacable.

I grew up in a working-class neighbourhood in upstate New York in the late 70s and early 80s, in the home of my grandfather, a politically astute Barbadian construction worker. Back then, May Day was taken seriously by working people and I have fond memories of celebrations at school, in parks, and in other public spaces.

In recounting the history of Tacky’s Revolt, I hope to inspire other comrades on this May Day. I also hope to prompt worker activists to reflect on their practice by giving insight into how empire, capitalism, and the racial state work and how those most violently oppressed by this brutal nexus organised against it with the ambition, courage, and confidence to transform their world.

Recommended Reading

The Interesting Narrative (1789) by Olaudah Equiano.

The New York City Slave Revolt of 1712: The First Enslaved Insurrection in British North America (2024) by Ben Hughes.

Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War (2022) by Vincent Brown.

Planters, Merchants, and Slaves: Plantations Societies in British America, 1650–1820 (2019) by Trevor Burnhard.

Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 (1972) by Richard S. Dunn.

The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America (2016) by Gerald Horne.

The Racial Contract (1997) by Charles W. Mills.

Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907) by William James.

Christopher D. Reid is a James McCune Smith PhD Scholar in History at the University of Glasgow. He has an undergraduate degree in Political Science and graduate degrees in Human Relations and Philosophy. His doctoral thesis is on the role of the colonial racial state in the development of finance capitalism in the early modern British Atlantic.