Dark History From The Caribbean Plantations

In 1675, a planned uprising by the enslaved people of Barbados was crushed before it had a chance to come to fruition. For three years, the conspirators' lives revolved around secrecy. But the discovery of their plan resulted in brutal reprisals by the British, and the deaths of over forty people. In this episode, Anthony and Maddy are joined by Dr Misha Ewen from the University of Sussex to discuss the uprising and how the violence of Barbados' became the blueprint for across Britain's plantation colonies in Jamaica and the American South. This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. Produced by Hannah Feodorov and McKenna Fernandez. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. After Dark is a History Hit podcast. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  1675 Barbados. Whispers of revolution bubble in the thick tropical air. For three years, enslaved Basians working on the sugar plantations have been secretly plotting to overthrow and slaughter their English colonizers. And now the time has come to revolt. But at the 11th hour, they're halted in their tracks. Because eavesdropping in the garden is Anna, a young enslaved woman. What Anna does next triggers a wave of barbaric retaliation, executions, torture, and a brutal crackdown that has unimaginable and lasting consequences across the island.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  From the edge of the stormy Caribbean, this is After Dark.

• 2:47Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  And I'm Antony.

• 2:50Speaker 00

  And today, we're talking about the story of a failed uprising by enslaved people on the colony of Barbados in 1675. It's a story that we wanted to cover for many reasons, not least because the blueprint of colonial violence here became used in English plantations in other colonies like Jamaica and the American South.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Our guest today is Dr. Misha Ewen from the University of Sussex. Misha, of course, is a regular here on After Dark, and we've had her on in the past to talk about the lost colony of Roanoke and the incredible story, which holds such a good place in my heart, actually, of Edward Francis, an enslaved man living in the Tower of London, who actually poisoned his enslavers. That's not why he holds a place in my heart, but it was just such a great history. Misha, welcome back to After Dark.

• 3:33Speaker 05

  Thank you. So nice to have you here. Misha, how did you first come across this history? What does this mean to you? So I have been researching the history of Barbados for almost about seven years now. My focus is on women who were enslavers in the 17th century, so particularly the role of white women in the development of the colony. And so I read a lot about Barbados. I also teach on Barbados. And this episode is one that I teach with my students to get us thinking about how the system of slavery had really crystallized by the 1670s and the ways in which enslaved people sought to resist their enslavement as well.

• 4:16Speaker 05

  And it's also a useful story because we do just have this one pamphlet and it kind of is a good teaching lesson for students, I guess, about how we can kind of read between the lines with these colonial documents to try and tease out the lives of enslaved people.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  What's really interesting, I think, about this particular case is, A, I didn't know about it, because I was saying to Misha before we started recording, when I saw that we were doing an uprising history in Barbados, I went, oh, we're doing 1816 and we know that a little bit better. And then it was like 1675. Okay, that's interesting. But also because it's so full of what we might expect in terms of its contradictions within the community of enslaved people and within that dynamic that we might be expecting from a straightforward narrative. And I think it says something about the complexities of this system, even by 1675. But one of the people I want to start with first is a young woman called Anna. Tell us what we know about, very little, but tell us what we do know about Anna.

• 5:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, so all we know about Anna, who is, I guess, in some ways, the woman at the centre of this story. She's the only, well, one of only two named enslaved people in this pamphlet. So she is living on the plantation of Giles Hall. And this morning, actually, I had a little look at a 1675 map of Barbados. And I think Hall was living in the parish of Christchurch. So this is one of the most affluent parishes in Barbados at this time. It's known as being quite sort of fertile. So there are lots of large sugar plantations there. So Anna, in all likelihood, is labouring on one of these plantations.

• 5:58Speaker 05

  Women are often involved in the first gang. So these are the enslaved people who are often planting the sugar cane, doing actually the hardest manual labour. And what we know about women in Barbados is that they are often trafficked to the island in their teens, early twenties. There are all different kinds of laws that have developed by the 1670s around women's reproduction, what might happen to them if they have children, for example. And we know that this is a really violent society for young women. They're very vulnerable to sexual exploitation and violence.

• 6:40Speaker 05

  But apart from that, you know, it's hard to say much more about her. We have an understanding of where most enslaved people come from in this period. A lot of them are being trafficked from what was then known as the Gold Coast, so modern day nations such as Ghana, for example. And yeah, it's likely that she's young. But apart from that, there's not much more that we know about this individual.

• 7:02Speaker 00

  It's really tantalising, isn't it? And she, as you say, she plays a really key role in the story, which we'll come to. You've painted there, Misha, a quite, I mean, already harrowing picture of what the world that Anna and the other enslaved people in this story would have faced, would have known. Talk to me about the colony itself. The English arrive in 1625. What is it about Barbados that attracts them? You mentioned that sugar cane is being grown. Is that the only product that's been produced here?

• 7:34Speaker 05

  So one of the reasons that they're interested in Barbados is because at that point, it isn't claimed by another European territory. So that means it's kind of up for grabs in a way. And the first settlement is established a couple of years later, in 1627, in Holdtown. And they know that Barbados is densely forested. So they're thinking, you know, there's going to be lots of timber that we can use. They expect that they'll be able to grow tropical crops. And significantly, even when they arrive in 1625, this small group already bring with them enslaved Africans, so captives that they've taken from a Spanish prize vessel at the Cape,

• 8:17Speaker 05

  well, off the Cape Verde Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. So slavery is kind of part of this colony from the very beginning. And for the first sort of 15 or 20 years, they're growing a selection of different kinds of tropical crops. So things like cotton, ginger, tobacco as well, which of course, many colonists are kind of used to because of earlier settlements like Virginia and even Providence Island as well. It's not until about 1640s that they actually start experimenting with sugar cultivation. And then Barbados undergoes this rapid economic development because sugar really takes off.

• 8:59Speaker 05

  So we, as historians, we kind of talk about there being a sugar revolution in Barbados in the 1640s and 50s. And in the 17th century, and I think this is something that people often don't know, is that this makes Barbados the richest colony in the English Empire at this time because sugar makes the colonists so wealthy. And it obviously also, well, maybe not obviously, but what it also does is give rise to the development of plantation slavery in Barbados. So sugar is incredibly intensive to cultivate. And then the processing of sugar also requires 24/7 attendance round the clock.

• 9:41Speaker 05

  So you start to see these kind of industrialized sugar complexes developing on the island in the middle of the 17th century and a rapid rise in the use of enslaved labour as well. So both these things, kind of sugar and slavery, go hand in hand. But all of this, in some ways, has already kind of crystallized by the mid 17th century. It happens very quickly. By the 1670s, the period that we're talking about, a lot of these things have almost kind of reached maturity in Barbados much earlier than they do in other colonies like Jamaica, which is still in its infancy in the last quarter of the 17th century.

• 10:20Speaker 00

  It is surprising, you know, Antony, you talked at the beginning about this not being the straightforward narrative we might expect in histories that we know, and certainly as 18th centuryists. You know, you think about plantations in Jamaica, for example, and what that dynamic looks like, the importance of sugar there. And yet, this is so much earlier. And as you say, it's already crystallized. This is already on an industrial scale and is already generating huge wealth.

• 10:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Can I check, Misha, the idea of labour that is happening on these earlier, although crystallized, sugar plantations?

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Do we have a mixture of enslaved people, people that are local to the area anyway? The reason I'm asking, of course, is because what looms large in Irish history is the idea of Irish indentured servants. And I think that's an important distinction. Maybe you could give us an idea of the overview of that labour force and enslaved labour.

• 11:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, so definitely in the first few decades, there is a mix. So we have, like you say, lots of white Irish indentured servants, servants from other parts of the British Isles as well, working alongside enslaved Africans and smaller numbers of enslaved indigenous Americans as well. So, right at the beginning of Barbados's history, some indigenous Americans are brought from Guyana. Later, you know, often they are kind of capturing ships and kind of grabbing captive enslaved people from wherever they can get them. So there is much more of a mix. And what's interesting is that because you have this, you know,

• 12:04Speaker 05

  what you could almost think about as a kind of solidarity between these labourers, who are all kind of at the bottom of a system, in a period when actually, ideas about racial difference haven't really developed and hardened in the way that we might expect them to. It's much more about, you know, who the labourers and who are the kind of, you know, the, you know, the ones who are kind of instructing their labour. And so we see cooperation between indentured servants and enslaved people in organising their own kind of uprisings. And this happens from the very beginning of the island's history. One way that Barbados develops through the 17th century is to kind of distinguish these groups, and they do

• 12:47Speaker 05

  that along lines of racial difference, as a way to kind of break that solidarity for the white planter elite to maintain control. But also, by the end of the 17th century, we see much smaller numbers of indentured servants, because they are more costly. You know, it costs more money to transport them, to clothe them. They expect, you know, a kind of package of freedom dues at the end of their service, if they actually live that long. It's much more economical for them to bring enslaved Africans to Barbados and do the work that previously white indentured servants might have done. So, around the time of the uprising, there are only about 2,300 white indentured servants in Barbados

• 13:33Speaker 05

  in comparison to nearly 40,000 enslaved Africans. So it's, you know, by the end of the century, actually, the significance of white indentured servants is, has, you know, almost completely diminished.

• 13:47Speaker 00

  And it speaks to the, the sort of, the need for efficiency within this industrial system, essentially, and that the function of this colony and the way that it works is to make money for the plantation owners, right? And so that's the most efficient and cheapest way to do it. Talk to me about how this, this community, this population of predominantly enslaved Africans is managed. Is there a military presence? Who is in charge of, is there someone who's in charge of Barbados as a whole? Is it, you mentioned a parish. Is that how it's divided?

• 14:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, just to kind of, I guess, paint, paint a picture, because obviously this is really kind of familiar to me, but I appreciate it's not for everyone. So there is a governor in Barbados who has ultimate, I guess, political authority, if you like. There is a militia as well. So men are mustered. You know, different colonial elites are, I guess, the colonels, kind of captains of each militia, and they are organised by parish. You know, names like St George, St James, Christchurch, St Michael. Each of them have parish churches. So for the white colonial population, this is kind of how society is structured. Below that, then you have different plantations. And there is a massive kind of range here

• 15:04Speaker 05

  as well, because in urban parishes like St Michael, which is where the, the capital Bridge Town is located, you have kind of much smaller urban households, where perhaps there are only one or two enslaved people. But on these larger industrialised sugar plantations, owned by the likes of, you know, Drax, Colleton, Newton, Sewell, Frey, these kind of large, sort of planter dynasties, you know, they have hundreds of enslaved people and hundreds of acres of land. Within the plantations, then, enslaved people are organised into these different gangs. And that is very much a innovation, if you like,

• 15:46Speaker 05

  of the plantation system in Barbados. So it's Drax who, he describes sort of organising his enslaved workforce into this gang system. So different groups are responsible for different parts of the sugar process. And how they're organised will depend on their ability, their physical strength. So, you know, smaller children, people with disabilities will do kind of easier work. And the first gang that I mentioned is kind of the, the strongest labourers, and that often does include a lot of women. Then you have people who are doing more, I guess, managerial work, if you like, overseeing enslaved people.

• 16:27Speaker 05

  And that could also include enslaved people by the end of the 17th century. So again, something that we maybe associate with later periods, has again, already developed in Barbados much earlier, as well as white servants doing that kind of oversight managerial work, job titles such as overseer. The thing is with all of this, we don't always have a lot of detail for the 17th century about exactly how this functioned. So this document that Drax produces, in around this era, the reason that he writes it is because he's about to go back to England and he's kind of leaving instructions for his overseer. So that has kind of served as a bit of a, you know, quite a significant document for

• 17:12Speaker 05

  historians of the 17th century, to give us a blueprint of how we think these larger plantations are operating. But yeah, beyond that, we don't have an incredible amount of detail. Other documents like laws obviously give us an insight into how they're trying to regulate behaviour. But often laws tell us a lot about anxieties at the time, you know, things that people are afraid might happen. So, yeah.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  What we do have, specific to Barbados in the 17th century, is something that was referred to as the Barbados Slave Code. Talk to us about the details there.

• 17:48Speaker 05

  So this set of laws were produced in 1661, but the earliest surviving copies we have are actually written a few years later, so 1667. And there are only a couple of copies that we have. What we know is that these laws that were set down in 1661 are based on, you know, earlier laws that had kind of been brought together, sort of rationalised, if you like, in, in the, in the kind of first year of the 1660s. And these laws are concerned with regulating the behaviour of enslaved people, particularly enslaved people who

• 18:33Speaker 05

  are trying to resist in one way or the other. So perhaps they have run away from plantations. So there are instructions about, you know, making sure that you search for them, that you hunt them down. If you come across a runaway, that you kind of, you know, alert the authorities. They're also concerned with ensuring that enslavers are searching the residencies of enslaved people, looking for anything that could be used in an uprising, like wooden clubs or swords or anything that could be used as a weapon. And it also establishes the different kinds of punishments that can be meted out against an enslaved person

• 19:16Speaker 05

  if they strike what is in this text described as a Christian, which really means any white person. And these punishments are very severe. So for a second offence, it could include their noses being slit or their faces burned. At the same time that these laws are set down to regulate the behaviour of enslaved people, there are actually another set of laws about regulating the behaviour of servants. So these two sets of laws are kind of created at the same time. And what we tend to agree as kind of scholars of 17th century Barbados is that, you know, one of the reasons for these laws is to, at this kind of crucial

• 19:55Speaker 05

  moment in the island's development, is to distinguish between these two groups, you know, white labourers, white people on the one hand, and black enslaved people on the other. And it's really when we start to see these kind of norms, ideas about racial difference, being articulated in this way, especially as it relates to punishment and what kinds of punishment is permissible for an enslaved person.

• 20:22Speaker 00

  It's really interesting that this idea of racial difference is coming in, certainly in the 18th century, you know, you have that enshrined in law, in culture, in language and everything. And that even in this moment, those differences in what is a very complex society, particularly at the beginning of this colony, is rapidly becoming sort of separated into different groups, and that that is a means of control. One thing that really surprised me about the Slave Code is, you know, you mentioned there, Misha, about the searching of the, this, the enslaved people's housing, looking for maybe weapons. And this blew my mind, that they sometimes would look for things like gauds that could be used as, you know, as horns to send signals and things. And it just, I think, for me,

• 21:05Speaker 00

  that gave me such a sort of a flash moment and insight into just how pervasive the, the desire, of course, and of, for uprising was, and how innovative enslaved people would be in using what was available to them in order to organise themselves and to, to take those opportunities. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back, and then we're going to get into the uprising itself.

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• 23:29Speaker 00

  So, Misha, talk to me about the people at the heart of this uprising. We have, as you mentioned, the one key source, and we're going to talk a bit as we go through, you know, about the limitations of this, what it gives us, the gaps that it leaves in the archive. Who are the main instigators that we know of?

• 23:51Speaker 05

  So, according to this pamphlet, the main kind of plotters are a group of what are referred to as being from the Coromantle coast, so these Coromantes. And these enslaved people are often associated in colonial documents with being sort of, you know, having military training and background, being good fighters, being especially kind of strong.

• 24:18Speaker 00

  So they're first generation enslaved Africans then?

• 24:21Speaker 05

  Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly. There's also kind of fear as well about this particular ethnic group. And I think even with this, we have to be cautious because often the descriptions that are given by white enslavers at the time do often flatten ethnic, cultural differences, you know, in ways that wouldn't have made sense to the people that they're kind of describing. But I think that perception is still important and kind of tells us something about colonial anxieties and fears. So, yeah, these are first generation people. I mean, in Barbados at this time, there is a developing Creole population of enslaved people, but actually so many people are being trafficked to the island that we can assume

• 25:02Speaker 05

  that many enslaved people are African born. And we have the name of one of them, the kind of leader, Koffi. Koffi, sometimes there are different variant spellings for this name, and it's quite a common name that you see in 17th century Barbados. It's a Akan day name, meaning Friday, so a name from kind of modern day Ghana. And one thing that we do get often in colonial documents at this time are people's African names.

• 25:36Speaker 00

  Which is quite unusual and certainly like rare in the history of slavery, right?

• 25:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, definitely over the centuries that diminishes because often people are then just given a kind of Christian name immediately and we kind of lose those African names that they were born with or would have used. And of course, they may have had multiple names as well. So Koffi may not have been the only name that he had. But it is something quite helpful for us in the colonial archive to allow us to perhaps try and discern people's ethnic backgrounds and origins. For Anna, of course, we don't have a similar name. She is just Anna, which could suggest that she could be second generation island born, but it could also just mean that that is a name that she's been given by her enslaver.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  What do we know about what Koffi and the rest of his uprising comrades have planned? Now, this is obviously going to be coming from a certain slant. We're going to talk about that document in just a moment in more specifics, but what can we discern?

• 26:39Speaker 05

  So what the pamphlet says, this pamphlet is printed in 76, referring to events in 75. And the author says that they had been plotting for three years, so I think since 1673 is what he's suggesting. And he says that they'd been so secret about it that even their wives didn't know. And that for me is also a really interesting detail, this idea that, you know, this family formation at this time amongst these groups of enslaved people. And he says that their intention was to make Koffi their king, that they were going to create this kind of chair of state for him, so a throne essentially, that they were going

• 27:19Speaker 05

  to make trumpets out of elephant's teeth, so ivory, and use scores to kind of, yeah, sound and kind of alarm everyone to their rebellion. And for me, this just, I mean, you know, like you say, we have to be kind of cautious with this document, but it kind of paints a picture, or at least offers some insight into their political thinking and the kind of culture around kind of politics, kingship, leadership amongst these groups of enslaved Africans. In terms of the damage that they intended to do to the island, it says that they would burn the sugarcane, that they would slaughter their enslavers, and that they might, you know, keep some of the women for themselves.

• 28:03Speaker 05

  And I think obviously this is, you know, trying to kind of depict the men as being, you know, the vicious and kind of, you know, probably is very much feeding into those kind of colonial fears about men and kind of the assault and rape of women.

• 28:20Speaker 00

  And also that racial difference, right? And the transgressions of that.

• 28:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, definitely. Which again, by this point are being kind of, you know, codified in other colonial spaces as well. So there are kind of different layers of colonial fears and anxieties, at the same time that there probably are some kind of truths here as well, or at least perhaps kind of glimpses into the political thinking and intentions of the plotters.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  We have an extract from this pamphlet, the key document, which is called Great News From the Barbados, or A True and Faith Account of the Grand Conspiracy. Just to warn listeners, there is a racial slur that's included in this. It's the language from the time. We are including it for that reason. It's important context and we are going to discuss it. Anthony, give us this extract because it's, I mean, it's so fascinating. It's full of so many details and so many layers of colonial meaning, slant anxiety that's been placed onto it, but let's hear it first of all.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  It says, in part, "Their grand design was to choose them a king, one Koffi, an ancient Gold Coast negro, to give notice of their general rising, with a full intention to fire the sugarcains and so run in and cut their masters, the planters' throats, in their respective plantations whereunto they did belong. Some affirm they intended to spare the lives of the fairest and handsomest women, their mistresses and their daughters, to be converted to their use, but some others affirm the contrary, and I am induced to believe they intended to murder all the white people there, as well men as women."

• 30:07Speaker 00

  Misha, let's, let's talk about the term negro that's used in this. You mentioned the sort of codification of race, racial difference, racial classification. And certainly that's something we're familiar with. Again, in the 18th century, various terms that are used to describe mixed race people and the sort of the different relationships and products of that that might happen on the plantation. Is this a commonly used term in this, in this period? And who, what racial group is it referring to? Is it a broad term that, as you say, kind of is used by colonists to kind of conflate lots of different groups?

• 30:48Speaker 05

  So from the kind of earliest English colonization in America, this term is used to describe black enslaved people, but also sometimes can conflate Indigenous Americans as well, because it has such strong associations with slavery. So someone who is enslavable, someone who has been enslaved. Through the 17th century, we often see that term being used against the term Christian to describe someone who is free, often white. What then kind of happens in the later 17th century is that we see the term white

• 31:29Speaker 05

  being kind of introduced in colonial documents to kind of start thinking about race in a different way that isn't about being Christian or non-Christian, it is about skin colour. And so that term takes on a different meaning, much closer to how we associate it today.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  I just, this has just occurred to me, is part of that, the sort of disappearing of of Christian as a term to mean purely white people, is that because a lot of enslaved people are converted to Christianity?

• 31:58Speaker 05

  So there is some of that in Barbados. So say, for example, when the Quakers come to Barbados, there is a kind of like a Quaker minor majority in Barbados in the 17th century. They do want to convert some enslaved people. And then obviously, there's a pushback of this from the colonial authorities, because they're worried that that will make them think that they are free. And so then that is deterred. But in England at this time, we see enslaved people who are being baptised and converted. So yeah, part of it is about saying, okay, well, you may have converted, you may now be Christianised, but you are still enslaved. And it's really not then until the sort of era of abolitionism, if

• 32:43Speaker 05

  you like, that then we see that kind of push again to convert enslaved people. It actually happens very rarely in Barbados. There are some examples in the 17th century, but often they are the mixed heritage illegitimate children of white enslavers. And they're doing it as a way to kind of, you know, recognise them. But yeah, we see very few black enslaved people being baptised in Barbados.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  So we have this plan that we've outlined, or what what seems to be a plan in this document, as that document views it, the writer of that document views it. I want to bring us back to Anna now, because in the preparation for this episode, Anna was a very interesting, I don't want to reduce it to a thought exercise, but she did make me think in a new way. Because your maybe white liberal elite thought is, oh, Anna, why? But actually, this woman owes us nothing. And she also is trying to carve out a space for herself, an existence for herself, a survival for herself, potentially as much

• 33:53Speaker 01

  agency as one can garner in this. And so it made me start to look at Anna and expect, and have no 21st century expectations from her. Because what she does next is so fascinating historically, that it's difficult to reconcile, but it's not for us to reconcile. So can you talk us through what what Anna decides to do next with this plan looming in the background?

• 34:21Speaker 05

  So according to the pamphlet, she is in the garden where she overhears this conversation between another enslaved person who was enslaved on on the same plantation as herself, having a conversation with someone about the plot. And hearing that and hearing that her fellow enslaved person is also kind of not keen on this uprising, because it will mean the slaughter of, you know, the island's white population. Apparently, she runs to her, you know, so-called master and mistress, her enslavers, and she tells them what has happened. And I mean, I just have like a million different thoughts about this, because one is even like, you know, is Anna even real?

• 35:02Speaker 01

  I know.

• 35:02Speaker 00

  That's what I thought reading this.

• 35:04Speaker 05

  You know, is she real? Or is she a helpful plot device, if you like, just to kind of move the story on quickly?

• 35:09Speaker 00

  And a sort of a reassuring character in this white colonial narrative of like, well, there are some who are loyal to us, and you know, bless us, she did the right thing and told us.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Anna.

• 35:21Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Is the other, I mean, as you say, it's not impossible that she might have been.

• 35:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  But it's just, there's a few device elements coming in there.

• 35:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. And so if we, I mean, that's kind of a different, well, it's not a different story, it's all, it's so intertwined, isn't it? You can't really separate it out. But in a world in which Anna was a real person, and she took those actions, I guess, how we might help situate that is first to kind of understand and appreciate that these are individuals with their own, you know, friendships, enemies, political views and beliefs. We don't know what other kind of, you know, plots, uprisings may have been plotted, planned, thought about by people at this time.

• 36:05Speaker 00

  So much missing in the archive here, isn't there?

• 36:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, other kind of failed attempts, if you like, that were not recorded.

• 36:14Speaker 05

  We also have to understand that by this point, there are very few opportunities for someone to gain their freedom in Barbados. But acting in the way that she did may have been, you know, one kind of slim opportunity, as she might have seen it, to perhaps be given her freedom. We do know that some people in the 17th century are freed by their enslavers. We see the evidence in wills. I spend a lot of time studying women's wills, and often, well, I don't say often, but there are examples of them freeing enslaved women in their wills. Of course, we don't know if that always happens, because a will is a kind of intention, it's not an outcome. But it's possible that she may have imagined a life for herself

• 36:58Speaker 05

  as a free woman in Barbados. There is a free community, people of colour, in the 17th and 18th centuries. She may have even been thinking, you know, again, through our kind of modern day lens, in even smaller ways than that, just a little bit more safety or freedom, you know, on the plantation, more privileges, in whatever kind of small way that may have mattered to her, you know, ways that might seem small now, but actually would have made a material difference to her life. Greater protection, for example. Maybe she had her own children, she'd be worried about them. I mean, there's just so many different concerns that a woman may have had, that it's, yeah, it's kind

• 37:40Speaker 05

  of impossible to, yeah, to imagine, but also even just to kind of begin to guess. Yeah.

• 37:46Speaker 00

  And I suppose in this incredibly violent world, there is no guarantee that an uprising like this might work. And then the reprisals, as we're about to see, you know, would be so extreme that it might, she might have just thought, simply, it's too big a risk.

• 38:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:02Speaker 00

  We'll all suffer because of the actions of these individuals who are plotting this, and therefore, it's not worth it.

• 38:09Speaker 05

  And one real fear that people, you know, would also have is the kind of disruption and displacement as well. So even being, you know, moved from your plantation to another part of the island, or moved off the island, you know, we do know that people are establishing families. You know, in this document, we have reference to wives. In my own work, I have read about a woman who lived actually at the same time as Anna, whose name was Ansi, who she's described as taking a husband, having a child with her husband. You know, people don't want their families to be broken apart. So I think that's something, I think, in, you know, how my own kind of awareness or understanding of this history has developed

• 38:51Speaker 05

  is that when you start to think about families and individuals as well, these very everyday concerns, you don't want to be sold off from your husband and your children, and that might happen. If her enslaver dies, for example, who is going to become the owner of this property? And what will happen to them then? You know, all these kind of uncertainties that people might have had would be enough to make you act in the way that she did.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  I think that's, that's so key to this entire history, isn't it? That we, we can view it zoomed out, as it were, with a bird's eye view. I mean, literally, in my mind, I'm sort of seeing Barbados, you know, from the air as an island. And there's a sense in which we as historians look at this in terms of systems, and the sort of great mechanics of the slave trade, and of the plantations, and of the uprisings as a way of pushing back against that machinery. And really, what is at the heart of this? And what is so important to remember, and so important in terms of those complicated human motivations, is the humanity of everyone involved here. Every single person here is a person with

• 39:56Speaker 00

  their own loves, hopes, fears, motivations, that we can, in most cases, simply guess at. We're going to take another break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about what happens to plotters once they are discovered.

• 40:22Speaker 06

  Hi there. I'm Dan, host of Dan Snow's History Podcast. And I can imagine on these dark winter nights, all you're going to do is curl up with a cup of tea and get lost in an amazing story. Well, I can help you with that. Twice a week, I tell you the most dramatic and extraordinary stories from history with details I can guarantee you've never heard before. Feel the frostbite of that grisly failed American invasion of Canada in the dead of winter. Imagine every clash and blow at the Battle of Bosworth. Follow Eleanor of Accretaine, one of the most powerful women in the medieval world, as she goes on crusade to the Holy Land with 300 handmaidens in tow.

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• 41:19Speaker 02

  In February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author Petra Mathers and her husband Michael mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know they had died by suicide.

• 41:30Speaker 03

  Dear honeys, this is goodbye.

• 41:33Speaker 04

  By the time you get this letter, both Petra and I will be dead. Next stop, Wonderland.

• 41:39Speaker 02

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• 42:00Speaker 00

  Misha, we know that the plot fails Anna, whether real or a plot device for this colonial narrative. She supposedly reportedly tells Justice Hall what is going to happen ahead of time and the plot is foiled. What are the actions of those in authority at this moment? Because this is presumably a terrifying and huge threat to not only their lives, but their property, the system of wealth they're cultivating. This is a huge threat to England herself, to the colonies, to the entire system.

• 42:38Speaker 05

  So the crackdown is really swift and violent. So we know that at least 35 people die, some by execution, some are beheaded, some are burned at the stake.

• 42:56Speaker 05

  Interestingly, before then, they are taken to court actually. And these court records don't survive for the 17th century, but it just suggests that they are examined. And that must be how they kind of, you know, are able to get more detail out of the.

• 43:10Speaker 00

  Do you think taking them to court is a genuine effort for a fair trial and justice? Or do you think it is a useful exercise in information gathering about how they organized, for example?

• 43:22Speaker 05

  I mean, I wish I knew the answer to this because I've also come across evidence that enslaved people appear in Chancery Court in 17th century Barbados. And to me, it, I don't know how on the one hand, they can view these people as property. It's not human, but at the same time, put them in a court of law. So this is a big mystery and I would love to know more about this myself, actually. I think there isn't actually enough scholarship about this in the 17th century, simply because those documents have not survived. And so that is a massive contradiction, if you like. These are people who are not considered human, but they're human enough to be examined in a colonial court. I would assume that, yeah, this wasn't really about granting them fair trial, but rather, you know,

• 44:09Speaker 05

  you know, maybe the kind of theatre of it to kind of show that they are, you know, maintaining control over the system and extracting kind of information from them as well. And the very kind of public violent spectacle that they make of these individuals, who we assume are all men, doesn't actually say if any of the plotters are women. These men who are executed, then their dead bodies are dragged through the street as well. So they're kind of further brutalised, kind of mutilated in this really harrowing way.

• 44:50Speaker 00

  This did surprise me in this history, not the level of violence necessarily, but the extent of it and the, I suppose, the effort that the authorities go to, to meet out these really grim punishments within a system that is all about efficiency, about preserving property above all else. This feels, frankly, it feels vengeful and not petty, I suppose that's the wrong word, but it's gratuitous. Would you think, is that fair to say? Does it seem unusual within the system? Or have you come across this, is this something that just happens in 17th century more generally?

• 45:27Speaker 05

  I mean, I think probably a reason that, you know, we're talking about this episode is because this isn't an unusual episode in the 17th century.

• 45:37Speaker 05

  Like I said, there had been kind of earlier, you know, failed uprisings, but often on a much smaller scale. This one really seems to have hit a nerve, if you like, with the colonial authorities. I don't really have a good explanation for why that might be at this particular moment, why they might react in this way. Certainly there's a sense that they are trying to make an example of these plotters.

• 46:04Speaker 05

  Something that just kind of, you know, makes me think as well is about the lengths, because you asked about, you know, the court and, you know, what might have been the point of that. And, you know, I think about these individuals being interrogated. And I also wonder about what they would have gone through in order to protect others as well. Because the fact that no women are obviously implicated, to me, just seems so unlikely that women did not have a role here, particularly because they were afforded different kinds of access in colonial spaces, access to different kinds of information,

• 46:46Speaker 05

  or different kinds of knowledge as well that they would have needed for this to be successful. And again, when we're kind of thinking about the humanity of this, I mean, it's kind of, yeah, I don't know. It's something about the very human dimension of this as well, that I think about these men, what they would have done to protect, you know, kind of, yeah, women, their loved ones, their wives as well. Because we know that this, yeah, these kinds of systems would have required everyone to be involved in order for it to have been, to have any kind of chance of being successful.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Let's zoom in on some of those men because we're going to go back to the document, great news from Barbados. And there is a turn here that is going to be very violent, just to warn you. And again, the language will be of the time. But these are the historical documents we're confronted with. And so we do, as historians, have a responsibility to deal with them. But just to warn you, there is, there is a great deal of violence in what's about to come. We have several men who are about to be burned alive together. And what we get is that one of them, under pressure from the crowd, is about to make a confession, so we're told in this document. But we then get this voice from the man beside him, known as Tony, and he apparently says this.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  "Thou fool, are there not enough of our countrymen killed already? Art thou minded to kill them all? At which point the man decided not to confess further and would not speak one word more. The spectators, observing this, cried out to Tony, 'Sorrow, we shall see you fry bravely by and by.' Tony then answered undauntedly, 'If you roast me today, you cannot roast me tomorrow. Five and twenty more have been since executed. The particulars of whose due punishment are not yet come to my hands. Five impeached hanged themselves because they would not stand trial.'" So, so many layers going on there. Are we hearing voices of enslaved people there, Misha?

• 48:51Speaker 05

  I mean, I've really, even this morning, I was thinking about this. I mean, it's so specific that it, my instinct is that these are probably the recorded words of enslaved people. And what I, the reason why I think this is such a fantastic document to kind of think about, and especially to teach with as well, is because it shows us so much about the defiance of these individuals. So this line, "If you roast me today, you cannot roast me tomorrow," is just so.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  Says something about ownership of self.

• 49:38Speaker 05

  Yes, yeah.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  It grounds you in yourself. It's defiant in the most simplistic way possible, and therefore the most effective way possible, in going, this, I'm taking control of this in, within the parameters of the control that I am enabled to have in this system.

• 49:59Speaker 00

  Is there not a world in which that particular line sort of, I mean, I absolutely can see the sentiment of what is being said here. You know, you can imagine someone saying, "Shut up, stop, why would you give the names of other people? Like, stop talking, be quiet."

• 50:17Speaker 00

  I don't know, the, "If you roast me today, you can't roast me tomorrow" line, it feels almost like a play. And I'm thinking about the spectacle of this. And, you know, just thinking about why a line like that would be included in a document that is produced by white colonists for the consumption of white colonists or people back home in England. Is there a sort of a transformation of some of these enslaved people? And a transformation of their presumably, you know, presumably what was their defiance, into something that's like a little bit comic almost, and a sort of removal of some of that power? Do you see that?

• 50:58Speaker 05

  I know, I mean, it is theatrical, isn't it?

• 51:04Speaker 05

  Because the inclusion of the defiance there seems so surprising to me in a document that is all about kind of removing their power and saying, look, you know, I mean, the title of it is literally great news from Barbados. Like, this didn't happen. We nipped it in the bud and we executed the people involved. You know, is there a sort of, there's a sort of flippance about it, I think, which feels odd.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Do you think, I see, I totally get it. But I read it differently, only because, because of what you're saying, actually, in terms of what the purpose of the document is. Because as I was reading it initially, I was kind of going, oh, this doesn't feel authentic. But then you said something that made me go, huh, which is, why include it? As in, like, take that out then. If it's, it seems like a strange thing to make up. Because actually, it counters, it shows, to me at least, and we'll never know, this is the great thing about history, right? It's an ongoing conversation. Is, it almost is counterintuitive to that great news that they're trying to communicate. And so, yeah,

• 52:10Speaker 01

  initially, I didn't think that it was necessarily authentic. But then you said something that made me go, oh, yeah, they're undercutting themselves, the white enslavers, by including it.

• 52:22Speaker 05

  Well, I, and I know, I think all our heads are kind of spinning in a sort of similar direction. So I, there's a similar kind of uprising that occurs in Virginia in the 1620, 1622, by the local Algonquin people. And when kind of news of that reaches England, actually, the purpose of kind of conveying these events in such dramatic detail is to justify a much more severe response to the indigenous population. So I wonder here that, yeah, rather than, you know, maybe they are kind of undermining their own authority and control as a way to say, you know, this is why it's so important that we have this as how close we came. Yeah. Our violence is justified.

• 53:05Speaker 00

  And sort of how, look how committed these people are to free themselves. We need to really double down.

• 53:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. So actually, that defiance does serve a purpose in this system. Like, in a way, you know, it makes you wonder, well, is it actually useful for them to kind of underline their humanity in this sense, as a way to kind of make people realise that, yeah, these actually aren't just kind of objects that we can move around at will. But actually, they do have an inner world. They have their own kind of mental world.

• 53:32Speaker 00

  And they can pose a genuine threat to the system. Yeah. And I think that really chimes with the sort of, the closing thought of the pamphlet then, which is like, yeah, look how close you've come. This is all terrible. And now we've restored order. Because the last, I don't know if it's the exact last sentence, but it certainly comes towards the end of the pamphlet. And it says, this, I read this on the Tube this morning, I saw this, I found myself laughing with the sort of absurdity of it. Considering the strength, riches, pleasant situation, populousness, and good hospitality of those noble gentlemen there now inhabiting, being the planters, I conclude it to be the finest and worthiest island in the world.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 54:17Speaker 00

  It's, it's a sort of, you know, this may be happening, but do come here and start your own plantation, because we're doing noble work here.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  Considering there's white people here now.

• 54:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, the white people are great, and it's very pretty, and we're all making money, and it's lovely. I mean, it's sort of, it's not a surprise that the pamphlet would end in that way. But it's, it seems so frivolous, and so kind of lighthearted, almost, after the horror of what has just come in the pamphlet, and this description of the punishments. Is that, is that surprising to you, Miss, as a historian of this period? Is that how the sort of colonial efforts, colonial settlement, colonial sort of strategy is portrayed in England at this time? That it's, you know, the noble gentlemen are doing their best

• 55:07Speaker 00

  work, and it's all lovely, and they're making it, they're making this kind of savage place, and these so-called savage people better, and it's all fine? Like, is that?

• 55:15Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, I think this pamphlet is puzzling, because it is so full of contradictions. But I think those contradictions are kind of real on the ground as well, if you like. I mean, by the later 17th century, from a sort of English point of view, there definitely has been a bit of a flip in terms of maybe how people are thinking about the colonial project. So, you know, by this point, there are lots of colonies that are quite well established in America, as well as, you know, elsewhere, with the East India Company, for example. They're not quite sending, you know, the kind of labouring classes in their droves like they used to. They're a bit more concerned about kind of, like, you know,

• 55:57Speaker 05

  keeping people at home, partly as well because that, you know, labour is being fulfilled by enslaved people. In a way, that kind of narrative of like, attracting more people to Barbados doesn't quite fit, just because by this point, all the land has been bought up already. You know, the kind of families that become the kind of large plantation owners have already kind of gobbled up all the land. There isn't really anything else to go around. So it's not maybe that they are wanting to attract more people. It's probably to do with, yeah, kind of upholding their kind of reputation, their stake, their kind of authority, because these are the most powerful group in the English Empire

• 56:42Speaker 05

  at that time. You know, if we think about the kind of lobbying power, you know, when they come back to Whitehall and they lobby for different, you know, to reduce taxes on sugar, for example, which is a big issue in the 1670s and 1680s for them. I think, yeah, it's about, you know, in a very simplistic sense, about saving face, if you like. And I don't mean that flippantly. Obviously, there are all different kinds of systems of power, political, economic, social power that lie behind that. But I don't know that we should see this as a pamphlet of kind of wanting to draw people to the colonies in the same way that we saw in the early 17th century. Barbados is kind of full up, if you like. Its potential has been kind of established already.

• 57:23Speaker 00

  I suppose if we, yeah, I completely agree with that viewpoint. And I think it actually gives us a sense of, you know, we're looking at this, we're focusing on Barbados and what's happening there. But in terms of the mentality of the 17th century, the centre of power is back in England. And, you know, the fact that this pamphlet is great news from Barbados. It's not great news in Barbados to be read by the people of Barbados. They know what happened. They were there. They witnessed this. Yeah. And that kind of, the, I suppose it's, it's all legitimising what is happening out there in, yes, a real place that has real archival, archaeological evidence, and real people were living these experiences.

• 58:04Speaker 00

  But for people back home, reading about this, it's also a place of sort of imagination, of investment, economic, spiritual, moral, you know, all of that. So I think that's, yeah, that's kind of fascinating, that it becomes, you know, in the, in that closing sort of sentiment, this idea of the good hospitality of these noble gentlemen, the finest, worthiest island in the world. There's a sort of imaginative portrayal of it. It's out there somewhere, if you're sat in London reading this pamphlet, and it's, they're doing a really good job, and it's all fine, and it's all been taken care of, and everything's

• 58:41Speaker 00

  kind of tickety-boo. What do you think the legacy of this failed uprising is, and the subsequent response to it by the authorities? Is this going to set the tone? How important is this episode of Barbadian history?

• 58:58Speaker 05

  Hmm. So I've been thinking about this sort of, for this podcast, obviously. And there's no obvious answer. But one thing that I have thought a lot about is, in the 1680s, this is kind of the first period when we see larger numbers of enslavers returning to England to live as absentees, so absentee property owners. And this is kind of starting as a bit of a trickle in the years following the uprising. And of course, we can't just point to this one event. But it's part of, I guess, a changing set of conditions, or maybe not even changing, but just kind of, you know, reaching some kind of climax, if

• 59:41Speaker 05

  you like, in the 1670s and 80s, of the ongoing threat that having an enslaved majority poses to the white enslaving elite. The fact that actually, the kind of, yeah, political climate is a little bit less favourable for enslavers. There is a bit more of a kind of clampdown in Whitehall on their authority around things like taxation, but also kind of colonial governance. And they've made a lot of money. They, even by the 1670s, they've kind of sucked the island dry. They already know that they've almost completely deforested Barbados. They are already noticing, you know, the fact that there is soil erosion,

• 1:00:24Speaker 05

  that they, yeah, the island has been depleted. So a lot of them are kind of making this decision to return. And you wonder how much the kind of fears and anxieties around these uprisings kind of feed into that. So that's potentially one consequence. It's also, I guess, an era where new colonies are being established in places like Jamaica. Obviously, it's a few kind of, you know, decades old by this point. But Jamaica introduces its set of slave codes in 1691. So a kind of, you know, a decade later. But they are, you

• 1:01:06Speaker 05

  know, directly borrowing from Barbados. Like, Barbados very much does serve as a blueprint. So again, even though it's hard for us to kind of show those very direct relationships between this uprising, I think all the events in Barbados are shaping how English colonists are thinking about plantation slavery in these other contexts, like Jamaica, like South Carolina. So.

• 1:01:32Speaker 05

  It's just very much intertwined in the kind of global development of plantation slavery, understandings of racial difference, of the kind of violence of this system as well, but also this kind of massive cultural shift. You know, if we think about British history in the kind of rise of absenteeism, which becomes much more significant in, you know, your period and very kind of popularized in kind of culture and literature, but really begins with this Barbados elite in the 1680s for the first time.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  You obviously work on this topic an awful lot and one of, not this specific topic, but the broader topic. And one of the things that I've seen in my own research is that, and in terms of Irish history, is that joy is a great form of resistance. And I just wonder if there is some use in asking this as the way out of this, of this topic. Because so often when we cover these histories, a respectful earnestness descends on the thing and it has to, and we absolutely understand the gravity of this history. But

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  at the same time, these people are living lives and they are, they are, they're carving a place for themselves within the boundaries that they have. Do you come across instances of joy in the lives of enslaved people at all in the archive, given how skewed the archive is towards that?

• 1:03:12Speaker 05

  I've never thought about it in terms of joy. But I think certainly, I guess maybe as historians, what we thought about was resistance. But I think where elements of that resistance could include joy, love actually, is what I tend to think about. So in my work on, so I work with women's archives as a way to kind of think, well, if we pay attention to enslaving women, what might we find out about the people that they enslaved that perhaps we wouldn't kind of be able to glean through the records of men alone? And unsurprisingly, perhaps, we do see more attention to the intimate aspects of people's lives. And so

• 1:03:57Speaker 05

  I mentioned this woman, Ansi, who was enslaved on the Newton plantation in the later 17th century. And her enslaver, this woman named Barbry Newton, she has returned to England in 1685 as one of these absentees with her family. And she's writing letters back to her cousin in Barbados, a woman named Isabella, inquiring after Ansi because she wants to bring Ansi to England as a wet nurse. And in the correspondence that follows, we find out that Ansi has become pregnant, she's taken Lewis for her husband, that she has

• 1:04:37Speaker 05

  safely delivered her child. And, you know, again, what life was like for an enslaved person in this period is unimaginable. And we can never really understand how they felt. But there is something very, I want to say like, human and maybe even hopeful, just to think that people were still in very ordinary ways, being able to get on with their lives and kind of establish connections that were meaningful. And these instances where women were just able to do the basic thing that we cannot take for granted, even, you know, in the 21st century, just to be able to mother their own child and take care of their own

• 1:05:18Speaker 05

  child in these really difficult circumstances. I think obviously, we always have to be really cautious about trying to imagine what that was like. But, you know, sometimes I think the evidence is there in the archives, actually. And I think this kind of speaks to what I think is, you know, the direction that a lot of historical scholarship on slavery has kind of been heading in, if you like, that we started off thinking about the numbers and the system and the mechanics of the transatlantic trading in slave people. And that's really important to understand the scale of this.

• 1:05:52Speaker 00

  Because it is unimaginable.

• 1:05:53Speaker 05

  It is unimaginable, and particularly for conversations around things like, yeah, reparations and the, you know, the climate impact on small Caribbean islands like Barbados that's had. But I think now, I mean, that work will always be ongoing, but I think in a way that has been established now. And what we can do as historians is kind of think a little bit differently about the archives as well, and where there are these more kind of yet individual intimate histories that we can tease out as well.

• 1:06:19Speaker 00

  Well, if you would like to hear more intimate histories from this time period, get in touch with us at afterdarkhistoryhit.com. If you want Misha back to come and talk about her research, which we will very happily do.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  She's just coming back. You don't get a say, sorry.

• 1:06:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, she will be coming back.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  I have an idea for an episode after this that I want to talk to her about already.

• 1:06:36Speaker 00

  Absolutely. But if you want to write in and demand that she comes back, you're also welcome to do that. Please leave us a five star review wherever you get your podcasts. See you next time.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  In February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author Petra Mathers and her husband Michael mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know they had died by suicide.

• 1:07:03Speaker 03

  Dear honeys, this is goodbye.

• 1:07:06Speaker 04

  By the time you get this letter, both Petra and I will be dead. Next stop, Wonderland.

• 1:07:12Speaker 02

  Why did they do it? And what did it do to the people they left behind? Listen to Death of an Artist wherever you get your podcasts.