News From the Hydra

Stacey Burns History 498

News From the Hydra

The Lernaean Hydra was an ancient, water dwelling creature with both serpent and reptile like qualities. Myth said that if one of the heads of the beast was cut off, another three would grow in its place, making it nearly impossible to tame the monster. Eventually Hercules would be the hero that would defeat this many headed beast, but the metaphor of the many headed hydra would continue to hold strong and be used by authors for years to come. Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker in The Many Headed Hydra apply the hydra concept to revolution in the British Atlantic during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They address the issue from both a top down approach of looking at the British Empire and its power and a bottom up approach focusing on the words and deeds of the unruly people in the colonies of the British Empire. Linebaugh and Rediker raise the question of what the hydra looked like from London and how it was packaged to the British people. The news of the hydra was like nothing the people of London had seen before. The below picture1 is a depiction from a sixteenth century German illustrator of the many headed hydra that has influenced so much of the thinking and writing of British Empire.

Wikipedia Photo, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hydra_04.jpg

News From the Hydra

As a first example of the hydra of the British Empire, Bacons Rebellion in 1675 in Virginia is arguably one of the most famous rebellions to take place in modern history. News of this rebellion, along with others happening during the period of 1600-1750 spread across the world like wildfire. Slave rebellions happened in British North and South America, that is for certain. It is the question of how the news of the rebellions made its way back to England that is an ongoing scholarly question. It is not the fact that the news spread quickly that is of interest today, but the way that this news spread. In The Many Headed Hydra, by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, it is said that the poet Andrew Marvell heard form a ships captain that Bacon entered Jamestown having first proclaimd liberty to all servants and Negros.2. News of rebellions in North America rarely came across the Atlantic as a hard news story, rather the news tended to be delivered in much more theatrical forms. In contrast, news of rebellions delivered from South America and the Caribbean Islands, tended to be more straight facts and information on the insurrections. It is not only the way that information was delivered to Britain from North America that is of interest, but also the question of why news was delivered differently from the two regions. Taking all of this into account, I will answer the scholarly question of in what form was news of rebellions and revolts delivered to the English people and how did those forms vary depending on where the news was coming from in the world. Additionally, all of this information will be related back to the metaphor of the hydra in helping explain the differences in the delivery of information.

Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many Headed Hydra (Boston: Beacon Press 2000), 136.

News From the Hydra Table of Recorded Slave Rebellions Details

First Slave revolt in continental North America. Involved over 100 enslaved Africans 35 blacks are publically hanged for plotting an uprising 60 slaves flee plantation, they are eventually caught and punished Rebellion plot involving black slaves, white indentured servants and native Americans is discovered and thwarted Slave revolt plot is uncovered, a large scale plan to exterminate whites Bacon's Rebellion A large number of slaves ravaged plantations Slave revolt erupts slaves and local native Americans plot a rebellion and it is quickly suppressed Slave rebellion leads to death of 9 whites and 20 blacks are eventually executed Planned slave rebellion was crushed Authorities uncover a plot to raise a slave revolt Enslaved Africans rose up against their masters and led an attack on the white people in the streets and in their homes. 23 were captured, 6 convicted, 3 executed Over 200 enslaved Africans had a plan to murder white people. The plot was discovered and they fled A plot to burn the town is discovered and the slaves were sentenced Slaves revolted against their masters, revolt eventually failed Authorities uncover a large plot of revolt, the plotters are executed Stono Rebellion

Name
1526 May 1612 November 1639

Year
South Carolina Mexico City St. Kitts (Caribbean Island)

September 1663 1687 1675 1691 1708 1709 April 1712 1713 Spring 1719

Gloucester County, Virginia Westmoreland County, Virginia Virginia Middlesex County, Virginia Long Island, NY Williamsburg New York, NY South Carolina Brazil

1720

Charleston, South Carolina

October 1722 1723 1728 August 1730 1739

Rappahannock River, Virginia Middlesex and Gloucester Counties, Virginia Savannah, Georgia South Carolina South Carolina

In this paper I will argue that there was a distinct difference between how word of slave rebellions reached Britain from North America as opposed to South America. News from North America tended to be much more theatrical, and fictionalized. Many times this news took the form of strongly biased pamphlets, fictional stories, or plays. In comparison, news from South America and the Caribbean generally came in a more news story form that many are familiar with today, telling the who, what, when, and where. I will also explore the notion of why stories from both regions of the world tend to leave out the why portion of the stories of rebellion
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and revolt. The notion that the differences between the forms of news will be explained through the theory that the difference can largely be based on the fact slave to European ratio. All of these proclamations and explanations will be proved and supported by looking at both the secondary and primary literature on the topic, with the period of 1600-1750 being the center for the primary literature. First I will look at the Many Headed Hydra as a classic work on the topic of the perceptions of slave rebellions. Then I will explore several of the major primary sources that were in Britain at the time and served as the news of the rebellions for the British people. Next I will introduce South American rebellions and the primary sources that depict those slave rebellions. As a conclusion I will compare and contrast the similarities and differences in the sources from the period of 1600-1750 that depict the slave rebellions and will draw conclusions as to why there is such a drastic difference between the types of sources presented from the different continents of the Americas. Finally I will relate my findings back to the story of the hydra. The story of the Many Headed Hydra is an interesting one and one that of how men and women crossed national, ethnic, and racial borders as they sailed across the Atlantic on trade and slave ships, connecting England, Virginia, Barbados and Africa in a way that had not been done ever before. The authors of this historiography show how ordinary working people led dozens of rebellions on both sides of the North Atlantic. The rulers of the day called the multiethnic rebels a "hydra" and brutally suppressed their risings, yet some of their ideas fueled the age of revolution. Others, hidden from history and recovered here, have much to teach us

News From the Hydra

about our common humanity.3 The book tells the story of the many headed hydra that is taken from mythology and the story of Hercules. One aspect, or head, of the hydra is the slaves and servants, or as they are referred to by Leinbaugh and Rediker the hewers of wood and drawers of water4. In the beginning that is merely what the slaves are, the people that cut down the trees and fetch the water, among other things. Through ideas of capitalism in the colonies, points of growth and other factors, those hewers of wood and drawers of water become something much more complex and stronger. This is not an issue until groups begin to revolt and thus the myth of Hercules arises that when one head, or revolution, is cut off, another two grow in its place. The goal of the British was to cut all the heads off at once, defeat the hydra and again subordinate these people to be mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. The significance lies in how events were reported that this many headed hydra was being defeated. Reports like the Strange News from Virginia pamphlets that will be later discussed were not the only strange news that the British heard about the goings on in the Americas. According to Linebaugh and Rediker, members of cultures high and low depended on sailors and their strange reports for news of alterae terrae5. The British people depended on reports from sailors and hearsay from authors like Aphra Behn to understand the events going on in North America. The hydra book also talks about the poem by Andrew Marvell cited earlier as another way that people found out about rebellions, not through news stories but through rumor and fiction. Linebaugh and Rediker also discuss the notion that a distinction was beginning to develop between the white colonist and the rebellious slaves and that
3

Marcus Rediker Website http://www.marcusrediker.com/Books/The_Many_Headed_Hydra/Synopsis_Hydra.htm 4 Linebaugh and Rediker, Hydra, 70. 5 Linebaugh and Rediker, Hydra, 24.

News From the Hydra

legislation in the 1670s was beginning to be written to protect the increasingly white colonists in North America from the rebellious slaves and natives. The notion of a many headed beast or hydra would continue to be a concept that stuck with the British, and other writers, until modern times, even being used to describe things like the American Revolution in the eighteenth century6. The model of the hydra is a powerful one for historians to this day. Andrew Marvells poem describing the feeling after Bacons Rebellion is an example of a head of the hydra, and possibly multiple heads, of the described previously. Interestingly, Bacons Rebellions was not just a single rebellion but actually two parts. First freedmen and small farm owners rebelled against the Native Americans; second a rally of troops, many being slaves and servants that fought against slavery and that were first part of a group that Bacon had gathered to march on Jamestown and promised freedom to in exchange for their service. 7 The pamphlets Strange News from Virginia and More Strange News from Virginia were pamphlets that I discovered, through researching several sources, were printed for William Harris in London. Since this is the case it is very likely that the pamphlets are most likely secondhand knowledge or hearsay as Harris not cited as the author or is there any evidence that Harris was in North America during the time of the rebellion. The descriptive and flowery language of the pamphlets leads one to believe that they are strongly fictionalized and tend to place a lot of the blame for the entire rebellion Nathaniel Bacon. This certainly was Mr. Bacons crime8 is stated in the pamphlet. Bacons original plan was to lead an uprising against

The Rebellion, Its Origin and Mainspring, The Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigines Friend 10, no. 1 (January 1862): 14. 7 Linebaugh and Rediker, Hydra, 136. 8 Strange News From Virginia Being a Full and True Account of the Life and Death of Nathanael Bacon, Esquire, who was the Only Cause and Original of All the late Troubles in that Country: With a Full Relation of All the

News From the Hydra

the Governor in Virginia, William Berkeley, but when his troops, mostly slaves, became strongly dissatisfied with conditions and the battle, they turned on him and caused an uprising. Bacon had been previously in trouble with the English government but was let go with misdemeanor charges and so the author of the pamphlet is quick to blame Bacon for the rebellion as a whole. Along with saying the whole thing is Bacons fault it is also basically said that he could not accept his pardon for misdemeanor for his previous crimes and had to keep pushing against the government until finally the tragedy of the rebellion struck. The author goes so far as to say that any reasonable mind would have been content with the pardon that he received but Bacon insisted on his opposition against that prudent and established government.9 The More Strange News from Virginia of 1677 pamphlet that is published as a supplement to the first gives many more details on the lives and punishments of those involved in Bacons Rebellion and how the English eventually restored peace in Virginia after Bacons death. News of the time after Bacons life was not immediately available when the first pamphlet was written so a second installment was later written. We could not inform you of a certain peace, nor give you an account of the arrival of those soldiers is a line in the introduction of the pamphlet and later goes on to tell that Bacon had been dead for two months before the soldiers arrived and that the remaining alive British soldiers and worked the rebels into an obedience of sorts.10 Clearly the British wanted to present a calm faade to the people in Britain by showing fully that the rebellion had been subsided. It is interesting that neither pamphlet gives great details about the actual rebellion and definitely does not show

Accidents Which Have Happened in the late War There Between the Christians and Indians (London: Printed for William Harris, 1677), 6. 9 Strange News, 7. 10 More News from Virginia; a Further Account of Bacons Rebellion (London: Printed for William Harris, 1677), 1.

News From the Hydra

Bacons point of view in things, while creating a very larger than life depiction of the rebellion. This was the case with much of the literature on rebellions in North America that was shown to the British people. It is clear that the writer of this pamphlet is opinionated in his own way and that even though it is clearly a slave rebellion, Bacon takes a lot of the heat. Bacon eventually dies and perhaps by blaming the events mostly on Bacon and then hearing about his death, it provides a closure for the British people and does not instill a lasting fear of slave rebellion within them. It has been proven that these pamphlets were edited by the government, 11further supporting the notion that the information given to the British people was doctored and not fully factual. As historical sources of what actually happened during Bacon's Rebellion, the news- letters (Strange News and More Strange News) are of little value, for they merely paraphrase and "pad out" what others saw and reported.12 The writer of the pamphlets actually said that Bacon defeated an American Indian tribe when in actuality, that American Indian tribe was defeated by a fellow American Indian tribe. While it is not explicitly stated as to the altering of this information, by comparing this information other sources on the topic, the argument that fictionalized information on the rebellions in the Americas was the only way that the common British citizen could accept the notion of revolts. The Widow Ranter by Aphra Behn is another really interesting piece that historians today can use to support a theory relating to the packaging of information on slave rebellions from the Americas to Britain. The Widow Ranter tells the story of Bacons Rebellion but in the

11 12

Wilcomb E. Washburn, *Untitled+, The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 65(1957): 234. Washburn, *Untitled+, 234.

News From the Hydra

form of a play. Paul Musselwhite put it eloquently in his essay What Towns this Boy? when he proceeded to say that while Behn made serious, major changes to the plot of the actual rebellion and the acts leading up to it, she did this with a purpose in mind. That purpose being that the mind of the person living in England at the time was too fragile to handle the strong, gruesome accounts of what actually was happening in the Americas during the time of the rebellion. While another popular work of Behns is Oroonoko, which is quite strong and gruesome it is because of the location that she was writing about for her audience in England. North America seemed much closer to home to the English and much less exotic than a place like Surinam. This major difference afforded her to be gruesome in Oroonoko, but demanded a much more romanticized version of the events in North America. She not only realized that the British were anxious about the goings on in the Americas with the slaves but also felt that, the colonists were deeply anxious about the social and political structures of their society13. It was not that Behn did not have the contextual and factual knowledge to write an accurate representation of the events that went on in Jamestown, but actually quite the opposite. Behn very well could have stopped in Jamestown and the Americas on her journey to Surinam in the 1660s and visited the site of the rebellion.14 She also could have gotten private sheets of news print back in England if she was not traveling across the Atlantic15. So it is clear that she had the factual knowledge to put together an accurate story but instead chose not to, which is the most interesting fact of the story. Behn knew of the fears of the British people of rebellion and slaves, knowing that if she gave them all of the facts another head of the hydra could have
13

Paul Musselwhite , What Towns This Boy?: English Civic Politics, Virginias Urban Debate, and Aphra Behns The Widow Ranter, 2011, 1. 14 Musselwhite, What Towns This Boy?, 2. 15 Musselwhite, What Towns This Boy?, 1.

News From the Hydra

grown, this time on the Eastern side of the Atlantic, creating yet another head for the British Empire to squelch. It is also interesting that Musselwhite specifically says that the news she would have had access to was private reports. This implies that they were not for public knowledge which further supports the notion that hard news stories about rebellions in North America were not readily available to the common man in England. Musselwhite later goes on to state that the sparks that flew off the smoldering houses in Jamestown ignited the pamphlet and propaganda campaign over the rebellion in England16. Pamphlets like the Strange News from Virginia are an example of this pamphlet campaign, which as previously discussed, was not necessarily a non-biased view point of the revolution for the English to be gaining valuable information from, further proving that the lack of reliable information on the happenings in North America relating to slave rebellions was great in the area of non-fiction. Jenny Pulsipher further supports this notion in her article by again citing the Strange News and More News pamphlets as being the most readily available source on the rebellions and most other news traveling to England through word of mouth17. She also goes on to say that Behn was friendly with many in high positions throughout the government and may have had access to some of the state papers and certainly to gossip about the revolt. The popular pamphlets would have been available to anyone with the pennies to purchase them18. Of course the love story that develops throughout the Widow Ranter is also a detail that Behn added for fictional flair. Like in her other work, Oroonoko, Behn uses romantic plots to
16 17

Musselwhite, What Towns This Boy?, 6. Jenny Hale Pulsipher, The Widow Ranter and Royalist Culture in Colonial Virginia, Early American Literature 39 (2004): 43. 18 Pulsipher, The Widow Ranter and Royalist Culture in Colonia Virginia, 43.

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News From the Hydra

take away from the severity of certain situations and the same holds true for her work in the Widow Ranter and to also create more of an appeal for her readers, further taking away from the seriousness of the situation in the Americas and the parallels that it has to the political climate in England at the time of the rebellion. Additionally, the fact that Bacon does not appear in the play until the second act, a significant point since the rebellion holds his namesake, is yet another reason to discredit this source as purely accurate and viable news for the British people. An argument can be made that the British could only handle information on something as frightening as a slave rebellion if it was packaged in a clearly labeled, fictional, love story, exactly what Aphra Behn creates for her readers in the Widow Ranter. There is an extreme lack of news on further rebellions in North America in the English press. A publication was found in the General Evening Post about a series of rebellions taking place in South Carolina and how the British government was containing them 19. The article gives very few details as to the actual events leading up and ruing the uprisings but it quick to explain to readers that those responsible will be taken care of. According to the article many slaves escaped from South Carolina to Florida and the article states that all Negros that which have deserted from South Carolina and which shall be taken to Florida during the said Expedition, shall be delivered up to their respective owners, on paying the sum or five shillings per head to the captors20. The British government wanted the British people to feel secure and safe that the rebellion and slaves would be kept under control. In comparison to stories of slave rebellions from South America in the news in England, there is a great lack of news reported. Many of the reports of slave rebellions may have been kept private or were merely transferred
19 20

News General Evening Post, London: June 5, 1740. News General Evening Post, London: June 5, 1740.

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News From the Hydra

through word of mouth. There are even a lack of drawings and depictions of slave rebellions, another significant fact for drawings and pictures were a major way of communicating news and ideas at the time. Below is a picture depicting one of the first slave revolts to be recorded. The revolt occurred on Long Island, NY on February 28, 1708.

21

Very little information about this rebellion is known except for the fact that Following the rebellion, a Black woman is burned alive and one Native American man and two Black men are hanged.22 I am unsure where the picture above was released from but it was clearly drawn by a biased party of some sort. The only bad people in the photo are African American and after the rebellion 9 white people were killed but only Blacks were killed, not necessarily with trial, for causing the uprising. While it is hard to locate similar pictures to this one, I would presume that if there are others, they are presented in a similar way, with there being a single, common enemy, and then an explanation of how the rebellion was contained and people were punished.

21 22

African American Registry, http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/slave-revolt-long-island-ny MSNBC Website, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28882560/ns/us_news-life/t/today-black-historymonth/#.T48PCatSQ40

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There was another revolt in New York that took place in April of 1712. At the time about 23 armed Africans gathered at midnight and set fire to a white mans house. A confrontation began ending in 9 dead whites and 6 wounded. In the end 27 Africans were captured and 21 were put to death (6 committed suicides).23 The interesting thing about this circumstance is that there is no evidence that there was actually a trial of any kind for the convicted and executed Africans and that they were condemned on slender evidence in the heat of peoples resentment24. This was most likely a common occurrence in the circumstance of slave revolts and rebellions that that the situation appeared taken care of to outsiders. The first protest against slavery took place on February 18, 1688 in Germantown, Pennsylvania. The protest was written after several concerned citizens of the area began to consider slavery to be morally wrong25. The original protest was written in German but later translated to English. It is unclear whether or not word of this protest reached the Old World from North America but the fact that it is documented that this protest took place is significant. By being able to prove that there were protests, and possibly rebellions or revolts, taking place by non-African members of society, there is evidence that it was not just slaves or radicals that were starting uprisings, contrary to the image that the British often portrayed to the British people. This protest was actually started by Quakers, some of the most peaceful members of history for their refusal to participate in wars. Some of the language of the protest includes "...we shall doe (sic) to all men like as we will be done ourselves; making no difference of what

23 24

Kwasi Konadu, The Akan Diaspora in the Americas (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010), 195. Konadu, The Akan Diaspora in the Americas, 196. 25 US History Website, http://www.ushistory.org/germantown/lower/kunders.htm

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generation, descent or colour they are"26, a sentiment clearly expressing dislike of the treatment of slaves. This is yet another head to the hydra that the British government wished to defeat. While these people might not have started any violence directly, their ideas very well could have had the ability to spread to other parties and give them ideas that could have grown into rebellions like Bacons Rebellion. Kenneth Morgan in Slave Resistance and Rebellion says that collective rebellion and violence was not just the only way that slaves learned to revolt. Poisoning was a major tactic for slaves to use when attempting to rebel and between 1740 and 1785 more slaves in Virginia were charged with poisoning than any other crime besides stealing27 The heads of the hydra were not necessarily just violent uprisings, but anything that would have created an issue for the British government in keeping order to society and upholding the power that they had worked hundreds of years to gain over all corners of the world. The Stono rebellion was the largest slave revolt in the history of the mainland colonies of the British in North America.28 On September 9, 1739, a group of slaves broke into a store on the Stono River and eventually beheaded two white mean and seized their weapons and alcohol. The slaves then headed towards what is today Florida and gathered a following of slaves as they went along, anywhere between 50 and 100 slaves are said to have joined them29. The rebels were eventually attacked by the white militia and stopped through brute force and violence after a bloody afternoon. It is not surprising that there is not a ton of information on this revolt as things were not well recorded at the time, especially when it came to slave
26 27

US History Website , http://www.ushistory.org/germantown/lower/kunders.htm Kenneth Morgan, Slavery and the British Empire: From Africa to America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 128. 28 Morgan, Slave Resistance and Rebellion, 139. 29 Morgan, Slave Resistance and Rebellion, 139.

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rebellions in British North America, but it is thought that harsh working conditions were a main cause of the uprising. The majority of the slaves were of African birth, not born in the Americas and they employed many traditional African tactics to their attack. This rebellion instilled fear in the people of South Carolina and probably of those across the Atlantic in Britain. It is important to point out that the first reported news of this event did not take place until November 30, 1939 and the news appeared in the Boston Weekly Newsletter. The news article was quick to assure people that the militiaman cut off *the+ heads of the rebels they had killed and set them up at every Mile Post they came to as a gory example to other slaves in the region30. It is first very interesting that news of this uprising was not reported for over two months and it is likely that the news did not reach Britain any faster, if at all. The second interesting fact about this publication is that, like in most of the British reports on violence, it does not give many actual details on the rebellion but does clearly state how the guilty have been punished. This is consistent with what has been noted on news reports from this time about rebellions from North America. It has been noted that the rebellion is lacking in coverage and that the coverage that there is of it is of poor quality and from many second hand sources.31 After further investigating I have come across a newspaper clipping from the London Evening Post, there is a slight mention of a scuffle of sorts at the Stono River (the site of the revolt)32. The newspaper is from November 15, 1739, so it is still over two months after the initial revolt but the lack of detail is astounding. The mention of Stono is two sentences at most
30 31

Boston Weekly Newsletter, 8 Nov 1739. John K. Thornton, "African Dimensions Of The Stono Rebellion." American Historical Review 96, Historical Abstracts, EBSCOhost. 32 News London Evening Post, London: November 15-17, 1739.

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and again, tells merely of the acts taken against the guilty parties and assuring the British people that order has once again been restored to British North America. The news source also conveniently leaves out any mention of the causes of the revolt. As aforementioned, it is speculated that the cause of the revolt was the harsh working conditions that the Africans were under at the time in South Carolina, along with the rest of the British Empire. There is no mention of the any justification of the Africans actions and the article is one sided and biased. It is assumed that the article would be biased because it is nearly impossible not to be but the blatant disregard of the main part of the story is interesting and should be noted. The revolted is painted as one hundred percent the fault of the black slaves and that the whites that were are their mercy were fully innocent. The actual people that died in the revolt could have been innocent but that does not mean that there was no fault to the British, a statement not included in the paper. It might have even gone unnoticed to the British readers because they were probably more concerned with understanding how the revolt was being handled and the actions that were being taken to rectify the situation and the perpetrators. An additional news source from the Daily Gazetteer confirms the assertions from above. This source is from November 17, 1739, a couple of days after the source from the London Evening Post appeared on the English streets. This news article states that is an excerpt from a letter from September, the month of the revolt. It also states that, again, the slaves revolted and the white people taking alarm, attackd them, killing about 50, and drove the rest into the swamps, where they must either surrender or be put to the sword33. Again, the article gives no mention of the events leading up to the revolt, only that there was a revolt, that white people

33

News Daily Gazetteer (London Edition), London: November 17, 1939.

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died, and that the African slaves responsible were being adequately punished. A British person probably opened their weekly publication of the British paper, perused the articles, and saw that there was a revolt a couple of months back but thought nothing of it because of the great time delay and the lack of information. It could be an entirely different history if the news was accurate, up to date, and in great detail. It very easily could have instilled a feeling of fear throughout Britain, leading to that head of the many headed hydra to develop and flare its nasty heads. The lack of news and pictures of slave rebellions in North America is likely a result of the British government attempting to contain the hydra that was rebellions in North America. By cutting off accurate and scary news from England, the British Empire thus helped to ensure that a panic would not break out within Great Britain, creating another head of the hydra for the British Empire to contain. As previously mentioned, the British government wanted the hewers of wood and drawers of water to again fulfill that role, and only that role, in North American society. Not only did the British not want a panic to ensue in Great Britain but it is also likely that they did not want sympathies to develop within the British people for the treatment of the slaves. The more propaganda and news that reaches the Old World from the New World, the more of an opportunity there would be for protest of the treatment and enslavement of the African Americans. The quote in The Many Headed Hydra by Andrew Marvell that serves as a scholarly question for this paper is even evidence of the lack of understanding and factual knowledge that the British people had about the uprisings in North America. Anthony Parent is the author of Foul Means: the Formation of a Slave Society in Virginia: 1660-1740 mentioned Marvell in his
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book. He asserts that Andrew Marvell merely took the word of the ship captain he used as his source as fully truthful, did not look into the situation any further, and was on his way. After gaining the little information that he had, Andrew Marvell went on to report to the British people, posing Nathanial Bacon has the sole person to blame for his heady attempt to seize the colony.34 It is probably likely that this was a frequent occurrence for events that took place in the New World. Many times, bits and pieces would get brought back to England as breaking news only to later find out that there were a lot of facts missing. It is possible that the British government knew that the news coming back to England was not reliable so that led to a heavy regulation of what was printed, for the sake of the peace of England. Conclusions and explanations for this will be discussed later in the paper. While there were a great many slaves in North America, there were many more in South America in the period of 1600-1750. By 1600 there were already hundreds of thousands of slaves in South America working their lives away in the sugar cane fields, living under harsh conditions with low life expectancies. The British were the largest transporters of African slaves during the Atlantic Slave Trade35 and according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Database there were approximately 2,571,338 slaves that disembarked from a slave ship into slavery between 1600 and 175036. A large majority of these slaves went to South America, Brazil in particular (as shown in the picture below) 37. Conditions were very hard on slaves in South America, the

34

Anthony S. Parent, Foul Means: The Formation of a Slave Society in Virginia, 1660-1740 (The University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 144.
35

Emma Christopher, Slave Ship Sailors and Their Captive Cargoes, 1730-1807. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 36 Slave Voyages Website, http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/database/search.faces 37 Afro-Latin Americans Website, http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/afro-latinamericans.htm

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average life of a slave in a place like Brazil was less than ten years. The large number of slave arrivals in the Caribbean reflected the backbreaking work, wide range of diseases, and high mortality rate among black worker in that region38 and these stocks of black workers would constantly have to be replenished.

There are very few documented slave rebellions and revolts in North America besides Bacons Rebellion and the Stono Rebellion but it is a bit of a different story in South America and the Caribbean. Between 1638 and 1837 there were seventeen slave revolts in the British Caribbean that involved dozens of slaves, thirty-eight acts of collective resistance with hundreds of slaves, fifteen outbreaks of violence with thousands of slaves and five rebellions that included many thousands of slaves39. This piece of evidence supports my argument because it supports the shows that there were in fact rebellions in both regions of the Americas and that it is also difficult to find information on rebellions from the North. In an attempt to control the hydra, slaves in North America were kept quite separated in order to keep them from rebelling against the government, but in South America with the amount of slaves that

38 39

Morgan, Slave Resistance and Rebellion, 15. Morgan, Slave Resistance and Rebellion, 142.

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were passing through, this was nearly impossible. There is quite a bit of evidence of slave rebellions from the south in British publications from the time, showing the difference in coverage between the two regions, even though rebellions were happening in both, a curious fact but an interesting one none the less. An article appeared in the British Gazetter on February 19, 1732 with news of an uprising in Jamaica40. The publication is a weekly publication so there must have been quite a bit of news over the course of a week but this was still deemed important enough to make the news, which is interesting. The article is written to the His Majesty and gives an account of the happenings in Jamaica and talks about Jamaica explicitly and the slave rebellions there and refers to other rebellions in the area but those are quite ambiguous. It seems that rebellions were not shared when they were in America but details the rebellions in Jamaica and the feelings of slaves and slave owners. News papers in the seventeenth century were not like our news papers today and did not include as many hard news stories so it is very significant that this rebellion, and others, were specifically detailed in the paper. Through extensive research I did not find anything like this article applying to North America and the rebellions that took place there. This article is very factual about what happened, not giving it a spin like in the publications about North America. There are explanations given for the uprising but blame is not really placed on one specific person. A similarity to the North American publications is that the writer of the article does ensure the reader that measures are being taken to contain the scuffles and that the rebellious slaves are being contained. No matter where things were taking

40

Jamaica News British Gazetteer, London: February 19, 1732.

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place, the British Empire still wanted to portray an image of power and a state of being in control. There could be many explanations as to why there was such a difference in the way that news of rebellions was portrayed depending on the regions that slaves came from. Slave owners did not want their slaves to be seen as rebellious at auction. The average age for a slave life expectancy in South America was much lower than the age of a slave from North America thus the South American slaves were much more likely to come up at auction than slaves from the north. If one were to judge simply from reading the announcements advertising slaves for sale, it would appear on the surface that there were no slave rebels who were ever marketed and this is because it was not in the best interest of slave owners to attempt to sell a rebellious slave and slave owners did not wish to talk about slave resistance, going to far as to deny its existence whenever possible.41 A rebellious slave would not sell well at auction, which could be one explanation for why there was such a difference in how these rebellions were perceived and reported. Slaves were valuable not only for their labor but also for being sold at auction. If slave rebellions were kept more secretive, it would be easier to sell slaves rather than to have buyers wondering if a slave from South Carolina was a part of the Stono Revolt and then deciding not to purchase any slaves from that area just in case. This could also be a part of the explanation as to why it is generally explicitly stated as to how the rebellious parties have been dealt with. Not one slave rebellion account did I read that did not detail how the slaves were punished and that was often the main feature of the article or publication. When it is so boldly stated how they are punished, then the British people, and people of the British colonies, were

41

Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion. (Greenwood, 2006),xxxviii.

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reassured that the guilty slaves were not going to stir trouble again. People in Britain were bound to get news of the rebellions at some point but perhaps if the news was presented in a more fictional way, people would be less intimidated by the thought of rebellion. Not only were slave rebellions reported in different ways, but blame was also placed on different parties. In South America, the blame was placed directly on the slaves but in North America that wasnt always the story. In instances like the Strange News pamphlets, the blame is not necessarily put solely on the slaves but on outside parties, in this case Bacon, as well. This could also be for selling purposes and also to project a feeling of safety to the people in England. At the time there were many more Africans than Europeans in Barbados and South America, while the ratio was much more even in North America. Europeans would not want to go to North America if they feared that a massive rebellion could happen at any second. It was also very common in North America for slaves to be separated in their housing situations. This was done so that the slaves could not conspire together when the slave master was gone and then let them stir up a rebellion. If colonists felt that North America was safe and less exposed to the savage slaves that were common in South America, then they would be more willing to go there. North America was a huge economic bubble for Britain and the empire wanted as much means of production there as possible and that meant they needed both British settlers to live there as well as slaves. The European economy, and especially the British, was dependant on the slave trade and slave labor. Rodney said in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Europe maintained slavery in places that were physically remote from European society; and therefore inside Europe itself, capitalist relations were elaborated without being

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adversely affected by slavery in the Americas42. The European people obviously knew that slavery existed (that much is obvious from studying texts from the time) but they also knew that their economies and capitalistic notions depended on it and they did not want to see those threatened, especially by things like slave rebellions. Just like the companies today do not want to let onto their consumers that they are having economic problems, the companies and government of in Britain in the seventeenth century would not have wanted any word of a revolution that was not contained in North America to get out to the British people for it may hinder them from going across the Atlantic. That explanation does not necessarily apply to the Caribbean and South America for many reasons, thus explaining the difference in news reports between North and South America at the time. As earlier stated slaves had low life expectancies in South America and greatly outnumbered the white settlers. Less British people were traveling to South America and thus there was less protecting to need to be done for over the idea of South America. Authors like Aphra Behn in her work Oroonoko still gave the British people a fantasized version of the Southern Hemisphere but it was not nearly as necessary or dire to the peace of mind of the British people and the British economy to have a rose colored view of South America and the Caribbean. This is the case because, as stated earlier, South America and the Caribbean was a place that the English were less likely to visit and was seen as a more exotic land than North America. It is these two facts that made the English people feel that they were not as exposed

42

Walter Rodney, Africas Contribution of European Capitalist Development-The Pre-Colonial Period, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Washington D.C: Howard University Press, 1981), 85.

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to upheaval in the southern hemisphere and thus felt less vulnerable to violence there as opposed to in North America. This difference in population demographics could also be an explanation as to why North American rebellions tended to be fictionalized. There were about 250 slave revolts between 1619 and emancipation in the American South, with many more taking place in Barbados and South America43. It has also been said much of what often appeared in the southern press was posturing and bravado...it became customary for southerners to put their best face forward and embellish news accounts that would portray the region in a different light44. So the reason that news was often quite distorted by the time it reached Britain was not only because it was passed on from person to person across the Atlantic but perhaps because of the way the original stories were told. Those stories being told in a more positive light made the news of rebellions easier for the British people to digest and made the rebellions in North America seem much less threatening, a win-win situation for all parties involved.

43 44

Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion. (Greenwood, 2006), xxxviv. Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion. (Greenwood, 2006), xxxix.

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African American Registry. http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/slave-revoltlong-island-ny. Afro-Latin Americans Website. http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/afrolatinamericans.htm. Boston Weekly Newsletter, 8 Nov 1739. Christopher, Emma. Slave Ship Sailors and Their Captive Cargoes, 1730-1807. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion. Greenwood: 2006. Jamaica News British Gazetteer, London: February 19, 1732. Jenny Hale. The Widow Ranter and Royalist Culture in Colonial Virginia. Early American Literature 39, no. 1 (January 1, 2004). Konadu, Kwasi. The Akan Diaspora in the Americas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Linebaugh, Peter, and Marcus Rediker. The Many Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000. Marcus Rediker Website. http://www.marcusrediker.com/Books/The_Many_Headed_Hydra/ Synopsis_Hydra.htm. More News from Virginia; a Further Account of Bacons Rebellion. London: Printed for William Harris, 1677. Morgan, Kenneth. Slavery and the British Empire: from Africa to America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. MSNBC Website. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28882560/ns/us_news-life/t/today-blackhistory-month/#.T48PCatSQ40. Musselwhite, Paul. What Towns This Boy?: English Civic Politics, Virginias Urban Debate, and Aphra Behns The Widow Ranter, 2011. News Daily Gazetteer (London Edition), London: November 17, 1939. News. General Evening Post. London, England, June 5, 1740. News London Evening Post, London: November 15-17, 1739. Parent, Anthony S. Foul Means: The Formation of a Slave Society in Virginia, 1660-1740. The University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Rodney, Walter. Africas Contribution of European Capitalist Development-The Pre-Colonical Period, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Washington D.C: Howard University Press, 1981. Slave Voyages Website. http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/database/search.faces. Strange News from Virginia Being a Full and True Account of the Life and Death of Nathanael Bacon, Esquire, Who Was the Only Cause and Original of All the Late Troubles in That
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Country: With a Full Relation of All the Accidents Which Have Happened in the Late War There Between the Christians and Indians. London: Printed for William Harris, 1677. The Rebellion, Its Origin and Mainspring, The Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigines Friend 10, no. 1, January 1862. Thornton, John K. 1991. "African Dimensions Of The Stono Rebellion." American Historical Review 96, no. 4: 1101. Historical Abstracts, EBSCOhost (accessed April 19, 2012). US History Website. http://www.ushistory.org/germantown/lower/kunders.htm. Wikipedia Photo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hydra_04.jpg. Washburn, Wilcomb E. *untitled+. The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 65, no. 2 (April 1, 1957).

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