Rebels in Arms: Black Resistance and the Fight for Freedom in the Anglo-Atlantic (Early American Places Ser.)

Enslaved Black people took up arms and fought in nearly every colonial conflict in early British North America. They sometimes served as loyal soldiers to protect and promote their owners’ interests in the hope that they might be freed or be rewarded for their service. But for many Black combatants, war and armed conflict offered an opportunity to attack the chattel slave system itself and promote Black emancipation and freedom. In six cases, starting in 1676 with Nathaniel Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia and ending in 1865 with the First South Carolina Volunteer Infantry Regiment near Charleston, Rebels in Arms tells the long story of how enslaved soldiers and Maroons learned how to use military service and armed conflict to fight for their own interests. Justin Iverson details a different conflict in each chapter, illuminating the participation of Black soldiers. Using a comparative Atlantic analysis that uncovers new perspectives on major military conflicts in British North American history, he reveals how enslaved people used these conflicts to lay the groundwork for abolition in 1865. Over the nearly two-hundred-year history of these struggles, enslaved resistance in the British Atlantic world became increasingly militarized, and enslaved soldiers, Maroons, and plantation rebels together increasingly relied on military institutions and operations to achieve their goals. "Enslaved Black people took up arms and fought in nearly every colonial conflict in early British North America. They fought in Nathaniel Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia in 1676, in the Tuscarora and Yamasee Wars in the Carolinas and Georgia in the second decade of the eighteenth century, in Florida during the War of Jenkins' Ear in 1740, in Virginia and Pennsylvania in the French and Indian War from 1754-1763, and throughout North America and the Caribbean during the American Revolutionary War, among many others. Rebels in Arms takes a transatlantic approach that employs Black perspectives of six case studies to show how enslaved people and Maroons took up arms and participated as soldiers in conflicts traditionally thought to have been fought over colonial or imperial interests. Iverson argues that slave resistance in the British Atlantic and United States became increasingly militarized over time. Indeed, enslaved soldiers, Maroons, and plantation rebels together relied on military methods, institutions, and operations to achieve their goals. Military violence increasingly became their modus operandi and the militarization of slave resistance continued to rise throughout the eighteenth century and up until the Civil War. This book contributes to recent scholarship that reconceptualizes the participation of enslaved people in armed conflict in the Atlantic world"-- Provided by publisher