| Abstract |
"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. |
