Have you ever heard about the Berbice Slave Rebellion? Well,
behind me you see a statue of 'Coffee' (Koffi or Kofi) and he was the slave
rebel leader that fought against the Dutch colonizers and that happened in the year
1763. In this video I'm going to tell you about the forgotten Barbice Slave Revolt!
The Dutch saying ‘Naar de barbiesjes gaan’ does not mean much good. It refers to going to Berbice,
and whoever went there in colonial times awaited a hellish, hot and short life.
Berbice (now in Guyana) was a small Dutch colony west of much larger Suriname for
about two centuries beginning in 1627. The basis of the economy was the plantation system, where
products such as sugar and coffee for the European market were produced using slave labor. Enslaved
Africans rebelled against their fate with some regularity, despite the considerable risks. No
one has counted exactly how many rebellions there were. Most rebellions were only small and were
suppressed within days. Another option was to run away. Some enslaved people, mostly men, managed
to escape the plantations and founded villages deep in the interior. Here they lived more or
less independently of colonial society; they were called Maroons. However, most enslaved people did
not venture into armed resistance or run away. This makes the rebellion in Berbice all the more
interesting. It was here that one of the largest rebellions in the 18th-century Caribbean took
place between February 1763 and July 1764. This rebellion is remarkable for several reasons. The
most striking thing about it is that the rebels acted as masters: they enslaved their opponents,
more on that later. The rebellion was also longer-lasting than elsewhere and more extensive:
almost all the enslaved people of Berbice were dragged into it, for better or worse.
Only thirty years later, in Haiti, would enslaved people again revolt
in large numbers. This revolution, which included hundreds of thousands of people,
has become far more famous than the one in Berbice because it eventually led to independence from
France. After 13 years of struggle, Haiti became the world's first post-colonial "black" country
in 1804. This did not happen in Berbice. However, new source research shows that the rebellion in
Berbice was a foreshadowing of that in Haiti. Again, it was not only about resistance to
slave status, but also about self-government. Slavery was of crucial importance in Berbice;
not only as the basis of the colonial economy, but also as a guiding force in the relationship
with the communities that already originally inhabited the area, the Arowaks and Caribs.
Indeed, they sold enslaved people, whom they had captured in wars among themselves, for example,
to the Dutch and were therefore willing to tolerate them in their territory. In the
second half of the 17th century, however, this trading relationship increasingly led to conflict
as the colonists, lacking workers, also tried to enslave the natives - their allies. African
enslaved people also joined these (short-lived) rebellions. The colonists wanted to prevent
such coalitions at all costs. Therefore, as in Suriname, treaties were introduced that prohibited
planters from enslaving friendly natives, and in turn obliged Arowaks and Caribs to track
down runaway slaves and provide military support to Dutch authority in case of attack or revolt.
By 1763, there were some five to six thousand enslaved people in Berbice. We do not know exactly
how many of them had been born in Africa and how many in Berbice itself. This distinction would
come into play during the rebellion. The latter, referred to as creoles, were better integrated
into the colonial society; into the country's slave culture. They had more family ties in the
colony and spoke the same language, Berbice Dutch. Recently arrived from Africa enslaved
people mostly formed ethnic affiliations based on their geographical origins in West Africa.
The living and working conditions of the enslaved, as elsewhere in the Atlantic world,
were abysmal but the situation worsened sharply in the years immediately before the rebellion. The
Seven Years' War (1756-1763) made it difficult to import food from the Republic. A series of
epidemics claimed many lives. The remaining slaves had to work harder and were given less to eat.
The exponentially increased workload and food shortage eventually led to an uprising
in February 1763, organized by a creole-African coalition led by Kofi. The rebels armed with guns,
knives and bows easily overwhelmed the 350 white oversee-ers; colonial authority collapsed almost
immediately as plantation owners and government officials fled in panic to neighboring colonies
or holed up on merchant ships to sail away. After the first major attacks, the fighting subsided.
A stalemate developed. Governor Simon van Hoogenheim dug in on a large sugar plantation
near the coast with a number of civilians and some 150 soldiers sent from St. Eustatius and
Suriname. However, they could do little but wait for reinforcements from the Republic. Kofi
in turn chose to negotiate, perhaps following the lead of Maroons in Suriname who had gained
their official independence through diplomatic consultations during this same period. However,
negotiations in Berbice came to nothing. Indeed, they sowed discord in the rebel group,
according to eyewitness accounts from original inhabitants and enslaved people
of this period. The dividing line probably largely paralleled the creole-African line:
many creoles wanted to negotiate, many Africans wanted to fight - presumably because the creoles
trusted the Europeans more and, moreover, had more to lose, while many Africans had more confidence
in their military capabilities because many of them had been soldiers before they were
enslaved. Regardless, at the end of the summer, the creole Kofi was replaced by the African Atta.
The stalemate was broken only when military units from the Republic arrived in November 1763. The
rebels were driven from the plantations. Arowaks and Caribs prevented them from establishing maroon
villages deeper inland. The rebels thus became isolated and faced shortages of arms, gunpowder
and food. Moreover, they became increasingly entangled in a war between themselves, with
origins in Africa often determining loyalties. The situation thus became untenable for many rebels,
and in the first months of 1764 they began to surrender to the Dutch in increasing numbers.
Still, it took another six months before the colonists regained control of their colony.
More than 140 people were then executed at the stake, on the wheel and on the gallows.
The sources for the rebellion are very extensive and they include, in addition to colonial
correspondence, the "examinations" of nearly 900 enslaved people, both men and women, from 1764.
These examinations show how extraordinary this rebellion was. They prove that the rebellion in
Berbice was not just resistance to slavery as such. In fact, the leading rebels themselves
enslaved those who did not want to participate. This is due to the fact that not everyone
supported the rebellion. The sources put into perspective the apparent massiveness of the
rebellion. It is true that all enslaved people were dragged along, but some participated under
duress or with little enthusiasm, others left their plantations but mainly to hide from the
violence. Many had mixed feelings because the stakes were enormous and if the rebels lost,
the consequences were fatal. On some plantations, the powerful "bombas" (master servants, themselves
enslaved) opposed the rebellion; under their influence, the enslaved fled into the forest or
fought the rebels. When the latter arrived on such plantations, they often killed the bomba first. If
the rebels did not intend to keep the plantation in production, they took everything they could use
and set fire to the buildings, including the huts, to make them uninhabitable. They recruited young
men for the army, sometimes violently, and took beautiful young women for the rebel leaders. This
may not be surprising, but what is striking is that they set themselves up as masters and forced
the rest of the people to work for them. That the rebels made slaves appears in many interrogations,
and native spies for the Dutch confirm it. Such forced laborers made sugar and rum for
the new "lords," worked as craftsmen and personal servants, while women washed, cooked and cleaned
and sometimes had to provide sexual services. Some witnesses told of being trafficked by rebels.
Why did they do this? The insurgents faced difficult choices. To permanently drive the
Dutch out of Berbice and free all black people, they had to quell opposition within their own
circles to increase their influence against the colonists and the administration. They had to
feed themselves and their followers. And for any later trading relationship with Europeans,
they needed an export crop. Almost naturally, this led them to enslave their opponents.
It is also possible that from the beginning the rebel leaders had in mind not general emancipation
but a new regime, this time with themselves in charge. This could be traced back to the situation
in West Africa, where slavery was common. Archival records of the short-lived 1734 rebellion in
St. John's Denmark (now part of the U.S. Virgin Islands) or the series of rebellions in English
Jamaica in 1760 also allude to such a dynamic. Historians have only very recently realized that
enslaved people did not always rebel purely in the name of freedom. The complex rebellion at Berbice,
which former rebels and other enslaved people themselves recount, is one of the
important sources for this new understanding. The Dutch would be in charge of Berbice till
early 19th century when the British took the area and it became part of the larger British Guiana.
Slavery by the Dutch was only abolished 100 years after the uprising took place in the year 1863.