Abstract
This chapter explores nineteenth-century abolition. Legal abolition of slavery occurred at different times across the region. Here, we focus on the multiple ways slaves themselves fought for freedom and forced passage of abolition laws through their resistance. In the decades following the Haitian Revolution, slave revolts and conspiracies—many invoking the symbolism of the Haitian revolt—arose throughout the Caribbean. In the British Caribbean, nonconformist Christian missionaries and slave spiritual beliefs challenged slavery, leading to several uprisings until London passed the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. Slave resistance—violent and organized, passive and quotidian—in the French and Danish West Indies surged until slavery’s official abolition in 1848. In Spanish Cuba and Puerto Rico, slaves invoked the Haitian example, ran away, and established runaway communities.
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Shaffer, K. (2022). Liberating Ourselves: Slave Resistance and Emancipation. In: A Transnational History of the Modern Caribbean. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93012-7_3
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