The 1763 Slave Rebellion in the Dutch Colony of Berbice (Modern-Day Guyana)

FAIN: FA-51716-05

Marjoleine Kars
UMBC (Baltimore, MD 21250-0001)

I am writing a book about one of the largest slave rebellions in the eighteenth-century Caribbean. This virtually unstudied, but richly documented, rebellion took place in the 1760s in the Dutch colony of Berbice, now part of the Republic of Guyana, in northeastern South America. I am particularly interested in the rebellion’s cross-cultural divides and alliances: the deep fissures between and among Africans and Creoles; the alliance of indigenous peoples with the Dutch; the cooperation of rebels and defected European soldiers; as well as the impact of Suriname maroons on the course of the rebellion.

Associated Products

“Dodging Rebellion: Women and a Politics of Gender in the Berbice Slave Rebellion,” (Article)
Title: “Dodging Rebellion: Women and a Politics of Gender in the Berbice Slave Rebellion,”
Author: Kars, Marjoleine
Abstract: This article examines the 1763 slave uprising in Dutch Berbice, a small colony next to Suriname on the Caribbean coast of South America. Interested in the lived experiences of all enslaved people, I move beyond the military conflict between rebel leaders and colonial slave owners on which historians most often focus. Using the unusually rich records generated in Berbice over more than a year of insurgency, I argue that the rebellion did not encompass all enslaved people in the colony, but was the work of a determined minority who used coercion, including re-enslavement, to get others to join. Many enslaved Berbicians were neither purposeful rebels nor committed collaborators or loyalists. Eager to stay alive and preserve their independence once slavery was overthrown, such people, many of them women, struggled to dodge both the Dutch and the rebels. A focus on the internal politics of rebellion, or the struggle over who will rule at home, reveals that as an emancipatory process, armed rebellion was profoundly gendered, hierarchical, and exacerbated existing divisions within the enslaved community. For many, agency in rebellion consisted of accommodation and self-preservation, rather than outright rebellion.
Year: 2016
Access Model: open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: American Historical Review
Publisher: Oxford University Press

“’Wij beleeven hier droevige tyden’: Europeanen, Indianen en Afrikanen in de Berbice Slavenopstand, 1763-1764," in Victor Enthoven, Henk den Heijer, Han Jordaan, eds., (Book Section)
Title: “’Wij beleeven hier droevige tyden’: Europeanen, Indianen en Afrikanen in de Berbice Slavenopstand, 1763-1764," in Victor Enthoven, Henk den Heijer, Han Jordaan, eds.,
Author: Kars, Marjoleine
Editor: Victor Enthoven, Henk den Heijer, Han Jordaan
Abstract: discusses the 1763 Berbice slave rebellion and its military suppression
Year: 2013
Publisher: Brill, Leiden
Book Title: Geweld in de West: Een militaire geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Atlantische wereld,
ISBN: 9789004246263

“’Cleansing the Land’: Dutch-Amerindian Cooperation in the Suppression of the 1763 Slave Rebellion in Berbice,” (Book Section)
Title: “’Cleansing the Land’: Dutch-Amerindian Cooperation in the Suppression of the 1763 Slave Rebellion in Berbice,”
Author: Kars, Marjoleine
Editor: Lee, Wayne E.
Abstract: Argues for the importance of native American resistance in the suppression of the 1763 slave rebellion in Dutch Guyana.
Year: 2011
Publisher: NYU Press
Book Title: Empires and Indigenes: Intercultural Alliance, Imperial Expansion, and Warfare in the Early Modern World
ISBN: 9780814753088

“Policing and Transgressing Borders: Soldiers, Slave Rebels, and the Early Modern Atlantic,” (Article)
Title: “Policing and Transgressing Borders: Soldiers, Slave Rebels, and the Early Modern Atlantic,”
Author: Kars, Marjoleine
Abstract: Discusses the mutiny of a regiment of European soldiers on the border of Berbice and Suriname in 1763 in the midst of the 1763 slave rebellion in Berbice (Dutch Guyana). These soldier end up joining the very slave rebels they had come to suppress.
Year: 2009
Periodical Title: New West Indian Guide/Nieuwe West Indische Gids
Publisher: KITLV, Leiden, The Netherlands

Blood in the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast (Book)
Title: Blood in the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast
Author: Marjoleine Kars
Abstract: On Sunday, February 27, 1763, thousands of slaves in the Dutch colony of Berbice—in present-day Guyana—launched a massive rebellion which came amazingly close to succeeding. Surrounded by jungle and savannah, the revolutionaries (many of them African-born) and Europeans struck and parried for an entire year. In the end, the Dutch prevailed because of one unique advantage—their ability to get soldiers and supplies from neighboring colonies and from Europe. Blood on the River is the explosive story of this little-known revolution, one that almost changed the face of the Americas. Drawing on nine hundred interrogation transcripts collected by the Dutch when the Berbice rebellion finally collapsed, and which were subsequently buried in Dutch archives, historian Marjoleine Kars reconstructs an extraordinarily rich day-by-day account of this pivotal event. Blood on the River provides a rare in-depth look at the political vision of enslaved people at the dawn of the Age of Revolution and introduces us to a set of real characters, vividly drawn against the exotic tableau of a riverine world of plantations, rainforest, and Carib allies who controlled a vast South American hinterland. An astonishing original work of history, Blood on the River will change our understanding of revolutions, slavery, and of the story of freedom in the New World.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1140351962
Primary URL Description: "The story of a massive eighteenth-century slave rebellion in the Dutch colony of Berbice (now Guyana) which had been all but forgotten. Historian Marjoleine Kars recovers a riveting tale from the archives, including rare first-person accounts from African-born slaves"--
Publisher: The New Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 1620974592
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

---