REVOLT AND RETRIBUTION. In the film, the prospect of a revolt by the slaves seems impossible; they cannot communicate with each other; their travel is restricted; the slightest transgression is met with instantaneous and brutal punishment.
It was not always so in the old Dutch colonies. In Berbice, the great slave revolt of 1763 looked like threatening the very presence of the Dutch in Guiana. The rebels even managed to destroy this Dutch Stronghold, Fort Nassau. In the photo, you can see what remains of the steps to what had been a great hall. Although the revolt was brutally suppressed, Berbice's plantations never truly recovered from the revolt.
There was an even more enduring revolt in Suriname. It began in the 1760s, amongst the slaves on the Cottica river. By 1769, the ‘Cottica Rebels’ (as the Dutch called them) had reached Paramaribo, and were setting fire to the edges of the city.
Bloated and luxurious, the planters were unable to respond. Although the company that ran the colony, the ‘Society of Suriname’, had its own army, they were the ‘outcasts of all nations’ with barely anyone fit enough to fight. So the company did what any good company would, and paid someone else. As the only men left were slaves, it was slaves that they employed. This ought to have been the end of Suriname, and yet – in some ways – it was only the beginning. Even today, it is a country with two minds; one urbane and slightly dissolute, the other wild and ascetic.
The revolt lasted much of the next ten years. It makes horrific reading, like an 'Apocalypse Now' of the 18th century; mad colonels; mutilated soldiers; captives hung up in trees. The rebels, led by a slave called Captain Bonny, were never entirely defeated. Instead, they fled into French Guiana, where their descendants remain today, as the 'Boni' community.
I like to think that these revolts contributed to the end of slavery. They made governments realise that there was a heavy price to pay for enslaving human beings, both militarily and financially. In the end, it was a combination of evangelism (personified by William Wilberforce) and free-market economics (championed by Adam Smith) that led to abolition. Without these revolts, emancipation might just have taken a little longer ... (for more on these revolts, see 'Wild Coast; Travels on South America's Untamed Edge')