Eighth Installment
Part V
Conclusion
Where did the revolutionaries go wrong?
The first revolutionaries were surprisingly successful. They seized the opportunity to begin the Uprising at just the right moment, and immediately after that, they acted with decisiveness and discipline. They took control of the river in stages, until the Dutch were pinned at the outpost of St. Andries in an extremely precarious and vulnerable position. It seemed as if at that point they had all the odds in their favour: Why then did they fail?
Problems
In order to have maintained their initial successes, the first revolutionaries would have had to deal with various problems, both immediate and potential at an early stage. As Coffy and his successors were to discover, maintaining freedom in the long term was an infinitely more difficult proposition than winning it in the first place. Nevertheless perhaps one of the most remarkable things about Coffy is that from the very beginning he seems to have been aware of the complexity of the problems with which he would have to cope. Some of these he attempted to come to terms with immediately, and it may not be altogether his fault that he failed. Others, such as the disunity within his own ranks, were probably beyond the capacity of any leader to solve at that point in time.
Food supplies
From the point at which Coffy took over the Government, he addressed himself to the problem of supplying a large body of revolutionaries over an extended period. Coffy ran a centralized state which involved clear division of labour. Plantations were maintained, and particular sections of the work forces were identified to grow provisions. A portion of his slave force was also employed in food production. In the long term Coffy clearly intended supplementing the local diet by trading with the Dutch.
Towards the end of Coffy’s administration it became obvious that a food crisis was approaching. This may have occurred because his system of production was suffering from his own loss of authority. A centralized system needs a strong central authority in order to work effectively, and towards the end of his government Coffy was clearly not in full control, Coffy’s successors never even attempted to organize large-scale food supplies, and consequently near starvation broke the resolution of many a revolutionary.
War supplies
Once again, Coffy does seem to have been conscious of the need to supply his army with firearms and ammunition over an extended period. His reluctance to commit himself to small skirmishes against the Dutch seems to have been related to his anxiety to conserve gunpower. He obviously decided that small battles with the Dutch achieved nothing, and just wasted ammunition. It may be partly for this reasons that he was angry with Accara for going to battle on the 2nd April, 1763 without his authority. His partial answer to the problems, therefore, was to save ammunition for as long as possible and, when battle was decided upon, to deal the Dutch one massive, crushing blow. A major victory against the Dutch at Dageraad would not only have denied the Whites a foothold in the Colony, but would also have given Coffy access to new gunpower supplies. Unfort-unately, the second battle of Dageraad on May 13, 1763, turned out to be a Dutch victory, thereby putting Coffy on the defensive, and depriving him of the possibility of replenishing his ammunition.
Coffy did repair and perhaps even manufacture weapons at the smithy in Fort Nassau, but he lacked the raw materials to make gunpower. His other solution to the problem was also doomed to failure. One of Coffy’s reasons for wishing to spread the Uprising to Demerara was to open up new sources of ammunition. The Demerara scheme came to nothing, however, and his attempts to exchange hostages for gunpower with the Dutch also came to naught. Although the Dutch deserters from Suriname brought some weapons and ammunition with them, the quantities were insufficient to make any real impact on Coffy’s situation. Once Coffy had failed to dislodge the Dutch from Dageraad, and had found it impossible to spread the Uprising beyond the borders of Berbice, there probably was no solution to the problem.
Despite this failure, it should be remembered that both Coffy and Atta showed military leadership qualities in refusing to commit ill-trained and ill-equipped troops to open battle tactics and firearms training, and neither imagined that the Dutch could be defeated by throwing large numbers of untrained soldiers mostly armed with spares against battle-hardened troops equipped with muskets and cannon. Despite the shortage of weapons and the acute shortage of gunpower, their troops acquitted themselves with skill in virtually all their encounters with the Dutch. Even Coffy’s two major setbacks at Dageraad were a very long way from being humiliating defeats, and in the end the Dutch only succeeded in crushing the Uprising by importing a large body of well-equipped marines, and by recruiting large numbers of Caribs.
External forces
Perhaps Coffy’s most intractable problem was that of the bush Amerindian tribes, particularly the warrior Caribs. At the point at which Coffy seized control in Berbice, many members of the bush tribes had vacated Berbice owning to the epidemic. Despite their apparent absence in February 1763, it could have been anticipated that the Dutch might bring in Indians. Whether Coffy perceived the tremendous potential danger that they represented is not really known. By acting in concert with the Dutch, the Amerindians eventually succeeded in throwing a net around the Colony, thereby cutting off all avenues of escape for the revolutionaries when the Dutch went on the attack. Failure to neutralize them probably meant that the Uprising was doomed to failure in the long run.
In dealing with the problem of the bush tribes, Coffy had very few options at his disposal. He could, of course, have tried to negotiate with them, but this would have been an extremely difficult proposition in the case of the Essequibo Caribs. Possibly his best course of action was his scheme to spread the revolt to Demerara, or even Suriname. Had he succeeded in persuading the slaves of Demerara and Essequibo to rise up as well, there is a chance that the Amerindians might have stayed in the interior. In any event, it would have been very difficult for the Dutch to seal off an area as large as modern-day Guyana. In other to succeed, however, it would have been necessary for Coffy to implement his scheme almost immediately after he took power in Berbice.
The longer he delayed, the more difficult it would have become to put his plan into effect. In fact, anticipating something of the kind, the authorities in both Suriname and Demerara actually did take measures for their own protection, although in the event these proved unnecessary, and the revolutionaries never found their way along the bush paths to Demerara, or actually attempted to link up with the Saramaccas of Suriname.
There is every reason to suppose that Coffy foresaw that the Dutch would seek assistance from neighbouring territories, and that they might bring in troops from Europe. It is very much a matter for debate, however, as to whether outside forces, whatever their strength, could have crushed the revolt unaided and without the assistance of the Amerindians. In 1772, the Dutch sent a force of marines to Suriname under the command of Colonel Fourgeoud to crush the Bonni maroons. This substantial and well-equipped expedition, which was led by an officer who had fought in Berbice, and included men who had also served there, met with little success against these maroons. Unlike Berbice, the Dutch received little or no assistance from the Amerindian tribes.
Disunity
The disunity within the revolutionary ranks caused Coffy’s own down fall, and made it very difficult to deal with the Dutch. The question of how crucial a factor it was in the failure of the Uprising is a v
ery difficult one to answer. It is quite possible that even if the revolutionaries had remained united under Coffy, a combination of a shortage of gunpower, the presence of the Essequibo Caribs, and the arrival of the Dutch marines would have been sufficient to defeat them eventually. Nevertheless, the lack of unity made a Dutch victory unavoidable.
It is almost impossible to state now with any certainty whether Coffy handled the situation among his followers badly, or whether he himself was in any way responsible for the disunity. The likelihood is, however, that there was not too much that he, or any other leader, could have done about it. Certainly, the African leaders, like Atta, who succeeded him seem to have done a far worse job. What unity there was amongst the revolutionaries is mostly associated with Coffy’s period of office.
The differences of opinion over the ultimate aims of the Uprising and the strategy to be adopted in order to achieve those aims had probably existed right from the very beginning. Coffy and his supporters had a very complex vision of the future involving the creation of a political state. This was unacceptable to many others who saw themselves operating small maroon communities in the bush and abandoning the plantation system altogether. This split in aims and strategy corresponded in general to the division between the Creoles and the Africans. As long as the Uprising met with some measure of success, Coffy was probably able to impose his views on everyone without too much difficulty, but as soon as the revolutionaries ran into problems, quarrels arose. Coffy’s plans were not something that the African nation could appreciate, and in the end it was the Africans who triumphed. Once the Africans took over power, there was probably no one leader who could have united them.
Errors of judgment and tactics
Time and again, the revolutionaries were in situation where, if they had taken the necessary action, they would have increased their chances of success. Coffy’s first major tactical error, which may have been the most crucial of the uprising, was not to attack the Dutch when they were marooned at St. Andries. His best chance of negotiating with them later was to drive them out first, and keep up the momentum. As it was, he allowed them to get a foothold at Dageraad.
In several subsequent attacks (e.g. the two battles of Dageraad), the revolutionaries attacked when the Dutch were at their strongest, not their weakest. It would appear that the revolutionaries did not have adequate information about the condition and general strength of the Dutch. Both Atta and Coffy missed golden opportunities to attack the Dutch when most of the latter’s soldiers were ill and not in a position to defend themselves.
Although Coffy was correct in thinking that he needed to capture one of the large Dutch boats equipped with cannon in order to control the river, he was mistaken in supposing that it could be done in a pitched battle situation such as that of the 13th May. As it was, the very boat which Coffy hoped to capture decimated his army.
Finally, of course, Coffy misjudged the situation and misread Van Hoogenheim. He seems to have assumed that the Dutch Government was negotiating in good faith when he was not, and he probably assumed that he (Coffy) was in a similar position to the maroons of Suriname, which he was not. He would have had to have done far more to convince the Dutch that they had no hope of regaining their former colony before they would have seriously contemplated negotiating with him.
By the time Atta took over, there was little hope of long-term success. At that point, a few small bands of maroons might have been able to establish themselves in the bush beyond the boundaries of Berbice (a few did so in Demerara), but lacking unity, ammunition and food, Atta could not possibly have hoped to hold the upper part of the Colony against the enemy for very long, no matter what strategy he adopted.
For their part, the Dutch made relatively few tactical errors, and no strategic ones from March 1763 onwards. Despite the constant flow of reinforcements, they resisted the temptation to attack the revolutionaries until they were positive that the Colony was completely surrounded by Amerindians. The Dutch could afford to wait; the revolutionaries could not.
