By A.J. McR. Cameron
In a society whose history has revolved so much around bondage of one kind or another, the Great Uprising of 1763 assumes a particular significance, representing as it does one of those rare interludes when the enslaved confronted their oppressors on their own terms. For Guyanese, therefore, the title of a recent work on the rising by Marjoleine Kars, ‘Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast’ is somewhat disconcerting. In the first place no revolt of those who were enslaved could be correctly described as a ‘mutiny’, and in the second, the essence of the story is not about bloodshed, although inevitably there was plenty of that, but about a level of sustained resistance which at its height even threatened Dutch hegemony in the Colony of Berbice, if not neighbouring colonies as well. It was a unique rising in terms of Caribbean revolts, lasting as it did for almost a year, and with its battles and exchange of correspondence between the leaders and the Dutch governor in some ways presaging the Haitian Revolution.
Once one gets past the lurid book jacket, however, with its blood splurge superimposed on a map of Berbice plantations, the actual text turns out to be something of a revelation. Kars has used an infinitely wider array of sources than anyone who has preceded her, and the details of events which are thereby uncovered provide greater insights into the thinking of those who struck out for their freedom than Guyanese have hitherto been exposed to.
Invariably, the people who live long after a rising has taken place are mostly constrained to see it through the eyes of those who suppressed it, in this instance, the Dutch. They have left us some fairly voluminous accounts, mostly compiled within the framework of their own prejudices, but that hardly satisfies this country’s need to understand the thinking of those who, after all, were either literal or metaphorical forebears. There are, of course, the letters from the leaders Coffy (Coffij, Kofi, Cuffy) and initially Accarra, too, which are available in English, but they cease before Coffy’s death, and in any case for various reasons have their limitations in terms of accessing the full reasoning behind what was being decided at their Fort Nassau headquarters.
In order to provide an insight into this, Kars has relied on the interrogatories or interrogations which took place at the end of the uprising, almost 900 of them, representing, as she says, close to half the number of surviving enslaved adults. She acknowledges that there were obvious pitfalls in being dependent on these, among which was the fact that the Dutch interrogators were not really interested in the grand sweep of events, but on what ‘crimes’ those giving testimony might have committed. For their part, with an eye to the jeopardy they were in, they in turn inevitably framed careful, and not necessarily always truthful answers in response.
The disadvantages notwithstanding, Kars says the interrogatories provide evidence of “how the rebellion was experienced by ordinary African-descended people” as well as laying bare the discord over what freedom really meant. Where appropriate she also draws obvious inferences from what was said.
She is not the first researcher to use these records in her work; Ineke Velzing also did so in her 1979 thesis, a small portion of which was published in Stabroek News on the 250th anniversary of the Uprising in 2013. However, Velzing mainly deals with the replies given by the leaders in addition to a few others in instances where they supplied details relating to critical elements in the story.
Another source of information to which Kars has had recourse and which no one before her had ever utilised, were the Suriname documents. Contrary to what might be assumed, these do allow us to penetrate some of the discussions among the rebels. This is because a detachment of Suriname troops sent by the Governor in Paramaribo to deal with the Magdalenenburgers in Corentyne mutinied and joined the rebels in Canje. Some of them were killed very quickly, no doubt because nobody trusted their motives, but others went on to serve Coffy and subsequently Atta as well. As first-hand witnesses their court martials particularly are of some value.
When Guyanese refer to the uprising, they tend to think of it in terms of the first great movement on the part of all the enslaved to throw off their yoke and live in freedom. But as Kars reveals, at the time freedom was not a simple concept; it meant different things to different people. Joining any kind of action which had as its end the overthrow of the planters and their government was fraught with danger, and the consequences for failure were truly chilling. “No matter how much people hated their enslavement,” writes Kars, “survival was foremost.” As a result, responses covered the spectrum from “strong support to evasion.”
While a few still supported the Dutch, there were many others who joined the rising. There were still others, however, who she says “remained noncommitted where possible, attempting to stay autonomous, or holding off on choosing their allegiance until it became clearer who would prevail.” Kars writes how they hid in the bush behind their plantations as soon as they heard the rebels approach, and moved back again after these – or the Dutch − had passed by.
She describes this as a political statement in itself; a kind of declaration of independence, indicating a preference to live without masters, whether these be the Dutch or the rebels. Kars quotes one man as telling the commissioners in 1764 that “he did not want to be anyone’s slave, and so he stayed home.”
The author puts into context the re-enslavement practised by the rebels, which upends some modern-day Guyanese assumptions about Coffy and those who came after him. She describes how “a successful revolution required control of resources, of territory, and of people.” In order to feed people, kitchen gardens had to be cultivated; in order to prevent the Dutch from retaking the colony, they had to train and supply an army; in order to feed the army they needed cash; in order to get cash they needed to have workers to grow cash crops. “To do all those things, they needed a government to enforce compliance with their rule and to neutralise opponents.”
While the names of all the major leaders as well as the outline of events were known to Guyanese before the publication of this latest work, what Kars does is provide a mass of detail about these which is completely new. Given the vast range of sources to which she has had recourse, her ability to collate the information contained therein and resolve its contradictions is especially impressive. What has emerged in her hands is a thoroughly explored and coherent story. In the case of an uprising which has never before been subject to exhaustive research (Velzing excepted, and her thesis never had the kind of exposure it deserved), in the first instance what people seek is a sequential account of what actually happened. Analysis and the debate about interpretations of the facts will come later.
One of the issues Guyanese have always been curious about is the role of women in the rebellion, since no names have come down to us of which people here are aware. Kars, however, has finally brought a measure of enlightenment to this area, although she has made clear that as the rising proceeded women were not identified in leadership roles.
At the very beginning of the rebellion she writes that there were a few female counsellors who “exerted crucial leadership”. She refers to Amelia of Hollandia and Zeelandia, Coffy’s ship-sister, who was said to have advised him about the loyalty of various people. At the end of the rising some rebels asserted that heads could roll on the word of this woman, and that one man claimed he had seen her “walking around with a broadsword like a man.”
Then there was Accarra’s wife, Barbara, who had a similar function, and who was accused by a bomba’s wife of recommending the execution of her husband and of watching the penalty being carried out while smoking a long pipe. Atta too had his counsellor in the form of a woman called Pallas, whom the Dutch accused, Kars says, of being “an instigator of the rebels through pretend magic.” At the end of the rising she writes that only four women were executed, suggesting in itself that the Dutch did not see them as a significant factor in events.
Another important subject of interest for local readers is the personalities of the major leaders: what they were like and how competent they were. Where this is concerned, Kars has not added a great deal to what was already known, not because of any dereliction on her part, but because little was said by those interrogated in 1764; the Dutch commissioners were simply not interested in pursuing the question.
Kars has corrected some errors which went before: for example, she writes that Goussari was in charge of the rebels at Peereboom, not Cossael (or Kossala as he is better known to English-speaking readers), and who is named by early secondary sources as the negotiator. Then there is the battle between the rebels themselves on Essendam, which was led by Atta on the one side, and she says Accabiré (Guyanese know him as Accabré) on the other. But this leads to a more problematic question. Accabiré belonged to the ‘Ganga’ nation, but who exactly were the Gangas (Gangoes, Gangoos, Guangos)?
Exactly what the breakdown of African nations was in Berbice at this period has never been researched. Those from the West Coast of Africa who were bought by the Dutch were generally shipped through the port of Elmina, while the Bantu-speakers originating from Angola and the Congo were obtained in the free zone of the Loango coast. Since the Congos and Angolans were fairly well represented in the enslaved population of Suriname, in the absence of any data to the contrary it is not unreasonable to assume that the same was true here.
While Kars mentions the Angolans, her emphasis is on the Aminas, which are usually referred to here as Delminas, after their port of shipment. As she rightly points out, there were several factors which might cause an African in the New World to gravitate to one nation or another locally, and these were not necessarily coterminous with their homeland equivalents. Nevertheless, she is of the view that the Akan-speaking peoples were the dominant force among the Aminas, and it is they who were responsible for the rising.
Like Monica Schuler before her, who had only a fraction of the information at her disposal than that which was available to Kars, she also cites the rebellions in the anglophone Caribbean in the 18th century which are laid at the door of the Aminas as evidence that this was a pattern. Whether Kars has established a case for it in Berbice is perhaps a moot point. The revolutionary plantations which were involved in the rising were either contiguous, or faced each other across the river, and they must have held Africans of various nations along with some Creoles. Goussari, whom Kars says probably led the first battle of the uprising at Peereboom, was possibly, she suggests, a ‘Ganga’. In addition, at a fairly early stage Coffy quarrelled with the Creoles, implying they had had some role to play in events. Certainly the initial government structure had a creole patina.
Whatever the case, the question still remains about Accabiré’s social identity. He is a leader who has always been a source of interest in this country, and a college was named after him many years ago. Did he really come from upper Guinea, as Kars says, or from Congo, as Schuler hypothesised? Both writers identified groups which met the criteria. Perhaps the evidence doesn’t exist to enable us to say with any certainty, although Kars does cite several men in 1764 as telling the commissioners they were “Gangoe of a different nation” from Accabiré.
And does Kars believe that the uprising had any hope of success? She writes that had Dutch colonial neighbours not come to the Colony of Berbice’s rescue at an early stage, it would have sunk “into the jungle like a tropical Atlantis.” Had it been “reborn” as an independent
unit, “Governor Coffij might have pre-empted Haiti’s leader Toussaint Louverture as the first black liberator to defeat colonial powers.” What thwarted him, she suggests, was the shortage of key resources and the failure to get additional supporters for the cause. In the end, she writes, “Lacking the long Atlantic reach of early modern European capitalists, the rebels had to resort to different measures to sustain themselves.”
While there are a number of other reasons which could be added to this, her conclusion about the likelihood that the uprising was probably doomed to failure in the long run cannot be gainsaid.
