‘To prevent any succour to the insurgents’: Enslaved insurgency and the Royal Navy in the Caribbean, 1795–1832

Abstract

While the actions of foreign navies and enemy privateers in the Caribbean have occupied the minds of maritime scholars, the role of the Royal Navy as an instrument of counterinsurgency to be used in suppressing self-liberation struggles by the enslaved has received much less attention. Yet, across the Caribbean, the Royal Navy was instrumental in securing victory for the colonial elite. In addressing this lacuna, this article revisits Fédon's rebellion in Grenada and the Second Carib War in St Vincent in 1795–1796, and the Jamaican Rebellion in 1831–1832, to suggest the extent of naval activity in confronting internal threats, and how responses to revolts illuminate the complex relationship between the navy and enslavement. In adopting its counterinsurgency role, after 1815 the navy found itself in the seemingly paradoxical situation of protecting enslavement and suppressing the slave trade.