“A Bargain with His Brother”

Abstract

In August 1831, around sixty enslaved people fought a war against enslavers in Southampton County, Virginia. It became known as the “Nat Turner Revolt.” Four months later, perhaps sixty thousand enslaved people fought their own emancipation war, commonly known as the “Baptist War,” throughout much of Jamaica. These uprisings differed in size, strategy, and outcome. The Virginian episode allowed slaveholders to strengthen their grip on slavery, while the Jamaican one catalyzed Britain’s capitulation to abolition. Historians have detailed the significant role kinship played in the more localized Virginian example. Comparing both emancipation wars, this paper extends analysis to the Jamaican case. It argues that kinship shaped both uprisings in remarkably similar ways, influencing radicalization and recruitment beforehand, support or opposition during war, and vulnerability to or evasion of white retaliation afterward. The similar function of kinship in such different events suggests a possible larger pattern that shaped other uprisings.