Show Notes
On Easter Sunday night, April 14, 1816, enslaved people in the parish of St. Philip, Barbados, rose against the planters. It was the largest slave revolt in Barbadian history, named after an African-born leader called Bussa. It lasted three days. This episode tells what the record shows: who led it, how it ended, the colonial response, and why the number of those executed and exiled is given differently by different sources. Sources: BlackPast, Understanding Slavery, the Yale Genocide and Colonialism project's study, the CARICOM Reparations Commission, the Royal Gazette and reference histories. Where sources give different totals, the episode says so.
More from The Griot | Stories Roots Legacy
Why did an oilfield strike in southern Trinidad spread into a colony-wide confrontation over wages, race, and political power? Sources: Trinidad and Tobago National Archives; Butler Papers; Commission of Inquiry into the Disturbances in Trinidad, 1937; British Colonial Office reports; Trinidad Guardian archive
How did a few minutes of shaking destroy Jamaica’s commercial capital and expose the limits of colonial disaster response? Sources: Jamaica Gleaner archive; United States Geological Survey historical earthquake records; Jamaica Legislative Council papers; British Colonial Office dispatches; National Library of Jamaica
How did strikes by sugar workers in 1938 become the turning point that created Jamaica’s modern labor movement and accelerated self-government? Sources: Jamaica Labour Department reports; Jamaica Gleaner archive; UK Colonial Office reports; National Library of Jamaica; Norman Manley papers
How did enslaved workers in Demerara organize across plantations, and why did the colonial government respond with military force and mass executions? Sources: British Parliamentary Papers; Colonial Office records; Guyana National Archives; The Missionary Register; Emilia Viotti da Costa, Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood
How did an American religious community in Guyana become the site of the largest mass death in modern Caribbean history? Sources: U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee hearings; Guyana government investigative records; FBI Jonestown files; Guyana National Archives; The New York Times contemporaneous reporting