Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War

Review
“Brilliant…groundbreaking…Brown’s profound analysis and revolutionary vision of the Age of Slave War―from the too-often overlooked Tacky’s Revolt to the better-known Haitian Revolution―gives us an original view of the birth of modern freedom in the New World.”―Cornel West
“Brown’s brilliant analysis reveals how slave rebellions across the Americas depended upon experienced combatants captured in African conflicts and then sold to Europeans, refuting the canard that slave traders gathered their victims randomly. While tracing the relationships between African warfare and uprisings in the Americas, Brown offers beautifully written portraits of those who survived the crushing forces of colonial imperialism and fought for freedom. Above all else, this astute and comprehensive book is about agency.”―Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
“A sobering read for contemporary audiences in countries engaged in forever wars, reminding us how easily and arbitrarily the edges of empire, and its evils, can fade from or focus our vision. It is also a useful reminder that the distinction between victory and defeat, when it comes to insurgencies, is often fleeting: Tacky may have lost his battle, but the enslaved did eventually win the war.”―Casey Cep, New Yorker
“Brown derives not only a story of the insurrection, but ‘a martial geography of Atlantic slavery,’ vividly demonstrating how warfare shaped every aspect of bondage…Forty years after Tacky’s defeat, new arrivals from Africa were still hearing about the daring rebels who upended the island.”―Julian Lucas, Harper’s
“Outstanding…Brown has produced one of the best treatments of slavery ever written.”―Steve Hahn, Boston Review
“A powerful account of the slave rebellion that took place in Jamaica in 1760 situates it in the context of an era of conflict and argues that slavery was itself a ‘state of war.’”―The Guardian
“A phenomenally insightful and compelling book on both the brutality of British colonialism and the desire for freedom.”―Brad Evans, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Virtuosic…A revelation, and a true heir to The Black Jacobins and The Common Wind…Through prodigious and imaginative work with the archives, or, rather, with their absences―namely, of the voices of the enslaved―Brown shows that, although slavers tried to unmoor the enslaved from their homes and communities, language and culture, and sense of self, the connections between various African communities and the diaspora endured despite the violence of the plantation regime.”―Laleh Khalili, New Statesman
“[A] revealing history…Readers interested in the era will find much of value in this exhaustive portrait of the rebellion’s origins and ramifications.”―Publishers Weekly
“Brown’s reframing of slavery as war allows us to better understand enslaved people as soldiers, diplomats, sailors, and community leaders dedicated to Black freedom (both then and now). Specifically, Brown’s book shows how―within the broader war―enslaved men, women, and children defended themselves and even counterattacked…Will undoubtedly shape generations of scholarship to come.”―Julia Gaffield, Public Books
“[A] careful reconstruction of an understudied footnote in Jamaican history.”―Alex Colville, The Spectator
“Intricately mapping each of the linked but local uprisings across Jamaica and relating them to tides in the global struggle, Brown demonstrates how the rebels applied strategic concepts mastered in wars an ocean away…He shows how they acted on motives and opportunities as global and complex as those of the military officers and planter militias who moved to contain and kill them…A tour de force of research, theory, and historical imagination that transforms anonymous laboring slaves into actors of tragic majesty in an intricate conflict.”―Christopher Moore, Literary Review of Canada
“A compelling account…By connecting the Jamaica insurgencies to larger intra-imperial wars, especially the War of Jenkin’s Ear and the Seven Years’ War, Tacky’s