Shipboard Revolts, African Authority, and the Atlantic Slave Trade

plantation-based revolts were but one element in a spectrum of resistance that transcended Africa, the Middle Passage, and the Americas.2 This article seeks to redress the imbalance in the literature by examining patterns of slave revolts on board ships at the African coast and in the Atlantic crossing between circa i650 and i86o. Using newly revealed quantitative data, it attempts to uncover explanations of these revolts and to assess their impact on the level as well as the structure of the slave trade. The analysis suggests that rebelliousness by slaves on ship and the resulting efforts by European carriers of slaves to curb such behavior significantly reduced the shipments of slaves. In addition, the analysis uncovers major variations in the incidence of revolts over time and, equally important, by geographical origin of the slaves shipped. These variations cannot be explained by reference to failure of European management regimes on slave ships but seem instead to be rooted in differences in the political economy of the various African slave supply regions. Overall, therefore, patterns of shipboard revolt shed important light on the impact of Africa and Africans on the organization and scale of the Atlantic slave trade as well as on the relationship of the trade in enslaved Africans to the development of Atlantic history.