The history of the most diverse insurrection the world has ever known.
For more than four centuries, enslaved people across the western hemisphere, from the United States and the Caribbean to Mexico and Brazil, fought any way they could to gain their freedom: from the first African revolt in 1521 on the island of Hispaniola to the eighteenth-century Maroon Wars on Jamaica, and the revolution that gave Haiti its independence. In The Great Resistance, acclaimed historian Carrie Gibson recovers their dramatic stories in one sweeping narrative. Focusing on the thousands of acts of defiance that kept the flame of freedom alive, Gibson vividly chronicles the resistance that eventually ended the slave trade and, with Brazil’s abolition in 1888, the institution of slavery itself.
Intertwined with this quest for emancipation were the political revolutions that gave rise to the modern nation-state. At a time when all post-slavery societies face serious questions about social and racial inequality, Gibson provides a radical new interpretation of abolition set amid a sweeping global landscape.
With its deep scholarship and rich narrative, The Great Resistance is a tribute to the persistence of the human spirit to overcome even the darkest of circumstances.
For more than four centuries, enslaved people across the western hemisphere, from the United States and the Caribbean to Mexico and Brazil, fought any way they could to gain their freedom: from the first African revolt in 1521 on the island of Hispaniola to the eighteenth-century Maroon Wars on Jamaica, and the revolution that gave Haiti its independence. In The Great Resistance, acclaimed historian Carrie Gibson recovers their dramatic stories in one sweeping narrative. Focusing on the thousands of acts of defiance that kept the flame of freedom alive, Gibson vividly chronicles the resistance that eventually ended the slave trade and, with Brazil’s abolition in 1888, the institution of slavery itself.
Intertwined with this quest for emancipation were the political revolutions that gave rise to the modern nation-state. At a time when all post-slavery societies face serious questions about social and racial inequality, Gibson provides a radical new interpretation of abolition set amid a sweeping global landscape.
With its deep scholarship and rich narrative, The Great Resistance is a tribute to the persistence of the human spirit to overcome even the darkest of circumstances.
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Reviews
Magisterial . . . Gibson constructs a sweeping vision of resistance to slavery as a defining element of Western history that made "abstract concepts of freedom concrete." Expansive and elegant, this is a marvel
Marvellous. Gibson completely rethinks the history of resistance to Atlantic slavery as equivalent in its scale and intensity to slavery itself. Rather than a patchwork of intermittent rebellions, she narrates an unremitting four-hundred-year campaign for freedom, with all the heroism and the compromises that entailed
Gibson insists on the primacy of the enslaved themselves as agents of their own liberation, "the true instigators of liberty." A solid contribution to the literature of the New World slave trade
Superb! Meticulously researched yet incredibly readable, this is slavery in the Americas as a state of war from beginning to end. The buried histories uncovered in this gripping book centres the story on the enslaved - their agency, dignity and furious resistance. A hugely impressive achievement
Impressive . . . a narrative history brimming with action . . . those who made up what Gibson calls the great resistance ultimately drove the movement toward emancipation for the millions yearning to be free
Superb! Meticulously researched yet incredibly readable, this is slavery in the Americas as a state of war from beginning to end. The buried histories uncovered in this gripping book centre the story on the enslaved - their agency, dignity and furious resistance
A gripping and insightful compendium of resistance to four hundred years of slavery that has long needed to be told
A new intellectual and political perspective on the emergence of freedom in the modern world . . . Gibson invites us to see ourselves as inheritors of something much broader too: a powerful history of political thought and on-the-ground resistance - in many forms, always against seemingly insurmountable odds - that stretched across continents and centuries
A panoramic account . . . as rich in stories from Spanish Cuba, Portuguese Brazil, French Martinique or Dutch Curaçao as from the more familiar settings of the United States or the Anglophone Caribbean