The successful 1776 revolt against British rule in North America has been hailed almost universally as a great step forward for humanity. But the Africans then residing in the colonies overwhelmingly sided with London. In this trailblazing book, Gerald Horne complements his earlier celebrated Negro Comrades of the Crown, by showing that in the prelude to 1776, the abolition of slavery seemed all … slavery seemed all but inevitable in London, delighting Africans as much as it outraged slaveholders, and sparking the colonial revolt.
In the prelude to 1776, more and more Africans were joining the British military, and anti-slavery sentiments were deepening throughout Britain. And in the Caribbean, rebellious Africans were chasing Europeans to the mainland. Unlike their counterparts in London, the European colonists overwhelmingly associated enslaved Africans with subversion and hostility to the status quo. For European colonists, the major threat to security in North America was a foreign invasion combined with an insurrection of the enslaved. And as 1776 approached, London-imposed abolition throughout the colonies was a very real and threatening possibility—a possibility the founding fathers feared could bring the slave rebellions of Jamaica and Antigua to the thirteen colonies. To forestall it, they went to war.
The so-called Revolutionary War, Horne writes, was in large part a counter-revolution, a conservative movement that the founding fathers fought in order to preserve their liberty to enslave others—and which today takes the form of a racialized conservatism and a persistent racism targeting the descendants of the enslaved. The Counter-Revolution of 1776 drives us to a radical new understanding of the traditional heroic creation myth of the United States.
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The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America by Gerald Horne pps. 349, New York, NYU Press (2014)
Reviewed by: Patricia M. Muhammad
Originally published in: 101:3 Journal of African American History (formerly the Journal of Negro History):
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.5323/jafriamerhist.101.3.0358?journalCode=jaah
Professor Gerald Horne’s book guides the reader to analyze the motives of opponents and advocates of the international slave trade in relation to pivotal events leading to colonial declaration of independence from the British Crown in 1776. Professor Horne challenges the reader to shelve mainstream notions that colonists rebelled against the Crown merely due to dissatisfaction with control England continued to exert until the former waged war to permanently sever ties with its legitimate colonial rule. Rather, Professor Horne suggests the reader grapple with the alternate, documented narrative, that the crux of the dispute between mainlanders and the Crown was colonial development under the auspices of the slave trade, their desire to monopolize it with reckless disregard to Africans’ lives and their intent to usurp their obligation to pay taxes the Anglican monarch levied.
The book begins with the late 17th century through the late 18th century and focuses on various factors which undergirded the instability of the international slave trade. Professor Horne explores various African and indigenes revolts garnered through impermissible assemblies against colonists, slavers and merchants in order to secure their freedom from a lifetime of servitude.
Professor Horne also discusses the Crown’s decline as a market participant through its commercial alter-ego, the Royal African Company. In order for the Crown to monopolize the slave market, it forbade colonists from trading with France and Spain and imposed additional taxes on Africans. As European powers vied for territorial expansion and capitalistic gains, resultant wars impeded the Crown’s economic growth, Spain befriended the indigenes and enticed Africans with freedom on the condition that they fight on behalf of Spain against colonists who sought to encroach on Florida and other Spanish holdings. Nevertheless, Professor Horne notes that Spain would not be the only colonial power to provide such inducements to Africans, as France and England eventually did the same.
Professor Horne foreshadows that the slave trade could not be sustained long-term causing colonists to attempt to extricate as much financial benefit through the exploitation of Africans to any extent possible. Beyond the few moral voices of enlightenment which opposed the slave trade, the Crown concluded that colonists hastened their own demise due to their increased African imports as integral conduits of agricultural production. The Crown therefore sought to extinguish the slave trade in the latter years to prevent the perceived annihilation of white settler population.
Professor Horne asserts that colonists in the West Indies nearly abandoned the idea of the slave trade as they noted the Crown’s common law against slavery . However, the Crown evaded the moral issue of slavery abroad as a means to ebb colonial dissatisfaction. Professor Horne posits that the Crown was in a peculiar position of denouncing colonists for their brutal treatment of Africans and slave trading, while simultaneously financially benefiting from the international market in African slaves.
Professor Horne analyzes the impact of one crucial act —the Crown’s edict of 1776, which urged enslaved Africans of the republic(an) South to take up arms to fight alongside the Patriots with freedom as their spoils. This edict only solidified the rebel’s view that England was working against colonists’ financial interests, as the edict sought to uncover treacherous settlers who continued to circumvent British autocracy. Although Professor Horne encapsulates various episodes in colonial history using primary and secondary sources equally, there are several instances in which he reiterates events, does not discuss such events in sequential order, and poses questions while explaining the cause of an event. This interactive method of writing may be the author’s attempt to challenge the reader to analyze prior discussed events or to simply consider the ideas as plausible conjecture. Nevertheless, these queries disrupt the flow of reading and are detrimental to Professor Horne’s presumed purpose.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave trade itself was the catalyst which led to the increased population of the Caribbean isles and mainland development as well as the social seed which evolved racial classification for both master or slave; up to and beyond the year 1776. Yet, Professor Horne references the term ‘Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade’ as a whole not more than three times throughout the book, though this intricate enterprise provided the foundation for colonists to declare their independence in 1776 which in no way intended the liberation of Africans and their Black American progeny.
Professor Horne concludes that July 4, 1776 resulted from several events including France and Spain as the Crown’s formidable foes in territorial expansion and the slave trade, various colonial powers arming Africans in wars which embittered colonists and African revolts against European captors both in frequency and severity. Professor Horne evaluates includes colonists who engaged in smuggling and piracy of both slaves and goods as among additional factors woven into the garment of insurgency rebels cloaked as independence from the Crown’s ‘tyranny,’ As a result of these maneuvers, which reduced the Crown’s financial stability through trade with the Crown’s enemies, colonies gained economic strength, the West Indies became overpopulated with Africans, which led Africans to create stable communities of their own and force colonists to negotiate treaties of independence from their former masters. The counter-revolution was characterized by African revolt against colonists which stemmed the tide of southern colonial revolt against the Crown. Professor Horne surmises that “Understandably, the only fitting rebuke for revolutionaries bent on abolishing private property—albeit in themselves—was a steely counter revolution.” Yet, the historical first voice narrative of the African is elusive in this book—which demonstrates the basis for what Professor Horne perpetuates as the ‘counter-revolution.’