An absolutely phenomenal window into the Caribbean periphery during a the Seven Years War. Well researched through surviving documentation, this harrowing tale of rebellion foreshadows a greater uprising only 30 years later. Wild Coast Dutch colonies hugged tropical tidal rivers for hundreds of miles inland in prison made of Jungle, Savannah, and bands of Native allies that would return any runaways.
Recent conditions due to the Seven Years War had completely isolated the Plantations. Large scale starvation and disease caused slave drivers to work their dwindling crew harder, while lower numbers left little extra hands to farm the slave gardens. The supplemental shipping was blocked and left the colony defenseless. A stray Slave ship that arrived in 1762 and a localized rebellion, led to many enslaved to see clear weaknesses exposed in Dutch Rule.
When a general rebellion broke out the next year, creolized and recently enslaved former soldiers united to shake the colony to its very core. “Blood On the River” recounts the human side of the rebellion in both the African military roots melded to the creolized Berbice Dutch Slaves that led Plantation crews. Pure terror and brutality is to be found on the water, but also placed within the context of the recent horrendous starvation. Lawful and cultural structures in West Africa found this heinous treatment as inducing a firm response to right the balance. Many were caught in between as plantation wide connected families sought to stay neutral.
Only through Native support and backup from the local colonies, could Berbice Dutch colonists hold out until help came from Europe. A hope that the colony could be split at the height of slave power, was slowly crushed in a drawn out series of jungle small unit skirmishes. Rebel attempts to use the very method of European diplomatic exchange, sowed their eventual defeat by giving the colonial forces time to receive support. Their willingness to use the structures and protocols of colonial authority demonstrated great knowledge in governmental organization and military affairs. Lost in the greater engagements of The Seven Years War in the Caribbean and overshadowed by the Haitian Revolution, The Berbice uprising is a representative in miniature of the pressures soon to boil over throughout the Atlantic Basin.
New York, Quebec, and The Water Route to The Center of The Worldb 