Work 16

The Devel was in the English-man, that he makes every thing work; he makes the Negro work, the Horse work, the Ass work, the Wood work, the Water work, and the Winde work.

Quote: Anonym (1676): Great Newes from the Barbadoes, Or, A True and Faithful Account of the Grand Conspiracy of the Negroes against the English and the Happy Discovery of the Same with the Number of Those That Were Burned Alive, Beheaded, and Otherwise Executed for Their Horrid Crimes. With a Short Discription of That Plantation. London: L. Curtis, p. 6 Picture: Wikimedia

Anonymous enslaved person in Barbados.

England appropriated the island of Barbados in 1625, continuing to control it until 1962. Over the course of the previous century, its inhabitants had either been kidnapped and enslaved or driven out by the Portuguese. Working on the plantations, English and Irish serfs, enslaved Africans and American indigenous peoples were settled, exploited, tortured and murdered in the cultivation of sugar cane. They defended themselves, often together, through flight, arson, murder and revolt. In the Caribbean, as in other parts of the Americas, resilient formerly enslaved people formed what were called Maroon communities (Linebaugh & Rediker 2008). .

*Peter Linebaugh & Marcus Rediker (2000): The Many-headed Hydra. New York: Verso.

1676