The counter-revolution of 1776 : slave resistance and the origins of the United States of America
Gerald Horne (Author), NYU Press
"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 living in the colonies overwhelmingly sided with the British. In this trailblazing book, Gerald Horne shows that in the prelude to 1776, the abolition of slavery seemed all but inevitable in London, delighting Africans as much as it outraged slaveholders, and sparking the colonial revolt. Prior to 1776, anti-slavery sentiments were deepening throughout Britain and in the Caribbean, rebellious Africans were in revolt. For European colonists in America, the major threat to their security was a foreign invasion combined with an insurrection of the enslaved. It was a real and threatening possibility that London would impose abolition throughout the colonies--a possibility the founding fathers feared would bring slave rebellions to their shores. To forestall it, they went to war. The so-called Revolutionary War, Horne writes, was in part a counter-revolution, a conservative movement that the founding fathers fought in order to preserve their right to enslave others. The Counter-Revolution of 1776 brings us to a radical new understanding of the traditional heroic creation myth of the United States." --Amazon
Print Book, English, 2016
First paperback [edition] View all formats and editions
New York University Press, New York, 2016
History
xiv, 349 pages ; 23 cm
9781479806898, 1479806897
960055682
Rebellious Africans: How Caribbean slavery came to the mainland
Free trade in Africans? Did the Glorious Revolution unleash the slave trade?
Revolt! Africans conspire with the French and Spanish
Building a "white" pro-slavery wall: The construction of Georgia
The Stono uprising: Will the Africans become masters and the Europeans slaves?
Arson, murders, poisonings, shipboard insurrections: The fruits of the accelerating slave trade
The biggest losers: Africans and the Seven Years' War
From Havana to Newport, slavery transformed: Settlers rebel against London
Abolition in London: Somerset's case and the North American aftermath
The Counter-Revolution of 1776
"First published in paperback in 2016."--T.p. verso