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Seminar 'Slave Insurgents and the Political Impact of Free Blacks in a Revolutionary Age: The Revolt of 1795 in Coro, Venezuela'.

When: Tuesday, May 6, 2025, 5:15 PM - 7:00 PM
Where: Room 1. 01. 1., Bancroft Building, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS

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Queen Mary Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies seminar by Global Professorial Fellow at the School of History Herman L. Bennett 

What happens to our understanding of the Age of Revolution if we acknowledge the existence of substantial and significant cultures of freedom throughout the Atlantic world?  Animated by this question, I intend to describe one of the largest yet neglected free black revolts in the history of the Americas—the 1795 Revolt in Coro, Venezuela in which the enslaved also figured prominently. The revolt of 1795 featured an extraordinary alliance between urban free blacks and rural slaves, creoles, Africans and Indians, black rustics and black travelers, natives and strangers, field hands and black militiamen.  In forging this alliance around freedom for slaves, the cessation of the sales tax (alcabala) and the formation of a Republica we discern the complexity of the conspiracy which, in turn, brought tension in a local society into relief.  A significant source of tension, I will argue, was the presence of a free black majority which pressed on the local social order.  The accumulated proceedings—mined in Archivo de la Indies, Sevilla—underscore the threat the 1795 revolt posed to the province because of the range of alliances, the movement’s scope and objectives along with the timing of events in the contours of the revolutionary Atlantic.  In the context of a colonial slave social formation, such demands and the presence of a free black majority offered a revolutionary challenge that still remains overlooked in our framing of the Age of Revolutions.

The Seminar will be available both digitally and in-person: sign-up links are available here and on the mailing list a fortnight before each event.

The seminar is organised by the Queen Mary Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies 

 

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