1. What were slave owners worried about?
Barbados 1816
What were slave owners worried about?

2. Worried slave owners and how they acted
CO 1/53, ff
Description: Letter from Barbados referring to unfounded report of ‘some Negroes being in Rebellion there and a discovery made of their design to rise upon and destroy the Christians’.
Extract:
‘... nothing is or can be made out against any Negroes only some insolent bold Negroes four or five for Example sake were well whipped for terror to others, and one old Negro Man belonging to Madam Sharp was sentenced to be burnt alive for uttering some insolent words
Date: 18 December 1683
Our Catalogue Reference: CO 1/53

3. CO 137/89, f
Description:
‘a terrible insurrection among the Negroes, who have burnt and destroyed all the plantations for 50 miles in length on both sides of the Cape’
Date: 7 and 17 September 1791
Our Catalogue Reference: CO 137/89

4. And finally…
CO 1/35, f 231
Description: Jonathan Atkins, governor of Barbados. ‘In my last I gave you advice of a Damnable Design I had discovered of the Negros to destroy us all and having enquired more thoroughly into it now find it far more dangerous than first we thought for it had spread itself out most of the Plantations in the Island… we have been forced to execute 35 of them for example…
Date: 3/13 October 1675
Our Catalogue Reference: CO 1/35

5. How to control slaves
Barbados was the first of the British possessions in the Americas to become dependent on the labour of enslaved Africans. In these laws were made
. No slaves were to leave plantations with permission and a pass, care should be taken to prevent their ‘wandrings and meetings’ and their carrying of weapons.
They should not be allowed to keep drums, horns or other loud instruments ‘which may call together, or give sign or notice to one another of their wicked Designs and Purposes’ etc. etc.
Severe punishments were sanctioned. Any slave offering violence ‘to any Christian’, should, for a second offence ‘be severely whipped, his Nose slit, and be burned in some part of his Face with a hot Iron’.
Anyone killing his own slave should not be punished; but anyone killing another person’s slave should pay compensation for the loss.

6. FEARS? A Discussion point
From the information given in the sources on the slides, what was it that the slave owners were most worried about?
Can you find any reference to slave owners being paranoid about slave resistance?