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10 Black Uprisings Against European and Arab Oppression They Won’t Teach in Schools – Part 2

Bussa’s Revolution

Bussa’s Revolution

In 1816, Bussa, an African-born Bajan slave, led an uprising in Barbados which is popularly known as Bussa’s Revolution.

On Easter Sunday, April 14, Bussa organized an island-wide revolt and marched his army of thousands into battle against white slave owners who occupied the island. The fighters eventually killed several plantation owners and took over half the island before the war was over.

Bussa’s Revolution was the first of three large-scale slave revolts in the British West Indies. After the war, a white plantation owner was quoted saying:

“The disposition to an enslaved persons in general is very bad. We hold the West Indies by a very precarious tenure – that of military strength only. I would not give a year’s purchase for any island we now have.”

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