Colonial history is not just a succession of European dominations. Black peoples responded with memorable revolts and reprisals. From the Marlborough mutiny to the 1947 Malagasy uprising, through Morant Bay and Haiti’s independence, here is a look back at 5 episodes in which the oppressed reversed the course of history.
A ship rocks in the middle of the Atlantic. The sea is heavy, the air thick with salt and fear. In the dark holds, chains clatter against damp wood, pacing the labored breath of hundreds of captives. Everything seems predetermined: crossing, market, plantation, death. But suddenly, in the suffocation, a spark erupts. A hand reaching out, a whisper, the outline of a plan. There, beneath the planks of the slave ship, the idea of a reversal is born.
Colonial history has too often been told as a one-way narrative: Europe imposing its law by force of arms, the slave trade and colonization reducing Africa and its descendants to powerlessness. Yet there exists another memory, woven from acts of refusal, vengeance, and reprisal. It tells us that Black people were never passive victims: they struck, at times with a violence equal to what they endured, reminding empires that oppression always carries a cost.
It is this obscured face of history that we revisit here: 5 episodes in which Black retribution manifested in blood, fire, and memory. From the hold of a slave ship to the Haitian insurrection, from Jamaican revolts to the uprisings of Madagascar, each act tells the same truth: in the face of European oppression, Black peoples responded—not only with prayers, but also with relentless reprisals.
I. The marlborough ship massacre (1752, Atlantic)
In the 18th century, the Atlantic is not just a sea of commerce but a cemetery in the making. Along the triangular routes, hundreds of ships like the Marlborough transport their human cargo: men, women, children seized from West Africa, packed into the holds, reduced to merchandise. The ledgers speak of “Negro heads” or “pieces of India,” but behind these numbers lie lives, gazes, grudges.
In 1752, as the Marlborough cuts through the ocean, a plot forms beneath the damp wood of the lower decks. The captives, despite hunger, thirst, and shackles, hold on to an invincible weapon: the will not to die as slaves. One evening, amid the clamor of waves and chains, the mutiny erupts. The prisoners break free, attack the crew, and turn the hold into a battlefield.
The British sailors are stunned by the fury of those they believed broken. Sabers seized, weapons turned against their masters, blood runs across the planks. Screams mix with the noise of blades and bodies thrown overboard. The slave ship becomes an instrument of brutal justice: dealing death to the tormentors, transforming the Marlborough not into a merchant vessel but a floating coffin for its oppressors.
The episode deeply shocks European shipowners and traders. The long-feared possibility of revolt materializes with violence. In the ports of Bristol or Liverpool, shipowners demand stricter discipline: military reinforcements on board, heavier shackles, increased surveillance. But the fear does not fade. Every crossing becomes haunted by the idea that the holds could, at any moment, turn into a field of vengeance.
The Marlborough massacre is not isolated: it belongs to a series of mutinies that marked the Atlantic slave trade, irrefutable proof that captives resisted the destiny imposed on them. While colonial archives often downplay their scale, African and Caribbean oral memory preserves the stories of men and women who chose fire and blood over submission.
II. The malagasy uprising (1947, Madagascar)
In 1947, Madagascar is not a free island but a colony under French rule. For more than half a century, the most fertile lands had been confiscated for colonial agriculture, the population subjected to the head tax, and Malagasy culture relegated to exotic folklore. Added to this is the frustration of Malagasy veterans returning from World War II: they shed their blood to liberate France, yet on their own soil, they were denied the right to self-determination.
On the night of 29 March 1947, the spark ignites. In the east of the island, then in the Highlands, groups of militants and peasants armed with spears, machetes, and a few rifles launch the insurrection. Colonists are attacked, garrisons stormed, European villages burned. For many, it is a brutal revenge: direct retribution against a colonial system experienced as permanent humiliation.
The initial successes, spectacular, throw the French authorities into panic. But soon, repression falls with unprecedented ferocity. The colonial army deploys troops, armored vehicles, and aviation. Suspect villages are burned, prisoners summarily executed, entire populations subjected to torture. Blind bombings aim to crush any desire for resistance. The toll is terrible: between 80,000 and 100,000 Malagasy killed, nearly 10% of the population at the time.
For Paris, the goal is to remind everyone that the colonial order tolerates no challenge. But for Madagascar, the memory of 1947 becomes foundational. The insurrection, even crushed in blood, enters collective memory as the first great modern cry of revolt against French domination. Popular stories preserve the image of villages rising up, of young people choosing death over humiliation.
In 1960, when Madagascar gains independence, the 1947 uprising is celebrated as the bloody prelude to restored freedom. Still today, every 29 March, the memory of these fighters haunts and inspires: their tragic yet heroic retribution continues to remind the world that colonial oppression was never accepted in silence.
III. The morant bay insurrection (1865, Jamaica)
Twenty-seven years after the official abolition of slavery in the British Empire, Jamaica remains marked by a deep racial divide. White planters continue to own the best lands, while former slaves and their descendants live in extreme poverty. Taxes, land restrictions, and an openly discriminatory judicial system keep the Black population in a condition close to servitude.
In this climate of injustice, one figure rises: Paul Bogle, a Baptist deacon from Stony Gut, respected for his charisma and moral integrity. On 11 October 1865, he leads several hundred supporters to the small town of Morant Bay in St. Thomas parish. Their destination: the courthouse, symbol of a colonial justice system that condemns the poor for unpaid taxes while protecting white elites.
When the demonstrators confront the militia, tension snaps. Shots are fired, several protesters fall. In response, the crowd storms the courthouse, sets the building on fire, and attacks colonial representatives. A dozen Europeans and loyalists are killed. This is not blind violence but targeted retribution: making an oppressive system pay for centuries of contempt.
The British Empire reacts without mercy. Governor Edward Eyre orders massive repression. The army and militia sweep through the parish, summarily executing hundreds of Black people, burning houses, imposing floggings and arbitrary imprisonment. More than 400 people are killed, hundreds more deported or sentenced to forced labor. Paul Bogle, arrested and hanged, becomes a martyr.
But the memory of Morant Bay transcends the brutality of its repression. The insurrection reveals to the world that abolition, without social justice or racial equality, is nothing but an illusion. It enshrines Paul Bogle among the heroes of Black resistance and later inspires Jamaican nationalism and Caribbean emancipation movements. Today, his portrait appears on Jamaican currency, reminding everyone that the fight for dignity also began in the flames of a colonial courthouse.
IV. The perfect ship massacre (1773, Gambia)
In 1773, on the banks of the Gambia River, a British ship named Perfect sets sail, its hold filled with captives destined for the plantations of the New World. Like so many other slave ships, it embodies the arrogance of an empire convinced of its omnipotence: the sea as a highway of the trade, the holds as floating tombs. But this time, the journey will not follow the intended script.
Barely into the crossing, an uprising breaks out. The captives—reduced to silence and suffering—find in their numbers and despair a weapon stronger than chains. The mutiny is swift, violent, implacable: the enslaved seize what they can—tools, pieces of iron—turning against their jailers the brutality inflicted upon them. The crew is overwhelmed and decimated. Those sailors not killed are thrown overboard, swallowed by the ocean they believed they ruled.
In the hold turned battlefield, retribution expresses itself with total intensity: a brutal inversion of roles. Those who, hours earlier, dealt death and humiliation now become the victims. The Perfect, symbol of the triangular trade, becomes a ship of vengeance.
Yet the story of the Perfect remains fragmented. Colonial archives, embarrassed by such events, limit themselves to terse mentions, buried within ledgers where one prefers to speak of “loss of cargo” instead of victorious revolt. African and diasporic memory, however, preserves this moment as proof of courage and dignity.
This massacre, like that of the Marlborough twenty years earlier, reminds us that the holds of the Atlantic were not only sites of suffering but also strongholds of resistance. Each mutiny—whether successful or crushed—planted a deep fear in European shipowners: the notion that their ships, instruments of wealth, could at any moment become their graves.
V. The 1804 massacre in Haiti
On 1 January 1804, in Gonaïves, Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaims Haiti’s independence. After more than a decade of war against the colonists, Napoleon’s armies, and slaveholding powers, the former Saint-Domingue becomes the first Black republic in modern history. But this victory does not end the cycle of violence; it instead opens the way to the most radical act of retribution of the colonial period.
In the months that follow, Dessalines orders the systematic execution of the remaining French colonists on the island—men, women, and sometimes children. The massacres unfold in waves, region by region, carried out by Haitian soldiers convinced that independence will never be secure as long as the former masters remain on liberated soil. In plains and cities, plantations and streets, revenge erupts: yesterday’s oppressors become today’s victims.
This retribution, extreme in its brutality, responds to centuries of slavery, torture, rape, and massacres perpetrated by the colonial system. For Dessalines, it is less a personal vendetta than a political strategy: eradicating any possibility of French reconquest and sealing the irreversibility of independence. In his own words:
“We have dared to be free; let us dare to be free by ourselves and for ourselves.”
The news shocks Europe. The French press denounces “barbarism”; European chancelleries condemn unbearable cruelty. Yet these same nations remain silent about the millions killed by the slave trade and the plantations. Haiti’s diplomatic isolation sets in immediately: the island, surrounded by enemies, becomes a pariah in the international order.
But for Haitians, 1804 remains the foundational moment of unprecedented Black sovereignty. Dessalines’ act, however controversial, affirms a brutal truth: independence is paid in blood, and freedom won by slaves cannot tolerate the return of their masters. History remembers this episode as a rupture—an ultimate retribution, carved at the tip of bayonets—that made Haiti the feared and admired symbol of the oppressed worldwide.
Breaking the silence of history
These 5 episodes remind us of a truth too often erased from official narratives: colonial history was never a monologue dictated by Europe, but a bloody dialogue in which the oppressed also took the initiative. In the holds of the Atlantic, on Jamaica’s plains, in Malagasy villages or Haitian streets, Black peoples struck back, at times with fury equal to what they endured.
To label these events as “massacres” without placing them in the long chain of systemic violence (slavery, colonization, institutional racism) is to distort history. Each act of retribution was first a response to centuries of brutality. It was accumulated humiliations, torture, and dispossession—not gratuitous cruelty—that forged these eruptions of vengeance.
The question that remains is that of memory. In school textbooks, these revolts are often reduced to a few lines, if they are mentioned at all. In African and diasporic oral traditions, however, they survive as flames of dignity. Today, the challenge is to fully rehabilitate them—not for blind glorification, but to recognize that the history of Black peoples facing Europe was never merely one of submission, but also a succession of resistances, reprisals, and conquests of freedom.
Notes and references
C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, Vintage, 1963.
Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution, Harvard University Press, 2004.
Hilary Beckles, A History of Barbados: From Amerindian Settlement to Nation-State, Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Michael Craton, Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies, Cornell University Press, 1982.
Eugene Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World, LSU Press, 1979.
Richard Price (ed.), Marron Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Jacques Tronchon, L’Insurrection malgache de 1947, Karthala, 1986.
Carolyn Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below, University of Tennessee Press, 1990.
David Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies, Indiana University Press, 2002.
Verene Shepherd, Livestock, Sugar and Slavery: Contested Terrain in Colonial Jamaica, Ian Randle Publishers, 2009.
Gad Heuman, The Killing Time: The Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica, University of Tennessee Press, 1994.
Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer (ANOM), holdings on Madagascar and Haiti (colonial reports, 1750–1950).
Runoko Rashidi, African Star over Asia: The Black Presence in the East, Books of Africa, 2012.
Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, 1972.
Summary
I. The Marlborough Ship Massacre (1752, Atlantic)
II. The Malagasy Uprising (1947, Madagascar)
III. The Morant Bay Insurrection (1865, Jamaica)
IV. The Perfect Ship Massacre (1773, Gambia)
V. The 1804 Massacre in Haiti
