#yamasee

[reasoningdaily]

The Yamasee War: The Black Indians who SHOOK South Carolina

south carolina was totally awakened by the Yamasee Freedmen

[kemetic-dreams]

The Seminole are a Native American people who developed in Florida in the 18th century. Today, they live in Oklahoma and Florida, and comprise three federally recognized tribes: the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, as well as independent groups. 

The word "Seminole" is almost certainly derived from the Creek word simanó-li. This has been variously translated as "frontiersman", "outcast", "runaway", "separatist", and similar words. The Creek word may be derived from the Spanish word cimarrón, meaning "runaway" or "wild one", historically used for certain Native American groups in Florida.

Native American refugees from northern wars, such as the Yuchi and Yamasee after the Yamasee War in South Carolina, migrated into Spanish Florida in the early 18th century. More arrived in the second half of the 18th century, as the Lower Creeks, part of the Muscogee people, began to migrate from several of their towns into Florida to evade the dominance of the Upper Creeks and pressure from encroaching colonists from the Province of Carolina. They spoke primarily Hitchiti, of which Mikasuki is a dialect. This is the primary traditional language spoken today by the Miccosukee in Florida. Joining them were several bands of Choctaw, many of whom were native to western Florida. Some Chickasaw had also left Georgia due to conflicts with colonists and their Native American allies. Also fleeing to Florida were African Americans who had escaped from slavery in the Southern Colonies

As they established themselves in northern and peninsular Florida throughout the 1700s, the various new arrivals intermingled with each other and with the few remaining indigenous people. In a process of ethnogenesis, they constructed a new culture which they called "Seminole", a derivative of the Mvskoke' (a Creek language) word simano-li, an adaptation of the Spanish cimarrón which means "wild" (in their case, "wild men"), or "runaway" [men].[ The Seminole were a heterogeneous tribe made up of mostly Lower Creeks from Georgia, who by the time of the Creek War (1813–1814) numbered about 4,000 in Florida. At that time, numerous refugees of the Red Sticks migrated south, adding about 2,000 people to the population. They were Creek-speaking Muscogee, and were the ancestors of most of the later Creek-speaking Seminole. In addition, a few hundred escaped African-American slaves (known as the Black Seminoles) had settled near the Seminole towns and, to a lesser extent, Native Americans from other tribes, and some white Americans. The unified Seminole spoke two languages: Creek and Mikasuki (mutually intelligible with its dialect Hitchiti), two among the Muskogean languages family. Creek became the dominant language for political and social discourse, so Mikasuki speakers learned it if participating in high-level negotiations. The Muskogean language group includes Choctaw and Chickasaw, associated with two other major Southeastern tribes.

In part due to the arrival of Native Americans from other cultures, the Seminole became increasingly independent of other Creek groups and established their own identity through ethnogenesis. They developed a thriving trade network by the time of the British and second Spanish periods (roughly 1767–1821). The tribe expanded considerably during this time, and was further supplemented from the late 18th century by escaped slaves from Southern plantations who settled near and paid tribute to Seminole towns. The latter became known as Black Seminoles, although they kept many facets of their own Gullah culture.

During the colonial years, the Seminole were on relatively good terms with both the Spanish and the British. In 1784, after the American Revolutionary War, Britain came to a settlement with Spain and transferred East and West Florida to it.

The Spanish Empire's decline enabled the Seminole to settle more deeply into Florida. They were led by a dynasty of chiefs of the Alachua chiefdom, founded in eastern Florida in the 18th century by Cowkeeper. Beginning in 1825, Micanopy was the principal chief of the unified Seminole, until his death in 1849, after removal to Indian Territory. This chiefly dynasty lasted past Removal, when the US forced the majority of Seminole to move from Florida to the Indian Territory (modern Oklahoma) after the Second Seminole War. Micanopy's sister's son, John Jumper, succeeded him in 1849 and, after his death in 1853, his brother Jim Jumper became principal chief. He was in power through the American Civil War, after which the U.S. government began to interfere with tribal government, supporting its own candidate for chief.

After raids by Anglo-American colonists on Seminole settlements in the mid-18th century, the Seminole retaliated by raiding the Southern Colonies (primarily Georgia), purportedly at the behest of the Spanish. The Seminoles also maintained a tradition of accepting escaped slaves from Southern plantations, infuriating planters in the American South by providing a route for their slaves to escape bondage.

After the United States achieved independence, the U.S. Army and local militia groups made increasingly frequent incursions into Spanish Florida to recapture escaped slaves living among the Seminole. American general Andrew Jackson's 1817–1818 campaign against the Seminoles became known as the First Seminole War. Though Spain decried the incursions into its territory, the United States effectively controlled the Florida panhandle after the war.

[oklahomahistory]

The Seminoles

The Seminoles This tribe originated in the early 1700s from Yamasee and Lower Creeks who migrated into northern and central Spanish Florida following their defeat by the South Carolinians in the Yamasee War. Military confrontations with white settlers as well as dwindling game for food perpetuated this exodus throughout the eighteenth century. The emigrants grew increasingly autonomous from the Lower Creeks. Gradually, they took on the name “Seminole,” meaning “wild” “runaways,” or “separatists,” which reflected their watershed departure. Later in the 1700s, the Seminoles welcomed black slaves escaping Spanish masters into their company. Though apparently retaining their servile status, these descendants of Africa lived in communities near the Seminole villages, grew into a significant component of the tribe, and received treatment as virtual equals. Following the American defeat of the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend, more Creeks headed to Florida to join the Seminoles. This time, Upper-not LowerCreeks, pro-British “Red Stick” veterans of the War of 1812, comprised the majority of the migrants. The war refugees ballooned the Seminole population from thirty-five hundred to six thousand. By 1815 these disparate companies comprised a formidable though still small nation. Their resistance to removal from their Florida homelands, however, casts a large legacy in American history books. Hunting on lands in that state as well as southern Georgia and Alabama, they centered their communities in Florida and lived as town-dwellers. Unlike the other southeastern tribes, they eschewed farming. The Seminoles’ initial significant conflict as a tribe with the United States occurred in 1817 to 1818 with the first of a series of “Seminole Wars.” White Georgian slave owners, whose major (and Constitutionally protected) financial capital in the economic system of the time consisted of their black slaves, complained to the U.S. government about runaways among these folk living with the Seminoles. General Andrew Jackson, in the latest of a long series of battles (violent as well as non-violent) with Natives, led an American army into Florida to retrieve the escapees, burning down a Seminole town in the process. As they did in many other places, from the time the United States purchased Florida from Spain in 1819, American settlers began swarming onto the tribe’s land, settling it, and then urging the U.S. government to remove the resident tribes. In 1823 the powers in Washington gained the Seminoles’ agreement to the Treaty of Tampa, which required the tribe’s move south to the swampy inland Everglades region east of Tampa. Even this did not work, because the Indians accused whites of harassment and the whites accused the Seminoles of theft, property destruction, and violence. The whites demanded the tribe’s relocation to Indian Territory. The Seminoles’ toughness, geography, history, leadership, and sense of place and other cultural traditions would generate a less than cordial response from them toward federal soldiers’ efforts to force them west. An early 1800s Seminole village in Florida, prior to the tribe’s wars with the United States and the exile of most of them to Indian Territory. Read the entire Oklahoma story in John J. Dwyer’s The Oklahomans: The Story of Oklahoma and Its People volume 1 of a 2-part series on the 46th state and the people who make this state very special.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 4.15 (before 1940)

769 – The Lateran Council ends by condemning the Council of Hieria and anathematizing its iconoclastic rulings. 1071 – Bari, the last Byzantine possession in southern Italy, is surrendered to Robert Guiscard. 1450 – Battle of Formigny: Toward the end of the Hundred Years' War, the French attack and nearly annihilate English forces, ending English domination in Northern France. 1632 – Battle of Rain: Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus defeat the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years' War. 1642 – Irish Confederate Wars: A Confederate Irish militia is routed in the Battle of Kilrush when it attempts to halt the progress of a Royalist Army. 1715 – The Pocotaligo Massacre triggers the start of the Yamasee War in colonial South Carolina. 1736 – Foundation of the short-lived Kingdom of Corsica. 1738 – Serse, an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel, receives its premiere performance in London, England. 1755 – Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language is published in London. 1817 – Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc found the American School for the Deaf (then called the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons), the first American school for deaf students, in Hartford, Connecticut. 1861 – President Abraham Lincoln calls for 75,000 volunteers to quell the insurrection that soon became the American Civil War. 1865 – President Abraham Lincoln dies after being shot the previous evening by actor John Wilkes Booth. Three hours later, Vice President Andrew Johnson is sworn in as president. 1892 – The General Electric Company is formed. 1896 – Closing ceremony of the Games of the I Olympiad in Athens, Greece. 1900 – Philippine–American War: Filipino guerrillas launch a surprise attack on U.S. infantry and begin a four-day siege of Catubig, Philippines. 1912 – The British passenger liner RMS Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic at 2:20 a.m., two hours and forty minutes after hitting an iceberg. Only 710 of 2,224 passengers and crew on board survive. 1920 – Two security guards are murdered during a robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts. Anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti would be convicted of and executed for the crime, amid much controversy. 1922 – U.S. Senator John B. Kendrick of Wyoming introduces a resolution calling for an investigation of a secret land deal, which leads to the discovery of the Teapot Dome scandal. 1923 – Insulin becomes generally available for use by people with diabetes. 1923 – Racially motivated Nihon Shōgakkō fire lit by a serial arsonist kills 10 children in Sacramento, California. 1936 – First day of the Arab revolt in Mandatory Palestine.

[annabutlerfiction]

Balancing The Weave by M.W. Lee - with giveaway!

. M.W. Lee has a new MM fantasy romance out: Balancing the Weave. For Mark, Pride weekend in Yamasee County, South Carolina, means spending the day with friends, flirting with the out-of-town men, finding a romance, drinking too much, and enjoying all of Pride. However, the Fates have arrived to address a hole which appeared in the tapestry representing Mark, his past, and his present, which…

[car63]

Jah Saka plays Mr Zebre - Yamasee War (Rootical Attack Records)

[happynaturalhair]

All This Negro Colored Black African American Reclassification Labels U Can Have Them I Am Autochthon aka Indigenous & I Am Never Apologetic 4 That Feathers Up Yakoke Halito #autochthonsofamerica #indigenous #neverapologizeforbeingindigenous #facts #original #coppercoloredamericans #hachotakniyamasseecriiktribe #chieftess #iskitanihatapushiknitakomi #littlebutterfly #underthemoonlight #yakoke #halito #osiyo #cherokee #mohegan #mohawk #yamasee #keetoowah #feathersup #onelove https://www.instagram.com/p/CEC_-SZjy4b/?igshid=byd3mfogig7x

[trulypure1]

[spanky606]

@Regrann from @roni_rone_tyronleung - #johnhorse #yamasee #seminole #muskogee #aniyunwiya #chickasaw #chahta #seminolewars #gullahwars #nattunica/#natturner #yamaseewar #denmarkvessey #crispusattucks #gabrielprosser #bassreeves #deadwooddick - #regrann

[reasoningdaily]

Indians Nearly DESTROY Colony | The Yamasee War 1715-1717

[gpunfdbl]

#Repost #Repost @indigenous_carolina @download.ins --- Repost Credits @pnd_kultureshock Over time the Yamseee People under different tribal names came in contact with every European power that touch the southeastern states, The French, Spanish & British. They converted to every religion that came and took on colonizer surnames like “Menéndez” , “Juanillo”, “Filipe”, “Williams” or “Greene”. The relationship with every nation was very rocky. Their relationship with the Spanish came to a screeching halt in 1597. They felt deprived of freedom and were upset at the fact that Spanish Priest would not let them have their custom of multiple wives. So they hunted down & slaughtered every priest in reach of their province. In 1685 a band of Yamasee from lower Georgia and upper Florida moved to Carolina. They sought to jump into the fur trade and Indian slave trade with the British. Around 50,000+ American Indians were enslaved and sent to the Caribbean islands during this slave trade amongst Europeans and Indians. The slave trade in America was kicked off by exported slaves out, not in. This slave trade went from the east coast all the way to the Mississippi River. They kidnapped indigenous people and put them into slavery. The Yamasee would be force to confront the subject of slavery after the British started to enslave their families to pay off debts. Things came to a head in 1715. The slave traders & representatives of the British Government along the Yamasee met at Pow Wow to try to calm the situation down. On Good Friday April 14, 1715, Slavers & Representatives woke up to Black Men painted with Red and Black paint. Red to represent blood, black to represent death. The British settlers met the same fate that the priest met down in Florida. They were all slaughtered. They tortured and killed up to 90 people with only two men escaping, 1 being Seymour Burroughs who swam across the Broad River and warned others but before doing so he was shot in back of the neck with a bullet coming out of his mouth. 300 people were able to escape as they watched the Wild Indians burn down the township. This Yamasee conflict lasted from 1715 to 1717 — 1,800 settlers were killed. https://www.instagram.com/p/CQ7HFvaMZBZ/?utm_medium=tumblr

[oklahomahistory]

The Seminoles

The Seminoles This tribe originated in the early 1700s from Yamasee and Lower Creeks who migrated into northern and central Spanish Florida following their defeat by the South Carolinians in the Yamasee War. Military confrontations with white settlers as well as dwindling game for food perpetuated this exodus throughout the eighteenth century. The emigrants grew increasingly autonomous from the Lower Creeks. Gradually, they took on the name “Seminole,” meaning “wild” “runaways,” or “separatists,” which reflected their watershed departure. Later in the 1700s, the Seminoles welcomed black slaves escaping Spanish masters into their company. Though apparently retaining their servile status, these descendants of Africa lived in communities near the Seminole villages, grew into a significant component of the tribe, and received treatment as virtual equals. Following the American defeat of the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend, more Creeks headed to Florida to join the Seminoles. This time, Upper-not LowerCreeks, pro-British “Red Stick” veterans of the War of 1812, comprised the majority of the migrants. The war refugees ballooned the Seminole population from thirty-five hundred to six thousand. By 1815 these disparate companies comprised a formidable though still small nation. Their resistance to removal from their Florida homelands, however, casts a large legacy in American history books. Hunting on lands in that state as well as southern Georgia and Alabama, they centered their communities in Florida and lived as town-dwellers. Unlike the other southeastern tribes, they eschewed farming. The Seminoles’ initial significant conflict as a tribe with the United States occurred in 1817 to 1818 with the first of a series of “Seminole Wars.” White Georgian slave owners, whose major (and Constitutionally protected) financial capital in the economic system of the time consisted of their black slaves, complained to the U.S. government about runaways among these folk living with the Seminoles. General Andrew Jackson, in the latest of a long series of battles (violent as well as non-violent) with Natives, led an American army into Florida to retrieve the escapees, burning down a Seminole town in the process. As they did in many other places, from the time the United States purchased Florida from Spain in 1819, American settlers began swarming onto the tribe’s land, settling it, and then urging the U.S. government to remove the resident tribes. In 1823 the powers in Washington gained the Seminoles’ agreement to the Treaty of Tampa, which required the tribe’s move south to the swampy inland Everglades region east of Tampa. Even this did not work, because the Indians accused whites of harassment and the whites accused the Seminoles of theft, property destruction, and violence. The whites demanded the tribe’s relocation to Indian Territory. The Seminoles’ toughness, geography, history, leadership, and sense of place and other cultural traditions would generate a less than cordial response from them toward federal soldiers’ efforts to force them west. An early 1800s Seminole village in Florida, prior to the tribe’s wars with the United States and the exile of most of them to Indian Territory. Read the entire Oklahoma story in John J. Dwyer’s The Oklahomans: The Story of Oklahoma and Its People volume 1 of a 2-part series on the 46th state and the people who make this state very special.

[im-the-punk-who]

Can you explain how a slave revolt in the Bahamas could have changed the history of America?

HELLO ANON FROM LIKE FOUR MONTHS AGO! I kept meaning to go back to this and then uhhh forgetting to do that. (Also thank you for indulging me and sending this sort-of-directly-asked-for-question lmao)

So. Here’s a brief overview of how a successful slave revolt like in Black Sails could have changed the history of not just America, but the entire world. And quite, well - easily - had the circumstances in Black Sails presented themselves. 

First off, standard disclaimer that this is all conjecture based on my own research and knowledge of both history and Black Sails. It isn’t meant as a takedown of anyone else’s views, or the character’s actions. The strongest I would call this is a wishful critique of the choices the writers made to include the things they did in the way they were included, and the way those same writers chose to end the story they chose to tell. And maybe, a little bit, a frustration of how the inevitability of american history is used as a given in fandom to defend certain character’s actions - but it is not meant to invalidate the reasons behind those actions. Just to point out that those reasons were more emotionally than factually driven (Which is cool! And very real to the kinds of tragedies that play out in real life revolutions! Vive le realismé!)

Also quite obviously I’m not a professional in any way. I was eating soup from a can as I wrote this. I am now eating cookies for dinner. I am writing this because it’s fun for me. It’s fun!! If deep thought-experiment type analysis of media isn’t your cuppa, that’s fine - you can keep scrolling.

I’ve included major historical events from 1700-1740 since that is the general time period that Black Sails draws its history from. In particular, most of the later seasons’ historical references come from the 1730s. While I’ve tried to be as thorough as possible...there are so many ways history could have been changed by a tiny action that it would be impossible to cover them all. For brevity, I’m focusing on the history of the Bahamas, the Caribbean, and Colonial America. I’ll touch on other places as is relevant but like......it’s world history for a reason.

Okay, here goes.

So first and foremost, to understand how it’s destruction could have changed America, you really need to understand just how much economic power chattel slavery gave colonial empires and England in particular. 

Slavery was the most important economic force in Colonial England, and not just in what the slaves produced. The slave trade itself was the most lucrative business in existence at the time. If you want to learn more about that, I highly recommend listening to this podcast, which does an excellent job of explaining how the economic buying and selling and bonding of slaves was of such value to colonial empires. This is important because the most powerful contemporary argument for the continuation of slavery was that it “could not be ended in the Americas until there was certainty that it wouldn’t create social or economic irritation.” (Thomas Jefferson, 1783.)

(Slavery in itself is not something that was unique to the british empire or even the Imperialist governments that created it. Most cultures have had some form of slavery. However, this was not the type of generational slavery that colonial empires employed. In most cases before the 1400s, slaves were not kept slaves solely based on the color of their skin - they were war prisoners, criminals, or debtors. In most cases, slaves could work to buy their freedom, and most importantly, slavery was not an inherited state that passed from parent to child. 

What we think of in terms of colonial slavery is chattel slavery - which is the kind of slavery Europeans imposed on Africans starting in the fifteenth century. These slaves could not buy their freedom. They were viewed as property instead of human beings based on their race and their children were automatically enslaved in the same way they were. They were mistreated, and viewed as subhuman, without any chance of escaping the bonds which had been forced upon them.

Because of this new type of slavery that started in the colonial era, Europeans needed to justify why they were entitled to own other people as slaves. They needed to convince themselves and other people that there was some moral justification for chattel slavery. This is what led to all the myths of ‘happy’ servitude, racial inferiority, and any ‘benefits’ slavery imparted to slaves. These were all lies created by philosophical thinkers and plantation owners and politicians that let settlers convince themselves they were not committing crimes of immense magnitude against other human beings. For much of the colonial era, these were the norm in thinking and their vestiges still linger today. But these were used to justify slavery because of how important it was economically.

And of course there were always dissenters. Since slavery was first introduced to the colonies there were people who knew that this sort of treatment was just not very gucci. These people argued that slavery went against the very nature of a ‘just’ society. That benefitting off the mistreatment of other human beings was akin to spiritual robbery, and that “European colonies should be destroyed rather than create so many unfortunates!” (Louis Jaucourt, 1754). With your goddamn motherfucking chest Jaucourt. The Quakers of Pennsylvania were strong proponents of abolition since the 1670’s! James Oglethorpe(yes, that Oglethorpe) himself was a staunch abolitionist who went as far as to make slavery illegal in Georgia when he formed the colony in 1733.

The economic power of slavery was used as a justification to keep it intact for hundreds of years and many colonists were happy with this, but it’s important to remember that not everyone was. England and the colonists were far from unanimously in support of the practice. This becomes important later! Like, this is the basis for the whole argument of how a drawn out war in the Bahamas could have ended slavery and changed colonial imperialism.)

OKAY NOW THAT WE’VE GOT THAT COVERED. 

Now let’s go to the people it affected. Enslaved black people have been fighting against their enslavement since they were taken from their homes and brought across the Atlantic in the 15th century. Starting in the 1700s, slave revolts started to see more and more success in these efforts, until in the late 1700s and early 1800s public opinion of slavery finally dropped enough that it was outlawed in the colonial empires of England and France. In the years of 1700-1740, there were several rebellions in the North American area including:

1712 New York Slave Revolt (British Province of New York)

1730 Chesapeake rebellion (British Chesapeake Colonies)

1733 St. John Slave Revolt (Danish Saint John)

1739 Stono Rebellion ((British Province of South Carolina)

1741 New York Conspiracy (British Province of New York)

And of course, 

1728-1739 First Maroon War (British Jamaica)

This is the war which the war in Black Sails is based on. The treaty that was offered by Woodes Rogers in Black Sails is almost word for word(minus the pirates bit) the treaty offered to the Leeward Maroons in this war. There are references to the factions in this war and even some of the historical people involved in it. The major difference? The Maroon war was successful. The Maroons were so good at warfare on their turf that the British were unable to sustain any major victories against them. After ten years they offered the Maroons a treaty granting them governmental agency(although not independence). In return, the Maroons agreed to return any escaped slaves back to the British, and to help the British fight off “invaders”. The Leeward maroons led by Cudjoe(Julius, in Black Sails) took this offer to avoid more fighting because he believed in an honorable peace with the enemy. Queen Nanny and her Windward Maroons(The Maroon Queen and Madi in Black Sails) refused because like....bruh those terms suck. After a year she was pressured into relenting by Cudjoe, but within thirty years the Maroons had started another war, dissatisfied with how the treaty was being carried out. 

(This is Queen Nanny. And yes, she is better than you.)

I also need to mention that Africans were not the only ones in North America hurt by British Colonialism, nor the only ones for whom abolition and an end to colonial empire was attractive. The Native Americans were also a constant frustration to the colonies, and, because it’s relevant to later things, I want to mention one incident in particular: 

The Yamasee War (1715-1717)

The Yamasee were a Lower Creek tribe that lived in what is today Georgia/Florida. The war was fought over a bunch of different things, including trading systems and colonists depleting the game in the area, but also because of the colonists’ nasty habit of trying to enslave Native American people. Bummer. So a bunch of tribes(and I mean a bunch - there were Shawnee and Cherokee factions, as well as about half a dozen other distinct nations that joined in the fight in sort of that loose ‘hey you hate these guys? we hate these guys!’ way.)

 Long story short, this war was a pretty significant factor in the colonists in the South not enslaving(outright) Native Americans anymore, and instead increasing the import of African slaves to the south. After this war the Yamasee split into two factions, one anti-colonist and one pro-colonist. The pro-colonist people called themselves the Yamacraw, and it was these people who granted Oglethorpe(yes, that Oglethorpe) the land which he used to found Georgia. Moral of the story, alliances between abolitionists and indigenous tribes were already in place in the colonies. Just waiting for a chance to be used.

(Tomochichi, the leader of the Yamacraw and very cool accessorizor)

(Yet ANOTHER thing to keep in mind is that before the end of the 18th century, both Haiti and Grenada would see major revolutions against their colonial empires. Slaves in all provinces and colonies were continually fighting for their freedom. What they lacked was a unifying force that supplied them enough power and cohesion to fight the empire man-to-man, so to speak.)

SO. INTO THIS SCENE, ENTER JAMES FLINT - ANGRIEST OF MLM SCALLYWAGS AND TACTICIAN EXTRAORDINAIRE.

(So cute.)

Anyway, the Golden Age of Piracy was largely over by the early 1720 - most of the pirates of Nassau took Rogers’ pardon and reintegrated as citizens of society. That or they like....died. A lot of them died. Gruesomely. Nasty business, piratry. So, if we assume that in Black Sails’ history that Flint and Silver managed to convince the Maroons to rebel ten years earlier, join with the pirates who did not want to assimilate, and start a revolution; now instead of two separate wars Britain is now fighting one much bigger, nastier, more expensive one. 

Backed by people with a good deal of money at their disposal. Cha-ching.

Keep in mind that Britain had already been at war for almost thirty years with first the Glorious Revolution and the Jacobite risings(1688-forever) and the War of Spanish Succession(1701-1714). Their resources had already been depleted. And this was why the American colonies(and India) had become so important to them. Remember what I said about the economic importance of slavery? It’s because Brtitain was using the slave trade to refill its coffers after an extensive and costly military campaign. 

So now, this new war is not only putting an additional drain on the empire’s resources before Britain has had a chance to replenish itself but it is also taking away the very source of income needed to replenish itself. (Since the war would target places heavy with slave trading.) In addition, the pirates handed a significant defeat to the British Navy that ended with the Navy retreating - turning tail and running from the island. This was actually a huge victory and one that was sort of downplayed in the show but would be incredibly significant in the event of a long campaign.

Rogers is not taking Nassau with the full support of Britain. He is only fighting with the traitors who did not return when the Navy withdrew. That is why he has to go to Spain in the first place. 

The show has also told us that this rebellion is already starting to be widely known - pirates and slaves from Barbados, the Bahamas, as far as Massachusetts are coming to aid the rebellion in the hopes of freedom. This is not a small thing. 

Even with the loss of the Walrus and most of the Walrus crew, there are still thousands of fighters on the Maroon Island. Slaves, mainland pirates - the defeat of the Walrus was a personal defeat but in the grand scheme of a larger war it was a small loss in what was ultimately a huge victory. 

Rogers has been squarely defeated. Because of that, they now have Nassau as a base. The war now has two strongholds - one protected by the forest and one protected by a fort - into which they can store supplies, retreat, and organize attacks from. If they can free the rest of the slaves on the island of Nassau and either oust or convert the puritans, all the better. 

The war at the point Rogers is defeated was far from a never-ending thing. In fact I would say that Flint is absolutely right - they are incredibly close to a decisive victory. England cannot afford to muster a large enough force to defeat two entrenched enemies working together - especially ones as well financed as we’re led to believe the chest would make the Maroons and Pirates. Even if Britain could somehow convince Spain and/or France to join them, both of those nations have also been severely depleted by wars of their own. And again, the more nations that Britain brings in, the more potentially disaffected people could be brought in to join the pirates(see, Haiti and Grenada specifically, both of which were French colonies at the time, and the Spanish colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico, etc). 

So from here, the smartest thing for the rebellion to do would be to hit large plantations: to both free the slaves and cripple Britain’s economy. Make slavery more costly to enforce than it is profitable to sustain, and build their numbers for the war as well, as well as like, you know, freeing slaves. Make it so that Britain could not sustain the cost of trying to fight it - as James said all the way back in 1705. Force a surrender on economic grounds.

So now, the power behind the empire has been broken. Even assuming a modest victory, the course of the entire world - not just the Americas - has changed. In victory, let’s say the Bahama/Caribbean islands are freed from British rule. Slavery in the americas will also never be able to get the foothold it does, historically. 

With a free nation actively willing to target slave plantations and ships sitting between it and Africa, the colonial slave trade is finished. Now sure, they could use the existing slaves, but it would be oh-so-easy for the Pirates and Maroons, alongside their hopeful new Native and abolitionist allies, to target large plantations and cripple them. 

If slavery never gets a foothold in the south, northern colonies never build the banks and mills and economic powerhouses that profit from the cheap produce, and most find another way to survive. Perhaps, if we’re going really all out, they start working with the native americans - learning ways to cultivate and grow crops with the land and in balance, rather than clearing thousands of acres for damaging cash crops. 

I want to be really, really clear about this because it is incredibly important. Without slavery, the British empire would not have bee able to sustain itself. It would not have the power. And the more it tried to tax the colonists to recoup its losses, the angrier those people were likely to get, and perhaps join the Maroons and Pirates, or perhaps evens start the american revolution early - maybe even with the help of the newly independent Jamaican/Bahaman island nations. 

This break in the power of colonial empires would shift world history into something unrecognizable as we know it. The empires would still exist, of course, but they would be set on their heels - France and Spain would see what happened to Britain and be less inclined to keep slavery legal in their own colonies. Power is split more evenly among the world, and indigenous and black/African nations are not wiped out in genocidal bids for power. 

Which brings me to India. If the Indian rebellions learned of what happened in America and the Bahamas, or if america had drained enough of britain’s resources that the British East India Trading Company was not able to be as controlling of the area, this could have meant independence centuries earlier, as well as a much easier path to independence. Think about what could have been if the Indian people had been able to oust a struggling empire from its shores an entire century before it historically did. 

(This bad boy is Mangal Pandey, who led the first major Indian revolution in the mid 1800s. In the movie adaptation his boyfriend best friend is played by Toby Stephens so I’m connecting the dots.)

Once the colonies of America and India are gone, Britain loses almost the entirety of its colonial power. (And this isn’t even including all the smaller colonies which could cloak their own independence in these big revolutions and the lack of (as much) of an indigenous genocide in many of these places. The economic disparity that defines Black experience in places that the British colonial system touched never gets a hold, and they are able to build their own economies in ways that benefit them and the places they live. 

Think about the wealth of culture in ALL nations that would not have been destroyed, had Britain not been allowed to swallow whole swaths of land whole. 

And, look. I know this is fiction. I know that of course, none of this happened, and that Black Sails is a fictional landscape. I know that so many things could go differently than I imagine them. I know that to extrapolate like this relies heavily on actually caring about a world that is completely different from ours and envisioning how that could come about. 

I also know, that it is just as important to tell these sorts of stories as telling stories about how small acts could have changed things immensely, as it is to tell them about how society must stay the same. It is just as important to tell stories about ‘what if colonialism were able to be stopped’ as it is to tell dystopian stories about the end of the world. It may not be as much fun, but it is important to remember that our power doesn’t lie an indiscernible amount of time in the future, after the world has already gone to shit. It lies with us, right now. And that even if it is hard to see, our actions have the power to shape history.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 4.15

769 – The Lateran Council ends by condemning the Council of Hieria and anathematizing its iconoclastic rulings. 1071 – Bari, the last Byzantine possession in southern Italy, is surrendered to Robert Guiscard. 1450 – Battle of Formigny: Toward the end of the Hundred Years' War, the French attack and nearly annihilate English forces, ending English domination in Northern France. 1632 – Battle of Rain: Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus defeat the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years' War. 1642 – Irish Confederate Wars: A Confederate Irish militia is routed in the Battle of Kilrush when it attempts to halt the progress of a Royalist Army. 1715 – The Pocotaligo Massacre triggers the start of the Yamasee War in colonial South Carolina. 1736 – Foundation of the short-lived Kingdom of Corsica. 1738 – Serse, an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel, receives its premiere performance in London, England. 1755 – Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language is published in London. 1817 – Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc found the American School for the Deaf (then called the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons), the first American school for deaf students, in Hartford, Connecticut. 1861 – President Abraham Lincoln calls for 75,000 Volunteers to quell the insurrection that soon became the American Civil War. 1865 – President Abraham Lincoln dies after being shot the previous evening by actor John Wilkes Booth. Three hours later, Vice President Andrew Johnson is sworn in as President. 1892 – The General Electric Company is formed. 1896 – Closing ceremony of the Games of the I Olympiad in Athens, Greece. 1900 – Philippine–American War: Filipino guerrillas launch a surprise attack on U.S. infantry and begin a four-day siege of Catubig, Philippines. 1912 – The British passenger liner RMS Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic at 2:20 a.m., two hours and forty minutes after hitting an iceberg. Only 710 of 2,224 passengers and crew on board survive. 1920 – Two security guards are murdered during a robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts. Anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti would be convicted of and executed for the crime, amid much controversy. 1922 – U.S. Senator John B. Kendrick of Wyoming introduces a resolution calling for an investigation of a secret land deal, which leads to the discovery of the Teapot Dome scandal. 1923 – Insulin becomes generally available for use by people with diabetes. 1923 – Racially motivated Nihon Shōgakkō fire lit by serial arsonist in kills 10 children in Sacramento, California. 1936 – First day of the Arab revolt in Mandatory Palestine. 1941 – In the Belfast Blitz, two hundred bombers of the German Luftwaffe attack Belfast, killing around one thousand people. 1942 – The George Cross is awarded "to the island fortress of Malta" by King George VI. 1945 – Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is liberated. 1947 – Jackie Robinson debuts for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking baseball's color line. 1952 – First flight of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress. 1955 – McDonald's restaurant dates its founding to the opening of a franchised restaurant by Ray Kroc, in Des Plaines, Illinois. 1960 – At Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, Ella Baker leads a conference that results in the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, one of the principal organizations of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. 1969 – The EC-121 shootdown incident: North Korea shoots down a United States Navy aircraft over the Sea of Japan, killing all 31 on board. 1970 – During the Cambodian Civil War, massacre of the Vietnamese minority results in 800 bodies flowing down the Mekong river into South Vietnam. 1986 – The United States launches Operation El Dorado Canyon, its bombing raids against Libyan targets in response to a discotheque bombing in West Germany that killed two U.S. servicemen. 1989 – Hillsborough disaster: A human crush occurs at Hillsborough Stadium, home of Sheffield Wednesday, in the FA Cup Semi-final, resulting in the deaths of 97 Liverpool fans. 1989 – Upon Hu Yaobang's death, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 begin in China. 1994 – Marrakesh Agreement relating to foundation of World Trade Organization is adopted. 2002 – Air China Flight 129 crashes on approach to Gimhae International Airport in Busan, South Korea, killing 129 people. 2013 – Two bombs explode near the finish line at the Boston Marathon in Boston, Massachusetts, killing three people and injuring 264 others. 2013 – A wave of bombings across Iraq kills at least 75 people. 2014 – In the worst massacre of the South Sudanese Civil War, at least 200 civilians are gunned down after seeking refuge in houses of worship as well as hospitals. 2019 – The cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris in France is seriously damaged by a large fire. 2021 – A mass shooting occurred at a Fedex Ground facility in Indianapolis, Indiana, killing nine and injuring seven.