Tacky’s Revolt
The Story of an Atlantic Trade War
Vincent Brown
When making notes from Tacky’s Revolt
The Story of an Atlantic Trade War
By Vincent Brown,
I was guided by the principle
That I would jot down only that
Which fundamentally meant, implied,
Denoted, or connoted, a connection
With Stroud scarlet cloth, coats and uniform -
For that’s the warp and the weft of Empire,
Enslavement, war, colonisation, and Stroud.
In Jamaica, the local militia wore red,
As Vincent Brown comments:
‘From the mid-seventeenth century, the English ruled Jamaica by “garrison government.” Jamaica was a fortified commercial outpost, run by military veterans focused on order and security … Governors rarely hesitated to invoke martial law when they felt the island was under internal or external threat.’
And what did those military veterans wear?
A contemporary account runs thus:
‘Guards are constantly kept on Sundays, & Holidays and the Troops of Horse in several Parishes or Precincts are obliged to Patrol in their Respective Divisions, to prevent conspiracies or disorders amongst the Negroes.’
And what did those guards wear?
Brown continues his narrative through the eyes of one James Knight:
‘’When [the slaves] see the White People Muster or Exercise, it strikes an awe or terrour into them.” ‘Slaves generally avoided anyone wearing a red coat, like those worn by grenadiers, he noted, and as a result,’ “some Gentlemen put on a coat of that Colour when they Travell” to deter trouble on the roads.’
And the Kingston Militia?
“a Scarlet regimental faced with Blue and metal buttons for the colonel’s company, with officers donning a Scarlet Coat faced with blue velvet …”
And as regards the ‘regular imperial force’,
As opposed to the militia:
‘Through the 1720s and 1730s,
British redcoats fought the maroons to a stalemate’;
Two regiments were then raised in succeeding decades:
The Forty-ninth Regiment of Foot,
And the Seventy-fourth Regiment,
Purely for ‘intestinal’ conflict,
Hence, Trelawney, the Governor of Jamaica, desired:
‘at all times to have some Soldiers Quartered in the Country Barracks to be ready on all emergencies for the protection of our Settlements & such parts of the Island as cannot readily receive any assistance from the Towns’;
This, ‘would be a great Security & comfort to the Inhabitants, especially those in the remote Parishes, who are now under great apprehensions both of the Foreign Enemy & the rising of their own Negroes’.
So, these two regiments:
The Forty-ninth Regiment of Foot,
And the Seventy-fourth Regiment,
Were the regiments used to quell Tacky’s Revolt in 1760,
All clad in scarlet.
And eighty odd years later, in 1834,
After abolition:
‘The military power of the slave empire
was called into action to enforce apprenticeship’;
In Jamaica,
There were strikes; demands for freedom; for wages;
And in response?
Floggings,
Until the 39th Regiment was called into action,
Two companies under the command of Sir Henry Macleod:
‘The strikers, faced with ranks of armed redcoats, returned to work, and Macleod left behind one of his two companies to maintain order.’
In Guiana:
Some 1,000 apprentices
Gathered in a churchyard;
There were demands for wages;
Redcoats were called into action;
‘Faced with the redcoats, the apprentices dispersed.’
Execution and exile followed.
Redcoats were used in Montserrat and Nevis, too:
‘Once it was clear that the Army would break strikes, apprentices retreated to slow-downs, and small-scale resistance, old weapons from the days of slavery.’
So, redcoats broke strikes in Stroud,
And, redcoats broke strikes in the slave empire …
