Work 16

The devil was in the Englishman that he forces everything to work: he forces the [Schwarzen] to work, the horse to work, the donkey to work, the wood to work, the water to work, and the wind to work.

Citation: Anonymous (1676): Great Newes from the Barbadoes, Or, A True and Faithful Account of the Grand Conspiracy of the Negroes against the English and the Happy Discovery of the Same with the Number of Those That Were Burned Alive, Beheaded, and Otherwise Executed for Their Horrid Crimes. With a Short Discription of That Plantation. London: L. Curtis, p. 6f. Image: Wikimedia

Anonymous enslaved person in Barbados

After the inhabitants of Barbados were kidnapped and enslaved or expelled by Portugal in the 16th century, England took possession of the island in 1625 (until 1962). English and Irish serfs, enslaved Africans and American Indians were settled as plantation workers for sugar cane cultivation, exploited, tortured and murdered. They fought back - often together - by fleeing, arson, manslaughter and revolt. In the Caribbean, as well as in other parts of the Americas, resistant former enclaved people formed so-called maroon communities (Linebaugh & Rediker 2008).

*Peter Linebaugh & Marcus Rediker (2008): The Many-Headed Hydra. The hidden history of the revolutionary Atlantic. Hamburg: Association A.