Daring to be Free: Rebellion and Resistance of the Enslaved in the Atlantic World

From the Wolfson History Prize-winning author of Black Spartacus, a revelatory history of enslaved people's resistance to Atlantic slavery. The ending of the slave trade and abolition of slavery by European powers during the 19th century is generally told as the work of enlightened liberals fighting against entrenched slaving interests in Africa, the Caribbean, and European capitals. Sudhir Hazareesingh here turns this narrative on its head, showing how the enslaved resisted their oppressors from the earliest years of the Atlantic slave trade in the 16th century until the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865, and how this opposition was the driving force for change. Daring To Be Free portrays the struggle for liberation from the perspective of the enslaved, wherever possible in their own words. It shines a light on the lives of revolutionaries like Toussaint Louverture, José Antonio Aponte, Nat Turner, and the pregnant rebel Solitude; freed writers of narrative accounts like Frederick Douglass and Ottobah Cugoano; and the countless maroons, insurgents and conspirators whose acts of defiance destabilised the slave order in the colonies and galvanized the movement for abolition in France, Britain, and the United States. Hazareesingh gives particular emphasis to the powerful roles of women as campaigners, disruptors and warriors. Drawing on written archives and oral history, as well as a rich body of secondary sources, the book traces the networks of cooperation that connected runaway settlements, covert rebellions and organized uprisings from Haiti, Jamaica, Brazil and Cuba to Mauritius and the United States. It shows us how the struggle for liberty was shaped not only by western Enlightenment ideals but by the spiritual, martial, and religious influences from the lives of the enslaved in Africa before the Middle Passage – and by the inspiring example of Haiti, the first successful anticolonial revolution and the first independent black state, which echoed down the 19th century. Daring To Be Free reshapes our understanding of Atlantic slavery by portraying how enslaved lives were defined not by their dehumanisation at the hands of colonialists and slavers but by their own resilience, solidarity, and commitment to freedom. It also examines the afterlife of the slave trade in contemporary discussions about the legacy of slavery and possibilities for redress, reparations, and memorial in our own time.

About the Author :
Sudhir Hazareesingh was born in Mauritius. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Balliol College, Oxford. His books include The Legend of Napoleon (winner of the Prix du Mémorial d'Ajaccio and the Prix de la Fondation Napoléon), In the Shadow of the General (winner of the Prix d'Histoire du Sénat), How the French Think (winner of the Grand Prix du Livre d'Idées), and Black Spartacus (winner of the Wolfson History Prize and the American Library in Paris Award). In 2020, he became a Grand Commander of the Order of the Star and Key of the Indian Ocean (G.C.S.K.), the highest honour of the Republic of Mauritius.

Review :
[An] absorbing and revelatory history of black resistance to the transatlantic trade ... a marvel of historical analysis and research. Hazareesingh maintains that Enlightenment ideals alone did not abolish slavery, and shifts the focus away from Christian abolitionists who often derided African culture to the agency of Afro-Atlantic insurgents and conspirators. [He] emphasises the role played by women as disruptors and warrior figures in the cause of freedom A sweeping history of black resistance from 1500 to 1900 … Studded with novelistic vignettes of insurrection, it doubles as a brisk history of Atlantic slavery. Hazareesingh writes with a wry lucidity, [showing how] enslaved men and women fought their bondage long before enlightened philosophes in Parisian salons decried it … [the book is] enlivened with colloquialisms [and] succeeds on the strength of its remarkable cache of evidence This stunning revisionist saga [is] a remarkable reorientation of the history of the modern world A much-needed and sure-to-be-influential addition to the literature of African enslavement Daring to be Free is a sweeping history of the rebellions, escapes, and everyday acts of defiance by enslaved Africans and their descendants across the Atlantic world. From African battlefields and maroon strongholds to the Haitian Revolution and spiritual resistance, Sudhir Hazareesingh restores the voices and strategies of those who fought relentlessly for autonomy, dignity, and liberation. Drawing on rich archival and oral sources, he reframes abolition as the achievement of the enslaved themselves — a centuries-long struggle driven by courage, solidarity, and an unyielding will to be free Daring to Be Free is a sweeping, powerful history of centuries of refusal and political imagination. Hazareesingh weaves together eloquent re-interpretations of famous revolts with a multitude of lesser-known, and revelatory, examples of resistance across the Atlantic World. He opens our eyes to the communities and worlds created by the enslaved, inviting us to craft a different future built on these unfinished struggles for true freedom A truly sweeping and magnificent history of abolition and enslaved resistance ... Daring to Be Free proves without doubt that the first abolitionists were enslaved and captive Africans themselves. No other synthesis of transatlantic slavery’s ultimate destruction can match this one in terms of the period and geographical locales covered or the number and quality of sources, but more importantly, in terms of the author’s determination to highlight the agency and ingenuity of the enslaved people who, bracing every obstacle, ultimately brought the system of slavery to a grinding standstill