Dangerous Spirit of Liberty: Slave Insurrection, Conspiracy, and the First Great Awakening, 1729-1746
Open AccessThis dissertation is an argument for an era of slave unrest within the British Atlantic Empire between the years 1729 and 1746. As the first full length, longitudinal study of the insurrections and slave conspiracies of the age, it approaches these events not as singular events in the histories of specific colonies, but rather as a shared moment in the history of the British provinces, when slaves in the Caribbean and mainland North America threatened white authority with open rebellion and in turn, inspired heightened fears of insurrection among white Britons. This project reveals new evidence of early slave communication networks capable of spreading rumors of resistance throughout the Caribbean and British mainland, demonstrates the deadly consequences of the period's sharp rise in the slave trade, and examines the relationship between British fears of slave rebellion and British anti-Catholicism. Another major contribution from this project is its case for a powerful connection between racial anxiety and the rise of evangelical religion in Early America. Even as insurrection and panic shook the British colonies, thousands of Americans joined a new, emotional search for spiritual salvation known today as the First Great Awakening. My study makes the unique argument that many evangelicals in the 1730s perceived slave rebellion as a sign that Britons had fallen out of favor with God and used these anxieties to galvanize spiritual conversion among the disaffected. In this way, slave unrest deeply influenced the growth of evangelical religion in the mainland provinces. In short, this study argues that the 1730s was a critical period in the Atlantic when slave rebellion and fears of conspiracy profoundly shaped the provinces of the British Empire.
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Pope_gwu_0075A_12104.pdf | 2018-01-16 | Open Access |
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DissertationSupplementaryFiles.pdf | 2018-01-16 | Open Access |
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