Berbice: a slave rebellion that nearly succeeded

Historian Marjoleine Kars tells Elinor Evans about a little-known 1763 rebellion by enslaved people in Berbice, in present-day Guyana. Chronicled in her Cundill History Prize-shortlisted book Blood on the River, it was an event that revises our understanding of the actions of enslaved people at the dawn of the Age of Revolution.

Marjoleine Kars is the author of Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast (The New Press, 2020)