Eye for an Eye: The Role of Armed Resistance ... - Freedom Archives

experience has been the argument of African continuities versus the contention
that African traditions did not play any significant role in the culture of African
descendants in North America. Their has been little scholarly consideration to a
martial tradition surviving amongst enslaved Africans in the U.S.A . . In Slave
Community, John Blassingame argues that most Africans taken captive during the
African holocaust, commonly called the slave trade, were members of ethnic
groups that didn't possess "heroic" warrior traditions . Given this argument,
enslaved Africans in the Western Hemisphere could not rely on military traditions
in resisting their captivity. Blassingame argues that the African ethnic groups
brought in captivity to North America were from agrarian societies that lacked
strong militaries .' But John K. Thornton has argued that the memory of military
experience of Africans from the lower Guinea Coast and Kongo/Angola region
may have played a decisive role in the Haitian Revolution. Thornton points out
that civil war in the Kingdom of Kongo and wars of expansion provided captives
to the victors who exchanged the prisoners of war to European slavers . A large
portion of the enslaved population included soldiers of defeated African armies .=
Africans from the same regions, including the militarily oriented empires of
Dahomey, Oyo and Kongo and smaller states with military forces, were trans-
ported to North America. Africans from these states were sold into captivity in
colonial Virginia and South Carolina.' Thornton also argues that African soldiers
from the Kingdom of the Kongo transported by the British to South Carolina
played central roles in the Stono Rebellion of 1739 . According to Thornton the
rebels engaging in dancing prior to combat, marching with drums and under
similar banners that were utilized by Africans armies, were similar to maneuvers