t started on the slave ships coming from Africa and continued in the West Indies. Eric Williams, from the information he was able to find, shows that about one in every fifteen ships that left Nantes experienced revolt. The ship the Diane, in 1775, was taken over by the 244 blacks on board. Only three whites survived an uprising on the Concorde. The revolts on slave ships were effective because the slave traders and owners lost a lot of money and many sailors were afraid to work on slave ships. However, these revolts were only local to the certain ships and they were not effective enough to stop or even make a considerable slow down of the slave trade. Physical revolt on land was more devastating and very common. In the seventeenth century there were revolts in St. Kitts (1639), Barbados (1649), Guadeloupe (1656), San Domingo (1679), and Jamaica (1690). In the eighteenth century there was over fifteen more. By listing these, I have not given justice to the relative size and magnitude of the different revolts but I am simply pointing out the abundancy of revolts in the West Indies. Out of these revolts there were many more that were planned, but never materialized. This leads to why the revolts were never able to evolve into a full scale revolution or give any long lasting rights for slaves.Many of the revolts either never emerged or did not develop as planned because of the slaves themselves. The largest obstacle to developing revolts was unifying the slaves. There were differences between the African slaves, particularly Coromantees and the creole slaves . Differences between the coloureds and blacks. Differences between African slaves from different tribes. Differences between slaves of different islands. In addition, many slaves acted selfishly and in their own self interest. It seems as though the creole slaves, the slaves that had lived on the plantations for many years or for generations, had become more apathetic and comfort...
