able with their situation (If you can call it comfortable). They were not as apt to rush into a revolution as were the slaves who had recently come from Africa, commonly known as the Coromantees. The earliest slave revolts were essentially African in character and led by Africans . It is easy to see how the cultural, lingual, and other differences between the Africans and the creoles made it hard for them to unify and revolt because after a revolt the slave owners would consciously import creoles to mix with the Africans. Also many times creole slaves would inform their masters of plots by the Africans to revolt because they were just as fearful of an African takeover as the slave owner. Even the Africans could not unify together because they came from different ethnic backgrounds in Africa and spoke different languages. Richard Ligon writing in 1657 about his experience in Barbados between 1647 and 1650 comments that the African slaves were “fetched from several parts of Africa, who speak several languages and by that means, one of them understands not another.” In addition, in Africa there was many tensions between African ethnicities, such as that between the Asante and Akan states. Therefore when they were grouped onto plantations they could not depart with their ethnic rivalries from Africa. In the previous paragraph, from the words of Ligon, one can see that the language differences between the slaves was a large barrier preventing effective revolution. In 1683, a conspiracy was uncovered in Barbados when handwritten notices were found encouraging the slaves to rebel. They were written in English . However, most of the slaves at that time had recently come from Africa so many of the slave owners suspected the message was from a white person . It was ruled, however, that the notices where written by slaves, giving evidence that the slaves needed a common language to communicate.Island solidarity was common amongst th...
