Episode Details

In February of 1763, an enslaved Akan man named Cuffy led the largest slave revolt in Dutch colonial history — and then formally proposed splitting the colony of Berbice with the Dutch governor in writing. The letter he signed as 'Governor of the Black People of Berbice' still exists in the Dutch National Archives. This episode tells the story of the Berbice Rebellion: eight months of a provisional Black government, the internal fracture that ended it, and the question of what it means that this happened thirty years before Haiti and twelve years before the American Revolution. Today that territory is Guyana — home to one of the world's largest new oil discoveries. Cuffy is on the currency. The republic he never got to build chose him as its national hero. History of the Caribbean — stories the textbooks left out. New episodes every week.