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From 1763-1764, nearly 5,000 enslaved people in the Dutch colony of Berbice in South America rebelled. In studying the history of the rebellion on the surface, one might think it fits the pattern of many New World slave revolts. But as Marjoleine Kars discovered, an examination of the judicial records provides a much closer look into the internal dynamics of the rebellion. Kars, associate professor and chair of history, is currently finishing a book about the slave rebellion in Berbice, and recently shared her research on WYPR’s Humanities Connection in advance of her upcoming Humanities Forum talk at UMBC.

“Even though the rebellion appeared massive to the Dutch, it was in fact the work of a determined minority who forced participation of their fellow slaves,” shared Kars in the segment that aired November 19 on WYPR. “In actuality, many enslaved people in Berbice were neither purposeful rebels nor active collaborators, nor did they take one position and stick with it. Rather, as one would expect in a lengthy, dangerous, and ever-changing insurgency, people moved along the political spectrum, changing their positions and loyalties, sometimes multiple times, as survival demanded.”

By focusing on the internal dynamics of the rebellion, Kars argued that it also exposes the importance of gender. While examining the rebellion from a distance, one might assume it appears men and women shared a great deal in the rebellion, however closer research reveals their experiences powerfully diverged.

Because not all of the insurgency agreed on what freedom actually meant, Kars stated that the untold story of the Atlantic Slave Rebellion in the Dutch Caribbean teaches us about the dynamics of other famous rebellions such as the American and French Revolutions.

Listen to the full segment on WYPR. On December 2, Kars presents a Humanities Forum talk “Freedom Marooned: An Atlantic Slave Rebellion in the Dutch Caribbean.”

An article about the role of gender in the Berbice rebellion will appear in early 2016 in the American Historical Review. Kars has previously written a book about a farmers’ rebellion in pre-revolutionary North Carolina: “Breaking Loose Together”: The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-Revolutionary North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), and she was a Dresher Center fellow in spring 2015.

Image: Marjoleine Kars. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

In the spring of 2015, actor Ben Affleck appeared on PBS’s Finding Your Roots, hosted by Henry Louis Gates. In preparation for the show, which traces the genealogies of famous Americans, Affleck requested that information about his family’s ownership of black slaves be omitted from the broadcast, though details about Affleck’s more noble ancestors, including his mother, who was a Freedom Rider, were highlighted. When the omission was publically revealed, Affleck admitted that he was “embarrassed” by ancestors who owned slaves. “The very thought left a bad taste in my mouth,” he shared on Facebook.

Affleck’s unwillingness to publicly admit to a family history of racism mirrors a broader cultural reluctance to address the close ties between heritage—both personal and national—and hate.  Family genealogies are only one area where such relationships are erased or ignored. Geography is marked and marred by acts of hate, acts commemorated, memorialized, celebrated, condemned, mourned, hidden, and ignored by various populations across time. Sacred spaces and sacred time are dedicated to hate events, then erased and rededicated. Official and unofficial histories make and remake the meaning of such events, and popular culture interprets and reinterprets them. We invent rituals to engage us with our hateful pasts, and we also craft narratives that distance us from it. Among extremists, hateful heritage is a source of pride, while among others, it is a source of guilt, humiliation, trauma, and defensiveness. In sum, hate events are never settled but are instead a source of constant conflict as they resonate across generations, informing the contemporary moment in ways frequently unseen, especially by those in power, and misunderstood, often strategically.

The Journal of Hate Studies seeks submissions of manuscripts examining the relationships between hate and heritage. Potential topics include:

• Hate in heritage studies as an academic field
• Teaching histories of hate, especially to historically victimized populations or to populations that have historically victimized others
• Memorialization and commemoration of victims of hate
• Sacralization of spaces of hate
• Popular reinterpretation of hate in film, theater, art, and music
• Leisure, tourism, and travel and hate
• Hate and the decorative arts and handcrafts
• Hate and ethnic identity
• Hate in family history and genealogy
• Historical interpretation and reinterpretation of hate events
• The commodification and commercialization of hate
• Hate in history as framed by members of hate groups