“It was an insurrection of the negroes, who were that night to have set fire to the large and beautiful town of St. Pierre…
The combustibles were laid were laid in upwards of 100 houses (consisting of hemp dipt in turpentine)”
-Gazette of the United-States., October 10, 1789 (story about the almost slave hemp rebellion)
drawing showing the slave quarters at a sugar cane plantation on Martinque in 1826. Source: Alcide Dessalines d’Orbigny, ‘Voyage pittoresque dans les deux Amériques’ (Paris 1836)
The Almost Slave Hemp Rebellion of 1789
It would almost happen on an island that the Native American’s called Madinina “The Island of Flowers”…
After years of exterminating the native Tainos and Caribs tribes who called the island home prior to the Europeans, the French would set up massive sugar plantations on the island now called Martinique.
These new plantations needed a massive amount of manual labor to operate. For the required labor the islands cloud of slave history would begin…
Martinique early 1900 postcard ‘Coupe de la canne à sucre’
The brutal treatment of the slave ‘workforce’ on Martinique would span more then 200 years until Emancipation in 1848… In late 1789 a ‘almost rebellion’ almost changed history…
With the start of the French Revolution in early 1789, supply lines were cut off to the French held Caribbean islands.
The French colonist were forced to grow their own food to supply themselves. This also meant no supplies for their forced laborers, the slaves…
The French didn’t want to be responsible for feeding their slaves themselves, so they allowed/forced the slaves to grow their own food. The slaves would include a rebellious crop hidden in their garden, Hemp…
“This day weed the most diabolical design that ever was formed, was discovered in Martinico: It was an insurrection of the negroes, who were that night to have set fire to the large and beautiful town of St. Pierre; while the white people were all in confusion, and striving to escape the flames, they were to be butchered indiscriminately, man, woman and child. The combustibles were laid in upwards of 100 houses, (consisting of hemp dipt in turpentine.) The plot was not discovered till 5 o’clock in the evening, when a negro belonging to an old lady, stung with remorse on thinking that he must murder the woman who had brought him up from a child, disclosed it to her. The troops being there upon assembled, 40 of the negroes were taken, armed with a hanger and long knife – the instruments which were in a few hours to have put a period to the existence of upwards of 5000 people. All the inhabitants have been under arms ever since, as they are afraid the negroes will attempt to rescue the 40 who are in goal – but this week they will be all rescued by the grim hand of death in the dreadful form of the rack. As it is only six hours passage to Martinico, I shall go there to see the execution, to be convinced if the rack is the terrible thing it is represented.”
Gazette of the United-States., October 10, 1789
Hemp has many times been the spark of Revolution. In the Almost Hemp Rebellion of 1789 on Martinique, hemp was almost the flames that changed history…
Coupeurs de canne à sucre en Jamaïque, 1880