Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies

Testing the Chains is a most welcome contribution to debates about developments in slave and post-slave societies of the Americas. Craton has concentrated his considerable skills as a historian, and his enviable familiarity with the sources, on an investigation of slave resistance in these territories from the early days of slavery in the seventeenth century to the 1830s, when emancipation, for which the slaves had long fought in their own way, arrived. Craton paints a most exciting, informative, and thought-provoking picture of the slaves' struggles against oppression. -William and Mary Quarterly

Craton performs an invaluable service by chronicling the continuity and persistence of slave resistance. He extends the implications of the argument that that West Indian slaves constructed a proto-peasant society in the shadow of the plantation, shielding themselves from some of its stultifying restrictions and forging networks of resistance. -Journal of Social History

Scholars interested in determining the causes of slave rebellions, the characteristics of rebel slave leadership, the autonomous organizations developed, and the ideology and styles of rebellious behavior will find this work an invaluable sourcebook. -Journal of American History

The strength of this book derives from its nice, neat, and convenient compilation of plots and revolts throughout the English Caribbean. Craton's compilation illustrates that in the earlier period the revolts and plots were dominated by Africans or maroons, while the later revolts involved creole slaves often in high-status positions in the plantation occupational structure. -Hispanic American Historical Review