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[–] 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I think it is seriously worth noting that Bacon’s rebellion was specifically an alliance of white indentured servents and african slaves against the slave owning class. Just don’t pay attention to the colonial anti-indigenous motivations for that revolt though.

No it was not, not in the slightest. Bacon represented the more fascistic of the two settler factions. His rebellion's entire point was to steal more from the indiginous to alleviate the economic downturn and he had full support of the white masses seeing their salvation in the looting that was to come.

And Bacon only conscripted the Afrikan slaves to the rebellion at the very end in a last ditch effort when he got deserted by his supporters after both sides bribed each other's indentured servants for the same reason.

I really recommend Settlers, chapter 2, in which Sakai recounts all the events from start to finish. Here's part of the conclusion:

Out of the debris of this chaotic dispute we can pick out the central facts. First, that there was no democratic political program or movement whatsoever. Bacon’s Rebellion was a popular movement, representing a clear majority of the settlers, to resolve serious economic and social problems by stepping up the exploitation of oppressed peoples. Far from being “democratic,” it was more nearly fascistic. Bacon was the diseased mind of the most reactionary faction of the planters, and in his ambitious schemes the fact that a few more freemen or ex-slaves had paper voting rights meant little. Far from fighting to abolish slavery, the Rebellion actually hoped to add to the number of slaves by Indian conquest. And, finally, there was no “Black and White unity” at all. Needing fighting bodies, Bacon at the very end offered a deal to his opponents’ slaves. He paid in the only coin that was meaningful — a promise of freedom for them if he won. Those Afrikans who signed up in his army didn’t love him, trust him, view him as their leader, or anything of the kind. They were tactically exploiting a contradiction in the oppressor ranks, maneuvering for their freedom. It is interesting to note that those Indianswho did give themselves up to unity with the oppressors, becoming the settlers’ lackeys and allies, were not protected by it, but were destroyed.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 day ago* (1 child)

    Thats really interesting for how severely differently it was presented in another explicitly leftist book I read. I was aware that it was strongly motivated by the genocidal interests of settlers but it was presented to me as effecticely a coalition between poor frontiersmen, indentured servents, and eventually slaves against wealthier colonials who refused to use state power to protect settlers. This movement was then coopted by Bacon but not began by him. The story as I understood it went something like this. In the beginning it was the frontiersmen (in some case legally landless), indentured servents, and slave aligned by their class interests as settlers threatened by indigenous resistance rebelling on their own for the purpose of not dying. Bacon, a wealthier colonial, comes in and says yeah fuck the natives I got your back and gives structure to the preexisting political unrests but is then successfully repressed by the colonial hierarchy led by Berkeley. Leading to stronger racial distinctions and decreased use of white indentured servitude as to avoid another such coalition forming across racial lines.

    I'd have to look into it more but I don't think this is an entirely unfair interpretation. I'd have to look more into African participation especially as I had never heard they were only part of it very late into the rebellion. Scholarship may have changed since 1983.

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