Enslaved Akwamu Launch Revolt on St. John

Context

The Danish West India Company claimed the sparsely settled island of St. John in 1718 to expand sugar production, joining other European powers in the Caribbean plantation economy. With few Danish settlers willing to work the land, the company turned to the transatlantic slave trade; ships from the Danish trading posts near Accra brought thousands of Africans to the Danish West Indies. Among them were many Akwamu people, members of a once-dominant Akan state on the Gold Coast whose defeat by rival groups around 1730 led to their mass sale into slavery.

By 1733 roughly 1,087 enslaved people lived on St. John alongside only 206 Europeans, most of them absentee-owned plantations managed by overseers. A prolonged drought, a destructive hurricane, and insect infestations ruined crops that year, leaving both enslaved workers and planters short of food. In response, growing numbers of enslaved people fled into the hills—a practice the authorities called marronage. Governor-General Phillip Gardelin answered with the Slave Code of 1733, which prescribed severe public punishments, including whipping, mutilation, and execution, for any act of defiance or escape.

What Happened

On the morning of November 23, 1733, a small group of enslaved Akwamu entered Fort Frederiksvaern above Coral Bay carrying bundles of firewood for the garrison. Hidden among the wood were cane knives. The attackers killed most of the soldiers inside; one survivor escaped by boat to St. Thomas. The rebels then fired the fort’s cannons, the prearranged signal for coordinated attacks across the island.

Under leaders including Breffu, King June, Kanta, and King Claes, the insurgents moved from plantation to plantation in the Coral Bay area and along the north shore. They killed European owners and overseers while deliberately sparing buildings, tools, and livestock they intended to use themselves. Many planters fled by boat to St. Thomas; others took refuge at the fortified Durloe plantation, which the rebels besieged but never captured. Most non-Akwamu enslaved people stayed out of the fighting, fearing domination by the Akwamu as had occurred in Africa.

Aftermath

Danish authorities on St. Thomas appealed to the French colony of Martinique for help. Roughly 400 French and Swiss troops landed on St. John in late April 1734 and, with superior firepower, drove the rebels from their strongholds within a month. Planter control was restored by the end of May. Local militia units continued to hunt remaining holdouts in the hills until the last major group was captured on August 25, 1734.

The uprising and its suppression caused many St. John landowners to abandon their estates and relocate to the newly acquired island of St. Croix. A few loyal enslaved people received freedom or land grants for aiding their owners’ escape.

Legacy

The 1733 insurrection remains one of the longest and most organized slave revolts in the early Americas, demonstrating that enslaved Africans could plan, seize, and briefly administer a colonial territory. It revealed the thin margin of security on which Caribbean plantation societies rested and prompted Danish officials to tighten both military presence and slave regulations in subsequent years.

Historians note the revolt’s distinctive Akwamu leadership and its explicit aim of continuing commercial agriculture under African control rather than destroying the estates. The event is remembered locally as an early assertion of resistance that contributed, over the following century, to the pressures that led Denmark to abolish the slave trade in 1803 and slavery itself in 1848.