Enslaved Merchants, Enslaved Merchant-Mariners, and the Bermuda Conspiracy of 1761

During the autumn of 1761, news of a slave conspiracy reached the colonial government in Bermuda. Not since the seventeenth century had Bermuda’s slaveholders contended with a widespread uprising of their bondpeople. As will be shown, this rebellion, involving a number of enslaved merchant-mariners, reflected a contradiction between slavery and the capacity of slaves to garnish profits without threat of confiscation.