Enslaved people never accepted their lot. They found themselves trapped, often for generations, unable to see a way out but given half a chance, they grasped the opportunity to escape and live in freedom. For numerous reasons, the decades after 1770 offered many more opportunities than had come before. Wherever they could, enslaved people seized these opportunities – to rebel and revolt – and to a striking degree they proved successful. These were the decades labelled by modern historians the “age of democratic revolution”, associated at first with the period 1760–1800 but later broadened to encompass the hundred years 1750–1850 and simplified to an “age of revolution”. The key events of the period initially were identified as the American Revolution and the French Revolution but the revolution in St Domingue demands an equal place in this narrative. Similarly, the struggle for political liberty in Spanish America and the struggle for the abolition of slavery constitute vital elements of the age of revolution.

The resistance and rebellion of enslaved people in the Caribbean now was embedded in a broader struggle that saw white people in conflict with their rulers both in the metropolis and the colonies. Arguments about the rights of man to liberty and equality – keystones of the French and American revolutions – could not be confined easily to a select group of free white men.