A variety of internal and external factors contribute to state formation, expansion, and decline. Governments maintain order through a variety of administrative institutions, policies, and procedures, and governments obtain, retain, and exercise power in different ways and for different purposes.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Explain the effects of the development of state power from 1450 to 1750.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS

KC 4.3.III.iii - State expansion and centralization led to resistance from an array of social, political, and economic groups on a local level.

KC 5.3.III.C - Slave resistance challenged existing authorities in the Americas.

ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES

Local resistance:

§Pueblo revolts

§ Fronde

§ Cossack revolts

§ Maratha conflict with the Mughals

§ Ana Nzinga resistance (As ruler of Ndongo and Matamba)

§ Metacom’s War (King Philip’s War)

Slave resistance:

§ Maroon societies in Caribbean and Brazil

§ North American

Local resistance:

§Pueblo revolts

Aug. 10, 1680, Popé, a Tewa Pueblo (joined by Apaches) led a revolt against the Spanish in what is now the southwestern United States.

Contextualization

• 1598--area around modern day New Mexico colonized by Spanish

• Catholicism was forced on them by missionaries

  • • kivas (ceremonial pits), masks, and other sacred objects were destroyed

    • Inquisition resulted in severe punishments—hanging, whipping, dismemberment (of hands or feet), or condemnation to slavery

      • • medicine men were especially singled out for reprisals

Revolt of 1680

• Popé, a medicine man embittered by imprisonment, believed himself commanded by the tribal ancestor spirits (kachinas) to restore the old customs

• Spaniards were forced to flee, leaving over 400 dead, including 21 priests. Over 1000 residents fled Santa Fe and went to El Paso del Norte.

• Pueblo celebrated their victory by washing off the stains of Christian baptism, annulling Christian marriages, and destroying churches.

Result

• remained free until 1692

• Spanish rule was reestablished in 1692, reconquered by Gov. Pedro de Vargas

§ Fronde

Causes

• reaction against centralization of authority by the French monarchy by Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu

• nobles wanted to reassert aristocratic privileges after the death of Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu

  • • new king, Louis XIV was a child

Events

• many of the rebel bands were members of the military, which was not under the central authority of the king at that time

  • • these soldiers were seasoned from wars against German states

• broke into Louis XIV's palace in Paris and stormed his bedroom

Effects

• increased power of the king as a centralizing authority

• French military was reorganized and placed under the control of the king

• erosion of feudalism -- reorganization of military resulted in weakening of nobility

• Louis XIV expanded Versailles to distance himself from Paris

  • • forced nobility to live there believing they were treacherous and could not be trusted

§ Cossack revolts

Series of uprisings from the 16th-18th centuries between Cossacks (lived in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) and thePolish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and later the Russian Empire.

Case Study: Pugachev Rebellion (1773-1774)

• disgruntled former soldier of Russia's Catherine II (reigned 1762–1796) (also known as Catherine the Great), named Yemelian Pugachev

• Issue

  • • Catherine confirmed the authority of the nobles over the serfs in return for the nobles' political cooperation.

    • serfs/peasantry in Russia were no longer bound to the land, but tied to their owner

    • serfs had no access to the political authority

    • serfs subject to an increase in indirect taxes

• Pugachev:

  • • mounted a rebellion in the steppe lands north of the Caspian Sea

    • raised an army of adventurers, exiles, peasants, and serfs who killed thousands of noble landowners and government officials

• Russian imperial forces crushed the uprising

• Government authorities took the captured Pugachev to Moscow in chains, beheaded him, quartered his body, and displayed his parts throughout the city as a warning against rebellion

§ Maratha conflict with the Mughals

• Maratha's

  • • Hindu Confederation that challenged the Mughal Empire

      • • fought a series of battles from 1680-1707

        • policies of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb (reigned 1659-1707) worked as a unifying factors for Hindu states

          • • reinstated jizya tax on Hindus

            • destroyed several important Hindu temples

    • After the death of the emperor Aurangzeb in 1707, the Mughal state entered a period of decline, and many local authorities asserted their independence of Mughal rule.

    • Maratha Empire began in 1674, and came to control much of South Asia from 1707-1818.

• Path towards British colonization

  • • Colonization of India evolved slowly as local authorities and European traders (most effectively-British East India Company) made and unmade a variety of alliances over roughly a century in India (1750–1850)

      • • The fragmentation of the Mughal Empire and the absence of any overall sense of cultural or political unity both invited and facilitated European penetration

§ Ana Nzinga resistance (As ruler of Ndongo and Matamba)

In 1624, Ana Nzinga inherited rule of Ndongo, a state to the east of Luanda populated primarily by Mbundu peoples. (source)

Context

• growing demand for this human labor colonies such as Brazil ultimately led Portugal to seek military and economic control of this region

• the kingdom was under attack from both Portuguese as well as neighboring African aggressors

• Portuguese soldiers and indigenous African raiders in search of captives for the slave trade, and rulers were forced to adapt to these new circumstances or face certain destruction

Initial Events

• Nzinga realized that, to remain viable, Ndongo had to reposition itself as an intermediary rather than a supply zone in the slave trade

• she allied Ndongo with Portugal, simultaneously acquiring a partner in its fight against its African enemies and ending Portuguese slave raiding in the kingdom

• Ana Nzinga’s baptism, with the Portuguese colonial governor serving as godfather, sealed this relationship

Portuguese betrayal

• By 1626, however, Portugal had betrayed Ndongo, and Nzinga was forced to flee with her people further west, where they founded a new state at Matamba, well beyond the reach of the Portuguese

• Nzinga offered sanctuary to runaway slaves and Portuguese-trained African soldiers and adopted a form of military organization known as kilombo, in which youths renounced family ties and were raised communally in militias

• She also fomented rebellion within Ndongo itself, which was now governed indirectly by the Portuguese through a puppet ruler.

• Nzinga found an ally in the Netherlands, which seized Luanda for its own mercantile purposes in 1641. Their combined forces were insufficient to drive the Portuguese out of Angola

Tide Turns

• Luanda was reclaimed by the Portuguese, Nzinga was again forced to retreat to Matamba.

• From this point on, Nzinga focused on developing Matamba as a trading power by capitalizing on its position as the gateway to the Central African interior.

• By the time of her death in 1663, Matamba was a formidable commercial state that dealt with the Portuguese colony on an equal footing.

• Nzinga reconverted to Christianity before her death at the age of eighty-one

§ Metacom’s War (King Philip’s War)

• 1675 to 1676 (source)

• Causes:

  • • Metacom (known as Philip) negotiated a peace treaty with the colonists at Plymouth Plantation, but the colonist’s encroachment on Wampanoag lands.

    • In January 1675, a Christian Indian was killed and three Wampanoag men were tried and guilty for the murder and hanged on June 8, 1675

    • Between June 20 and June 23, 1675, the Wampanoag carried out a series of raids against the Swansea colony of Massachusetts, killing many colonists and pillaging and destroying property.

• The war

  • • spread during the summer of 1675 as the Wampanoag, joined by Algonquian warriors, attacked settlements throughout Plymouth Colony.

    • September 9, 1675, the New England Confederation declared war against “King” Philip and his followers.

    • A week later, around 700 Nipmuc Indians ambushed a militia group escorting a wagon train of colonists. Almost all colonists and militia were killed in the fighting, known as the Battle of Bloody Brook.

    • December 19, 1675 near the Great Swamp in West Kingston, Rhode Island

      • • estimated that 300 Indians, including women and children, were either killed in the attack or died from exposure to the winter elements; some were burned alive at the stake

    • King Philip set up camp in New York, but was attacked by the Mohawk tribe.

    • winter of 1676, King Philip’s confederacy continued to assault English colonies throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Maine

      • • “Nine Men's Misery" incident

          • • Narragansett Indians ambushed around 60 colonists and 20 Christian Wampanoag Indians. The Indians killed almost all the colonists; however, nine men were captured and gruesomely tortured to death.

      • spring of 1676

        • • Narragansett Chief Canonchet handed over to the Mohegans and shot, beheaded and quartered

          • militia attacked and killed up to 200 Narragansett at the Battle of Turner Falls

      • August 20, 1676

        • • King Metacom (Philip) was shot and killed

          • his body was then hung, beheaded, drawn and quartered. His head was placed on a spike and displayed at Plymouth colony for two decades.

Results:

• considered the bloodiest war per capita in U.S. history. It left several hundred colonists dead and dozens of English settlements destroyed or heavily damaged.

• Thousands of Indians were killed, wounded or captured and sold into slavery or indentured servitude.

  • • The war decimated the Narragansett, Wampanoag and many smaller tribes and mostly ended Indian resistance in southern New England, paving the way for additional English settlements.

Slave resistance:

§ Maroon societies in Caribbean and Brazil

• Maroons were the descendants of a band of run away slaves who had taken refuge on the periphery of colonial society or in the mountainous interior of Caribbean island. Later, runaways also supplemented their numbers.

• Case Study: British Jamaica

  • • use of slave labor in Jamaica for the production of sugar in this British colony

    • Threat to plantation economics

      • • plantation raids

        • the killing of white militiamen who responded

        • the freeing of slaves

    • Inability to subdue Maroon societies

      • • planters were willing to sign a treaty with the Maroons in 1738

        • article three of the treaty states that the Maroons were given 1500 acres of crown land, a necessity for the Maroons to maintain their independent way of life

        • article eight of the treaty, which states: "that if any white man shall do any manner of injury to Captain Cudjoe, his successors, or any of his or their people, shall apply to any commanding officer or magistrate in the neighborhood for justice." This showed some equity under the law between the Maroons and the planters.

        • the fifth article of the treaty divide the game (animals to hunt) equally among the planters and the Maroons

§ North American

In the United States, there are records of at least 313 slave revolts between 1619 and 1865--the period in which chattel slavery existed in the United States. Here are 5 example (source):

1.) Stono Rebellion, 1739

The Stono Rebellion was the largest slave revolt ever staged in the 13 colonies. On Sunday, Sept. 9, 1739, a day free of labor, about 20 slaves under the leadership of a man named Jemmy provided whites with a painful lesson on the African desire for liberty. Many members of the group were seasoned soldiers, either from the Yamasee War or from their experience in their homes in Angola, where they were captured and sold, and had been trained in the use of weapons.

They gathered at the Stono River and raided a warehouse-like store, Hutchenson’s, executing the white owners and placing their victims’ heads on the store’s front steps for all to see. They moved on to other houses in the area, killing the occupants and burning the structures, marching through the colony toward St. Augustine, Fla., where under Spanish law, they would be free.

As the march proceeded, not all slaves joined the insurrection; in fact, some hung back and actually helped hide their masters. But many were drawn to it, and the insurrectionists soon numbered about 100. They paraded down King’s Highway, according to sources, carrying banners and shouting, “Liberty!” — lukango in their native Kikongo, a word that would have expressed the English ideals embodied in liberty and, perhaps, salvation.

The slaves fought off the English for more than a week before the colonists rallied and killed most of the rebels, although some very likely reached Fort Mose. Even after Colonial forces crushed the Stono uprising, outbreaks occurred, including the very next year, when South Carolina executed at least 50 additional rebel slaves.

2.) The New York City Conspiracy of 1741

With about 1,700 blacks living in a city of some 7,000 whites appearing determined to grind every person of African descent under their heel, some form of revenge seemed inevitable. In early 1741, Fort George in New York burned to the ground. Fires erupted elsewhere in the city — four in one day — and in New Jersey and on Long Island. Several white people claimed they had heard slaves bragging about setting the fires and threatening worse. They concluded that a revolt had been planned by secret black societies and gangs, inspired by a conspiracy of priests and their Catholic minions — white, black, brown, free and slave.

Certainly there were coherent ethnic groups who might have led a resistance, among them the Papa, from the Slave Coast near Whydah (Ouidah) in Benin; the Igbo, from the area around the Niger River; and the Malagasy, from Madagascar. Another identifiable and suspect group was known among the conspirators as the “Cuba People,” “negroes and mulattoes” captured in the early spring of 1740 in Cuba. They had probably been brought to New York from Havana, the greatest port of the Spanish West Indies and home to a free black population. Having been “free men in their own country,” they rightly felt unjustly enslaved in New York.

A 16-year-old Irish indentured servant, under arrest for theft, claimed knowledge of a plot by the city’s slaves — in league with a few whites — to kill white men, seize white women and incinerate the city. In the investigation that followed, 30 black men, two white men and two white women were executed. Seventy people of African descent were exiled to far-flung places like Newfoundland, Madeira, Saint-Domingue (which at independence from the French in 1804 was renamed Haiti) and Curaçao. Before the end of the summer of 1741, 17 blacks would be hanged and 13 more sent to the stake, becoming ghastly illuminations of white fears ignited by the institution of slavery they so zealously defended.

3.) Gabriel’s Conspiracy, 1800.

Born prophetically in 1776 on the Prosser plantation, just six miles north of Richmond, Va., and home (to use the term loosely) to 53 slaves, a slave named Gabriel would hatch a plot, with freedom as its goal, that was emblematic of the era in which he lived.

A skilled blacksmith who stood more than six feet tall and dressed in fine clothes when he was away from the forge, Gabriel cut an imposing figure. But what distinguished him more than his physical bearing was his ability to read and write: Only 5 percent of Southern slaves were literate.

Other slaves looked up to men like Gabriel, and Gabriel himself found inspiration in the French and Saint-Domingue revolutions of 1789. He imbibed the political fervor of the era and concluded, albeit erroneously, that Jeffersonian democratic ideology encompassed the interests of black slaves and white workingmen alike, who, united, could oppose the oppressive Federalist merchant class.

Spurred on by two liberty-minded French soldiers he met in a tavern, Gabriel began to formulate a plan, enlisting his brother Solomon and another servant on the Prosser plantation in his fight for freedom. Word quickly spread to Richmond, other nearby towns and plantations and well beyond to Petersburg and Norfolk, via free and enslaved blacks who worked the waterways. Gabriel took a tremendous risk in letting so many black people learn of his plans: It was necessary as a means of attracting supporters, but it also exposed him to the possibility of betrayal.

Regardless, Gabriel persevered, aiming to rally at least 1,000 slaves to his banner of “Death or Liberty,” an inversion of the famed cry of the slaveholding revolutionary Patrick Henry. With incredible daring — and naïveté — Gabriel determined to march to Richmond, take the armory and hold Gov. James Monroe hostage until the merchant class bent to the rebels’ demands of equal rights for all. He planned his uprising for August 30 and publicized it well.

But on that day, one of the worst thunderstorms in recent memory pummeled Virginia, washing away roads and making travel all but impossible. Undeterred, Gabriel believed that only a small band was necessary to carry out the plan. But many of his followers lost faith, and he was betrayed by a slave named Pharoah, who feared retribution if the plot failed.

The rebellion was barely under way when the state captured Gabriel and several co-conspirators. Twenty-five African Americans, worth about $9,000 or so — money that cash-strapped Virginia surely thought it could ill afford — were hanged together before Gabriel went to the gallows and was executed, alone.

4.) German Coast Uprising, 1811

If the Haitian Revolution between 1791 and 1804 — spearheaded by Touissant Louverture and fought and won by black slaves under the leadership of Jean-Jacques Dessalines — struck fear in the hearts of slave owners everywhere, it struck a loud and electrifying chord with African slaves in America.

In 1811, about 40 miles north of New Orleans, Charles Deslondes, a mulatto slave driver on the Andry sugar plantation in the German Coast area of Louisiana, took volatile inspiration from that victory seven years prior in Haiti. He would go on to lead what the young historian Daniel Rasmussen calls the largest and most sophisticated slave revolt in U.S. history in his book American Uprising. (The Stono Rebellion had been the largest slave revolt on these shores to this point, but that occurred in the colonies, before America won its independence from Great Britain.) After communicating his intentions to slaves on the Andry plantation and in nearby areas, on the rainy evening of Jan. 8, Deslondes and about 25 slaves rose up and attacked the plantation’s owner and family. They hacked to death one of the owner’s sons, but carelessly allowed the master to escape.

That was a tactical mistake to be sure, but Deslondes and his men had wisely chosen the well-outfitted Andry plantation — a warehouse for the local militia — as the place to begin their revolt. They ransacked the stores and seized uniforms, guns and ammunition. As they moved toward New Orleans, intending to capture the city, dozens more men and women joined the cause, singing Creole protest songs while pillaging plantations and murdering whites. Some estimated that the force ultimately swelled to 300, but it’s unlikely that Deslondes’ army exceeded 124.

The South Carolina congressman, slave master and Indian fighter Wade Hampton was assigned the task of suppressing the insurrection. With a combined force of about 30 regular U.S. Army soldiers and militia, it would take Hampton two days to stop the rebels. They fought a pitched battle that ended only when the slaves ran out of ammunition, about 20 miles from New Orleans. In the slaughter that followed, the slaves’ lack of military experience was evident: The whites suffered no casualties, but when the slaves surrendered, about 20 insurgents lay dead, another 50 became prisoners and the remainder fled into the swamps.

By the end of the month, whites had rounded up another 50 insurgents. In short order, about 100 survivors were summarily executed, their heads severed and placed along the road to New Orleans. As one planter noted, they looked “like crows sitting on long poles.”

5.) Nat Turner’s Rebellion, 1831

Born on Oct. 2, 1800, in Southampton County, Va., the week before Gabriel was hanged, Nat Turner impressed family and friends with an unusual sense of purpose, even as a child. Driven by prophetic visions and joined by a host of followers — but with no clear goals — on August 22, 1831, Turner and about 70 armed slaves and free blacks set off to slaughter the white neighbors who enslaved them.

In the early hours of the morning, they bludgeoned Turner’s master and his master’s wife and children with axes. By the end of the next day, the rebels had attacked about 15 homes and killed between 55 and 60 whites as they moved toward the religiously named county seat of Jerusalem, Va. Other slaves who had planned to join the rebellion suddenly turned against it after white militia began to attack Turner’s men, undoubtedly concluding that he was bound to fail. Most of the rebels were captured quickly, but Turner eluded authorities for more than a month.

On Sunday, Oct. 30, a local white man stumbled upon Turner’s hideout and seized him. A special Virginia court tried him on Nov. 5 and sentenced him to hang six days later. A barbaric scene followed his execution. Enraged whites took his body, skinned it, distributed parts as souvenirs and rendered his remains into grease. His head was removed and for a time sat in the biology department of Wooster College in Ohio. (In fact, it is likely that pieces of his body — including his skull and a purse made from his skin — have been preserved and are hidden in storage somewhere.)

Of his fellow rebels, 21 went to the gallows, and another 16 were sold away from the region. As the state reacted with harsher laws controlling black people, many free blacks fled Virginia for good. Turner remains a legendary figure, remembered for the bloody path he forged in his personal war against slavery, and for the grisly and garish way he was treated in death.

The heroism and sacrifices of these slave insurrectionists would be a prelude to the noble performance of some 200,000 black men who served so very courageously in the Civil War, the war that finally put an end to the evil institution that in 1860 chained some 3.9 million human beings to perpetual bondage.

Activity:

1.) Read the passage and identify the authors claim/assertion.

2.) Contextualize the claim/assertion within the broader historical events in South Asia that led to these events.

Source: History of the Marathas, by R.S. Chaurasia, 2004

The First Anglo-Maratha War followed, as this domestic quarrel among the Marathas gave a chance to the diplomats of the east India Company to sow seeds of discord in the Maratha Confederacy. The Gaikwar separated himself from the Maratha Confederacy and the Bonsle was bribed by the East India Company to stand aside. However, the treaty of Salbai, which ended the war, recognized Mahadji Sindhia as an independent ruler, and a mediator between the East India Company and Mysore.

The First Maratha War was proved fatal to the Marathas, as it exposed the weakness of the loose Maratha Confederacy, heralded the advent of the East India Company in the internal politics of the Marathas and lastly led to the appointment of British Residents at the court of the Sindhia and the Peshwa, who, by their diplomacy, wove a spider's web of intrigue at these courts and ultimately brought out the downfall of the Maratha empire.

Key Takeaways

A) Local resistance would become a continuity wherever outside forces attempted to establish hegemonic control

• often times they would result in an intensification of the conditions that led to instability (Ndongo and Matamba, Cossack , Fronde)

• other times it could cause fragmentation and result in destabilization of central authority (Maratha, Pueblo)

B.) Slave resistance persistently challenged existing authorities in the Americas with different outcomes

• In the case of the Caribbean and Brazil, Moroon societies established unique societies outside of the authority of colonial society

• In the United States, outcomes often proved to be severe