ladytp:

flintsredhair:

@ladytp replied to your post

But why does common thinking seem to assume – without any real reason besides blind hope – that Flint and Madi’s war would have succeeded in overthrowing British yoke, abolishing slavery and freeing those millions of future generations from the fate worse than death? Would a crew of pirates and runaway slaves really have defeated the British Empire, the most powerful in the world with unlimited resources at hand?

Because there were other successful rebellions against the British Crown in the same area in the same century. Because the American Revolution succeeded with scarcely more resources than the pirates and slaves could have mustered. The short answer is yes, and the long answer is even if they didn’t succeed, it’s important that someone would have tried, because it would have given others the notion that a rebellion could succeed in the future. The fact that the pirates of Nassau managed to annoy the British into offering the pardons in the first place is, as Flint rightly noted, a sign that England thought there was a possibility they could win, because you don’t pardon people you can successfully put down by other means that will scare other dissenters into backing down.

There would always have been a chance, that is true – but from what I observed from the story, pirates did not seem to have real resources to maintain more than a small colony, if left to their own devices. Even the farmers of Nassau were more or less out of the picture, I believe, and they didn’t have statesmen, lawyers nor politicians (yes, an unfortunate requirement for a sovereign dominion). They might have been able to hold Britain off for a while as some Caribbean revolts did, but I doubt it would have had any such influence to the politics of Great Britain that has been raised in some discussions. American revolution certainly did, but at that stage America was big and vast and populous with almost 3 million people and also an established society, commerce and political system, so that was somewhat different….

I certainly believe the cause was noble – but judging characters motivations afterwards based on what could have been and assuming that the best of all options would have prevailed (a period of struggle and deaths followed by peace and prosperity and freedom) is our prerogative – but not the prerogative of those who had to make their decisions based on how they judged the situation and its risks at the time. 

Agreed – the characters could not, at the time, know how history would pan out, but they damn sure did know what England was about. They knew the suffering brought about by her laws. They knew what it was to be considered less than human, and they knew they weren’t the only ones suffering. They knew that Flint proposed to take the war not just to the Caribbean but to the mainland, which, as you noted, possessed far greater resources with which to wage their war, including men and supplies. It wasn’t a question of holding off Britain – Flint proposed to turn a war made up of a ragtag army of pirates and slaves into a conflict that was far better funded and supplied, and I really, honestly do think he could have done it. I think, with Madi’s help, and the help of her people, they had a chance. How many Jameses and Thomases do you think they would have found in British jails up and down the east coast, if the war had gone that far? How many men who could and would have served as lawyers and statesmen? How many women like Madame Guthrie who might have seen the rebellion as a chance to have their own lives at last instead of kowtowing to their men? And I repeat – even if they didn’t win, the chance to be free of the empire that wanted them all dead or enslaved, or tortured like Thomas, was worth fighting and potentially dying for. They wanted it, they knew the risks, and no one – I mean absolutely no one – had the right to rip that out from under them because they judged it unwinnable, especially not someone who faced none of the systemic, unrelenting oppression based on something they could not change that Madi and Flint had both personally experienced.