When I Die, I Shall Return to My Own Land

The First Comprehensive Investigation into the First Uprising Against Slavery in North America
When I Die, I Shall Return to My Own Land: The 1712 New York City Slave Revolt is the first comprehensive investigation into this major event in the history of slavery in North America. Consulting court records, correspondence, and the minutes of the various colonial councils, as well as a wide range of sources related to eighteenth-century slavery, historian Ben Hughes vividly recreates early colonial New York, the lives of its enslaved inhabitants, the factionalism among the city's Dutch and English elites, and their precarious hold on Manhattan Island in the face of French and Native American threats. Hughes traces the origins of the New York rebels, details how they came to be enslaved, and recreates the shadowy dealings that took place between African polities, European and American slavers, and New York merchants. The forepersons of a movement which continues to this day, these original African American rebels have now been all but forgotten. Here, Hughes attempts to redress this imbalance by recovering their story.