Blood on the River

A breathtakingly original history of the Berbice Slave Rebellion, the event that almost changed the face of the Americas.

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THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE BERBICE SLAVE REBELLION

Winner of the 2021 Cundill History Prize
Winner of the 2021 Frederick Douglass Prize

'A gripping tale about the human need for freedom ... spellbinding' NPR

'Impressively detailed ... Kars provokes the reader into seeing the many sides involved in this bloody and desperate struggle with empathy and pity ... excellent' Paterson Joseph, actor and author of The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho

'A masterpiece ... a story for the ages' Elizabeth Fenn, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Encounters at the Heart of the World

In February 1763, thousands of slaves in the Dutch colony of Berbice - in present-day Guyana - launched a massive rebellion - and very nearly succeeded. For an entire year, they fought their enslavers, dreaming of establishing a free state, what would have been the first Black republic. Instead, they vanished from history.

Blood on the River is the explosive story of this forgotten revolution, an event that almost changed the face of the Americas. Historian Marjoleine Kars draws on long-buried Dutch interrogation transcripts to reconstruct a rich day-by-day account of this extraordinary event, providing a rare look at the political vision of enslaved people at the dawn of the Age of Revolution. An astonishing original work of history, Blood on the River will change our understanding of revolutions, slavery and the story of freedom in the New World.