Orleans Slave Revolt of 1811 in American Historiography

Abstract

This article tells about one of the most mysterious events in African–American history – the January 1811 slave uprising in Louisiana, which, among other things, is also the most massive armed demonstration of black slaves in the United States. The "mystery" of this event is explained primarily by the limited and tendentious nature of the source base, which does not allow forming a coherent idea of the causes and course of the uprising. In this paper, the author focuses on the analysis of the history of the study of this issue, examining in detail the works of leading experts and mentions of this event, and most importantly – tracing the dynamics of the perception of the slave rebellion of 1811 in American historiography. The special relevance of this study is also given by the fact that the topic of the January slave uprising on the German Coast is not represented in any way in domestic American studies. In the course of his scientific research, the author comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to distinguish at least two stages of the study of the uprising, the first of which was dominated by the traditionalist (conservative), and the second by the modernist and formalist (deductive) approaches. The work uses descriptive, comparative-historical, retrospective and causal methods of historical research.