Tacky's Revolt | |||||||
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Part of the Seven Years' War | |||||||
![]() A French illustration of the revolt made in 1800 | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
![]() ![]() Jamaican Maroons | Coromantee rebels | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
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Tacky † Apongo Simon | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
Unknown | Hundreds | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
60 whites killed 60 free blacks killed |
1,100+ rebels killed 500+ rebels sold into slavery |
Tacky's Revolt (also known as Tacky's Rebellion and Tacky's War) was a slave rebellion in the British colony of Jamaica which lasted from 7 April 1760 to 1761. Spearheaded by self-emancipated Coromantee people, the rebels were led by a Fante royal named Tacky (Twi: Takyi). It was the most significant slave rebellion in the West Indies between the 1733 slave insurrection on St. John and the 1791 Haitian Revolution. The rebels were eventually defeated after British colonial forces, assisted by Jamaican Maroons, waged a gruelling counterinsurgency campaign. According to historian Trevor Burnard, "[in] terms of its shock to the imperial system, only the American Revolution surpassed Tacky's War in the eighteenth century." It was also the largest slave rebellion in the British West Indies until the Baptist War of 1831, which also occurred in Jamaica.[1]