Freddy, that was a great post – much info in few words. I’m curious about the last point, though. Caribbean colonies with many slaves and few free settlers – are you suggesting that the free settlers didn’t want to risk rebelling against their colonial motherland because they feared that the slaves would join them in the rebellion, then turn around and keep rebelling against them, too? If so, why exactly would they fear this?
Perhaps in the experience Haiti (where, I believe, the slaves rebelled against both at the same time) lies part of the answer.
I would say that it was more that island colonies needed their British garrisons as insurance against slave uprisings. Whites in the mainland colonies were confident that they could kick out the redcoats and still raise enough of a militia to put down a Denmark Vesey or a Nat Turner on their own. Whites in the island colonies, where they were heavily outnumbered, weren’t.
Pretty much, yes. Haiti was in the future at the time of the American Revolution, of course, but white planters understood the danger. The general breakdown of colonial authority in France on the heels of the French Revolution invited one of the few successful slave uprisings in history.
The Continental Army’s Montgomery/Arnold invasion of Canada in late 1775 had pretty rough going, and ultimately failed. I think most of the Canadian population at the time just wanted to keep their heads down and stay out of trouble with the Brits, who seemed likely to remain in control of the region despite the rebellion to the south.