Tacky

Tacky was an Akan man from the Gold Coast, described as a former African chief, who was enslaved in Jamaica. The details of his early life are not well documented, but he played a central role in organising what became known as Tacky's War, Tacky's Revolt or Tacky's Rebellion, one of the most significant and best-organised slave uprisings in Caribbean history.

Many of the people enslaved in Jamaica at the time were Akan, known in the colony as Coromantee, and had extensive military training from their homelands. The uprising was inspired by the earlier success of free Black communities in Jamaica, such as the Maroons led by Queen Nanny during the First Maroon War of the 1730s.

Some time before daybreak on Easter Monday, 7 April 1760, Tacky and his followers began the revolt in the parish of Saint Mary, a sugar-growing region of Jamaica. They easily took over local plantations and seized weapons, and enslaved people on neighbouring estates joined them in large numbers. The plan was to overthrow British rule on the island and establish an African kingdom.

The colonial authorities responded with force, calling up militia and troops and using Maroon fighters bound by treaty to help put down the revolt. Tacky was killed in the fighting in 1760, but the rebellion continued in other parts of the island, with enslaved people in several parishes rising before it was finally suppressed in 1761.

The revolt shocked the British Empire. According to the 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 the largest slave rebellion in the British West Indies until the Baptist War of 1831, and Tacky remains commemorated in Jamaica as a hero of resistance against slavery.