Adaptive Tactics: Cross-Cultural Strategies in Cuban Slave Rebellions

This paper will investigate how enslaved people in Cuba adapted warfare techniques from across different African cultures thereby creating unique tactics in New World contexts. The paper will explore two revolts during the 1830s in Cuba, one larger and one smaller, to discuss the role African warfare tactics played in each incident. The work seeks to unravel how rebellious actions unfolded, accounting for the ethnically diverse populations found on plantations as well as the scale of such incidents. The goal of the discussion is to create an integrated understanding of the ways knowledge moved from multiple African contexts to Cuban plantations and in the process was transformed from culturally specific modes to an adapted cross-cultural model of resistance and rebellion.