The St. Joseph Mutiny was a mutiny which occurred on 17 June 1837 among the 1st West India Regiment of the British Army. It began at the unit's barracks in St. Joseph, Trinidad, then part of the British West Indies.
It was led by recently arrived Africans who had been liberated from illegal slave ships by the Royal Navy and subsequently conscripted into the West India Regiments. Between 60 and 100 soldiers in the regiment participated in the mutiny, seizing arms and ammunition, killing one enlisted soldier and setting fire to the officers' quarters. The Army and Trinidad Militia quickly suppressed the mutiny, killing twelve mutineers; six others committed suicide to avoid capture. Three ringleaders of the mutiny were subsequently executed, while two others were sentenced to death but had their sentences commutated to penal transportation to Australia.
One of the leaders of the mutiny, Daaga, became a folk hero in Trinidad and was an inspiration for the leaders of the Black Power Revolution in the 1960s.
Mutiny is a revolt among a group of people to oppose, change, or remove superiors or their orders. The term is commonly used for insubordination by members of the military against an officer or superior, but it can also sometimes mean any type of rebellion against any force. Mutiny does not necessarily need to refer to a military force and can describe a political, economic, or power structure in which subordinates defy superiors.
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the form of a mutiny of sepoys of the company's army in the garrison town of Meerut, 40 mi (64 km) northeast of Delhi. It then erupted into other mutinies and civilian rebellions chiefly in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, though incidents of revolt also occurred farther north and east. The rebellion posed a military threat to British power in that region, and was contained only with the rebels' defeat in Gwalior on 20 June 1858. On 1 November 1858, the British granted amnesty to all rebels not involved in murder, though they did not declare the hostilities to have formally ended until 8 July 1859.
The Connaught Rangers was an Irish line infantry regiment of the British Army formed by the amalgamation of the 88th Regiment of Foot and the 94th Regiment of Foot in July 1881. Between the time of its formation and Irish independence, it was one of eight Irish regiments raised largely in Ireland. Its home depot was in Galway. It was disbanded following the establishment of the independent Irish Free State in 1922, along with the other five regiments that had their traditional recruiting grounds in the counties of the new state.
The West India Regiments (WIR) were infantry units of the British Army recruited from and normally stationed in the British colonies of the Caribbean between 1795 and 1927. In 1888 the two West India Regiments then in existence were reduced to a single unit of two battalions. This regiment differed from similar forces raised in other parts of the British Empire in that it formed an integral part of the regular British Army. In 1958 a new regiment was created following the creation of the Federation of the West Indies with the establishment of three battalions, however, the regiment's existence was short-lived and it was disbanded in 1962 when its personnel were used to establish other units in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. Throughout their history, the regiments were involved in a number of campaigns in the West Indies and Africa, and also took part in the First World War, where they served in the Middle East and East Africa.
The Black Power Revolution, also known as the Black Power Movement, 1970 Revolution, Black Power Uprising and February Revolution, was an attempt by a number of social elements, people and interest groups in Trinidad and Tobago to subvert the neocolonial order held over from the days of British slavery and imperialism, and supported by Anglo-American collusive efforts to maintain dominating influence in the Caribbean region.
The National Union of Freedom Fighters (NUFF) was an armed Marxist revolutionary group in Trinidad and Tobago. Active in the aftermath of the 1970 Black Power Revolution, the group fought a guerrilla warfare campaign to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Eric Williams following the failed Black Power uprising and an unsuccessful mutiny in the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment.
Reginald Andrew Lassalle, better known as Rex Lassalle, is an alternative medicine practitioner and former lieutenant in the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment who was a leader of an army mutiny in April 1970 as part of the Black Power Revolution.
Makandal Akhenation Daaga was a Trinidad and Tobago political activist and former revolutionary. He was the leader of the 1970 Black Power Revolution. During the unrest he was arrested and charged.
The Cocos Islands mutiny was a failed mutiny by Sri Lankan soldiers against British officers, on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands on 8 May 1942, during the Second World War.
The Siege of Delhi was one of the decisive conflicts of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The rebellion against the authority of the East India Company was widespread through much of Northern India, but essentially it was sparked by the mass uprising by the sepoys of the Bengal Army, which the company had itself raised in its Bengal Presidency. Seeking a symbol around which to rally, the first sepoys to rebel sought to reinstate the power of the Mughal Empire, which had ruled much of the Indian subcontinent in the previous centuries. Lacking overall direction, many who subsequently rebelled also flocked to Delhi.
The Second Battle of Cawnpore was a battle of Indian Rebellion of 1857 that was decisive by thwarting the rebels' last chance to regain the initiative and to recapture the cities of Cawnpore and Lucknow.
The Central India Campaign was one of the last series of actions in the Indian rebellion of 1857. The British Army and Bombay Army overcame a disunited collection of states in a single rapid campaign, although determined rebels continued a guerrilla campaign until the spring of 1859.
Tacky's Revolt 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. 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.
The Battle of Badli-ki-Serai was fought early in the Indian Rebellion of 1857, or First War of Indian Independence as it has since been termed in Indian histories of the events. A British and Gurkha force defeated a force of sepoys who had rebelled against the British East India Company. The British victory allowed them to besiege and ultimately capture Delhi.
The Pennsylvania Line Mutiny was a mutiny of Continental Army soldiers, who demanded higher pay and better housing conditions, and was the cause of the legend and stories surrounding the American heroine Tempe Wick. The mutiny began on January 1, 1781, and ended with a negotiated settlement on January 8, 1781. The negotiated terms were finally concluded by January 29, 1781. The mutiny was the most successful and important insurrection of Continental Army soldiers during the American Revolutionary War.
The Nancy affair, commonly referred to in English as the Nancy Mutiny, was the crushing of a military mutiny in France on 31 August 1790, two years before the final overthrow of the French monarchy. The mutiny was of particular significance in that it illustrated the degree to which the discipline and reliability of the Royal Army had been undermined by thirteen months of revolutionary turmoil.
The British West Indies Regiment was a unit of the British Army during the First World War, formed from volunteers from British colonies in the West Indies.
Blowing from a gun is a method of execution in which the victim is typically tied to the mouth of a cannon which is then fired, resulting in death. George Carter Stent described the process as follows:
The prisoner is generally tied to a gun with the upper part of the small of his back resting against the muzzle. When the gun is fired, his head is seen to go straight up into the air some forty or fifty feet; the arms fly off right and left, high up in the air, and fall at, perhaps, a hundred yards distance; the legs drop to the ground beneath the muzzle of the gun; and the body is literally blown away altogether, not a vestige being seen.
Edward Lanza Joseph was a Trinidadian journalist, playwright and author. He was one of the first English-language poets in British Trinidad, also writing in Trinidadian Creole. He briefly served as editor of the Port of Spain Gazette and published one of the first books on the history of Trinidad.
The Barrackpore mutiny was a rising of native Indian sepoys against their British officers in Barrackpore in November 1824. The incident occurred when the British East India Company was fighting the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–1826) under the leadership of the Governor-General of Bengal, William Amherst, 1st Earl Amherst.
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