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Talk

The Great Resistance: the 400-year fight to end slavery in the Americas

Historian Carrie Gibson tells the epic story of the fight to end slavery.

Date
29 May 2026
Location
Online

For more than four centuries, enslaved people across the western hemisphere, from the United States and the Caribbean to Mexico and Brazil, fought any way they could to gain their freedom. From the first African revolt in 1521 on the island of Hispaniola to the eighteenth-century Maroon Wars on Jamaica, and the revolution that gave Haiti its independence, this was the most diverse ongoing insurrection the world has ever known.

Join historian Carrie Gibson as she retells some of the stories of struggle featured in her latest book, The Great Resistance. Focusing on the thousands of acts of defiance that kept the flame of freedom alive, Gibson vividly chronicles the resistance that eventually ended the slave trade and, with Brazil’s abolition in 1888, the institution of slavery itself.

Event details

Date
29 May 2026, 14:00 to 15:00
Price
Free to £15

Pay what you can

Location
Online, Live-streamed on Vimeo

Dates for this event

29 May 2026

  • 14:00 to 15:00

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This event will be live streamed on the website of our streaming service, Vimeo.

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Watch after the event

This talk will be available to watch after the event, using the same link you will receive to join it live. It will remain available for a limited period of 48 hours after the event has finished, unless otherwise stated.

Speakers

  • Carrie Gibson

    Historian

    Carrie Gibson was born in the US and lived in the UK for more than two decades before moving to South Korea. After a career in journalism, mostly spent at the Guardian newspaper in London, she completed a PhD in history at Cambridge in 2010 on the Hispanic Caribbean islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) during the Haitian Revolution. Her love of the Caribbean led her to write Empire's Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Present Day and El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America.