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The film portrays the revolts of slaves in Curacao, a Dutch colony that erupted in 1795. Tula initiated a nonviolent March across the entire island. The black participants claimed to be in desperate need of help because they believed they had endured more than enough abuse at the hands of their employers. Tula’s narrative forms the basis of the film. His willingness to die for his brethren made the producers of the movie rather inspired to retell such an emotional tale. It seeks to commemorate Tula and his men for their bravery in sacrificing everything for the greater good of the people. It narrates the history of black people in the 16th century. Just like Tula’s people suffered in Haiti from the Dutch, blacks in America faced brutality too.
They labored in massive farms without adequate payment for their services. Vaughan (1972) states that the first traces of black slaves were not reported until 1819. At this point, black people were still engaged in trying to enter the country. Limits of Democracy observes that the introduction of slaves into the country coincided with a marked increase in the productivity of cotton farmers since southern America mainly employed blacks in cotton plantations. There were only about 1.6 million slaves, along with approximately 1.6 million cotton bales produced in 1820. By 1860 this figure had increased to 4 million slaves and an equal number of bales of cotton (Limits of Democracy ). The movie also depicts the same thing albeit set somewhere else. The movie also depicts a revolt of black slaves against the white plantation owners, led by a determined black man. Several blacks decided to join the fight for freedom when they realized the oppressive mistreatment that was meted out to them by their white employers.
This was the case in the American South as well from the 1800s and the middle of the 1900s.
The southern economy in America thrived due to the extensive cultivation of cash crops such as rice, indigo, tobacco, hemp, and sugar (Slave Culture in Early America). During the 1850s, American slaves in the South produced approximately 75% of the world’s cotton (Slave Culture in Early America). This certainly does mean that a significant amount of work was performed. Throughout the world, no other population completed the type of work these individuals did. The growth in the Southern economy from the use of enslaved individuals is staggering, while the North also saw growth due to other activities in the region (Slave Culture in Early America). Though beneficial to the nation as a whole in some capacity, these growths fueled intense competition and conflict between the two regions of the country. The North was an anti-slavery and pro-mechanized industry. Instead, they sought to utilize both their congress and physical aggression to communicate to the South that enslaving people was a barbaric way to conduct oneself and should be put to an end. This makes it possible to explain what triggered black rebellion movements such as that of Tula as portrayed in the film. The act served to illustrate that slavery was wrong and they sought to enslave them no more.
The wisest course of action for them was to align themselves alongside the Northerners battling the Southerners. Quite similarly, the white people equally had a contemptuous view of Africans. They thought of them as primitive beings, while their women were mere sexual commodities. Numerous European and American writers in the past perpetuated this fallacy through their works. In “Journey To Genie,” Robert Baker writes that Africans are black “soules whose likeness seemed men but were as black as coal.” (1562) John Hawkins (1564) says, “These people are all black and are called Negroes.”
Such mindsets resulted in revolts similar to the one that Tula spearheaded in Haiti. Blacks fought for their rights no matter how few in numbers they were. The film portrays the stereotypical abusive intimate relationships that existed among the Haitian populace. It shows an instance in which the dynamics between blacks and whites had so deteriorated that agitation for rights was the only option left for blacks. The issue this movie tackles is like that of the black people in the southern parts of America during the slavery period. It indicates that white people globally tended to harbor some hatred for their black slaves and this poorly disguised rage was manifested through forcing them to work under extremely unfavorable conditions. The film’s strength is the presence of strong African men representing the enslaved Haitians and capturing the essence of strong Africans, which they brutally exploited. Also, they tell us that poor relationships that did exist and overwhelmingly caused the war. The film’s weakness is in adding a plethora of overblown accounts that do not seem to exist within the actual narrative at all.
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