Challenging Epistemologies and Slave Resistance as a Forgotten Structure in Caribbean Slavery in the Nineteenth-Century World-System

This analysis examines dominant conceptual frameworks in world-historical studies of slavery by relocating them within the theoretical and historical development of the capitalist world-economy and of capital itself. It critiques the limitations of existing historiography by demonstrating how world-historical approaches have largely failed to account for enslaved resistance as a constitutive element of capital’s formation, particularly in relation to non-wage labor. The article argues that future research must incorporate acts of resistance—especially those grounded in systems of belief and religious practice—into the historical logic of capital, rather than treating them as external or reactive phenomena. Rethinking the capital-labor relation in this way allows for a more historically accurate theory of capitalism and carries significant implications for understanding both past and present challenges to global capital. In doing so, the study centers the epistemological interventions and religious structures of slave resistance as foundational to Caribbean struggles against colonial domination and subjugation.