The Great Resistance: The 400-Year Fight to End Slavery in the Americas

by Carrie Gibson

For more than four centuries, enslaved people across the Americas, from the United States and the Caribbean to Mexico and Brazil, fought any way they could to gain their freedom. For the first time, their dramatic stories are gathered in one sweeping narrative that offers a message of inspiration in our own time.

"Among the emancipators are the millions whose stories will never be known. They lived the struggle. They were the great resistance." Thus does acclaimed historian Carrie Gibson conclude her magisterial chronicle of four centuries of effort by enslaved people in the western hemisphere to gain their freedom. "Freedom is an idea," she writes, and the actions of the thousands who fought to escape slavery made clear that "freedom had to be for everyone, otherwise it was a lie."
The horrific enslavement by Europeans of twelve million Africans taken to the Americas has been widely written about, and important individual slave revolts have been recorded; but Gibson tells a larger story, portraying the multitude of freedom struggles across the entire hemisphere-from North America to the Caribbean to Brazil-as one long-running quest for freedom. From the first African revolt in 1521 on the island of Hispaniola, to the 18th-century Maroon Wars on Jamaica and the revolution that gave Haiti its independence, and thousands of smaller acts of defiance in between, Gibson vividly chronicles the continuum of resistance that eventually ended the slave trade and, with Brazil's decision in 1888, the institution of slavery itself.
This was the most diverse ongoing insurrection the world has ever known, and the way it was responded to shaped every nation in the Americas in meaningful ways. "If scholars were to emphasize the efforts of the enslaved more than the condition of slavery," historian Vincent Brown has written, "we might at least tell richer stories about how the endeavors of the weakest and most abject have at times reshaped the world." With its deep scholarship and rich narrative, The Great Resistance is a major contribution to the literature around slavery and freedom and, in our time, a tribute to the persistence of the human spirit to overcome even the darkest of circumstances.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Politics, Race

640 pages, Hardcover

First published January 6, 2026

About the author

Carrie Gibson is the author of three works of history: The Great Resistance: The 400-Year Fight to End Slavery in the Americas (2026), El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America (2019), and Empire’s Crossroads: A history of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Present Day (2014). Prior to gaining a PhD in history at the University of Cambridge in 2011, she worked as journalist for The Guardian and Observer in London. She is currently living in Seoul, South Korea.

Reviews

[Chelsea Knowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

*Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.*

The Great Resistance discusses slavery in the Americas by focusing on how enslaved people fought for their freedom. As this discusses the Americas, there is a focus on North America as well as countries such as Brazil. The first African revolt in 1521 is discussed as well as Marronage and the Haitian Revolution. Events are put into the larger contextual history as the author explains what other counties such as Britain were doing at the time and how this impacted public attitudes to slavery. This book also details the horrific punishments inflicted upon the enslaved and how even when the law changed so enslaved people were given more freedom there was still so much control placed upon former enslaved people. Ultimately this book reveals the lengths enslaved people went to for their freedom and the importance of resistance.

This book is very informative and it’s clear the author has done their research on this topic. There was a lot of information in this and at times it did feel a little dense. This book covers so many different countries and many different people so a lot of this information was new to me even though I’m quite well read on this topic. This was well written and had a lot of references. It’s clear this author knows this topic in and out so I would recommend this. Similar titles to this book that I’ve recently read and would recommend reading either before this or after this are Daring to be Free by Sudhir Hazareesingh and Black England by Gretchen Gerzina.

[Cathy Geha · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Great Resistance by Carrie Gibson
The Four Hundred Year Fight to End Slavery in the Americas

~ Deep dive into the dark depths of slavery that existed throughout the Americas and how it took centuries to finally legally abolish it ~

What I liked:
* The research that was obvious while reading and also credited in footnotes, bibliography, and author’s notes
* That it was easy to read for a layperson though perhaps not easy to retain due to the vastness of the information shared
* The empathy I felt for the enslaved and what they endured
* Being made aware of how many European countries were involved in the slave trade not only selling but procuring and using the slaves to enrich their countries
* Learning why some slaves preferred to jump overboard or commit suicide rather than remain slaves
* Being able to question why rulers, popes, and commoners were so willing to capture free men for their own purposes and enrich themselves for doing so
* Realizing that slavery has probably always existed and being reminded of why some have justified it – I cannot accept their reasoning as justifiable
* Believing that this is a book that would appeal to those that would like to read more about this topic and that the information and writing style will make the information easy to understand if not easy to digest
* Thinking this is a book that one should probably tackle a chapter at a time over a period of time rather than in one sitting

What I didn’t like:
* The emotions that were stirred up within me as I read how many millions were sold and enslaved
* Thinking about how one human can do to another what was done to the enslaved
* That even though I know that slavery is illegal in the Americas now, I do not believe it is completely finished for all

Did I like this book? Yes, for the information and because it made me think
Would I read more by this author? Yes, if the topic interested me

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the ARC – This is my honest review.
5 Stars

[cori's chapters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and Atlantic Monthly Press for the ARC of this book. All opinions on this work are my own.

I have not read anything by Carrie Gibson, but after this, I will be checking out her other work. The Great Resistance explores the beginnings of African enslavement. Typically, work on enslaved Africans focuses on North America, with some mention of South America and Haiti. And that is even more so for stories of the enslaved fighting back. Gibson’s work is a breath of fresh air. It details how European countries have benefited from slavery and the impacts that slavery had on the emancipation laws in the future. At first, freedom could be granted, but as time went on, it became harder for the enslaved to become free. I had taken a history of Latin America course in undergrad, so I was already familiar with some of the laws, like the “free womb” law. But I learned so much from this book that I did not learn in my class. There were revolts that I had not heard of before, like the 1830’s Bahamian revolt led by Pompey. We also get to more well-known revolts that occurred in the United States. This is a must-read for those who enjoy African History and Studies.

[Megon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a history book, not an entertainment type of book. But it was pretty interesting for history. I learned quite a bit that I had no clue about. I liked that the author managed to keep politics out of it. It goes pretty deep into different countries wars and conquests. Not so much with the USA. Although there was a quote from Lincon saying that he didn't care about slavery in the Civil War, it's written in such a way that you would think the whole thing was caused by it. I did get this book from Goodreads.

[Pauline Stout · Rating 5 out of 5]

This great book is a history of the Atlantic slave trade, as told by the people that resisted and protested the spread, and the people that rebelled against it.

I’ve seen many books that have been written about the space trade but I personally haven’t seen many books as written by the perspective of the victims of said trade. The book still does an amazing job of telling the story of the beginning of the trade, how it evolved, and how it eventually ended. Being told from the perspective that this is told from makes this different from the dozens of other retelling of this though. There is a real sense of the suffering and strife of the people that we subject to this horrific and inexcusable practice. There are many things in here that I had no idea about happening. Reading this history was frustrating and infuriating and fascinating. This was very easy to read and very well researched.

Overall I highly recommend this. Because of the subject matter it can be deeply triggering but I think that it is worth powering through that. Recommend for people interested in the subject matter and nonfiction fans as a whole.

[Jbondandrews · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I enjoyed reading this book. Carrie Gibson should have mentioned Canada, although as I don't know much about slavery in this country, so little has been written, perhaps no one fought against it but I hardly think that's true.

[Mason Wyss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Idk if you need to read the whole thing. A lot of the events are alike in so many ways. But it is a good intervention into the writings about emancipation: namely, even though no slave revolts were directly successful in liberating their participants besides Haiti, the different forms of resistance taken by slaves shaped the system and the abolitionist movement.