Sensbach Review (unedited)

Sensbach, Jon F. Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World. New Ed. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006.

In Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World, Jon F. Sensbach traces the life and work of a free mulatto woman named Rebecca from the colonial Caribbean to the Gold Coast of Africa during the eighteenth century. Rebecca’s extraordinary story reflects “the origins of the black church itself” (7), and through the examination of it, Sensbach is able to tell the much broader story of the rise of black Christianity on St. Thomas. He emphasizes the fusion of cultures and religious beliefs that combined to create the social atmosphere in the Caribbean, and which provided the foundation for this new form of Christianity. “Chafing cultures gave off the spark of something new, melded and fused, picked up new cadences, then spun off into something different again” (5). Rebecca’s story also highlights the role of women in the colonial Caribbean, especially in regards to their place in society and religion. Sensbach shows how Rebecca was a product of her environment as well as a great mover and shaker, “[challenging] the strictures of race, religion and gender” (7). As “the first black woman ordained in western Christianity” (7), Rebecca paved the way for many more by using the social avenues available to her. By telling Rebecca’s story, Sensbach aims to relate the story of St. Thomas, and the rise of black Christianity in the American colonial community, claiming that it grew out of the events on St. Thomas.
Sensbach uses a number of manuscripts from Denmark, Germany, the United States, and the U.S. Virgin Islands including several church registers, diaries, letters and colonial documents. He questions the authorship of many of the letters, and it seems that quite a few of them were written in another’s name. In these cases, the content of the letter was meant to reflect how that person was supposed to feel, and not necessarily how they actually felt. Other letters were rewritten versions of Rebecca’s real letters: “someone must have thought her letter needed more polishing and elaboration if it was to be presented, perhaps even read aloud, as suitable testimony of God’s marvelous grace. The second letter is a rewrite of her original, kneading many of her ideas into a smoother flow…properly punctuated and capitalized, and full of florid phrases” (131). His primary sources include Johan Lorentz Carstens’ St. Thomas in Early Danish Times: A General Description of all the Danish, American or West Indian Islands published in the 1740s and Christian Georg Andreas Oldendorp’s accounts which he refers to quite frequently throughout this book. Pierre Pannet’s Report on the Execrable Conspiracy Carried Out by the Amina Negroes on the Danish Island of St. Jan in America 1733 and Nikolaus Ludwig von Zizendorf’s Budingische Sammlung (Budingen, 1740-1745) are also firsthand accounts Sensbach regularly cites in this book.
Sensbach opens with an in-depth description of the slave revolt on St. John, explaining the violent relationship between the planters and the slaves. Here, as in all plantation communities, slaves greatly outnumbered their masters. “To control this captive population, planters staged an elaborate choreography of terror” (10) involving severe punishments for all transgressions, such as amputation and whipping. In their revolt, the slaves retaliated in kind “killing white men, women, and children” (11). In this chapter, Sensbach also discusses the dynamic relationships between the slaves themselves. Despite their shared fate, the different tribes and peoples still retained a strong sense of identity, and in many cases, these cultural differences kept them apart. “The insurgents belonged to the Akwamu kingdom…whose shared culture enabled them to organize such an ambitious uprising” (16). Apparently, this particular uprising was exclusively Akwamu, a small minority of people known as the Aminas, who “operated out of old antagonisms and the desire to rule their former African subjects again” (20). These “old antagonisms” caused the revolt to ultimately fail. Without the aid of their fellow slaves, the rebels were unable to retain control over the island once the French came to the Danes’ aid. Most resorted to suicide rather than wait to be caught and face the horrific death that awaited them at the hands of the white planters. Through the story of the revolt, Sensbach sets up the historical backdrop for Rebecca and black Christianity, and reveals the complex system of relationships between very diverse peoples. Out of this tumultuous event came Rebecca, and her part in spreading Christianity to the free and enslaved black people of St. Thomas.
In the next chapter, Sensbach compares the lifestyles of slaves and their white Creole masters. While their slaves worked all day, many of the planters lived very decadent lives. This disparity was perfectly acceptable due to the belief that whites were inherently superior to blacks. It was this type of thinking that Rebecca confronted throughout her life, especially as a person of mixed race. She came from Antigua as a slave at the age of “six or seven” (29), and was bought by the van Beverhout family to work in their household. The van Beverhouts apparently grew to like her very much because they allowed her to learn to read and write. “This evident closeness with the van Beverhouts, and the skills in literacy it brought, resulted in two important changes during [her] childhood and early adolescence: she became interested in Christianity and she gained her freedom” (36-37). This was only the beginning for Rebecca. “She had a knack for gaining every advantage her position afforded – her master’s patronage, literacy, freedom, managerial status, higher social standing” (43). This success, elevation in status, and “unfulfilled spiritual yearning” (43) put her in the perfect position for the arrival of Friedrich Martin and the teachings of the Moravian Church. Martin and his associates came to St. Thomas for the explicit purpose “to preach among indigenous and enslaved people” (50). After several meetings, it quickly became apparent to Martin that “Rebecca’s demeanor and devotion…made her an ideal spokesperson for Christ” (46). She gradually became one of the prominent figures at Bible class, in “charge of the entire female half of the movement” (77), teaching slaves how to read and about Christianity.
While discussing Rebecca’s deeds, Sensbach continues to keep the historical and social contexts in view, showing how those influences shaped her life and those around her. For example, “the Bible classes…became searching discussions about slavery, violence, resistance, and the role of religion in helping people make sense of conflicting pressures” (57). When the slaves learned to read and began to read the Bible, it became very difficult for them to reconcile the Bibles’ teachings with their masters’ hypocrisy and their own misfortune. However, according to Sensbach’s interpretation, Rebecca seems to have had little need to reconcile her misfortunes. Instead, it seems as though she drew strength from her faith, especially while imprisoned with her husband. She also suffered the deaths of her first and second husbands, and her two daughters. There were the restrictions she chose for her life, such as the very austere rules of the Moravian sect especially in regards to sexuality. Rebecca embraced these restrictions as pious duties while she simply had to accept the imposed social strictures.
Rebecca was first married to one of the Brethren and a fellow missionary of herself and Martin, Matthaus Freundlich. During a legal investigation of Martin’s legitimacy as an official minister, Rebecca and Matthaus, who were married by Martin were then convicted of fornication. Martin and the Freundlichs spent several months in jail because it was against their religious beliefs to swear, and for Rebecca and Matthaus to be remarried would prove Martin was indeed a charlatan. Their time spent in prison, however, only reinforced their faith and sense of martyrdom for the Christian cause. Soon after their release, the Freundlichs decided to move to the Moravian settlement in Herrnhut, Germany where Rebecca was ordained. After the deaths of Matthaus and their daughter, Anna Maria, Rebecca was eventually encouraged to remarry by her congregation. In 1746, Rebecca was married to Christian Protten, a mulatto man and “Rebecca’s counterpart in every way” (184). They too had a child named Anna Maria, but she also did not survive into adolescence. From this point, Christian and Rebecca Protten moved to a mission at Christiansborg in West Africa, where they both stayed for the rest of their lives. Overall, Rebecca spent most of her life dedicated to Christianity, and actively worked to spread the Word throughout the world. It would appear that she was most successful in the Caribbean, but she continued her self-appointed mission in lands very foreign to her. Despite the many obstacles and tragedies in her life, she still accomplished much for Christianity, blacks and women in a world that did not cater to them.
In conclusion, Sensbach offers a well-researched biography of a very influential woman. He places her life within the broad context of colonial society and the spread of Christianity to demonstrate how amazing her accomplishments were in relation to the social constraints that fettered her. While she was still limited by these constraints, she gained the highest rank a free mulatto Creole woman in the eighteenth century possibly could. By stretching “the strictures of race, religion and gender” (7), she acted as a pioneer for blacks and women in New World Christianity. However, he does not discuss white women and their role in colonial society much at all. While he hints at the practice of voodoo in these slave societies, he never actually acknowledges it as such, nor does he put much stock in native African religions. He also only briefly mentions Islam though many slaves were probably practicing Muslims. On the other hand, his focus is centered on Christianity. He also incorporates a plethora of interesting facts and details, most notably on the Moravians’ fascination with Christ’s fatal wounds. Sensbach’s book opens the door for further study of slave’s lives and the interactions between the variety of different peoples that were brought together in the colonial New World. His focus portrays the tiny island of St. Thomas as an incredible melting pot of cultures, and Rebecca’s story depicts how these cultures began to fuse together through the establishment of black Christianity.
Rebecca’s Revival is tied very closely through the topic of slavery to Harm’s The Diligent and Schwartz’s Tropical Babylons. Sensbach’s book, however, is even more transatlantic in that Rebecca herself travels within the Caribbean to Europe to her final resting place in Africa. Ironically, her journey was the reverse of her African ancestors. The slave rebellion on St. John also connects this book with Dubois’ Avengers of the New World on the Haitian Revolution, an uprising which most likely drew inspiration from the St. John revolt. Rebecca’s Revival contributes the female perspective on slavery, religion and colonial life. It also provides a look into the rise of Christianity in the black community, and how they fused it with African beliefs and customs to create a very unique form of Christianity that set black Christians apart from white Christians.
Courtney Robertson
HIST 6337

Books on Black Christianity in the Atlantic World

African American Religious History: A Documentary Witness. Ed. Milton Sernett. Duke University Press, 1999.

Central Africans and the Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora. Ed. Linda M. Heywood. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Canizares-Esguerra, Jorge. Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550-1700. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006.

Deggs, Mary Bernard. No Cross, No Crown: Black Nuns in Nineteenth Century New Orleans. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001.

Gordan, Shirley C. God Almighty Make Me Free: Christianity in Preemancipation Jamaica. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1996.

Irons, Charles F. The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.

Kidd, Colin. The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600-2000. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Raboteau, Albert J. Slave Religion: the “Invisible Institution: in the Antebellum South. Oxford University Press, 2004.

Thornton, John K. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Review of Elliot

Elliot, J. H. Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.


In his Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830, Elliot comparatively studies the emergence and evolution of the Spanish and British empires in the New World, from colonies to independent countries. He takes a very methodical approach to this rather enormous task, and the structure of the book reflects this accordingly. He breaks this evolution down into three parts: “Occupation”, “Consolidation” and “Emancipation” in order to demonstrate the general cycles each empire went through, and also to show how each developed differently despite their similar undertakings. His overarching argument is that because the English focused more on settlement, the English colonial empire evolved more quickly towards autonomy than the Spanish, who were mostly concerned with conquest. The motivation for conquest is imperial glory and expansion which implies a reliance on the empire, whereas a successful settlement is an independent one.
Elliot depends greatly on secondary sources, rather than primary sources, in this book. The two largest of the secondary sources are The Cambridge History of Latin America which spans the length of eleven volumes, and The Oxford History of the British Empire, at a mere five volumes. He also relies heavily on The American Historical Review, The Hispanic American Historical Review, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, and The William and Mary Quarterly. This sort of reliance can only be expected in regards to such an ambitious work as this. He does incorporate a reasonable number of primary sources, such as Gomara’s Cortes. The Life of the Conqueror by his Secretary, and The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1647-1729 by Samuel Sewall.
“Occupation” begins with the Elliot’s comparison of Hernan Cortes and Christopher Newport, and their different approaches to imperial establishment in the Americas. He does, to a certain degree, fall into the myth of “exceptional men” per Matthew Restall in his Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest in his examination of these two men. “If [Cortes] lacked military experience when he set out on the conquest of Mexico, he had developed the qualities of a leader, and had become a shrewd judge of men… Newport, too, was an adventurer, but of a very different kind” (8). To Elliot, Cortes and Newport serve as the first representatives of their respective countries in the Americas, and their actions put the evolution of their colonies into motion. This section is mostly concerned with the foundation of Spanish and English colonies in America, the colonists’ interactions with the American peoples, and the exploitation of New World resources newly available to imperialists.

Elliot's Empires of the Atlantic World: Book Reviews

• Cervantes, Fernando. The Times Literary Supplement. No.5392 (August 4, 2006) p.3-4

“This appraisal can barely begin to do justice to the formidable scholarship an dthe wealth of suggestions and insights contained in this magnificent book…a detailed and illuminating comparative synthesis of both, with hardly a dull paragraph despite its dispassionate perhaps at times too dispassionate scholarship, is a mighty triumph.”

• Johnson, Richard R. The Journal of American History. Vol.93 no.4 (March 2007) p.1205-6

“Both for its own insights and its alerting readers to the findings of scholarship beyond their usual field of study, this is an indispensable and richly rewarding contribution to both the art of comparative history and the story of early America.”

• Morrissey, Robert. American Indian Culture and Research Journal. p.220-23

“Rather than producing generalities, this book drives at fascinating and illuminating particularities. The book’s real value is in its use of comparisons to illuminate the empires’ myriad characteristics, both subtle and essential. For readers of this journal, one of the book’s strengths is certainly in its constant attention to the place of indigenous peoples within the two imperial cultures under investigation. Still, it must be said that the book’s focus is mostly on Europeans and their plight; a highly illuminating chapter on identity gives almost no consideration to indigenous identities.”


• Phillips, Carla Rahn. Eighteenth-Century Studies. Vol.41 no.1 (Fall 2007) p.110-13

“In Empires of the Atlantic World, J. H. Elliot offers a masterful synthesis of several colonial histories that is unlikely to be surpassed in the near future.”


• Schmidt-Nowara, Christopher. Social History. Vol.32 no.2 (May 2007) p.219-22

“His work, a singular combination of gripping narrative and deft structural analysis, is thus keenly attuned to the ironic aspects of Spanish and British imperial expansion in the Americas.”

• Seed, Patricia. Journal of British Studies. Vol.47 no.3 (July 2008) p.685-6

“Elliot’s stance on British colonization remains far too flattering and misses many opportunities to make critical points…In choosing a lengthy historical time period, Elliot creates an extensive framework for future comparative work on the history of the Americas.”

• Steele, Ian K. The American Historical Review. Vol.112 no.3 (June 2007) p. 800-2

“Such simplicity promises much less than this insightful and illuminating exploration delivers…Elliot’s Atlantic history is both innovative and traditional.”

• Stein, Stanley J. The Hispanic American Historical Review. Vol.87 no.4 (November 2007) p.780-3

“This is a remarkable tour de force, in thematic and chronological coverage bond, seamlessly shifting between two colonial cultures and their metropoles. Elliot crafts a political, institutional, and cultural narrative spiced with usually well-founded, penetrating insight – withal, infused with an understandable British triumphalism in its repeated recourse to Protestantism and English libertarianism…an outstanding contribution to the historian’s craft.”