The Caribbean colonies stayed loyal to Britain out of fear of slave revolts.

Evidence

Fantasies of depravity and rapid evolutionary adaptation among the creoles were a skewed response to the fact that settlers did create societies distinct and different from those of their fellow nationals across the Atlantic. This circumstance was something the creoles of the Caribbean shared with those of the mainland to the north and south. But their destiny would be quite different. When the thirteen colonies revolted, the wealthiest colonies of the British empire—those of the Caribbean—did not join them, in part because concern about controlling their slaves overshadowed a desire for independence. While slaves played a major role in the American Revolution, primarily by escaping to join the British, who held out the promise of freedom, in the new United States slavery was ultimately consolidated rather than destroyed. In contrast, the victorious struggle for national independence that soon followed in Saint-Domingue became a successful struggle against slavery. And its major protagonists were not slave owners but slaves themselves. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 130

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s wider Atlantic-history frame: American Revolution, slave escape to the British, and the contrast between US slavery consolidation and Haitian abolition — useful background stitching for the Haitian narrative arc.