How did enslaved drivers reconcile their status as captive bondsmen with their role as the enforcers of labor discipline? Randy Browne’s The Driver’s Story seeks to address this question by providing a compelling study of enslaved drivers’ role within the larger history of racial capitalism and Atlantic slavery in the nineteenth-century Caribbean. Drivers were enslaved people appointed by enslavers to operate the driving system—a model of labor organization and social control devised to supervise, discipline, and extract the maximum amount of labor from enslaved people on sugar plantations. By focusing on the individual stories of enslaved drivers in the nineteenth-century southern British Caribbean, Browne interrogates what he refers to as the drivers’ “fundamental predicament”—the tension between their enslaved condition and their position as agents of enslaver power—and what it can reveal about the experiences of those in the world of plantation slavery.

Browne argues that the stories of plantation drivers highlight how the dynamics of plantation production were inseparable from the role of the driver, positioned at the heart of Atlantic slavery and racial capitalism. His analysis aims to bridge two often distinct fields of study—the institutional history of slavery and the social lives of enslaved people—by examining the drivers’ central role in both plantation management and the interpersonal relationships of the enslaved. The stories he reconstructs throughout the book draw from an extensive documentary record, including enslaved people’s testimonies preserved in the official archives of fiscals and protectors of slaves in colonial British Guyana. These records were created during the period of amelioration and imperial legal reform within the British Empire. Between 1807 and 1834, imperial reform administrators appointed local officials to adjudicate complaints filed by enslaved people against their enslavers. Through an analysis of the grievances brought before fiscals, Browne examines not only the actions of drivers, but also their interactions, their understanding of their world, and their intermediary roles between enslavers and the enslaved communities they managed.

The Driver’s Story begins by exploring the origins of the driving system and the role of the driver within it, focusing on what the author calls their “fundamental predicament.” He argues that drivers were ensnared at the heart of the labor system they were compelled to enforce—tasked with disciplining and supervising enslaved people while also enduring brutal discipline and constant surveillance themselves. Chapter two examines the plantation regime and its operation on the ground through the experiences of enslaved drivers. By using the drivers’ testimonies, the author analyzes how they navigated the tension between the labor demands of enslavers and the resistance mobilized by enslaved laborers, adjusting their strategies and responses to the pressures from both above and below. The following chapter delves into drivers’ social relationships within enslaved communities, informed by what Browne identifies as the African political framework of “big-man politics.” This practice involved the political mobilization of social relationships that hinged on the efforts to expand kinship networks, acquire followers, and consolidate control over people within a community.

The last two chapters build on his exploration into “big-man” politics by interrogating drivers’ contentious relationships with enslavers and their roles in rebellions. Chapter four examines the complex nature of drivers’ authority on plantations. His analysis reveals that while white plantation managers appointed drivers, their authority over enslaved people derived not as delegated top-down power but bottom-up drawn from their position of leadership as “big men” from within enslaved communities. Browne then continues these lines of analysis into chapter five, interrogating what rebellion meant for drivers and what drivers meant for rebellions by delving into the rich documentary record of the 1813 Berbice slave rebellion. He reveals that drivers became the key leaders of African ethnic associations, formed political coalitions between plantations and ethnic affiliation groups, and often pursued their own agendas, which included the overthrow and replacement of planter regimes with their own “big-man” political hierarchies. Browne also shows that, in some cases, drivers directly opposed rebellions by concluding they had more to lose—their kinship networks, followers, and their protected status—than to gain by joining rebellions.

Browne provides a nuanced, thought-provoking analysis of the complex roles played by enslaved drivers in the southern British Caribbean. By situating drivers at the intersection of plantation management, enslaved community leadership, and resistance, Browne illuminates their “fundamental predicament” as both the enforcers and victims of the plantation regime. Browne’s work thus offers a critical intervention that deepens our understanding of the entangled dynamics of power, resistance, and survival in Atlantic slavery.