Free to Bury Their Dead: Baptism and the Meanings of Freedom in the Eighteenth-Century Caribbean

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay closely examines the testimonies of maritime maroons who fled Jamaica to seek religious sanctuary in Cuba. The case unfolded during the mid-eighteenth century, a peak time for sugar production in the British colony. Across the Caribbean Sea, the southern shores of Cuba offered possibilities that contrasted with the reality of plantation life in Jamaica. A well-established and active marine underground linked the two islands, bringing information about different slave systems and religious traditions, while also serving as escape routes for enslaved Africans trying to survive Atlantic slavery. Taking into account African and especially Akan funerary rites, and considering the differences between Spanish and British colonial realities, this article asks what role religious sanctuary in general, and baptism in particular, might have played in seaborne escapes. In doing so, the article offers a unique window into the lived experiences of maritime maroons and the ways in which they interpreted the benefits religious sanctuary had to offer. I argue that the testimonies of these self-liberators reveal multiple conceptions of freedom, including the freedom to give dignified burials to their dead.