Resistance in/and the Pre-Emancipation Archives

Abstract

This chapter deals with resistance by Black women in pre-emancipation era archives as exemplified by the life and work of three Caribbean women. They represent a larger group of symbolically significant women, who are being invoked with increasing frequency, as Caribbean nations seek to highlight the role of powerful women as part of the collective memory of the region. The women are Nanny of the Maroons from Jamaica who is seen as the embodiment of a powerful Black Caribbean resistance leader, La Mulâtresse Solitude, from Guadalupe as far as her life can be understood through the silences of the colonial records in the Archives Nationales de France, and Mary Ann Reid from Jamaica who created a home-based dance hall where, official records claim, a major rebellion was organized. Archival sources (including court records, narrative reports, oral testimony, and private and administrative correspondence) are used to unlock their revolutionary resistance (counter)narratives. Examination of their cases reveals that existing records documenting enslaved people in legal histories, private and administrative correspondence, and oral testimony must be the subject of more thorough research and more sustained analysis to elucidate the long history of revolutionary enslaved women in the Caribbean.