Runaways, Repertoires, and Repression: Marronnage and the Haitian Revolution, 1766–1791

Abstract

The Haitian Revolution was the modern era's most successful slave rebellion. Grand marronnage, long-term or permanent escape from enslavement, was part of the pre-revolution repertoire of contention. This paper uses content analysis of digitally archived runaway advertisements to examine relationships between birth origin and interactional patterns that facilitated long-term escape and reflected shared responses to repression and other environmental factors over time. Marronnage by a group of two or more people was a significant portion of the sample, demonstrating the importance of small-scale group interactions while escaping rather than attempting the dangerous act of fleeing alone. Africa-born and creole African-descendant runaways responded to repression using group escape and other types of social network ties in distinctive ways. There was a closely associated relationship between the use of social network ties and durations of escape that were relatively successful, which I define as lasting for six months or more. Moreover, rates of successful marronnage gradually increased in the years before the Haitian Revolution, which perhaps helped to facilitate the diffusion of a growing shared consciousness. These findings indicate a need for further research on micro-level activity prior to world-historical events such as the Haitian Revolution.