Maroon Communities Research Articles

Fourteenth Colony: The Forgotten Story of the Gulf South During America’s Revolutionary Era by Mike Bunn

The late eighteenth-century Spanish Gulf Coast remains one of the least examined and woefully misunderstood regions of North America. American historians of the period generally focus on revolutionary developments in New England or on the French and British imperial struggle to define the Great Lakes region. Yet the Gulf was a dynamic nexus of empire in which three imperial metropolises—Britain, France, and Spain—all vied with one another, and, after 1783, with the United States and numerous Native American peoples and maroon communities to strengthen and expand their own spheres of control. By the late eighteenth century, the destiny of this region had coalesced as the number of competitors had been reduced to only Spain and the nascent United States.Bunn’s Fourteenth Colony provides an explanation of how and why the colony of West Florida remained loyal to Britain during the period of the American Revolution, and how Spanish forces wrested it from British hands. The examination, through eleven chapters, explains the British takeover of the Gulf Coast in the post-1763 period. During the Seven Years’ War, Spain had lost control of Havana, the capital of Cuba; to secure the return of this valuable city, Spain ceded La Florida (East and West Florida) to Britain in the 1763 Treaty of Paris. Subsequent chapters also explain the role of government and of Indian trade and describe the sparsely located settlements and daily life of the inhabitants, as well as how the colony prospered. Without a stable cash crop, settlers cultivated indigo and cochineal for dyes, harvested pine timber for construction and naval stores, traded with the Indians for deerskins, herded cattle and raised hogs for meat, and exploited slavery.The revolutionary struggle that erupted between Britain and the North American colonies inevitably brought the Gulf Coast into the fray even though the settlers remained steadfastly loyal to Britain. James Willing, a former captain in the Colonial Navy, brought the war to West Florida when he took Patriot forces down the Mississippi River to compel settlers to take an oath of neutrality. Although Willing occupied Natchez and plundered nearby plantations, he was defeated by a Loyalist force and taken captive by the British. Spain took advantage of the disorder and removed Britain from the Gulf. Spanish troops in New Orleans under Bernardo de Gálvez seized Baton Rouge in the fall of 1779 and Mobile in early 1780. By May 1781, Gálvez had captured Pensacola and its garrison, leaving the British with no ports on the Gulf of Mexico. The 1783 Peace of Paris returned the territories of West Florida and East Florida to Spain but initiated growing problems regarding the boundary with the newly established United States.By its very nature, well-written history is interdisciplinary because it addresses events and people, economics, politics, class and society, and why and how important decisions were made. Bunn’s Fourteenth Colony does so by integrating the Gulf Coast into the American revolutionary struggle. Using an extensive collection of primary and secondary sources, Bunn ably describes, in an engaging style, how the British ultimately lost the Gulf to Spanish control. He also places the colony into the broader narrative of American territorial expansion, which is a valuable lesson for those trying to understand the development of the United States.

Maroon Socioterritorial Movements

Maroon communities, or communities of descendants of fugitives from slavery, have been long-lasting examples of social movements pursuing political goals through the production and mobilization of space. They have been largely forgotten in academic analyses, however, which, in Latin America, are primarily focused on peasants and indigenous movements. Therefore, drawing on socioterritorial movements readings and maroon studies, this article analyzes how maroon-descendant communities have produced territory in both urban and rural spaces—including areas of forced displacement—locally and transnationally, to survive hegemonies deeply rooted in the legacy of slavery and to achieve political aims. These communities unsettle binary categories of rural and urban socioterritorial movements and monolithic visions of antistate struggle. This transterritorial, rural–urban appropriation of spaces resisting different powers follows the past logic of marronage to achieve freedom and security, re-creating in present times the political vision of historical maroon leaders regarding the construction of a grand Palenque in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.

Plant resource uses and losses in a small maroon community in a Colombian Pacific hot spot

Abstract. de Lima DVT, Ordóñez LL, da Cruz DD. 2021. Plant resource uses and losses in a small maroon community in a Colombian Pacific hot spot. Biodiversitas 22: 3031-3041. The Colombian Pacific is a world biodiversity hotspot, and traditional communities of the region have high cultural diversity, such as the Jovi maroon community, which shows economic and cultural practices rely on regional ecosystem services. This study aimed to conduct an ethnobotanical survey in the Jovi community, specifically focused on the identification of the plants used, the purpose of use, losses in the use of species, the conservation status of the species, and if there are differences regarding plant use knowledge between genres. Participant observation was conducted associated with interviews for data collection with 26 local experts. The Jovi community uses a wide variety of plants (135 species belonging to 57 families). Cultivated species showed the highest use values in the community. The most important uses were medicinal, food, and technological, respectively. Use losses were verified, mainly, for the species used as food. Two species deserve attention, i.e. Minquartia guianensis (Near Threatened - IUCN), and Pelliciera rhizophorae (Vulnerable - IUCN), both obtained by extractivism and have timber use. There was no difference in knowledge between men and women. Cultural changes may be delimiting changes in the use of plant species in the community.

Afro-Latin American geographies of in-betweenness: Colonial marronage in Colombia

This article explores Maroon spatialities during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through a critical geographical analysis based on historical records collected in the General Archive of the Indies, the National General Archive of Bogotá, and the oral tradition of San Basilio de Palenque, a community of descendants of fugitives from slavery located in the Montes de María in the Colombian Caribbean. The article’s findings show that San Basilio de Palenque survived by navigating in-between different colonial forms of producing territory that simultaneously implied opposition and co-optation. Drawing on Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s “ch’ixi” and Gloria Anzaldúa’s “border notions,” this spatial navigation embraced opposition and fissure between African, European, and indigenous elements without trying to suppress or reconcile them. This ethic of spatial balance as marronage was San Basilio de Palenque’s formula for survival. The methodology implemented in this article also required stepping in-between the archive and the oral tradition, without taking sides, taking a ch’ixi/border approach, as well revisiting the history of this Maroon community in Latin America.

“In Front of the World”: Translating Beatriz Nascimento

AbstractThis collection translates some of the work of the influential Black Brazilian thinker and activist Beatriz Nascimento (1942–1995) for the first time into English, in collaboration with her only daughter, Bethânia Gomes. Historian, poet, theorist and organiser, Beatriz Nascimento was a key figure in Brazil’s Black Movement until her untimely death in 1995. She dangerously wrote at the height of Brazil’s Military Dictatorship (1964–1985), and theorised extensively on the Black condition in Brazil; the unique experience of Black women; and quilombos—Brazilian maroon societies that she imagined as spaces of both historical and contemporary fugitivity. Following Alex Ratts, this introduction outlines her contribution to radical geography, in particular Black geographies, territoriality and embodiment. It also positions Nascimento within the trans‐Atlantic Black radical tradition. We present two of Nascimento’s essays in translation here. The first, “The Concept of Quilombo and Black Cultural Resistance”, introduces a crucial strand of her scholarly work, on the history and socio‐political significance of quilombos (maroon communities). The second, “For a (New) Existential and Physical Territory”, shows Nascimento in a different mood: philosophical, reflective and iconoclastic. In addition, two of her poems—“Dream” and “Sun and Blue”—are also translated here for the first time.

The Long War for Texas: Maroons, Renegades, Warriors, and Alternative Emancipations in the Southwest Borderlands, 1835–1845

In the Southwest Borderlands, marronage and insurrection defined the long war against slavery and empire waged by Indigenous peoples and African Americans following the Texas Revolution of 1835–36. The egalitarian politics and militarized commerce of Native societies empowered marginalized communities by providing the spatial, material, and ideological resources for emancipatory struggles. Allied with Mexico, multiethnic bands of warriors, fugitives, and renegades built fortified villages, planted provision grounds, raised livestock, and recruited outsiders. These efforts culminated in uprisings by Tejanos and enslaved African Americans, as well as an attempt to establish a Pan-Indian buffer state north of the Rio Grande. With their combined force, these cohorts posed grave problems for the Anglo-Texan slave state and made its independence tentative and vulnerable. Taking seriously the aspirations of maroon communities, this article shifts our understanding of emancipation and sovereignty from a racialized and nationalist framework to a more fluid terrain that reveals how the dispossessed galvanized new methods of renewal.

Wild Paradise: Hope in the Great Dismal Swamp

Wild Paradise: Hope in the Great Dismal Swamp Ridwaana Allen Although the Great Dismal Swamp is as formidable as it sounds, there is so much more to its story. A forested peatland straddling the North Carolina/Virginia border, this mixture of forests and marshes is home to 119 varieties of wildflowers, 54 tree species, 41 kinds of shrubs, 35 aquatic plant species, 29 ferns and vines, along with 81 grasses, sedges, and rushes (Mohlenbrock 2012). Over 200 species of birds have been identified at the swamp, with 93 reported to nest there. Other inhabitants include various reptiles and amphibians, otters, bats, raccoons, minks, foxes, gray squirrels, white-tailed deer, and less commonly, black bears and bobcats (Wilson 2001). The Great Dismal Swamp’s past is as rich as its biodiversity. The swamp is full of narratives, some conflicting. To early settlers, it was a wilderness to be tamed. To poets and writers, it was inspiration. To Native Americans, Africans, and African Americans, it was a refuge – an alternative to colonialism and slavery. When the English first began exploring the Virginia lowlands in the 1600s, “dismal” meant “swamp” in that region, and the terms were used interchangeably (Tidwell 2002). In 1728, William Byrd II, a colonel in the British army and wealthy plantation owner, led a group of surveyors into the swamp to help demarcate the border between Virginia and North Carolina (Hansen 2010). Colonel Byrd – who believed that the Great Dismal Swamp and its air were so foul, no living thing could survive there, and birds would not fly over it – is credited with naming it (ibid.). After his visit, Colonel Byrd wanted to drain the swamp and turn it into an extensive hemp farm. He also wanted to use canals to connect the swamp to the Pasquotank River in North Carolina to the Elizabeth River in Virginia (Tidwell 2002). After traveling the swamp on horseback, George Washington described it as a “glorious paradise.” He wanted to build a north-south canal to connect Chesapeake Bay and the Albemarle Sound (Pettie 1976). In 1763, Washington’s Great Dismal Land Company started clearing the swamp for rice farming (Belcastro 1998). When that venture failed, they turned to logging, which was much more profitable. Drainage ditches and roads were built to facilitate the logging (Belcastro 1998). Later in the 1760s, a canal known as “Washington’s Ditch” was dug between Lake Drummond and the Nansemond River (Pettie 1976). In the 1790s, the Dismal Swamp Canal was dug (Mohlenbrock 2012). Both remain to this day. Worth mentioning is that most excavation, production, and transport was accomplished using Black slave labor (Sayers et al. 2007). [End Page 1] Arguably, the Great Dismal Swamp exists as much in the physical as in the imagination. It served as literary inspiration for Robert Frost, and as the backdrop for other writers including Thomas Moore’s “The Lake of the Dismal Swamp,” Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Dred, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Slave in the Dismal Swamp” (Pettie 1976). While the Great Dismal Swamp may have inspired capitalistic resource exploitation, poetry, and prose, others had different motivations. Between circa 1630 and 1860, Native Americans and thousands of African Americans occupied the swamp (Sayers 2006). While it remains unknown how many Native Americans occupied the swamp, African Americans numbered in the thousands as maroons and enslaved laborers (ibid.). Three time periods appear to emerge, along with corresponding geographies. According to archaeological finds, disenfranchised Native Americans likely lived along the swamp edges to maintain selective access to the outside world between 1630 and 1710 (Sayers et al. 2007). One form of resistance to the cruelty and inhumanity of slavery was marronage, which is “the act of removing oneself from enslavement or running away” (Agorsah 1994). Between 1700 and 1865, maroons occupied swamp edges, small islands, and the interior (Sayers et al. 2007). Enslaved laborers occupied the swamp between 1765 and 1865 in canal-adjacent areas, and performed various tasks including canal excavation, barge pushing, and shingle making (ibid.). Hiding in plain sight, at least one maroon community worked among the enslaved individuals and free Black and White laborers for the construction of railroads (Maris-Wolf 2013). The groups...

Суринамские мароны: исторические особенности формирования этносоциальной группы во фронтирном обществе

Предметом исследования являются исторические особенности формирования суринамских маронов. Прибытие в Западное полушарие европейцев способствовало радикальным социально-демографическим изменениям, в том числе в результате массового ввоза африканских рабов. Одной из распространенных форм сопротивления невольников стали побеги с плантаций, в ходе которых в различных регионах Америки (Бразилии, Мексике, Суринаме, Ямайке) возникли маронские сообщества. Сумевшие адаптироваться к новым условиям суринамские мароны в течение первой половины XVIII в. оказались серьезной преградой на пути развития плантационного хозяйства, заставив рабовладельцев пойти на компромиссные соглашения. Автор на основе широкого круга зарубежных источников и исследований осуществляет историко-этнографический обзор зарождения и активной фазы формирования этносоциальной группы суринамских маронов, стремится показать особенности социально-культурной среды, а также противоречия между маронами, индейцами и европейцами. Территориально-географические особенности Суринама привели к гораздо меньшим по масштабам боевым действиям маронов по сравнению с ямайскими марунами, находившимися в условиях ограниченного островного пространства. В ходе исследования проанализированы отличительные особенности маронских сообществ. Противостояние маронов и колонизаторов заканчивается в начале XIX в. в результате постепенной креолизации африканской массы невольников, однако его последствия не преодолены вплоть до настоящего времени.

Palenquero origins

Abstract Palenquero is a Spanish-lexified creole spoken in Columbia. We argue that existing hypotheses regarding its birth are problematic in several regards. This article addresses the inconsistencies in these hypotheses and provides an alternative, more coherent account. More precisely, we take issue with the following three claims: (a) Palenquero is the result of a two-language encounter; (b) it has its roots in a West African Afro-Portuguese proto-variety; (c) an ancestral form of the creole emerged in the port city of Cartagena. We then set out to present our own, more economical, formation scenario, according to which Palenquero was formed in the early 1600s in the linguistically heterogenous maroon communities of the Cartagenan hinterlands.

New histories of marronage in the Anglo‐Atlantic world and early North America

AbstractThis essay surveys the scholarship of marronage, the most pervasive form of fugitive slave community formation, resistance, negotiation, and enslaver accommodation in the history of the Atlantic world. It begins with a brief survey of the subject's historiographic roots, with particular emphasis on its foundational definition as slave resistance and rebellion; on scholarly debates of the grand/petit marronage binary; and on the validity and definitions of maroon identity, forged by processes of ethnogenesis and grounded in maroon communities, past and present. The essay then centers on recent histories of marronage in the Caribbean, the Global South, and in early North America. In doing so, it seeks to draw out explicit thematic connections otherwise implicit in new maroon studies. The essay closes with a brief mention of forthcoming works that, informed by extant maroon studies, examine the challenges contemporary maroon communities face and that signal present‐day maroon descended communities' contributions to an increasingly globalizing world.

Fugitive Modernities: Kisama and the Politics of Freedom, Jessica A. Krug

Reviewed by: Fugitive Modernities: Kisama and the Politics of Freedom by Jessica A. Krug Inge Brinkman BOOK REVIEW of Krug, Jessica A. 2018. Fugitive Modernities: Kisama and the Politics of Freedom. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 260 pp. $26.95 (paper). This book begins in Brazil in 1632, when a group of Portuguese captains traveled north of Rio de Janeiro in a region far away from any town or plantation. To their surprise, they encountered a “black” man, in the company of indigenous people, who stated that he was an emancipated slave originally from “Quissamã.” The captains named the region accordingly, and today it is still called Quissamã. This vignette underscores a connection between various communities of fugitives, starting with Kisama in Angola and on to Limón in Grenada and Palmares in Brazil. Kisama, a region between the Atlantic Ocean and the Longa and Kwanza rivers in Angola, containing some 8,700 square miles (11), had already in the beginning of the sixteenth century acquired a reputation of being rebellious and difficult to conquer. The Portuguese made multiple attempts to subdue the region, dry and disease-ridden land having limited [End Page 138] strategic importance and few inhabitants, but controlling it was not among the Portuguese’s most pressing needs (Heintze 1972). Soon, it was hosting runaway slaves and other people attempting to avoid slave hunts, much to the annoyance of those involved in the trade. The book’s first three chapters focus on Kisama in Angola, starting with the figure of Kafuxi Ambari, an important Kisama leader at the turn of the sixteenth century. The next chapters study fugitive politics and political legitimacy in the wider context and relations among gender roles, fighting, food production, and trade. Kisama, according to the author, is not only a region, but also a meme (the link to Japan is not explicitly mentioned), functioning as a signifier of “a particularly belligerent, obdurate form of resistance to all outside authority or state power” (2). In chapters 4 and 5, the author takes us beyond the regional perspective and draws in fugitive modernities in Limón and Palmares. Chapter 6 zooms in on memory production in the nineteenth and twentieth century of the Kisama meme in Angola and Brazil. In reading chapters 4 and 5, I wondered about the choice of Limón and Palmares. Why weren’t other maroon communities discussed, or even the Quissamã region in Brazil, with which the book begins? The question remains, whether the meme approach does justice to contemporaries’ perception of Kisama as a location or region in geographical terms or an identity in “ethnic” or “national” terms. While the author’s stance on identity as a politics of semiotics, rather than an ascription of geographical concern, is appreciated, a meme suggests an actual process of passing on, by imitation even, of performance and discourse. The book “is not a romance, nor is it a tragedy” (9). Still, it studies the history of Kisama from a particular stance, the viewpoint of “politics of freedom.” By taking the concept of freedom as its guiding principle, the book tends to romanticize and at times creates an all too facile opposition between heroes (fugitives) and villains (“the Portuguese”). Kisama “mounted effective resistance to European colonialism” (cover): it formed a “revolution” (190), an attempt to fulfill “these dreams of freedom” against state power and capital (194). This overall approach sharply contrasts with the contents of some of the chapters. Krug states “it would be wrong to assume that Kisama’s opposition to participation in the trans-Atlantic slave trade meant an ideological opposition to social inequality in general” (104), but how then does this statement relate to the “politics of freedom?” Even “Kisama’s opposition” and “objection to strategies of state” (104) can be questioned. Kisama did not function as a whole in its history; rather, some of Kisama’s political leaders stood in rivalry with other leaders there and in the wider region. These leaders were seeking to protect their constituencies against slave hunts and other threats, and they attempted to increase their own statecraft by opposing that of others. That is not necessarily an antistate position. Furthermore, [End Page 139...

Mediação e processos de reconhecimento - Subjetivações para além da produção do consenso único

Considerando o problema da paralisação dos processos de reconhecimento e titulação de áreas remanescentes de quilombos, o artigo visa abordar as diferentes respostas dos beneficiários a esta situação como resultantes de mediações interculturais sobrepostas, e até aqui compartilhadas, entre estes e os diversos agentes atuantes no contexto do reconhecimento, e que exprimem mudanças prático-simbólicas, relacionadas a elaborações subjetivas da experiência política. Respostas estas que, em sua diversidade, tanto se dirigem à adesão às demandas comuns, aglutinadas em torno da condição quilombola, quanto ao dissenso que confronta a ação coletiva, em ambos os casos relacionadas a incorporações contextuais e distintas de discursos desenvolvimentistas em oposição. A reflexão se desenvolve a partir da observação etnográfica e de uma análise de alguns textos produzidos por diferentes agências envolvidas nos processos em curso em territórios quilombolas, mais diretamente na região do Vale do Ribeira, sudoeste do estado de São Paulo.

“O judiciário é o pior inimigo do povo negro”. Judicialização da vida quilombola: Notas sobre a justiça brasileira

O artigo mostra a percepção de moradores e lideranças do Quilombo Sacopã (Rio de Janeiro-RJ) sobre o Judiciário brasileiro nos diversos processos em que pleiteia o reconhecimento de seus direitos – territoriais e culturais. O objetivo é discutir a judicialização da experiência das comunidades quilombolas fluminenses, que se veem envolvidas em diversos processos, seja para a titulação de seus territórios, seja em relação a vizinhos, ocupantes e até mesmo ao poder público.

Participatory ethnobotany and conservation: a methodological case study conducted with quilombola communities in Brazil\u2019s Atlantic Forest

BackgroundAlthough multiple studies advocate the advantages of participatory research approaches for ethnoscience, few provide solid contributions from case studies that involve residents in all of the project phases. We present a case study of a participatory approach whose aim is to register ethnobotanical knowledge on the use of plants in two quilombola communities (maroon communities), an important biodiversity hotspot in the Atlantic Forest, Southeast Brazil. Our aim is to provide tools that will empower decision-making related to sustainable use and management among residents.MethodsIn phase I, the objectives and activities were defined in meetings with residents to carry out ethnobotanical surveys between two quilombola communities—the Quilombo da Fazenda (QF) and Quilombo do Cambury (QC). In phase II, we offered community partners training courses on how to collect plants and ethnobotanical data. In coordination with the university team and using ethnobotanical methods, community partners interviewed specialists on plants and their uses. In phase III, using the participatory mapping method, residents indicated plot locations and collected plants to calculate the Conservation Priority Index for native species recorded in phase II.ResultsIn 178 days of fieldwork, two community partners from the QF and three from the QC selected 8 and 11 respondents who reported 175 and 195 plant species, respectively, corresponding to 9 ethnobotanical categories. Based on requests from the local community, booklets and videos with these data were collaboratively produced. A large percentage of species were found to be of great conservation priority—82.1% in the QC and 62.5% in the QF. Virola bicuhyba, Cedrela fissilis, Plinia edulis, and Tabebuia cassinoides are the species most at risk and will be the focus of phase IV, when a participatory management plan will be carried out. Additionally, we present both challenges and opportunities with the hope that others can learn from our successes and failures.ConclusionsOur experience shows that it is possible to train community members who wish to document their knowledge to support the process of ensuring that local knowledge is highly regarded, further ensuring its perpetuation. In this context, the project may be of great interest to development programs in promoting community-based management strategies for useful plants.

The Battle of Negro Fort: The Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community by Matthew J. Clavin

Reviewed by: The Battle of Negro Fort: The Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community by Matthew J. Clavin Patrick Luck The Battle of Negro Fort: The Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community. By Matthew J. Clavin. (New York: New York University Press, 2019. Pp. x, 253. $24.95, ISBN 978-1-4798-3733-5.) Over the last several decades, one of the great shifts in how American history is understood has been the recognition that slavery and slaves should be at the center of that history rather than at its margins. In his new study, The Battle of Negro Fort: The Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community, Matthew J. Clavin makes a similar historiographical intervention by placing the "Negro Fort" at Prospect Bluff in Spanish Florida at the center of the dynamics that led to the various invasions of Florida undertaken or ordered by Andrew Jackson during and after the War of 1812, crucial episodes in the expansion of American slavery. However, Clavin interprets the fort not only as a direct spur to American expansion but also as emblematic of both "the larger fight over freedom and slavery that raged throughout the Americas at the turn of the nineteenth century" and the fact "that the American government had always [End Page 700] sanctioned slavery" (p. 2). Even more ambitiously, he claims these events are "early evidence of what came to be known as the Slave Power" and a sign that "ambivalence over the institution [of slavery] had disappeared since the nation's founding" (pp. 12, 14). Clavin's book is organized as a chronological narrative of the events that led to the battle of Negro Fort, the battle itself, and its long aftermath (including an epilogue on how abolitionists used the fort's story). The origin of the fort was in the British policy during the War of 1812 to encourage slaves to fight for the British empire. As a result of these British efforts, this fugitive slave community was based in a well-constructed fort, well-armed, and organized on military lines; they even wore British military uniforms, indicating that they conceived of their community "as a 'sovereign enclave of British subjects'" (p. 86). Andrew Jackson was the community's main antagonist, and many of the actions he took that led to his rise to prominence (such as the American invasions of Florida) were driven by his desire (shared by many white southerners) to destroy the fort and capture its residents. Despite the importance of the British and of Jackson to this story, Clavin places African Americans at its center, carefully excavating the diverse backgrounds of the hundreds of people (including Native Americans) who lived in and around the fort. Clavin concludes that these African Americans were not "slave revolutionaries" but rather individuals who seized the opportunity presented by British intervention for "'self-determination, self-reliance, and self-rule,'" much like other maroon communities throughout the Americas (p. 12). Clavin also shows that, even after the fort was destroyed, many of the African Americans who had congregated there managed to escape and continued their resistance for years afterward, typically in close alliance with Native Americans (particularly Redstick Creeks and Seminoles). Perhaps Clavin's greatest contribution, besides retelling an important event from American history that has been largely lost to memory, is to show how important the actions of the residents of Negro Fort were to the course of the conflicts on America's southern border in the 1810s and after. The great fear of many white southerners, manifested in the fort, was that slaves and Native Americans would unite with the support of the British to halt and perhaps even reverse American expansion. Clavin shows how these fears justified military expeditions into Spanish Florida as well as the later Seminole Wars. In this excellent study, Clavin concludes that, much like during the Civil War, the willingness of slaves to run to and even join a power fighting against their enslavers drove crucial events in American history. Patrick Luck Florida Polytechnic University Copyright © 2020 The Southern Historical Association

The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution by Julius S. Scott

Reviewed by: The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution by Julius S. Scott Ronald Angelo Johnson The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution. By Julius S. Scott. London: Verso, 2018. ISBN 978-1-78873-247-5. 272 pp. $34.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback. Rarely have so many scholars owed as much to one historical study as they do to The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution. When Julius Scott completed his doctoral dissertation at Duke University in 1986, his research spurred some of the most influential works on the Age of Atlantic Revolutions over the subsequent three decades. Thirty-two years after Scott's doctoral defense, the work was formally published for the first time; reading the book now, one can see glimpses of the classic works produced upon its foundation, including books by Ada Ferrer, Jane Landers, Matthew J. Smith, Rebecca Scott, and Jean Hébrard.1 This study links life in British-, French-, and Spanish-controlled territories of the Caribbean and South America through the Haitian Revolution. In each of the five chapters of captivating storytelling, the author weaves the region's disparate languages and societal practices into a cohesive narrative of collective strides toward freedom, involving peoples of different ethnic groups. His analysis of ruling practices blurs the lines of demarcation between the colonized territories to identify "Afro-America," a region in constant protest against European economic oppression and cultural subjugation. The book emphasizes the cosmopolitan environments of Caribbean port cities to illuminate the interconnectedness among peoples under the control of the planter class across the territories. According to Scott, "Larger cities like Kingston, Cap Français, and Havana could properly be termed capitals of Afro-America. . . . [T]he growing coastal cities nurtured the most complex patterns of mobility and presented the most vexing problems of control for all the colonial powers" (15). As imperial gains expanded the economic importance of urban areas, the hustle and bustle of port cities provided safe haven for fugitive freedom seekers and attracted upwardly mobile free people of color for generations. Chapter 1 introduces readers to ventures toward greater liberty across the eighteenth century. European slaveholders, governors, and merchants believed themselves to be the "masters" of Afro-America. Yet an unquenchable desire for freedom showed itself in the ingenuity and grit of the region's marginalized inhabitants. The ubiquitous presence of involuntary bondage and its inhumane effects on the lives of the enslaved permeate Scott's narrative. Still, the hope and promise of lives beyond slavery are never far from the book's primary subjects. Musicians, maroons, and marauders, they all understood their value as human citizens. The [End Page 156] cruelties and injustices inflicted upon these populations could not dampen their spirit striving to be free. Scott focuses the reader's attention on the constant drive toward freedom demonstrated by individuals as well as groups. Prior to 1986, much of the historical scholarship published in North America about the Haitian Revolution and about European enslavement of Black people in the Atlantic World gave preference to the English-language writings of elitist, European intellectuals. The Common Wind employs the resourcefulness of marginalized peoples across the Caribbean as the historical lens through which to bring into view the injustices of the Atlantic trade system based on stolen lives and labor. Scott observes, "The activities of runaway slave communities in Jamaica did not go unnoticed in nearby Cuba, underscoring the fact that the histories of the maroon societies in the two islands in the eighteenth century were closely intertwined" (11). Across the rest of the book, the author does not segregate the Caribbean into different sectors and does not present a collection of loosely related case studies. Instead, he treats the Caribbean as the Caribbean, a cooperative system of lives and commerce linked together across different islands and territories. One of Scott's greatest contributions to the historical profession remains his revelation of "the common wind," the regional network of communication that existed in varying forms from Caracas, Venezuela, to Charleston, South Carolina. He reminds readers, "The books, newspapers, and letters which arrived with...

Folia and Baile de Rabecada: Aural Narratives in a Brazilian Quilombo


 
 
 This article describes the music of baile de rabecada and folia da bandeira from the perspective of two rabeca players who are leaders in a rural Afro- Brazilian community. Their narratives rely on repertoire and music examples that are part of the aural tradition of these practices in the quilombo. Adopting as its focus specific music pieces, this study reveals that baile de rabecada features rhythmic patterns indicating a mixture of Iberian and Afro-Brazilian aspects, to a much greater extent than literature suggests. My ethnographic work on these two rabeca players highlights the association between their music practices and the socio-economic networks of the rural economy. The baile and the popular Catholic folia da bandeira are associated with an agrarian traditional system and territorial relations that form a cultural setting that operates as agency, which has enabled the communities in Vale do Ribeira to reclaim the historical meaning of the quilombo (maroon community), and carry out a political campaign for the recognition of their land rights. As a result of broad social changes, community leaders acknowledge that they do not perform the tradition as it was once practised and are now concerned with the extent to which future generations will maintain the rituals that characterize these rural Afro-Brazilian communities.
 
 

A Harvard Physician’s Reports on an 1857 Visit to the Saamaka

Abstract In 1857, Harvard professor and anatomist Jeffries Wyman traveled to Suriname to collect specimens for his museum at Harvard (later the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, founded in 1866 and curated by Wyman). Though his main interest concerned amphibians, he had a secondary interest in ethnology and, apparently, a desire to demonstrate current theories of racial “degeneration” among the African-descended population, particularly the “Bush Negroes.” This research note presents a letter he wrote his sister from Suriname, excerpts from his field diary, and sketches he made while visiting the Saamaka and Saa Kiiki Ndyuka. Wyman’s brief account of his visit suggests that Saamakas’ attitudes toward outside visitors (whether scientists, missionaries, or government officials) remained remarkable stable, from the time of the 1762 peace treaty until the Suriname civil war of the 1980s.

Archaeological Recovery of Identity

ABSTRACTThis article provides discussion and commentary on the theoretical and methodological contributions provided by the studies included in this thematic collection of articles entitled “Refuge and Support: Historical Archaeologies of Multiracial Native American and African American Sites and Communities.” I also address related issues in my research on Angola, a historic maroon community in Florida. The history of Angola and the surrounding region included individuals of Seminole and African American heritage and the creation of a maroon community of refuge from European American slavery and racism.

Running in Jamaica: A Slavery Ecosystem

Running in JamaicaA Slavery Ecosystem Hilary McD Beckles (bio) In 1655 an English army invading Jamaica defeated and ran Spanish occupiers off the island. On the run, settlers found refuge in neighboring Cuba, still under Spain's imperial control. Unable in the conflict to exercise effective control over their enslaved Africans, the Spanish had little choice but to bid their chattels farewell. Happy to be rid of their enslavers and unwilling to fall into the legal and military grip of English conquistadors, enslaved blacks ran to the Blue Mountains. High above the site of their enslavement, they constituted themselves into a maroon community out of sight of whites.1 In the century that followed, English occupiers converted the valleys under their control into their largest Caribbean slave plantation complex. More than four hundred thousand enslaved Africans were imported to work and die in the sugar fields and cattle pens. But each annual cohort of imported chattels supplied a steady stream of runners who multiplied by the thousands in the deep recesses of mountain ranges. An endemic war between mountain runners and valley enslavers defined social relations in the colony until treaties were signed calling for peace. The provisions of each agreement sought to nullify the benefits of running. Old runners agreed to return imitators to the valley in return for the right to walk about the plantations unmolested. This strategy was only partly successful. New runners formed new maroon communities, and the flight out of sight remained the norm in the political culture.2 [End Page 9] Running was resistance. It evolved as a social strategy that sustained a way of life. Uphill and across valleys, flights were methodologies of movement in which the spirit of the sprint defined daily life and defied institutional power. Fight and flight were as Jamaican as pirates and planters. But as the frontier gave way to the proliferation of creole communities during hthe second half of the eighteenth century, the running culture and its corresponding consciousness were diversified and incorporated into a more accommodating ontology of town and village living. Flight along the byways and highways that connected urban ecologies increasingly defined forms of movement. The sprint to freedom was accompanied by the silence of slipping out of sight downtown. Everywhere runners could be seen and not heard. An ecosystem of freedom emerged in which runners walked about freely and survived in plain sight of those with military might.3 Simon P. Newman's pathbreaking essay, "Hidden in Plain Sight," takes this evolved Jamaican colonial reality as a starting point. He traverses the movement of enslaved Jamaicans as recorded in the local archives and seeks to present them as enslaved subjects without chains and obvious ownership claims. The process of enslavement was demeaning and degrading for the Africans. Their strategies of resistance were designed to be uplifting and fulfilling. Not everyone could run and keep up the fight; not everyone possessed the body and spirit to spill blood in battle. Most had the desire for more space and full control over their bodies and time. In this sense, then, running was not simply a physical action but a process with multiple phases that was undergirded by a state of mind that understood periods of stillness to be as significant as persistent running.4 Newman's essay, furthermore, is a critical contribution to the booming literature on Jamaica's slavery enterprise. Its focus is the British perception of the social and cultural performance and production of the enslaved as revealed through the gaze of prominent enslavers and stakeholder narrators. The eye of the English, and the brutality of Britishness, are set in motion as analytic tools in order to display how chattel slavery was constructed and sustained as a profitable part of the colonial project, and how the enslaved excavated a culture committed to freedom within the constricted bowels of bondage.5 British colonists produced an enormous and diverse archive of racial opinion and belief that has long been the primary source of "histories." The [End Page 10] considerable historiography that depicts Jamaica in slavery is a main artery of Atlantic colonial imagination and (mis)understanding. More so than for any other British...