Maroon Communities Research Articles

“Hemispheric Postcolonialism: Black Female Sexuality and Slavery in the Americas”

AbstractBuilding on what Günter H. Lenz describes as the “always two‐directional processes of transculturation,” this piece brings together two classic works, Gayl Jones's Corregidora and Carlos Diegues's Brazilian film, Xica da Silva (1975), specifically addressing the hemispheric connections in cross‐cultural literary and cinematic representations of black female sexuality, colonialism and slavery in the Americas. The essay presents a critical comparison of the legacy of slave concubinage and black female resistance, noting how Jones's Corregidora helps to undermine the Brazilian myth of racial democracy, while Xica da Silva deepens Gayl Jones's Pan‐African vision of the quilombos, or maroon societies, and problematizes sexuality by magnifying the complex mix of abjection and desire, which deeply engages Jones's novel. By furthering an already existing discussion yet promoting a new critical paradigm for a hemispheric postcolonialism, this work seeks to fortify the nexus of Africana Studies, Comparative American Studies and Hemispheric Studies, but with a distinct postcolonial focus on the historic and cultural intersections of U.S. and Latin America, working within the purview of postcolonial studies in particular.

Towards a Black Feminist Model of Black Atlantic Liberation: Remembering Beatriz Nascimento

Abstract Black woman, scholar, and visionary—Beatriz Nascimento was a critical figure in Brazil's Black Movement until her untimely death in 1995. Although she published only a handful of articles before she died and left only a few other recorded thoughts, her ideas about the symbolic relationship between quilombos (Afro-Brazilian maroon societies) and black subjectivity encourage us to re-imagine the meaning of Black liberation from a transnational, Black feminist perspective. This essay reflects on her life and intellectual contributions, making the argument that Nascimento should be considered a key figure in the radical Black tradition in the Americas. Not only did her ground-breaking theorizations of the Black Atlantic re-imagine this important concept from a radical, Black, female, Latin American perspective, but the general lack of knowledge of her theoretical contributions in contemporary theoretical debates in African Diaspora and Latin American Studies underscores the need to deemphasize the United States and English-speaking experiences in our discussions of global Black intellectual traditions, while simultaneously foregrounding black women's contributions to Latin American philosophical and political thought.

Slave Maroon Communities in the Atlantic World

Slave Maroon Communities in the Atlantic World

Patterns in medicinal plant knowledge and use in a Maroon village in Suriname

Ethnopharmacological relevanceTraditional medicine plays an important role in the primary health care practices of Maroons living in the interior of Suriname. Large numbers of medicinal plants are employed to maintain general health and cure illnesses. Little is known, however, on how knowledge of herbal medicine varies within the community and whether plant use remains important when modern health care becomes available. Aim of the studyTo document the diversity in medicinal plant knowledge and use in a remote Saramaccan Maroon community and to assess the importance of medicinal plants vis a vis locally available modern healthcare. We hypothesized that ailments which could be treated by the village health center would be less salient in herbal medicine reports. MethodsDuring three months fieldwork in the Saramaccan village of Pikin Slee, ethnobotanical data were collected by means of participant observations, voucher collections and 27 semi-structured interviews and informal discussions with 20 respondents. To test whether knowledge of medicinal plant species was kept within families, we performed a Detrended Correspondence Analysis. ResultsIn total, 110 medicinal plant species were recorded, with 302 health use reports and 72 uses, mostly related to general health concerns (42%), diseases of the digestive system (10%), musculoskeletal system and fever (each 7%). Bathing was the most important mode of application. Most health use reports related to cure (58%) and health promotion (39%), while disease prevention played a minor role. Traditional medicine not only treated cultural illnesses, but also health concerns that could be treated with locally available modern medicines. Knowledge of medicinal plant species is not strictly kept within families, but also shared with friends. Certain recipes and applications, however, may be specific family knowledge. ConclusionMedicinal plants play a very important role in the daily lives of the Pikin Slee villagers. Plant use reflects actual health concerns, but as modern medicines are available for most of these concerns, the use of herbal medicines seems to be a deep rooted cultural preference, especially when concerned with cultural illnesses and health promotion. Locally provided healthcare could be enriched if traditional knowledge, illness concepts, and medicinal plant uses could fit into a larger, community-oriented framework.

Traditional healing and medicine in Winti: a sociological interpretation

During the period of the slave trade (1650-1830), people were brought from the whole West Coast of Africa to Suriname. The majority had a Fante-Akan (Ghana), Ewe-Fon (Togo and Benin), or a western Bantu (Congo, Zaire and Angola) background, while the Mandingo (Senegal, Sierra Leone and Liberia) formed a minor fraction (Wooding 1972: ch. II). In the course of time they amalgamated into the Afrosurinamese population group, which is subdivided into two main groups: the coastal Creoles and the inland Bushnegroes.

Mais Médicos program: provision of medical doctors in rural, remote and socially vulnerable areas of Brazil, 2013-2014

The Mais Médicos program was introduced in 2013 with the aim of reducing the shortage of doctors in priority regions and diminishing regional inequalities in health. One of the strategies has been to offer 3-year contracts for doctors to work in primary healthcare services in small towns, inland, rural, remote, and socially vulnerable areas. This report describes the program's implementation and the allocation of doctors to these target areas in 2014. To describe the provision of doctors in the first year of implementation, we compared the doctor-to-population ratio in the 5570 municipalities of Brazil before and after the program, based on the Federal Board of Medicine database (2013), and the official dataset provided by the Ministry of Health (2014). In its first public call (July 2013) 3511 municipalities joined the Mais Médicos program, requesting a total of 15 460 doctors; although the program prioritizes the recruitment of Brazilians, only 1096 nationals enrolled and were hired, together with 522 foreign doctors. As a consequence, an international cooperation agreement was set in place to recruit Cuban doctors. In 12 months the program recruited 14 462 doctors: 79.0% Cubans, 15.9% Brazilians and 5.1% of other nationalities, covering 93.5% of the doctors demanded; they were assigned to all the 3785 municipalities enrolled. The study reveals a major decrease in the number of municipalities with fewer than 0.1 doctors per thousand inhabitants, which dropped from 374 in 2013 to 95 in 2014 (75% reduction). Of the total, 294 doctors were sent to work in the country's 34 Indigenous Health Districts (100% coverage) and 3390 doctors were deployed in municipalities containing certified rural maroon communities (formed centuries ago by runaway slaves). After 1 year of implementation, the municipalities with maroon communities with less than 0.1 doctors per thousand inhabitants were reduced by 87% in the poorest north region. More than 30% of municipalities with maroon communities in the richest regions had more than 1.0 doctors per thousand inhabitants, whereas in the poorest regions fewer than 7% of municipalities reached that level. The Mais Médicos program has granted medical assistance to these historically overlooked populations. However, it is important to evaluate the mid- and long-term sustainability of this initiative.

Ethnomedicinal survey of a maroon community in Brazil's Atlantic tropical forest

Ethnopharmacological relevanceConsiderable medicinal plant research in Brazil has focused on indigenous and mixed-race (caboclo and caiçara) communities, but relatively few studies have examined the medicinal plants and associated healing traditions of the descendants of enslaved Africans. This study surveyed the medicinal plants employed by a relatively isolated maroon community of Afro-Brazilians in the Atlantic coastal rainforests of Bahia, Brazil, a global biodiversity hotspot. The studied community is exceptional in that the residents were defacto slaves until several years ago, with no access to western medicine. We examined the following questions: 1) What medicinal plants are used in this community? 2) What are the principal taxonomic groups, life forms, source habitats, and geographical origins? 3) What species stand out as measured by use value and frequency indices? and 4) Is the community's geographical isolation and African ancestry reflected in their medicinal uses of the local flora? Materials and methodsThe study was carried out in the Quilombo Salamina Putumuju maroon community in Bahia, Brazil. Data were collected from May to October 2014 from 74 individuals (37 men and 37 women) by means of semi-structured interviews, walk in the woods, and vouchering of identified species. We used the Cultural Value Index (CV), the Relative Frequency Index (RF), and the Use Value Index (UV) to determine the importance of medicinal plant resources. Continuity of African medicinal plant uses and traditions was determined through self-reporting and comparison with previously published works. ResultsWe recorded 118 medicinal plant species distributed in 100 genera and 51 families. The best represented families were: Asteraceae, Fabaceae, Lamiaceae and Myrtaceae. Most plant medicines were used to treat respiratory, digestive systems, genitourinary, and skin problems. The most common medicinal life form was herbs (44%), followed by trees (28%) and shrubs (18%). Native species (55%) were used somewhat more than exotic species (45%), and non-cultivated species (51%) were slightly more numerous than cultivated species (49%). In spite of abundant nearby old-growth forests, trails and gardens were the most common collection sites. A mean of 13.2 medicinal plant species were cited per participant. The highest CV was recorded for Cymbopogon citratus (0.20) followed by Lippia alba (0.19) and Stryphnodendron cf. adstringens (0.17). The highest RF included C. citratus (0.69), L. alba (0.59), and Eugenia uniflora (0.55). The highest UV figures were recorded for S. cf. adstringens (1.68), followed by Sida cf. cordifolia (0.97) and C. citratus (0.93).Fifteen species (13%) of this maroon medicinal flora trace their ancestry to Africa or African-derived healing traditions. ConclusionThe Salamina maroon community maintains considerable knowledge of the medicinal value of the local flora. However, little of this knowledge is derived from the surrounding old-growth tropical forests. Their pharmacopoeia is a hybrid mix of wild and cultivated species, natives and exotics. Among those species representing the community's isolation and African ancestry, most are associated with spiritual and magical medicine.

Ecotourism community enterprises and ethnodevelopment: modelling the Kalunga empowerment possibilities in the Brazilian savannah

This paper investigates the Kalunga community demands for income generation through ecotourism enterprises in the north of Goias State, in the Brazilian savannah. As part of the analysis, the paper discusses the main aspects of the community empowerment framework. It identifies the existing natural and cultural assets of the Kalunga and the community need for capacity building aimed at dealing with a growing tourism business and managing visitors. This afro-descendant community expects ecotourism to serve as a development as a catalyst for economic development by propitiating financial independence through ecotourism community enterprises. These issues require the elaboration of an ethnic operational business model for the community, which is one of the main contributions of this paper. There is insufficient literature on the Kalunga maroon community, particularly related to ethnic-based business and enterprises. This paper investigating the Kalunga is important because it can reveal ‘the silences’ and the ‘innermost facts’ of a slow, but evolving process of social and economic emancipation of this African-descendant group, one that in the past (date) highly segregated itself from enslavement. This paper also makes an original contribution to research knowledge by comprehensively examining the possibilities for community empowerment from the within as an ethnodevelopment process. The main issues lie in the fact that the Kalunga cannot continue to be perceived by outsiders as ‘cheap labour’ on their own lands; they must take ownership of their own assets, means for survival and long-term fate. The research is predominantly qualitative based on field research, participant observation, interviews with key informants, and written survey with a focus group.

The therapeutic itinerary in urgent/emergency pediatric situations in a Maroon community.

The goal was to understand the therapeutic itinerary of Maroon children in urgent/emergency situation. Is a descriptive research with a qualitative approach that uses the Health Care System model of Arthur Kleinman as its theoretical support. Participants included 12 mothers of children who had experienced any urgent or emergency medical situation. Data collection took place from December 2013 to June 2014 through semi-structured interviews with a thematic analysis of the data. The care of the child started in the "informal" subsystem, and access to a "formal" subsystem was characterized as a pilgrimage for health services. A development of specific strategies is needed to ensure and facilitate full access to the services of the professional subsystem for Maroon communities.

"No obedecen a nadie, sino cada uno gobierna a su familia". Etnicidad y política en la reducción del maniel de Bahoruco, 1785-1795

Resumen En el proceso de negociación para la reducción del maniel de Bahoruco, radicado en la frontera entre Santo Domingo y Saint Domingue, intervinieron tanto las autoridades españolas y francesas como los cimarrones. La comunidad cimarrona no conformaba un corpus político unificado, sino que estaba dividida en dos grupos con identidad definida, líderes diferenciados y propuestas políticas propias. A lo largo del proceso de negociación, que se vio seriamente afectado por la revolución haitiana, los posicionamientos políticos de los dos grupos de cimarrones fué divergente, atendiendo a las necesidades específicas de cada uno de los grupos.

Cape of storms: Surveying and rethinking popular resistance in the eighteenth-century Cape colony

In this article I provide a broad overview of resistance at the Cape under the Dutch East India Company (VOC) undertaken by the multiracial and multiethnic popular classes (low-ranking Company servants including soldiers and sailors, slaves and indigenous Khoesan labourers). I identify and examine some of the main forms of protest including: desertion and the creation of maroon communities; arson; threats against and assault of masters; and collective insurgency comprising rebellions, mutiny and strikes. Questioning established approaches in the literature which emphasise social divisions amongst the popular classes – including along racial and ethnic lines – as well as the limits and weakness of popular protest, this article demonstrates that the popular classes at the Cape developed a rich and varied tradition of “direct action”. The discussion reveals that this was often overt and collective, and sometimes drew sections of the Cape’s popular classes together across divisions. It was also informed by alternative conceptions of morality and justice.

The Okanisi: A Surinamese Maroon Community, c.1712–2010

The Okanisi: A Surinamese Maroon Community, c.1712–2010

Quilombolas: a produção de mel na apicultura familiar do Vale do Ribeira, São Paulo

Family beekeeping (small-scale beekeeping) is an essential activity for economic and ecological farming systems (with its contribution to pollination), which aims to bring social inclusion, fixed income, and sustainable ecological bases. This study aimed to identify the current profile of honey production in five quilombolas communities in the Sao Paulo Ribeira Valley (Cangume, Piloes, Piririca, Porto Velho, and Ribeirao Grande/Terra Seca), with reference to the social and environmental aspects as well as beekeeping practices. The results suggest that the social aspects of family beekeeping can be considered a second income. In these communities, however, sanitation problems, including lack of potable water resources and mining contamination, differ between communities. With the study of georeferencing, we were able to establish local environmental conditions, which served as the basis for the floristic inventory of 85 plant species distributed in 32 botanical families. The analyses of air temperature and relative humidity and honey humidity indicated that the honey was influenced by climatic conditions and the processes adopted, since the measures of pH and EC suggest a correlation with the botanical origin of honeys. Professional training in maroon communities allowed an awareness of the quality and composition of honey.

The ‘Botanical Gardens of the Dispossessed’ revisited: richness and significance of Old World crops grown by Suriname Maroons

Old World crops entered the Americas as provision on slave ships and were planted by enslaved Africans in their home gardens, known as the ‘Botanical Gardens of the Dispossessed’. Escaped slaves who settled in Maroon communities in Suriname’s forested interior practiced shifting cultivation for centuries with seeds they brought from their home gardens. After the abolishment of slavery, Creoles largely abandoned agriculture and farming became the activity of Asian wage laborers. Maroon agriculture has never been studied in detail. The recent discovery of African rice (Oryza glaberrima) in a Maroon garden initiated this ethnobotanical study on Old World crops grown by Maroons, and their motivations for maintaining this agrodiversity. In 2013, we collected crop cultivars and landraces and interviewed 16 Aucan and Saramaccan Maroon farmers. The greatest richness was encountered in bananas, taro, okra and rice. Most crops were used for food, but sesame, melegueta pepper and African rice largely lost their food function and served mainly for rituals. Farmers exchanged seeds and tubers with family members and other ethnicities in both urban and forest communities. Spending time in the capital during childbirth or illness resulted in the loss of typical Maroon crops (e.g., Bambara groundnut), as seeds lost viability during the farmer’s absence. Motivation to grow specific crops and cultivars varied from tradition, food preference, seasonal spreading, rituals and traditional medicine. Documentation of specific landrace properties, storage of seeds in germplasm centers and in situ conservation are urgently needed to safeguard these previously undocumented Maroon landraces.

<b>Prevalence of variant hemoglobins and thalassemias in a maroon community in Sergipe, Brazil

Current analysis investigates the sickle-cell syndrome among members of a maroon community ( comunidade quilombola ) in the state of Sergipe, Brazil. The entire population, comprising five hundred and ninety-three people, was screened. Blood samples were collected from 318 people, aged between six months and fifty years, who underwent a solubility test to assess the presence of HbS, followed by Sickle-Cell Test to confirm its presence. Results revealed that 2.2% of the three hundred and eighteen people tested have hemoglobin HbS in their blood; 57% have type HbAS and 43% have a combination between thalassemia and heterozygous with a variable percentage of HbS ranging between 24.9 and 37.9%. Blood sampling revealed that only five out of the 318 people belonged to different families. Results are highly relevant for public health policies on the sickle-cell syndrome and its management.

Papist Devils: Catholics in British America, 1574–1783 by Robert Emmett Curran (review)

Reviewed by: Papist Devils: Catholics in British America, 1574–1783 by Robert Emmett Curran Jennifer E. Schaaf Papist Devils: Catholics in British America, 1574–1783. By Robert Emmett Curran. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2014. 320pp. $29.95. In Papist Devils, Robert Emmett Curran offers a concise history of the Catholic experience in the British Atlantic world. Curran begins his inquiry in 1574 on the eve of Catholic colonizing projects in North America and the West Indies. He establishes that the shifting fortunes of Catholics in the Mother Country created a ripple effect that directly impinged on the prospects of their colonial cousins across the Atlantic. Though most Catholics chose to remain in Britain and endure penal legislation and persecution as best they could, a very few intrepid figures saw emigration to colonial outposts as a means of achieving economic prosperity and spiritual sanctuary simultaneously. Other, less fortunate, Catholics made their way across the Atlantic under terms of indentured servitude, fleeing poverty or facing expulsion from the lands of their birth. Though Curran briefly describes the circumstances endured by Catholic colonists as remote from one another as Nova Scotia and the Leeward Islands, more than half the text describes the experiences of [End Page 92] Maryland Catholics. Curran deftly traces the demographic and financial realities that complicated Lord Baltimore’s motivating ambitions. Catholic Marylanders found themselves in the minority from the outset, and contended with Protestants’ resentment of their attempts to maintain power and safeguard Catholic spiritual prerogatives. Curran lucidly and adroitly unspools the tangled skein of shifting political, religious, and financial alliances that forced Catholics in Maryland and throughout the Atlantic world to navigate local antagonisms and distant geo-political machinations that converged in unexpected and often volatile ways. Provincial officials such as William Claiborne cynically exploited anti-Catholic sentiment in England to advance their economic and political agendas in Maryland. The colony’s Catholic elite employed various means of combating such intrigues, from casting their political lot with apparent sympathizers to implementing innovative legislation to protect religious freedom. Elsewhere in the Atlantic world, Catholics lacking political resources resorted to more drastic means of self-preservation. Some Catholic servants relegated to the most brutal locales in the West Indies, for example, allied with slaves to form maroon communities beyond the reach of merciless overseers. And Acadians struggled to maintain their religious and ethnic identity in the aftermath of being ruthlessly routed from their settlement. While Curran’s achievement is considerable, his work is not without its occasional flaws. A more careful and nuanced consideration of Catholic women would have greatly improved the volume. Curran observes that laywomen provided spiritual succor in their households and in underserved communities prior to the establishment of Catholic religious and social institutions. And he rightly asserts that such efforts earned them the esteem of their co-religionists. But he goes on to make the unsupportable claim that Catholic women enjoyed a higher status within their faith community than their Protestant counterparts. To make his case, Curran cites Catholic men’s willingness to appoint wives as executrixes of wills and to allow women’s participation in the management of family farms and businesses. In so doing, he ignores an extensive historiography that reveals women throughout the southern colonies exercised unprecedented legal and financial prerogatives in the early phases of settlement when seasoning frequently left them widowed and without male protectors. As men’s life expectancy rose, women’s legal and financial autonomy concomitantly fell. Curran touches only lightly on the unique circumstances of black and enslaved Catholics. He recounts how Maryland’s tobacco economy came to rely on slave labor. And he concedes that Catholics were among [End Page 93] Maryland’s most prominent slaveholders. Curran points out that Maryland Catholics followed the Jesuit directive to baptize and properly catechize slaves. And he speculates that various elements of Catholic worship may have dovetailed with West African religious practices and made conversion more palatable. This mild depiction raises more questions than it answers. Curran does not address whether enslaved and marginal Africans experienced Catholic evangelization as coercive. Nor does he explore whether slaves capitulated to their owners’ religious admonitions as a practical strategy...

Ethnobotany approach taperas of maroon communities of Alcântara, Maranhão, Brazil

Alcantara is the second oldest city in the state of Maranhão, which had its splendor even at the time of colonial Brazil, standing out as a major producer of sugar cane and cotton. The agrarian history of the city is old, dating back more than three centuries. Founded in 1648, was an important Maranhão region, besides the production of sugar cane and cotton producing cattle, salt, and food crops, mainly cassava, maize, rice and beans, reaching its best productive time in the mid-nineteenth century. Currently there are about 200 quilombo remaining areas in Alcantara. The objective was to take stock of existing medicinal species in Taperas (areas previously occupied by human presence, and then ruins) of quilombola communities of Manival - coordinates (S 02º 22 '26.6' '; WO 44 29' 27.4 '') and Castelo - coordinates: (S 02º 24 '43.1' '; WO 44 36' 03.07 ''). In the study were interviewed five residents in Manival community and 7 residents of Castelo community to locate Taperas and date the time of abandonment. Taperas were found aged between 30-50 years of neglect. Raised 24 species distributed among 15 families where two species were intentionally introduced for cultivation and at one point abandoned as cultivated species: as cotton (Gossypium arboreum L. - Malvaceae) and mango (Mangifera indica L. - Anacardiaceae). The most representative botanical families were Euphorbiaceae (16.66%), Arecaceae, Fabaceae and Malvaceae with 8.33% each. The leaf is 50% utilization of the plant parts. The medicinal uses are varied to control lice and fleas, treat kidney problems, blood cleanser, general pain, and even for treatment of gastritis.

Black Seminoles: the maroons of Florida

Maroon communities and slave revolutions in the Black Atlantic world are well known and well documented. Surinam, Jamaica, Cuba, Guyana, Venezuela, Columbia, Haiti, and Brazil had large numbers of enslaved fugitives who fled the plantations, armed themselves, and defended their human right to be free against national and local military forces. Much less is known about the maroon tradition in the United States where there has been a concerted effort to suppress information on slave revolts and maroon activity. The publicized rebellion of Nat Turner and the planned rebellions of Gabriel Prosser and Denmark Vesey that never got off the ground are highlighted, it seems, in order to obfuscate the more successful maroon activities. Tagged as the largest slave rebellion in the United States, the Nat Turner rebellion did not even come close to achieving what some of the revolts waged during the colonial period achieved. There were three epicenters of maroon communities in the United States: the Dismal Swamp of southern Virginia and northern North Carolina, southern Louisiana, and north-central Florida and the Everglades, home of the Seminoles. This paper will examine the Black Seminoles, fugitive slaves who formed a maroon community and became part of the Seminole Confederation that fought three wars against the United States. The Seminole maroons’ century-long defense of their freedom far excelled the courageous revolt of Nat Turner and was by far the largest and longest standing military defense against the United States waged by an African or Indian group.

Assessing the sociolinguistic situation of the Maroon creoles

Recent anthropological and socio-historical research on Maroon populations suggests that Maroon communities have undergone significant social change since the 1960s spurred by processes of urbanization. However, to date very little is known about how these social changes are impacting on the Maroon Creoles as there is very little sociolinguistic research being carried out in the region. The aim of this paper is to examine the sociolinguistic context of the Maroon Creoles in the light of data from two recent sociolinguistic surveys carried out in Suriname and French Guiana. The findings demonstrate that the sociolinguistic status of Maroon languages has undergone various changes. Several of them are now well represented in French Guiana and, as additional languages, are gaining speakers both in Suriname and French Guiana. While their speakers increasingly practice them together with other languages, thus displaying their multilingual repertoire, there is little indication that their survival is threatened because their speakers predominantly hold positive attitudes towards them.

Plantation Ecologies: The Experimental Plantation in and against James Grainger’s The Sugar-Cane

This essay examines the Scottish poet and physician James Grainger’s 1764 “West-India georgic,” The Sugar-Cane, to chronicle the transformation of the plantation into an ecologically-unique site for experimentation, produced through material processes and imaginaries of British enclosure in the West Indies. Through its cataloguing of Caribbean diseases, natural remedies, and oblique references to medical experiments on the enslaved, The Sugar-Cane offers a powerful articulation of what I call the “experimental plantation,” an enclosed site from which empirical knowledge is produced, extracted, and transplanted from tropicalized lands and bodies. At the same time as the poem registers the enclosure of human and non-human life within the experimental plantation, it also belies an anxiety about the disordering, tropicalizing forces of various “fugitive” species in the Caribbean, including tropical diseases, wild animals, and maroon communities, all of which threaten to dissolve and overtake the enclosed borders of the plantation. In The Sugar-Cane, the image of the plantation as an ecologically-enclosed, protected space of British cultivation and experimentation is revealed to be a fragile colonial fantasy, always on the verge of being “infected” and creolized by indigenous plants, animals and diseases, as well as by Africans both within and outside of the enclosures of the plantation.