Maronage in Slave Plantation Societies: A Case Study of Dominica, 1785–1815

Abstract

Ever since the establishment of plantation colonies in the New World by European powers, the African who had been forcibly removed from his homeland and transported across the Atlantic to supply the labour force, reacted to his enslavement. This reaction took many forms. It ranged from collective and violent acts such as revolts to individual acts such as poisoning or murder, refusal to work, and flight from the plantation as individuals or in groups. Even though individual acts of flight were annoying to the planter because of the loss of labour power, such actions were hardly threat to the plantation system itself or social stability in the islands since they generally represented peaceful methods of resistance to slavery rather than collective or violent ones. When, however, the escaped slaves established viable self-sufficient communities and used them as bases for collective assaults on the settled plantations -assaults involving arson, plunder and murder, the very existence of the plantation system was at stake. It is this type of activity which has been termed maronnage, and indeed, the Maroon communities which were to be 'found in almost every plantation colony in the New World,1 put up heroic struggles for their freedom and independencestruggles which seriously disrupted white economic activity and threatened to destroy the social order itself. In some of these struggles the metropolitan powers either suffered outright military defeats or were unable to gain victory…