Rituals, runaways, and the Haitian Revolution : collective action in the African diaspora / Crystal Nicole Eddins.

Originally published in 2022, ISBN 9781108843720, Reissued as Open Access in 2022.

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 07 Apr 2022).

"We have a false idea of the Negro" : legacies of resistance and the African past -- In the shadow of death -- "God knows what I do" : ritual free spaces -- Mobilizing marronnage : race, collective identity, & solidarity -- Marronnage as reclamation -- Geographies of subversion : maroons, borders, and empire -- "We must stop the progress of marronnage" : repertoires and repression -- Voices of liberty : the Haitian Revolution begins.

The Haitian Revolution was perhaps the most successful slave rebellion in modern history; it created the first and only free and independent Black nation in the Americas. This book tells the story of how enslaved Africans forcibly brought to colonial Haiti through the trans-Atlantic slave trade used their cultural and religious heritages, social networks, and labor and militaristic skills to survive horrific conditions. They built webs of networks between African and 'creole' runaways, slaves, and a small number of free people of color through rituals and marronnage - key aspects to building the racial solidarity that helped make the revolution successful. Analyzing underexplored archival sources and advertisements for fugitives from slavery, Crystal Eddins finds indications of collective consciousness and solidarity, unearthing patterns of resistance. The book fills an important gap in the existing literature on the Haitian Revolution. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.