60199616-flight-to-freedom-african-runaways-and-maroons-in-the-americas

Introduction
9
Naturally, there were important variations between states, within a given
state, and over various time periods. Unfortunately, it is impossible in such a
relatively short study to address those variations all the time, especially when
they did not make a qualitative difference to Maroon life. However, every
attempt has been made to cite cases or examples from several countries to
illustrate the salient points and to provide greater scope for comparative
analysis. Of necessity, I have been highly selective in regard to the bibliography
and have no doubt omitted several works that would have enriched this
study. I trust, though, that the works cited will guide those who want to deal
with particular communities or topics in greater depth.
Resistance to enslavement and brutalities constituted an attempt by
enslaved persons both to reduce the power of the enslavers and to acquire
some power for themselves. William Freehling (2002, 5) observes that “The
job of an underclass, when it seeks to overturn a crushing dominion, is to
find the spaces where successful resistance can be mounted.” Maroons certainly
sought and often found such spaces. Marronage was the most extreme
form of such resistance, since it involved opting out of the system of oppression
altogether and establishing a new kind of society in which the former
enslaved persons took (or sought to take) control of their own lives and destines.
Jean Fouchard (1972, 170) insists that marronage was not a saga about
“fugitives interested in timid escapades without a tomorrow, but with true
‘rebels’, dedicated and aggressive, hostile to slavery”. Harriet Beecher
Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (which sold over three hundred thousand
copies in its first year of publication) emphasizes the contribution of
fugitive agency to changing the pathetic circumstances under which
enslaved persons lived.
Contemporary and occasionally modern writers have criticized the
Maroons for their seemingly indiscriminate attacks on people who were not
enslavers. We must remember, however, that it was not simply the slaveholders
who were responsible for the system of slavery, but almost the entire
White community. The system could not have existed without broad sanction,
tacit or open, by that community. In the words of Orlando Patterson
(1991, 10), “A slave relationship . . . requires at least the tacit support of those
not directly involved with it, and calls into being a slave culture, however
rudimentary.” The validity of this observation is evident in the United States
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which placed the burden on every free person in
the country to apprehend and return runaways (Quarles 1969, 107; Fogel 1989,