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

266 Flight to Freedom
fidelity to their overlords. The term negotiations must not be taken in its literal
sense but interpreted as sufficiently elastic to include unwritten codes of
conduct between enslaver and enslaved that would reduce the burden of slavery.
1 Thus, for instance, an enslaved person might expect his overlord to grant
certain privileges – from badges to cash, and, at the furthest extreme, freedom
– as a reward for meritorious service, through a mutually understood
system of reciprocal service and rewards. 2 Such rewards were firmly built into
the system of slavery from its earliest days.
A curious feature of the struggle for freedom and negotiated space is that
sometimes it led to the abridgement of the freedom of others, among not
only the oppressors but also the oppressed. The abridgement of the freedom
of the oppressors is easily understood through the dialectic of class or racial
conflict. Freire (1972, 32) understood this well when he wrote: “As the
oppressed, fighting to be human, take away the oppressors’ power to dominate
and suppress, they restore to the oppressors the humanity they had lost
in the exercise of oppression.” In other words, the oppressors are forced to
cede some of their freedom in order to restore their humanity.
When, however, as often happens in human societies, the oppressed practise
oppression against each other for selfish reasons, it is an altogether different
matter. One of the many unfortunate aspects of slavery in the
Americas was the frequency with which enslaved persons betrayed planned
revolts and Maroon activities. This was true of the aborted revolts in Berbice
in 1763; Charleston, South Carolina, in 1822; and Bahia in 1835 (Thompson
1987, 173–74; Lofton 1948, 412–14; Reis 1993, 73–75). In Haiti, also, in 1758,
Makandal, the feared Maroon leader, was betrayed by an enslaved female
whom he had asked to kill her master (Gautier 1985, 226). Tackey’s revolt in
Jamaica in 1760 was put down with the assistance of the former Maroons of
the Windward and Leeward groups, who also killed him (Campbell 1990,
155).
From the early eighteenth century, French policy in Haiti was to confer
freedom on enslaved persons after three years of devoted service as members
of the militia, captains or scouts (Fouchard 1972, 353n2). Those who were
assigned the rank of captain must have enjoyed the authority and trust inherent
in the position, and they must also have enjoyed material privileges comparable
to those of the Black slave-drivers. Periodically, the colonial
governments also recruited enslaved persons for specific kinds of commando
missions, promising them freedom for devoted service. This happened to