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

Introduction
15
ous other kinds of materials; for information on what was taking place within
the authoritarian state; and at times for physical protection (usually on initial
flight, or during some other contingency, such as when they were wounded
or were likely to be apprehended). As Jean Fouchard (1972, 169) notes, there
were “clandestine networks in the world of the slaves organizing and facilitating
flight”.
Without such networks marronage would have been even more difficult
than it was, and much more restricted in demographic and military terms.
Many who did not offer physical and emotional help nevertheless revelled
quietly in the escape of one of their family members, “and, above all, each
escape of a fellow sufferer produced prayers of success, fed the rumor mill,
fired dreams, and raised the level of curiosity about freedom throughout the
quarters” (Blassingame 1979, 192–93).
On the other side, enslaved persons on the plantations or in the towns
depended upon the Maroons to keep their arms open to receive them and
provide them with protection and sustenance; to exchange with them commodities
– often seized by Maroons on raids – to which the enslaved persons
would not otherwise have access; and to create some free space and at times
lighten their burdens, when their overlords decided that concessions were
necessary to keep the enslaved persons under their control. Of course,
Maroon activities could, and sometimes did, lead to tighter control of
enslaved persons, but this was usually in times of heightened Maroon activity
within a given area.
Patterson (1979, 279) asserts that “all sustained slave revolts” had to be
linked with marronage since “the only way in which a slave population can
compensate for the inevitably superior military might of their masters is to
resort to guerrilla warfare, with all its implications of flight, strategic retreat
to secret hideouts, and ambush”. Wim Hoogbergen (1993, 181–82) also argues
strongly that revolts that did not involve prior contacts with Maroons – at
least in Suriname in the eighteenth century, when the coercive apparatus of
the state had reached unprecedented heights – stood much less chance of
success than those that did so. In fact, he seems to view any other approach
as a fatal flaw, especially in large-scale revolt. Numerous examples exist of
insurgents transforming themselves into Maroons – for example, in the
Jamaica revolt in 1760, the Berbice revolt in 1763, and most notably the
Haitian revolution of 1791–1804. But smaller revolts often produced the same
result, as, for instance, in 1773 when a failed revolt on the Belize River led to