Doctoral Dissertation Research: Struggles for Sovereignty: Escaped Slaves, Colonial Governance, and Race in the French Caribbean, 1790-1850

这一博士论文项目是关于19世纪之交加勒比地区马龙人的抵抗做法、逃亡奴隶的既定社区和殖民统治做法之间的关系。栗色居民点通常位于种植园周围的沼泽和丘陵等不太受欢迎的地点，在殖民时代是美洲各地种植园景观的特有之地。虽然他们在海地革命等历史事件中发挥了核心作用，但学术研究在很大程度上忽视了他们。这个项目将通过考察殖民地对婚姻、奴隶逃亡行为、美洲种族观念的转变以及确保对殖民领土的政治和经济控制的战略的改变，在多大程度上促进这一未被研究的领域。这项调查的结果将有助于理解种族差异的概念是如何在19世纪及以后产生的，以及美洲殖民统治的形式是如何形成的。通过重点研究法属加勒比海地区，它有助于填补历史研究中忽视大西洋世界法语方面的空白。该项目将调查三个问题，即法国殖民统治战略与马龙人的抵抗做法之间的关系。首先，殖民当局如何理解19世纪初法属加勒比海地区的婚姻制度，特别是关于它在日常种植园经营中的作用及其对关于种族和主权的殖民思想的影响？第二，法国殖民当局采取了哪些机构行动，如新法律或改变军事战略，以应对海地革命后真实或假想的婚姻威胁，这些变化是否以同样的方式在法属加勒比海地区实施？第三，法属加勒比海不同地区的马龙人如何应对这种治理做法的变化？这项研究将通过对法国殖民档案中关键地点的档案研究，分析殖民管理者之间的通信、军事报告以及与逃亡或逃亡的奴隶有关的法庭诉讼程序等历史文件，以努力更好地了解马龙人与殖民当局之间斗争的地理复杂性。在这一过程中，将产生关于大西洋世界种族社会结构和主权斗争的新知识。马龙人和法国殖民统治者之间的斗争在塑造加勒比地区的经济、社会结构和文化景观方面发挥了重要作用，甚至到现在也是如此。研究马鲁恩岛对这些进程的影响可以增进我们对该地区历史上是如何发展的以及为什么它看起来会是今天这样的理解。然而，马龙人发挥的作用不仅仅是过去的遗物，因为他们斗争的紧张局势和遗产挥之不去，并对未来产生影响。今天，在加勒比海和拉丁美洲的许多地方，马龙人的后代声称继承了抵抗的传统，以重组正在进行的关于文化、政治和土地权的斗争。这个项目将有助于揭示当代试图修改栗色叙事的历史根源。它还将突出这种努力对在遗产旅游和国家政治复兴的时代努力维持其文化特性和获得传统土地的栗色后裔社区的更广泛影响。这项研究产生的发现和结果将通过发表期刊文章、在专业会议上发表演讲和公开演讲来传播。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立研究事业。

This doctoral dissertation project is about the relationship between resistance practices of maroons, established communities of escaped slaves, and colonial governance practices in the Caribbean at the turn of the nineteenth century. Maroon settlements were typically located in less desirable locations such as swamps and hills surrounding plantations and were endemic to plantation landscapes across the Americas during colonial times. While they played a central role in historical events such as the Haitian Revolution, scholarly research has largely overlooked them. This project will contribute to this understudied field by examining the extent to which colonial responses to marronage, the act of escape among slaves, transformed ideas about race in the Americas and altered strategies for securing political and economic control over colonial territories. Findings from this investigation will advance understandings of how notions of racial difference were produced in the nineteenth century and later, and how forms of colonial governance took shape in the Americas. By focusing on the French Caribbean, it contributes to filling a gap in historical studies that overlook Francophone aspects of the Atlantic world. This project will investigate three questions about the relationship between strategies of French colonial governance and resistance practices of maroons. First, how did colonial authorities understand marronage across the French Caribbean at the turn of the nineteenth century, particularly in relation to its role in daily plantation operations and its effects on colonial ideas about race and sovereignty? Second, what institutional actions, such as new laws or changing military strategies, did French colonial authorities take in response to the real or imagined threat of marronage after the Haitian Revolution, and were these changes implemented in the same way across the French Caribbean? Third, how did maroons in different parts of the French Caribbean respond to such changes in governance practices? Through archival research at key sites in the French colonial archive, this study will analyze historical documents such as correspondence between colonial administrators, military reports, and court proceedings pertaining to escaped or fugitive slaves, in an effort to better understand the geographic complexity of the struggle between maroons and colonial authorities. In the process, new knowledge about the social construction of race and struggles over sovereignty in the Atlantic world will be generated. The struggle between maroons and French colonial administrators played an important role in shaping the economies, social structures, and cultural landscapes of the Caribbean, even into the present. Studying the influence of maroons on such processes can improve our understanding of how the region developed historically and why it looks the way that it does today. The role played by maroons, however, is not merely a relic of the past, as the tensions and legacies of their struggle linger into the present and have implications for the future. In many places across the Caribbean and Latin America today descendants of maroons claim a heritage of resistance to reframe ongoing struggles over cultural, political, and land rights. This project will help reveal the historical roots of contemporary attempts to revise maroon narratives. It will also highlight the broader implications of such efforts for communities of maroon descendants struggling to maintain their cultural identities and access to traditional lands in an age of heritage tourism and resurgent national politics. Findings and results generated by this research will be disseminated through the publication of journal articles, presentations at professional conferences, and public lectures. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.