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

这个博士论文项目是关于在十九世纪之交的加勒比地区，逃亡奴隶建立的社区和殖民统治实践之间的关系。栗色定居点通常位于不太理想的地方，如种植园周围的沼泽和山丘，是殖民时期美洲种植园景观的地方性特征。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的反应，奴隶之间的逃跑行为，在多大程度上改变了美洲的种族观念，改变了确保对殖民地领土的政治和经济控制的策略，为这一未被充分研究的领域做出贡献。这项调查的结果将促进对19世纪及以后种族差异概念是如何产生的，以及殖民统治形式是如何在美洲形成的理解。通过关注法属加勒比海，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。这个项目将调查三个问题，关于法国殖民统治的策略和栗色人的抵抗实践之间的关系。首先，殖民当局如何理解19世纪之交法属加勒比地区的婚姻，特别是它在日常种植园经营中的作用及其对种族和主权的殖民思想的影响？其次，法国殖民当局采取了哪些制度性行动，如制定新法律或改变军事战略，以应对海地革命后真实或想象的婚姻威胁，这些变化是否以同样的方式在整个法属加勒比地区实施？第三，法属加勒比不同地区的黑人如何应对治理实践的这种变化？通过对法国殖民档案中关键地点的档案研究，本研究将分析历史文件，如殖民地管理者之间的通信、军事报告和与逃跑或逃亡奴隶有关的法庭诉讼，以更好地了解逃亡奴隶与殖民当局之间斗争的地理复杂性。在这个过程中，将产生关于种族的社会建构和大西洋世界主权斗争的新知识。黑奴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，直到现在。研究栗色人种对这些过程的影响，可以提高我们对该地区历史发展的理解，以及为什么它看起来是今天的样子。然而，黑人所扮演的角色不仅仅是过去的遗留物，因为他们斗争的紧张和遗产一直延续到现在，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，黑人的后代声称他们继承了抵抗的传统，以重新定义正在进行的文化、政治和土地权利斗争。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。它还将突出表明，在遗产旅游和国家政治复苏的时代，这些努力对努力维护自己的文化身份和进入传统土地的黑人后裔社区产生了更广泛的影响。这项研究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，该奖项将为有前途的学生提供支持，使他们能够建立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.