Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution by Laurent Dubois

slavery in Saint-Domingue.19
    African religions also put down roots in the soil of plantations, changing
    in the process. They entered into dialogue with the practices of Catholi-
    cism, whose saints were imbued with a new meaning by worshipers in both
    Africa and the Americas. In Saint-Domingue the Arada slaves from the
    Bight of Benin, who were the majority during the first decades of the eigh-
    teenth century, brought the traditions of the Fon and Yoruba peoples,
    which were joined by those brought by the Kongo slaves who eventually
    became the island’s majority. In a world organized to the production of
    plantation commodities, where slaves were meant to be laborers and noth-
    ing more, religious ceremonies provided ritual solace, dance and music,
    but most importantly a community that extended beyond the plantation.
    They also provided an occasion for certain individuals to provide advice
    and guidance. Out of the highly industrialized and regimented plantations,
    then, emerged a powerful set of religious practices that celebrated and re-
    flected the human struggles of those who participated in them. Religion
    was, in some sense, a space of freedom in the midst of a world of bondage,
    and helped lay the foundation for the revolt that ultimately brought com-
    plete freedom to the slaves.20
    Administrators and slave owners had long recognized the subversive po-
    f e r m e n ta t i o n
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    [To view this image, refer to
    the print version of this title.]

    Engraving of a sugar plantation from the Encyclopédie, 1751. The idealized image identifies (1) the master’s house, (2) the slave quarters, (3) the pasture, (5) the fields of sugarcane, (6) the water mill, (7) the building where the cane juice is boiled, (10) the building where the cane stalks are crushed to make the juice, (12) the building where the pains (“breads”) of sugar are dried, and (13) the heights where manioc, bananas, and other provisions are grown. Courtesy of the Michigan State University Library.
    tential of the religious ceremonies of slaves. They criminalized and sought
    to suppress them, though they were never entirely successful. Moreau de-
    scribed in detail a “danse vaudoux” that involved the worship of a snake
    that had “the knowledge of the past, the science of the present, and the
    prescience of the future.” It involved dialogue between worshipers, who
    wore red handkerchiefs, and two religious leaders to whom they referred
    by “the pompous name of King and Queen, or the despotic master and
    mistress, or the touching father and mother.” The worshipers asked these
    two for favors; “the majority,” wrote Moreau, “ask for the ability to direct
    the spirit of their masters.” At one point during the ceremony, the Queen
    was “penetrated by the god,” and “her entire body convulsed,” and “the or-
    acle spoke through her mouth.” All this was followed by the singing of “an
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    av e n g e r s o f t h e n e w w o r l d
    African song” and dancing. The spiritual power itself was such that some
    whites, caught spying on the ceremonies and touched by one of the wor-
    shipers, themselves began to dance uncontrollably, and had to pay the
    Queen “to end this punishment.” “Nothing is more dangerous than this
    cult of Vaudoux,” asserted Moreau. He lamented the power of the religious
    leaders and the dependence of worshipers on them. Such relations of
    power, presumably, were acceptable only between master and slave.21
    For plantation owners and managers, the slaves were laboring machines,
    cogs in a system meant to produce as much sugar or coffee as possible. “It
    is in the time and strength of the negroes that the fortune of the planter resides,” wrote one contemporary commentator. The majority of slaves spent
    their entire lives doing harsh and difficult labor in the fields. On sugar
    plantations they were organized into several ateliers, or work-gangs, each under the command of a driver. The strongest slaves