Negro resistance to slavery and the Atlantic
slave trade from Africa to Black America103iar with the history of the Caribbean. Anyone who is willing to refer to the
sources will see that the whole history of the slave trade and slavery is a sequence
of revolts. Seen in this light, marginal elements^6 such as the Maroon Negroes
assume decisive importance. Studying them makes it possible to clarify the
economic and social aspects of the slave system. Centring the problem on the
Maroon Negroes and the slave revolts ' has the advantage of allowing one to
deal with the whole question of the method of slave exploitation without
getting involved in the intricacies of sectoral analysis.
This is the procedure adopted here. The history of Africa and
the black Americas extends from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century along
many lines of emphasis—extrema, as the mathematicians would say—which
have economic, political, sociological and cultural aspects. At a time when
several African and American countries are freeing themselves from colonial
tutelage, it is necessary to go back to origins, to the beginning of a process of
revolts extending over several centuries. It is impossible to understand the
liberation movements in various African countries without going back to the
violent revolts which broke out sometimes as soon as the Europeans arrived
in Africa.^8
Approaching the problem from the standpoint of the Negro, in opposi-
tion to the slave system, the protagonist in a long process starting in the fifteenth
century and continuing up to our own time, is tantamount to founding a new
historical anthropology.The basic records
The first essential step is to go methodically through the tremendous volume
of scattered documents recording the main feature of the revolts in English,
Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, Italian, Danish, Latin, etc. Some record
offices appear to have more material than others: the Public Record Office,
London; the Archives Nationales, Paris; and Torre do Tombo, Lisbon. Other
centres, less well known to research workers, hold additional material which
must be consulted: the Rigsarkivet, Copenhagen; Algemeen Rijksarchief, The
Hague; and Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen. It is also important, of
course, and often advantageous to consult records in provincial towns, overseas
territories and the Vatican Archives in order to obtain different viewpoints
and see the problem more clearly.
Some archives sources that have not been used and which afford different
approaches to the problem are listed in the Appendix (p. 115).Research to be undertakenIt would be desirable to undertake a research programme centred on different
topics.