Drivers Commandeurs Psychology

This note documents the experience of enslaved people who served as commandeurs (slave drivers) - those forced to enforce plantation discipline against their own community. Drivers occupied the most psychologically complex position in slavery's hierarchy: they were simultaneously enslaved and enforcers, victims and perpetrators, community members and collaborators. Their role reveals slavery's genius for creating internal divisions, forcing enslaved people to inflict violence on each other while the system maintained ultimate control.