Friendship Bonds Enslaved

This note documents the friendships, solidarity bonds, and non-romantic, non-familial relationships that enslaved people formed in Saint-Domingue. These bonds were survival mechanisms, resistance networks, and assertions of humanity. In a system designed to atomize people, reduce them to isolated units of labor, and prevent collective action, every friendship was an act of defiance. Bonds ranged from casual companionship to life-or-death trust, from shared work partnerships to revolutionary conspiracies.