Marronnage — Skills, Trades, and the Enslaved Workforce

The Saint-Domingue marronnage advertisements frequently describe enslaved people's skills and trades, inadvertently documenting the specialized workforce that built and maintained the plantation economy. Trades appearing include perruquier (wigmaker/hairdresser), menuisier (carpenter/cabinetmaker), charpentier de navires (ship's carpenter), cuisinier (cook), and matelot (sailor). Skilled workers were more mobile and better connected to urban and port networks — the same leverage that made them valuable made them more capable of successful flight. Maritime trades in particular connected the enslaved to inter-island escape routes. The concentration of skilled workers among runaways reveals that marronage was not random desperation but calculated action by people with knowledge of the colony's social geography.