Also known as: Marronnage skills and trades, Runaway skilled workers
Last updated: April 23, 2026
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.
Skilled trades shaped the patterns and possibilities of marronnage
Skills and trades recorded in the advertisements
The trades and skills of the enslaved were embedded in plantation life
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"Marronnage — Skills, Trades, and the Enslaved Workforce." Rasin.ai, 2026. https://rasin.ai/connections/concepts/marronnage-skills-trades. Accessed 2026-05-05.