Rituals, Runaways, and the Haitian Revolution: Collective Action in the African Diaspora

A scholarly monograph that refuses the separation of religion, marronage, and politics, arguing that ritual gatherings, flight from plantations, and clandestine networks were all part of a single infrastructure of collective action in Saint-Domingue. Eddins traces how ritual free spaces, women's bridge roles, coded solidarity, mayombo combat practice, and border geographies connected maroons, plantation bondspeople, and free people of color into the networks that made the 1791 uprising possible. The book is especially strong on African political thought — Kongo, Arada, Senegambian, and Islamic traditions — as organized forces rather than background atmosphere.