Race and Revolution at Bwa Kayiman
| Author | Robbie Shilliam |
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0305829817693692 |
| Subject Matter | Conference Keynote |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829817693692
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2017, Vol. 45(3) 269 –292
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829817693692
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Race and Revolution at Bwa
Kayiman
Robbie Shilliam
Queen Mary University of London, UK
Abstract
It is no longer remarkable to claim that, out of all the revolutions in the making of the modern
world order, the Haitian Revolution was the most radical and remains the most challenging
to Euro-Western narratives. The Haitian Revolution did what no other did – end slavery –
in an age when white Europeans and North Americans spoke of natural rights and freedoms
while they remained traffickers and brutal exploiters of African flesh. The stakes at play are
significant: To theorise and narrate the Haitian Revolution is to necessarily take part in a struggle
over the authorship of the meaning of global justice and modern freedoms. But as we deepen
our understandings of the Revolution we must grapple more audaciously with the intellectual
strictures that have in various ways ‘silenced’ these struggles of enslaved Africans. Race informs
these silencings. Fundamentally, race silences the response to slavery. In this article, I return to
Bwa Kayiman – the meeting that inaugurated a world-shaking response.
Keywords
race, revolution, slavery
Sanble lwa yo
Nan Bwa Kayiman nou ye
Nou tande fizi tire
Apre Bondye
Se nou se`l ki chèf la ye
Apre Bondye
Se nou chèf
[Let us gather our divinities
Corresponding author:
Robbie Shilliam, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS, UK.
Email: r.shilliam@qmul.ac.uk
693692MIL0010.1177/0305829817693692MillenniumShilliam
research-article2017
Conference Keynote
270 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 45(3)
1. An elderly Haitian sings this traditional song to Rachel Beauvoir-Dominique during field-
work in 1999; see ‘The Social Value of Voodoo Throughout History: Slavery, Migrations
and Solidarity’, Museum International 62, no. 4 (2010): 99–105.
2. The account given here is synthesised from Bob Corbett, Daniel Simidor, and Rachel
Beauvoir-Dominique, ‘The Bois Caiman Ceremony: Fact or Myth’, 2002. Available at:
http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/haiti/history/revolution/caiman.htm. Last accessed
January 29, 2017; Rachel Beauvoir-Dominique and Eddy Lùbin, Investigations Autour Du
Site Historique Du Bois Caiman: Rapport (Cap-Haitien: ISPAN, 2000); Kate Ramsey, The
Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti (London: University of Chicago Press,
2011), 43–45; David Patrick Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2002), 81–92; Carolyn Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue
Revolution From Below (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990), 91–92.
We are in Bois Caiman
We hear the rifles fire
After God
We are the only chiefs here
After God
We are the chiefs]1
Sunday 14 August 1791, and at least 100 workers from across Plaine du Nord parish
meet at the large Lenormand de Mézy estate.2 These coachmen, commandeurs (drivers)
and personal servants of the white plantation owners of St Domingue have been conven-
ing with some regularity. Unbeknown to massa, and in conjunction with the maroons of
the hinterlands, they have been planning a large insurrection. This particular Sunday is
auspicious. It happens to be the eve of the annual celebration of Ezili Kawoulo, a lwa
(spiritual agent) who is the patron of secret societies. After some discussion, the date of
insurrection is confirmed as the 24th of August. On the following day the colonial assem-
bly will reopen at nearby Cap-Français, and will have brought the political and economic
leadership of the Antillean colony together and vulnerable to attack.
A few days later the Chabaud and Gallifet estates are prematurely set ablaze. Upon
interrogating the perpetrators, the whites start to realise the significance of the imminent
insurrection. The secret is out. So the time to act is now. Amidst a number of responses,
Dutty Boukman, a commandeur and coachman of the Clément plantation, hastily con-
venes a meeting on the following Sunday night, 21 August, at Bwa Kayiman – alligator
woods that surround a swamp in the Choiseul and Dustou estates. At this gathering
Boukman recites a prayer that he has rehearsed beforehand:
The Good God who created the sun which lights us from above,
which stirs the sea, and makes the thunder roar,
Good God, hidden in the clouds, watches us,
he sees what the white people do.
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