Just as in Africa until the last quarter of the nineteenth century retreat had been a possible response of African peoples, it was similarly the case at the sites of slave labor. In the Caribbean islands as well as in Latin America and North America, Black peoples found means of disengagement. Away from the plantations, in the security of mountain retreats, on the continent toward the up-country sources of the great rivers that emptied into the ocean at the coasts, Black communities could be reestablished. And the very existence of such settlements enhanced the morale of those who remained in captivity. Over the generations, the successive depositions of new labor, the maroon settlements, and the legends of such communities further enriched the radical tradition. And each generation among the slaves contributed to the further broadening of Black consciousness and the ideology of the tradition. And while the trade itself expanded in response to the interactions of exchange, commodity-demands and surplus production in the world system, within the slave communities a Black people evolved. Manifest expressions of Black radicalism such as marronage, arson, the destruction of work tools, and even open rebellion were complemented by less overt forms. When separation was not possible, open revolts might fester; where rebellion was immediately impractical, the people prepared themselves through obeah, voodoo, Islam, and Black Christianity. Through these they induced charismatic expectations, socializing and hardening themselves and their young with beliefs, myths, and messianic visions that would allow them, someday, to attempt the impossible. Their history confirmed these processes; their fruition could be seen in the papaloi of the Haitian Revolution; the obeah men and women who crowd the trial records of slave rebellions in the Caribbean and elsewhere; the Muslim revolts in Brazil; the rebel preachers who appear at the center of resistance in Jamaica, Suriname, and North America.

Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making o…, loc. 1461