Bois Caïman

In August of 1791, in the thick woods of St. Domingue (pre-revolutionary Haiti), enslaved persons gathered at Morne Rouge, at a specific place which will now become known as Bois Caïman. The meeting consists of about two hundred enslaves, sent from various plantations in the region. Presiding over the meeting was the Jamaican enslaved, Dutty Boukman. As Boukman, presided over the meeting and call upon the enslaved to take their freedom from the French oppressors, a woman would appeared suddenly in the meeting: Cecile Fatiman. Cecile would go on to perform what is now widely consider to be a voodoo ritual and prophesied the fall of the French colonisers in Haiti. As such, Bois Caïman, would go down in history as the event that kicked off the Haitian Revolution; the only successful black slave revolt in history.

Additional Knowledge

BOOKS

• A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution by Jeremy D. Popkin

• Avengers of the New World by Laurent Dubois

• Facing Racial Revolution: Eyewitness Accounts of the Haitian Insurrection by Jeremy D. Popkin

• The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History by David P. Geggus

• The Haitians: A Decolonial History by Jean Casimir

• The Haiti Reader: History, Culture, Politics by Duke University

ACADEMIC PAPERS

• Bois Caiman by The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine

• Colonial Hell and Female Slave Resistance in Saint-Dominigue by Jayne Boisvert

• Runaways, Repertoires, and Repression: Marronnage and the Haitian Revolution, 1766–1791 by Crystal Nicole Eddins

• Super Fly: François Makandal’s Colonial Semiotics by Monique Allewaert

• The Anti-dialectical Signification of Erzulie Danthor and Bois Caiman of the Haitian Revolution by Paul C. Mocombe

• The Bois Caiman Ceremony by David P. Geggus

• The King, a Queen, and an Oath Sealed in Blood: A Cultural Re-Evaluation of the Bois-Caiman Ceremony and its Impact on the Early Haitian Revolution by Sean Dane Anderson

ACADEMIC BLOGS

• Bois Caiman As “A Curse” by Sandie Blaise