Ex-slaves physically held plantations while planters waited impotently for restitution

Evidence

Descourtilz described a stubborn and brazen refusal on the part of ex-slaves to give up the gains they had been freed. For many planters, the tables were turned in a particularly distressing way, for they found their plantations in the hands of one of their former slaves. As they waited for the local bureaucracy to consider their requests to take back their lands, they were at the mercy of those they had once owned. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 798

Categorization

• XREF: Inversion of power on the plantation parallels the reversal dynamic the reader will know from other colonial/postcolonial histories of land restitution.