Sugar plantations organized slaves into disciplined work-gangs under drivers.

Evidence

Faced with such united resistance, whites found they had little power to respond. Mauger’s representatives asked local administrators to punish the rebellious slaves. But with so few troops at their disposal in front of widening slave resistance, there was little they could do. A month later Mauger’s administrators named another man, a sugar refiner, to take control of the plantation, but the slaves expelled him too. In the end, Mauger’s representatives accepted Enard’s presence, and even paid him and sent food to the plantation. “Men are vindictive, and we are in a century in which it seems everything is permitted,” they wrote apologetically to Mauger. Only the defeat of the slave insurgents of the north could bring the slaves of the Western Province back under control. Although on many plantations slaves remained “tranquil,” they were not “working too hard.” “We are forced to close our eyes and reward them anyway. It is quite cruel, but the hope of a different future gives us patience.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 454 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

At the same time they were community leaders among the slaves. Often chosen because of the respect they already enjoyed on the plantation, as drivers they achieved more power, adding fear to this respect, as well as the ability to help weak or sick slaves and to allow some to leave the plantations at night or on weekends. A manual for prospective plantation masters advised them to be wary of their drivers, who excelled at maintaining an illusion of perfect devotion to the whites but were also close to the most rebellious of the slaves on the plantation, whom they spared from punishment. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 140 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

Related

• Slave drivers straddled collaboration and rebellion leadership simultaneously (similarity 0.85)
• Slave drivers balanced complicity with the master against leadership of the enslaved community (similarity 0.82)
• Slave drivers were simultaneously collaborators and clandestine community leaders loyal to rebels (similarity 0.81)
• Sugar plantations organized slaves into rigidly stratified work-gangs laboring from dawn to dusk (similarity 0.81)
• Absentee ownership gave managers brutal autonomous power over slaves (similarity 0.80)
• Planters found it more profitable to work slaves to death than to sustain them. (similarity 0.80)
• Sugar-plantation slaves proved far more enraged in 1791 revolt. (similarity 0.80)
• The northern slave revolt emboldened slaves colony-wide to challenge plantation authority (similarity 0.79)
• Slavery’s control system relied on a pervasive terror of resistance against masters (similarity 0.79)
• Slaves used poison to dominate and humiliate their masters (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• United slave resistance disabled whites’ power to discipline plantations #contradicts (0.60) — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 454
• Slave drivers balanced complicity with the master against leadership of the enslaved community #expands (0.50) — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 140