Imperialisms, Revolutions, and Resolutions in the Caribbean Amazon - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 104

ics favored confusion and jurisdictional paralysis, which provided excellent condi-
tions for runaways, military fugitives, and refugees from, or instigators of, revolutions.
The colonies were also transformed by formal revolutionary ideologies from Europe,
elsewhere in the revolutionary Caribbean, and even France's deported revolutionar-
ies—thosemoderatesofthe18Fructidoruprisingwhoweremetingouttheirlastfevered
days in tropical banishment. 64
The slave economies of the Eastern Amazon were integrated into Caribbean circuits
of goods, people, and ideas through winds and currents, as well as the clandestine flow
of knowledge and gossip in the subaltern worlds of slavery and resistance to it. 65 Local
revolts were stimulated in different ways by the autonomous black polities of Surin-
ame, the French and Saint Domingue revolutions, as well as the rise of Bolivarian ab-
olitionist politics thatcontributedto“almost revolutions” anddecolonization throughout
the Spanish Amazon. Indeed, from the Orinoco to the Amazon channel, the Caribbean
Amazon might well be understood with its maroon states, quilombos , recalcitrant nat-
ives, renegades, bandoleros , and disenfranchised Creoles—a place in fairly constant re-
bellion throughout the late eighteenth century—as the one of the most revolutionary
places in the hemisphere. Slave uprisings and runaways were reliable features of slavo-
cracies and nourished continual low-intensity warfare, As the eighteenth century wore
on, there were new and palpable threats. News of revolution and the rights of man flew
through the New World. In 1790 French Guiana, like Saint Domingue and Guadeloupe,
had an uprising. The rebellion, a small affair, occurred in the Approugue Valley. Fam-
ously, on hearing that the French revolutionary pronouncements of the rights of men de-
clared them all equal, 162slaves went to their master saying they had been declared free
in France and wanted to take advantage of their liberty. Similar events occurred else-
where. 66 Some rebels were captured and killed by a black militia whose members were
promisedtheirfreedominexchangeforrepressingthatofothers.Butwhatitmeanttobe
a citoyen could not simply be met with repression in the Amazon, since workers could
withdrawintotheforestsorthemaroonworld.Thisseparate quilombo reality,alongwith
the limited institutional and military capacities of the government, probably defused the
moreradicalrevolutionaryimpulses:oneneedn'toverthrowtheexistingstate;onecould
construct a new polity away from it. Simple labor withdrawal was widespread in the
CaribbeanAmazon. 67 OnnewsoftherevolutioninFrenchGuiana,Brazilsentfiveships
to the mouth of the Approugue River to avert any “ideological contamination” by the
revolutionary state. Von Humboldt was denied entrance into Portuguese Amazonia from
hissojournsontheOrinocopartlybecauseofhisrevolutionarysympathies andthemore
general concern about espionage. 68
Theattempted revolutioninFrenchGuianawasofonlyminimal interest inthemétro-
pole because the colony with its 10,000 blacks, some Galabi Indians, and 1,300 whites