City of Refuge: Slavery and Petit Marronage in the Great Dismal Swamp, 1763–1856 by Marcus P. Nevius (review)

Maroons did not want to be found. These fugitive slaves fled to mountains and swamps, such as the Great Dismal Swamp, on the border between Virginia and North Carolina, that were inaccessible to slavecatchers. Unobservable at the time to those who kept the written record, maroons remain an elusive historical subject about which to write. In the first four chapters of City of Refuge, Marcus P. Nevius looks for faint signs—and even just opportunities for maroon activity—by scouring the records of the companies that directed slaves to clear land, grow rice, cut shingles, and dig canals in the Dismal Swamp during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In the last two chapters and epilogue, maroons emerge from the pages more distinctly, mostly as symbols for abolitionists, but also as flesh and blood.

To understand how enslaved people sought freedom in the swamp, City of Refuge’s first four chapters document the evolution of the extractive economy of this special place. This business history and study of labor in the extreme conditions of the swamp comprise the core of the book. The focus on company ventures is necessary partly because specific forms of oppression for enslaved people shaped their strategies for seeking freedom. But the focus is also dictated by the unavoidably lopsided source base that privileges enslavers’ concerns about profits and legal maneuvers. This empirically driven book hews closely to the letters and ledgers, letting the primary sources speak for themselves, as it leads the reader through the twists and turns of companies’ business decisions. Along the way, the author points out opportunities for slaves to seek autonomy and possibilities for maroon activity.

In the late eighteenth century, the Dismal Swamp Company attempted to force enslaved people to clear land and cultivate rice and grains, but it and competing companies discovered the real profit in making shingles from the swamp’s cypress and other trees. From the beginning, enslaved people fled these labor camps and took refuge deeper in the swamp. This became easier when the company withdrew from direct supervision of the extraction economy. Yet flight also became less necessary: for a time, the lack of oversight permitted enslaved shinglers more autonomy. It also created opportunities for exchange between slaves and maroons, although there is frustratingly little evidence of it. The uninstitutionalized space of the swamp labor camps left the company bereft of eyes and ears independent of the on-site workers, who, at least in one case, appeared to collude with a third-party speculator to tell the company that a particular section of the swamp looked unpromising.

The Dismal maroons loom largest in the last two chapters and epilogue. In part this owes to how useful the idea of the maroon was for other people’s causes: for enslavers, the maroon was a bogeyman, and for abolitionists, the maroon was an indictment of slavery and a testament to the thirst for freedom. This shift is also due to a more forthcoming source base that includes travelogues and a former slave’s recollections. Here the reader gets some documented details about maroon life in the Dismal Swamp.

A study of marronage in Virginia and North Carolina is a welcome addition in a field dominated by the Caribbean and South America, where more historical examples occurred. In the larger field, the categorization of marronage as “petit” or “grand” is common, and City of Refuge embraces this terminology. However, readers may find that the specific freedom-seeking activities documented in its pages challenge that framework. For slavery scholars, “petit marronage” usually refers to a person’s short-term absence from a slave labor camp. Typically, runaways would visit family enslaved elsewhere, or perhaps absent themselves at a key moment of production to preserve their bodies or to make a point about their value. In “grand marronage,” refugees created permanent settlements and...