From Marrons to Kreyòl: Human-Animal Relations in Early Caribbean

Many scholars agree that the plantation was at the center of the colonial project in the Caribbean. However, for it to thrive as a modern infrastructure it depended on multiple regional and global connections as well as a wide range of human and more-than-human interactions. The chapter draws on colonial sources such as travelers’ accounts and novels in order to retrace the journey of European pigs (Sus scrofa) to the Caribbean. By focusing on this specific animal, it shows how both feralization and domestication were practical problems that defined the rhythms of colonization at the same time as they allowed for the possibility of struggles to be staged within provision grounds as well as in the margins of plantation landscapes. By doing so, this chapter critically reassesses the concept of peasant breach, reading it with an attention to the entanglements between human and animal histories.