Runaway Slaves in Nineteenth-Century Barbados

I Runaway slaves in nineteenth-century Barbados were a significant aspect of the slave society. Little research has thus far been done on runaways in Barbados, in part because it is surprising that slaves managed to run away at all. Barbadian slaves did not have the possibilities of grandmarronage which Richard Price, Silvia de Groot , and others have documented for Jamaica and Surinam. I By the nineteenth century, there was no scope for the establishment of communities of runaways. Barbados was a relatively small and settled colony; the forests and caves which may have helped earlier generations of slaves to escape no longer existed. In addition, the proportionately high ratio of whites to blacks which characterised Barbados must have made running away a distinctly difficult enterprise.