Intimate Direct Democracy

Description

From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, many African people who were enslaved in North America emancipated themselves and fled into vast swamplands and across colonial borders, beyond the reach of oppressive settler-colonialism and the institution of slavery. On the peripheries of empire, these freedom-seeking “maroons” established their own autonomous, ethnically diverse, and intimately democratic communities of resistance.

In this new volume, Modibo Kadalie offers a critical reexamination of the history and historiography surrounding two sites of African maroonage: The Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and North Carolina; and Fort Mose in Florida.

In these communities of refuge, deep-rooted directly democratic social movements emanating from West Africa converged with those of indigenous North Americans. Kadalie’s study of these sites offers a new lens of “intimate direct democracy,” through which readers are invited to re-examine their notions of human social history and the true meaning of democracy.

“Dr. Kadalie’s personable political style invites the reader into the revealing history of these two colonial-era communities where indigenous, African, and poor white people created social and ecological systems of survival independent of the profit-motivated European colonists. Intimate Direct Democracy gives voice to truths of American history that are not found in traditional texts.”
— Yakini Kemp, Professor and former Chair of English and Modern Language, Florida A&M University “Acclaimed scholar, political scientist, and Pan-Africanist, Modibo Kadalie explores a neglected aspect of Black freedom fighters in eighteenth-century North America. This book is an eye-opening account for anyone who is seeking to learn from the past to understand the present.”
— Mohamed Haji Mukhtar, Professor of African and Middle Eastern History, Savannah State University “Modibo Kadalie [. . .] invites us into the world of two maroon communities–the Great Dismal Swamp and Fort Mose. He humbly lets the histories of those who sought refuge from colonizers, enslavers, and nation-states speak for themselves. Yet Kadalie also brings these self-governing, multiracial, autonomous eco-communities to life, compellingly reminding us that social-ecological communal lifeways and solidarity are indeed possible, even under the worst of conditions. An inspiring must-read, when we most need it!”
— Cindy Milstein, editor of Deciding for Ourselves: The Promise of Direct Democracy

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