A Decolonial Ecology. Malcom Ferdinand

Translator’s note: Défricheurs literally means “land-clearers” or “fellers” and should be read in relationship to that colonial act of inhabitation. The term is more often translated by the English “pioneer.”

      26 26 Du Tertre, Histoire générale des Antilles, vol. II, p. 454.

      27 27 Translator’s note: The French word usually translated into English as labor force is main-d’œuvre, literally meaning “work hand.” This has a relationship to the English vocabulary around slavery worth noting, since it is lost in the more abstract “labor force,” as enslaved Black people were often referred to as “hands” in the accounting paperwork and financial discourse of slavers. See Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (New York: Penguin, 2014).

      28 28 Delawarde, Les Défricheurs et les petits colons à la Martinique, p. 39.

      29 29 See Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, Qu’est-ce que l’esclavage? Une histoire globale (Paris: Gallimard, 2014); Pétré-Grenouilleau, Les Traites négrières: essai d’histoire globale (Paris: Gallimard, 2004).

      30 30 See chapters 3 and 9.

      31 31 Gil Scott-Heron, “Who’ll Pay Reparations on My Soul?” recorded 1970, track 13 on A New Black Poet: Small Talk at 125th and Lennox, Flying Dutchman/RCA.