Summary

The formation of fugitive communities in Central and Southern Africa is a recent historiographical topic. The lives and trajectories of fugitives have undoubtedly received much more attention in studies of the African presence in the Americas. Focusing on Africa is to return to the perspective that resistance to slavery, forced labor, and colonialism began on the continent. It is getting to know the local dynamics and the history of a continent in constant transformation. In particular, as it pertains to the regions of Central and Southern Africa, it resumes debates over the so-called precolonial period given that covered highlights of colonial occupation and exploration long before the Berlin Conference. Stories about escapes that led to the formation of runaway communities are referred to in a variety of ways—cipaka, mocambos, muttolo, quilombos, ocilombo, drosters, musitu—were privileged, with special attention to the political, economic, and cultural relationships that shaped the experience of those who chose or were forced to leave their home communities. Highlighting a diversity of experiences, gender differences, legal statuses (free, freed, enslaved), ethnic and identity formations, religious and political values, and situations of forced labor and exile (servants, soldiers, exiles, and convicts in general) are investigated.