1790s (Era): Enslaved market women in Saint-Domingue were observed calling each other “sailor,” a term of greeting that signaled a deep form of cross-occupat…

1790s (Era): Enslaved market women in Saint-Domingue were observed calling each other “sailor,” a term of greeting that signaled a deep form of cross-occupational solidarity. This shared terminology connected urban female vendors to the mobile maritime world and the egalitarian legacies of seventeenth-century buccaneers. These women played a crucial role in the informal communication networks that circulated rumors and news through the colony’s port cities. Their social interactions formed a core component of the “transnational geography of struggle” that characterized the age of revolution.