Senegal

National liberation and anti-colonial movements c. 1767–1791 ✕ Killed in action

Vodou priest who presided over the Bois Caïman ceremony of August 1791 and led the slave rising of the North

Born around 1767 to a Muslim family in Senegambia, he was captured and enslaved in Jamaica, then sold to Saint-Domingue, where he is said to have become a Vodou priest. Sold on after trying to teach other slaves to read, he worked as a slave driver and coach driver, and his name came from his English nickname "Book Man". On or about 14 August 1791 at Bois Caïman on the Choiseul plantation he presided, with the priestess Cécile Fatiman, over the last of the meetings that planned the rising, and on 22 August he gathered the slaves of the Dutilh, Héron and Noé estates and burned the Noé sugar works, opening the revolt. He led a rebel force that grew to around fifteen thousand towards Cap-Français, but on 7 November 1791 he was killed by French troops while defending the rebel base at Fond Bleu, and his head was displayed with the inscription "The head of Boukman, leader of the rebels".