This paper is a sociological exploration of interactive processes between 1750 and 1791 that fostered an emergent collective intentionality and contributed to the Haitian Revolution, the only successful uprising of enslaved African and African descended people. The project employs concepts pertaining to the African Diaspora to understand members of that global process as creators of their own reality. Collective intentionality brings focus to how enslaved Africans and their descendants invoked shared historical and cultural memory as they aimed toward liberation. Other theoretical ideas from the social movements arena of sociology provide a basis for understanding antecedent activities as critical to the analysis of revolutions and other contentious politics.Africans' intentionality in late 18th century Haiti (Saint Domingue) was oppositional to enslavement; and it was grounded in a shared African cosmic orientation, reinforced by common status, and further diffused by ongoing interactions in protected social spaces. With specific attention to northern Saint Domingue, I collected and analyzed data using secondary source documentary review and content analysis of primary source data from the Marronnage in Saint Domingue online database. The research found that African and African descendants' deliberate removal of self - self-liberation - from enslavement and their participation in culturally distinct sacred rituals were important forms of resistance prior to the Haitian Revolution.
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