A Stick-Duel Was Banned in Guadeloupe in 1683

WHY THIS ARTICLE

Caribbean combat games are treated as folklore of uncertain age. The thesis surfaces a precise, early source — the Blénac-Bégon regulation of 1683 — and reads its erasure from the Code Noir as significant.

A phrase in 1683

The mayolè is a centuries-old duel, rooting in the combat traditions of the Caribbean, bare-handed and with the stick, whose existence is attested since the seventeenth century. A 1683 regulation by Blénac and Bégon forbade the enslaved to gather in remote places 'where they hold combats of defiance.' This is one of the oldest sources on the subject.

An eloquent erasure

In the definitive version — the royal Edict of March 1685 on the police of the American islands, the Code Noir — the phrase disappeared. Its importance is capital: it explained, without pejorative colour, the reasons for certain of these gatherings. Neither brawls, nor fomentations of revolt, nor blind vengeances, but 'combats of defiance' — regulated duels between civilised persons. That neutrality of tone was doubtless one reason for its absence from the Code Noir.

Why it matters

The oldest trace of a Caribbean combat game is also a trace of its erasure. The archive that records the duel is the same one that, two years later, chose to forget it.

SOURCES

La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles (1905–1984), thèse de doctorat, Université des Antilles, 2020 (Part III, B.1: mayolè; the Blénac-Bégon regulation of 13 February 1683 and its absence from the Code Noir of 1685).

IN THE CORPUS

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HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

MALO, Olivier. A Stick-Duel Was Banned in Guadeloupe in 1683. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 68. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/a-stick-duel-was-banned-in-guadeloupe-in-1683. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.