The Early Political Development of Jamaican Maroon Societies

Abstract

URING the era of slavery, communities of maroons, or escaped slaves, sprang up throughout the New World. Wherever there were slave plantations, there was resistance in the form of runaways and slave revolts; and wherever mountains, swamps, or forests permitted the escaped slaves to gather, they formed communities. These ranged in size from Palmarres, in Brazil, with over ten thousand people, to the handfulls of runaways who hid on the fringes of plantations in the American South. While most maroon communities were destroyed by the colonial societies that surrounded them, a few could not be reduced or even contained, and colonial governments were forced to sign treaties recognizing their freedom.1 Although documentation on maroon societies is fragmentary at best-for obvious reasons, maroons tried to keep out of sight a number of writers have tried to reconstruct the history and culture of particular maroon societies, and several have attempted analysis of marronage in general.2 The