Jamaican Maroons

Jamaican Maroons
Regions with significant populations
 Jamaica
 Sierra Leone
Languages
Jamaican Patois, Kromanti
Religion
Jamaican Maroon religion
Related ethnic groups
Coromantee, Jamaicans of African descent, Sierra Leone Creoles, Maroon people

Jamaican Maroons descend from Africans who freed themselves from slavery on the Colony of Jamaica and established communities of free black people in the island's mountainous interior, primarily in the eastern parishes. Africans who were enslaved during Spanish rule over Jamaica (1493–1655) may have been the first to develop such refugee communities.

The English, who invaded the island in 1655, continued the importation of enslaved Africans to work on the island's sugar-cane plantations. Africans in Jamaica continually resisted enslavement, with many who freed themselves becoming maroons. The revolts disrupted the sugar economy in Jamaica and made it less profitable. The uprisings decreased after the British colonial authorities signed treaties with the Leeward Maroons in 1739 and the Windward Maroons in 1740, which required them to support the institution of slavery. The importance of the Maroons to the colonial authorities declined after slavery was abolished in 1838.

The Windward Maroons and those from the Cockpit Country resisted conquest in the First Maroon War (c. 1728 to 1740), which the colonial government ended in 1739–1740 by making treaties, to grant lands and to respect maroon autonomy, in exchange for peace and aiding the colonial militia if needed against external enemies. The tension between Governor Alexander Lindsay and the majority of the Leeward Maroons resulted in the Second Maroon War from 1795 to 1796. Although the governor promised leniency if the maroons surrendered, he later betrayed them and, supported by the Assembly, insisted on deporting just under 600 Maroons to British settlements in Nova Scotia, where enslaved African Americans who escaped from the United States were also resettled. The deported Maroons were unhappy with conditions in Nova Scotia, and in 1800 a majority left, having obtained passage to Freetown eight years after the Sierra Leone Company established it in West Africa (in present-day Sierra Leone) as a British colony, where they formed the Sierra Leone Creole ethnic identity.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

  1. ^ Thayer, James Steel (1991). "A Dissenting View of Creole Culture in Sierra Leone". Cahiers d'Études africaines. 31 (121): 215–230. doi:10.3406/cea.1991.2116. Archived from the original on 10 August 2021. Retrieved 23 August 2021.
  2. ^ Browne-Davies, Nigel (2014). "A Precis of Sources relating to genealogical research on the Sierra Leone Krio people". Journal of Sierra Leone Studies. 3 (1). Archived from the original on 15 April 2022. Retrieved 23 August 2021.
  3. ^ Walker, James W (1992). "Chapter Five: Foundation of Sierra Leone". The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783–1870. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 94–114. ISBN 978-0-8020-7402-7., originally published by Longman & Dalhousie University Press (1976).
  4. ^ Taylor, Bankole Kamara (February 2014). Sierra Leone: The Land, Its People and History. New Africa Press. p. 68. ISBN 9789987160389. Archived from the original on 30 August 2021. Retrieved 23 August 2021.
  5. ^ Grant, John N. (2002). The Maroons in Nova Scotia (Softcover). Formac. p. 203. ISBN 978-0887805691.
  6. ^ Campbell, Mavis (1993), Back to Africa: George Ross and the Maroons (Trenton: Africa World Press), p. 48.
  7. ^ Sivapragasam, Michael (2020), "The Returned Maroons of Trelawny Town", Navigating Crosscurrents: Trans-linguality, Trans-culturality and Trans-identification in the Dutch Caribbean and Beyond, ed. by Nicholas Faraclas, etc (Curacao/Puerto Rico: University of Curacao), p. 17.

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