Lord Denning
Synopsis of the Jamaican Maroons!
Introduction
The introduction of black slaves in the western world were the beginning of a new culture, more economic wealth and prosperity for whites and for blacks a life of poverty, enslavement and oppression.The life and times of the Jamaican Maroons is a story of an indomitable foe, a people whose survival depends on their wit and tenacity, form a part of this terrible saga in the history of blacks in the New World and where we are today.
The struggle of the Maroons of Jamaica against the British colonial authorities, their subsequent collaboration with and betrayal by them. A story that took a circular voyage from West Africa to Jamaica, then to Canada and in the end returned to Africa.
The Maroons of Jamaica originally came from West Africa. Some of them were IBO, a tribe from eastern Nigeria. The slave trade between 1590 and 1840 concerned three different cultures from three different continents involved in an elaborate system of barter in enslaved Africans. Europeans comb African countries looking for gold, ivory, spices and cheap labour for their plantations in the Americas; traveling routes first navigated in the 15th century.
The Henrietta Marie was typical of the small merchant ships and traders that ply the Atlantic on their way to the Americas and the West Indies at the turn of the 18th century. In 1699, the ship left the port of London on her second slaving voyage, carrying cargo of European manufactured goods for trade in West Africa. She journeyed to the African coast where her cargo is exchanged for enslaved Africans and ivory, from there the ship sailed to Jamaica, where the captives is exchanged for sugar and logwood. Laden with new world goods, the Henrietta Marie! began her long and ardous voyage home to London, where she planned to sell her valuable cargo. It was on the 18th May, 1700 the slaver "Herietta Marie" sank off the coast of Florida on its way back to England. The ship's voyage was typical of slavers that ply the caribbean in those days, from England to Nigeria, then to Jamaica where over 200 surviving slaves were sold in the market place.
Before 1655 the Spaniards occupied Jamaica. The island having been "discovered" by Columbus in 1494. At the time of discovery the inhabitants were the Arawak Indians who were enslaved by the Spaniards. But, by the time the British took possession of the island, spanish ill treatment; European deaseas; and the the introduction of cattle which destablized native agriculture cause all the Arawak Indians to be totally wiped out. So, the most reliable source of slave labour, even before the the Indian population was decimated was from Africa inline with the inexorable pattern of the enslavement process of the New World.
The Spanish and Portuguese explorers that occupied the island brought with them a cultural heritage of slavery as practiced in Iberia and the model of the institutional complex of the slave - run sugar plantation of Madeira. Columbus lived in Maderia for nearly 10 years. Also, in Columbus time the infamous Spanish Inquisition, authorized by Pope Sixtus IV in 1478 was entrenched in the Old World. Pope Sixtus tried to establish harmony between the inquisitors and the ordinaries, but was unable to maintain control of the desires of King Ferdinand V and Queen Isablella. Sixtus agreed to recognize the independence of the Spanish Inquisition. This institution survived to the beginning of the 19th century, and was permanently suppressed by a decree on July 15, 1834. Columbus and his men came to the New World to plunder and seek riches for the return voyage to Spain.
However, those Spaniards left in Jamaica by Columbus were subsistence farmers, they farmed domestic produce and was more interested in finding Gold and other precious metal. Consequently, by the time of the English conquests "not one hundredth part of the plantable land was in cultivation." The Spanish explorers frequent forays into the hills for Gold and their hunting habits contributed to their slaves becoming skilled hunters and backwoodsmen. The slaves were used more for hunting wild cattle and hogs than farming and so became masters of woodcraft. They learned the trails through the woods and mountains, an invaluable skill to them later on as guerrilla fighters. "It was these black slaves of the Spaniards who took to the hills at the time of the British conquest that were to form the nucleus of the first Maroon society in Jamaica under the British."
Mavis Campbell argued whether these Spanish blacks who ran into the hills could be properly called runaway slaves. She said that since the definition of slaves as property, then the Spanish blacks were by conquest now British property and, as such, runaway slaves. This species of property in perpetuity was also heritable by itself and through its progency. Thus, decendants to be born in the hills would also be slaves, legally subject to be reconsigned to slavery in the event of capture, whatever their perception of themselves or their notion of their freedom might be, so long as a slave society existed on the island. See Amistad Trials! for the idea of property.
We should also consider the fact that, Admiral Venables the Naval Commander of the British Navy set forth Article Eleven of the Terms of Capitulation upon capturing the island, said in paraphase, "All slaves and negroes were to appear on the Savanna near the town on the 26th when Venables would inform them of the favours and acts of grace concerning their freedom to be granted them."
It is said that none of them responded to this offer. "The majority took to the hills separating themselves from their late masters." The attitudes of the slaves is that white masters were the same regardless of nationality. Nevertheless, the word "Maroon" is a generic term to designate fugitive slaves from plantations in the New World. Popular opinions accept that the word is derives from the Spanish Cimarron which referred to domestic cattle that had escaped to a wild existence. Others like the Iberians had their own designation for runaway slaves, but since 1655, Maroon is a designation use to refer to runaway slaves under the British. So, we could look at the Spanish Maroons as separate and they does not form a continuum of Maroon society in Jamaica as developed from the turn of the seventeenth century to the first three decades of the eighteenth. The Spanish Maroons are called Maroons by virtue of an historical event (British conquest) and not from the usual runaway situation.
Another issue is that the Spanish Maroons were Creoles mostly from the northern part of West Africa and Angola, while their eighteenth century counterparts were mainly Akan speaking blacks. What is important is that their were hostilities between these two groups. The Spanish Creoles did not take kindly to the newly arrived African runaways who came to join them in the hills. One reason is that British slave traders concentrate mostly on the Gold Cost of Africa seeking slaves for the New World. The Akan blacks were from Ghana and, a cause for the open hostility and lack of unity between the two groups. In spite of this, the Spanish Creoles were an inspiration to plantation slaves, they showed resistance to slavery. They created a precedent of defiance of the slave master's authority and their presence in the woods gave cause to slaves running away from the plantations. Their skills as hunters help to show runaway slaves how to adapt to their surrounding, and later on in guerrilla warfare against the authorities.
Therefore, the history of Maroon societies in the New World is the history of guerrilla warfare. A question to keep in mind is why these former bitter opponent of the colonial authorities should have turned to collaborate with them? And, in so doing what effect this had on the plantocracy in Jamaica?
Within a year of the British conquest of Jamaica, "the rebellious slaves" in the hills, had made themselves so formidable that, like the Spanish officials of Panama, the British soon conceived that they were a greater danger that were the Spaniards. The Maroons' boldness, their prowess in guerrilla warfare, their knowledge of the terrain of the country were all too noted with apprehension. "Concerning the state of the enemy on shore here the Spanairds is not considerable, but of the Blacks there are many, who are like to prove as thorns and pricks in our sides, living in the mountains and woods, a kind of life both natural, and I believe, acceptable to them...." Certainly this were not true of Africans, but a life born of necessity.
Indeed, the early Maroons were "thorns and pricks" in the side of the British, they plunder and burn plantations, captured slaves and killed British soldiers who ventured out too far into the woods. The Maroons victories against the British were so numerous that in April, 1656, the British Governor D'Oyley reported "it hath pleased God to give us some success against the negroes. A plantation of theirs beeinge (sic) found out, wee (sic) fell on them, slew some, and spoiled one of their chief quarters." In another skirmish the British soldiers killed "seven or eight " negroes" but the Maroons retaliated by ambushing and killing forty soldiers. In a letter to John Thurloe, Major Sedgwicke said, "In two daies (sic) more than forty of our soldiers, were cut off by the negroes as they were carelessly going about their quarters."
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