Abstract
Maroon societies consisted of runaway slaves and their offspring who sequestered themselves in the circum-Caribbean wilderness.1 The existence of Maroons manifested the opposition of some African slaves to their enslavement and a persistent desire to create a free society of their own. In the Western hemisphere, Maroon societies emerged virtually whenever and wherever a slave population existed. None the less, at any given time, Maroons comprised no more than a tiny fraction of the local Afro Caribbean community. The survival of Maroon societies depended on a combination of circumstances, not only the local geography, but also the local social, political and military resources of the Maroons and neighbouring slaveholders.
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Notes
Gabino De la Rosa Corzo, ‘Los Palenques en Cuba: Elementos para su Reconstruccion Historica’, in La Esclavitud en Cuba (La Habana: Editora de la Academïa de Ciencias de Cuba, 1986), pp. 86–123.
Barbara Klamon Kopytoff, The Maroons of Jamaica: An Ethnohistorical Study of Incomplete Polities, 1655–1905 (Diss: University of Pennsylvania, 1973; Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1973).
Benjamin Nistal Moret, Esclavos Profugosy Cimarrones: Puerto Rico, 1770–1870, (Rio Piedras: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1982), p. 13.
Gabriel Debien, Les Esclaves aux Antilles Françaises (Basse-Terre: Société D’Histoire de la Guadeloupe, 1974), pp. 412–13.
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, ‘Saint Domingue’, in David W. Cohen and Jack P. Greene (eds), Neither Slave nor Free (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1972), p. 180.
Bryan Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Cole and Thomas, 1810) I, p. 340.
Richard B. Sheridan, ‘The Maroons of Jamaica, 1730–1830’, in Gad Heuman (ed.), Out of the House of Bondage, (London: Frank Cass, 1984), p. 158
John D. Lenoir, The Saramacca Maroons: A Study in Religious Acculturation (Diss: New School, 1973; Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1974), p. 19.
Eugene D. Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), p. 53.
Silvia W. de Groot, ‘A Comparison between the History of Maroon Communities in Surinam and Jamaica’, in Gad Heuman (ed.), Out of the House of Bondage (London: Frank Cass, 1984), p. 181
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© 2003 UNESCO
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de Groot, S.W., Christen, C.A., Knight, F.W. (2003). Maroon communities in the circum-Caribbean. In: Knight, F.W. (eds) General History of the Caribbean. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-73770-3_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-73770-3_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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