The False Dichotomy: Jamaican Maroons as Resistance Fighters and Colonial Enforcers

Abstract

Over the course of the eighteenth century, the maroons of Jamaica developed an independent identity that was separate both from the slave community from which they originated and from the colonial community. The maroons of Jamaica won their political sovereignty in 1738 when they signed a peace treaty with the British colonial government of Jamaica. In so doing, they—contrary to the resistance scholarship that has historically characterized maroon studies—became complicit in the very system of colonial oppression they had escaped. Maroons used this system to their advantage to legitimize their political status and to create stability for their community. This study explores the ways in which maroons participated in colonial administration through examining the events of the First Maroon War (1730-1740), Tacky's War (1760-1761), and the Second Maroon War (1795-1796). Throughout the course of these conflicts, maroons asserted their independence, maintained their sovereignty through collusion in oppression, and ultimately lost their sovereignty after the negotiations of the Second Maroon War failed.