Maroons

Maroons were people who escaped enslavement and formed independent communities, often in remote terrain. Their settlements resisted slaveholding societies and developed distinct political and cultural traditions.

Transatlantic slave trade: The forced transportation of millions of Africans across the Atlantic for enslavement in the Americas. Its expansion created the conditions from which many maroon communities arose.
Guerrilla warfare: Irregular warfare in which smaller forces use mobility, surprise, and local knowledge against stronger opponents. Maroon fighters used raids and evasive tactics against colonial forces.
Palmares: A seventeenth-century confederation of maroon settlements in northeastern Brazil. Its scale and longevity made it one of the largest maroon societies in the Americas.
Nanny of the Maroons: An eighteenth-century leader of the Windward Maroons in Jamaica who resisted British colonial forces. Her leadership became a defining example of Jamaican Maroon resistance.
Haitian Revolution: A revolution from 1791 to 1804 that ended French rule in Saint-Domingue and established Haiti. Its victory extended the challenge to slavery and colonial power beyond maroon settlements.
Cimarrón: A Spanish colonial term for an escaped enslaved person or a feral animal. The word helped give rise to the name used for maroon communities.
Swidden agriculture: A farming method that clears and cultivates a plot temporarily before allowing it to regenerate. Rotating fields helped settlements produce food while limiting visible traces.
Jamaican Maroons: Descendants of escaped Africans who established autonomous communities in Jamaica’s mountains. Their wars and treaties shaped a durable maroon presence on the island.
Cudjoe: An eighteenth-century leader of the Leeward Maroons in Jamaica who negotiated a treaty with Britain. His agreement helped secure recognized autonomy for Jamaican Maroon communities.
Abolitionism: The movement to end slavery and the slave trade. Maroon resistance exposed the instability and coercion on which slavery depended.

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