"Price breaks new ground in the study of slave resistance in his 'hemispheric' view of Maroon societies." -- Journal of Ethnic Studies

I. Staley Prize in Anthropology--Eugene D. Genovese "Manchester Guardian"

Maroon communities were small, secret encampments formed by runaway slaves, typically in isolated and defensible sections of wilderness. The phenomenon began as runaway slaves, unable to escape to safe havens in sympathetic colonies, opted instead to band together for survival near the sites of their former enslavement. In this first survey of documentary records of marronage in colonial and antebellum South Carolina, Timothy James Lockley offers students and scholars of history an opportunity to assess the unique features and trends of the maroon experience in the Palmetto State.

The forgotten stories of America maroons—wilderness settlers evading discovery after escaping slavery Over more than two centuries men, women, and children escaped from slavery to make the Southern wilderness their home. They hid in the mountains of Virginia and the low swamps of South Carolina; they stayed in the neighborhood or paddled their way to secluded places; they buried themselves underground or built comfortable settlements. Known as maroons, they lived on their own or set up communities in swamps or other areas where they were not likely to be discovered. Although well-known, feared, celebrated or demonized at the time, the maroons whose stories are the subject of this book have been forgotten, overlooked by academic research that has focused on the Caribbean and Latin America. Who the American maroons were, what led them to choose this way of life over alternatives, what forms of marronage they created, what their individual and collective lives were like, how they organized themselves to survive, and how their particular story fits into the larger narrative of slave resistance are questions that this book seeks to answer. To survive, the American maroons reinvented themselves, defied slave society, enforced their own definition of freedom and dared create their own alternative to what the country had delineated as being black men and women’s proper place. Audacious, self-confident, autonomous, sometimes self-sufficient, always self-governing; their very existence was a repudiation of the basic tenets of slavery.

In the early 18th century, the Dutch colony of Suriname was the envy of all others in the Americas. There, seven hundred Europeans lived off the labor of over four thousand enslaved Africans. Owned by men hell-bent for quick prosperity, the rich plantations on the Suriname river became known for their heights of planter comfort and opulence--and for their depths of slave misery. Slaves who tried to escape were hunted by the planter militia. If found they were publicly tortured. Gradually slaves began to form outlaw communities until nearly one out of every ten Africans in Suriname was helping to build rebel villages in the jungle. This book relates the history of a nation founded by escaped slaves deep in the Latin American rain forest. It tells of their battles for independence, their uneasy truce with the colonial government, and the attempt of their leader, Alabi, to reconcile his people with white law and a white God.

"Maroons, self-organized communities of runaway slaves, existed wherever slavery was present. One of the most vital and persistent maroon communities was tucked away in the mountainous rainforests on the Caribbean island of Dominica, at the time a British colony. This "state within a state," as the colonial authorities tellingly described it, posed a direct challenge to the slavery system, and before long, the Dominican Maroons rose up to challenge the British Empire. Ultimately, they were captured and put on trial. Here, for the first time, are primary documents, carefully edited and contextualized, that richly present the voices and experiences of the Maroons--in resistance and defeat. Your Time Is Done Now tells the story of the Maroons of Dominica through the transcripts of trials held in 1813 and 1814 at the end of the Second Maroon War. Using the trial evidence to explain how the Maroons waged war against slave society, the book reveals fascinating details about how they survived in the forests, defended themselves against attack, and maintained support from enslaved allies on the plantations. It also examines the key role of the British governor, George Ainslie, a notoriously cruel ruler, who succeeded in suppressing the Maroons, and how the Colonial Office in London reacted to his punitive conduct. This book provides a moving and valuable addition to the growing literature on slavery and slave resistance in the Americas" -- Publisher's description

" Freedom as Marronage" deepens our understanding of political freedom not only by situating slavery as freedom s opposite condition, but also by investigating the experiential significance of the equally important liminal and transitional social space "between" slavery and freedom. Roberts examines a specific form of flight from slavery"marronage"that was fundamental to the experience of Haitian slavery, but is integral to understanding the Haitian Revolution and has widespread application to European, New World, and black Diasporic societies. He pays close attention to the experience of the process by which people emerge "from "slavery "to "freedom, contending that freedom as marronage presents a useful conceptual device for those interested in understanding both normative ideals of political freedom and the origin of those ideals. Roberts investigates the dual anti-colonial and anti-slavery Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) and especially the ideas of German-Jewish thinker Hannah Arendt, Irish political theorist Philip Pettit, American fugitive-turned ex-slave Frederick Douglass, and the Martinican philosopher Edouard Glissant in developing a theory of freedom that offers a compelling interpretive lens to understand the quandaries of slavery, freedom, and political language that still confront us today."

From the 1520s through the 1580s, thousands of African slaves fled captivity in Spanish Panama and formed their own communities in the interior of the isthmus. African Maroons in Sixteenth-Century Panama, a primary source reader, edited by Robert C. Schwaller, documents this marronage in the context of five decades of African resistance to slavery. The self-sufficiency of the Maroons, along with their periodic raids against Spanish settlements, sparked armed conflict as Spaniards sought to conquer the maroon communities and kill or re-enslave their populations. After decades of struggle, Maroons succeeded in negotiating a peace with Spanish authorities and establishing the first two free Black towns in the Americas. The little-known details of this dramatic history emerge in these pages, traced through official Spanish accounts, reports, and royal edicts, as well as excerpts from several English sources that recorded alliances between Maroons and English privateers in the region. The contrasting Spanish and English accounts reveal Maroons' attempts to turn European antagonism to their advantage; and, significantly, several accounts feature direct testimony from Maroons. Most importantly, this reader includes translations of the first peace agreements made between a European empire and African Maroons, and the founding documents of the free-Black communities of Santiago del Príncipe and Santa Cruz la Real—the culmination of the first successful African resistance movement in the Americas. Schwaller has translated all the documents into English and presents each with a short introduction, thorough annotations, and full historical, cultural, and geographical context, making this volume accessible to undergraduate students while remaining a unique document collection for scholars.

Toussaint L’Ouverture was the leader of the Haitian Revolution in the late eighteenth century, in which slaves rebelled against their masters and established the first black republic. In this collection of his writings and speeches, former Haitian politician Jean-Bertrand Aristide demonstrates L’Ouverture’s profound contribution to the struggle for equality.

Cultural Vitality in the African Diaspora Lavishly illustrated with more than 350 images, this groundbreaking new book traces traditions in woodcarving, textiles, clothing, and jewelry created by the Maroon people of Suriname and French Guiana.