Existing comment:
Jamaica Maroons:
Jamaica's mountainous center has always been a difficult region to travel through, control, or regulate. Since the English conquest of 1655, the mountains offered refuge to runaway slaves or Maroons, who were able to establish stable communities in regions the English considered inpenetrable. The Maroons engaged the English militia in open warfare on several occasions in the eighteenth century; the first in the 1730s, which saw Maroon communities shift from the eastern mountains to the Cockpit Country in the west. The English offered the Maroons a treaty in 1739 that gave liberty and qualified autonomy in their region. Skirmishes between the English militia and Maroon communities in Trelawny reignited in the 1790s, resulting in a mass deportation of Maroons to Nova Scotia. |