Jamaica’s Troubled Past Essay -- A Level Essays

Jamaica’s Troubled Past ‘The Maroons’ Jamaica’s fighting spirit can be seen even in its early days with the Maroons. The fighting spirit is not uncommon with people who are oppressed or forced against their will. The Maroons came in two waves, the first are slaves that fled during the Spanish rule, the second wave was during British control. The Maroons used the highlands of Jamaica to seek refuge, establish colonies and attack plantations when needed. Even today the beliefs and herbal practices of the Maroons are still evident in Jamaican culture. Their trouble past has made their life difficult but even today they are a presence in Jamaica. The First Deserters The idea of runaways did not take long in the Caribbean islands. Jamaica was not the only island experiencing runaways, Haiti, Cuba, and many Latin American countries were all falling victim to these guerilla style warfare tribes. During the first years of Spanish control the island of Hispaniola (Spanish Jamaica) experienced many problems with slaves. Columbus suggested to King Ferdinand in the first letter from his voyage of discovery, "I can bring slaves that are captured people, as many as are wanted." Disease and overwork killed many of the peaceable, indigenous Arawaks. Others hanged themselves, drank poisonous cassava juice, murdered and aborted their children rather than be enslaved. A few, the first Maroons, escaped into the craggy hills. (Olson, pg.234) Recent excavations at Nanny Town, the most important early Maroon settlement, support Maroon oral traditions that the first African refugees found accommodation among the Arawak. (Olson, pg.234) Correspondence from the last decade of the sixteenth century also suggests that Spanish colonial officials w... ...keth. Obeah; Witchcraft in the West Indies. Negro Universities Press. Westport, Connecticut. 1970. Buckley, Roger. Slaves in Red Coats. Yale University Pess, New Haven, CT. 1979. Campbell, Marvis. The Maroons of Jamaica 1655-1796. African World Press, Inc. Trenton, NJ. 1990. Drescher, Seymour. Econocide British Slavery in the Era of Abolition. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA. 1977 Hall, Gwendolyn. Social Control in Slave Plantation Societies. The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, Maryland. 1971. Olson, Eric. (Feb 2000). Mountain Rebels: The Flight from Slavery of Jamaicas’s Maroons. World and I v15:2, p234. Available: Expanded Academic Research. Reidell, Heidi. (Jan-Feb 1990). The Maroon culture of endurance. (history of Jamaica's runaway slaves) Americas (English Edition) v42 n1, p46(4). Available: Expanded Academic Research.