Maroon Communities Carve Out Freedom in the Mountains and Forests
From Jamaica to Suriname, escaped enslaved people build fortified settlements the colonial powers cannot conquer and eventually must negotiate with
Quick facts
- Jamaica treaties
- 1738 (Leeward Maroons), 1739 (Windward Maroons)
- Suriname treaty
- 1760 (Ndyuka)
- Surviving Jamaican Maroon towns
- Charles Town, Moore Town, Accompong Town, Scott's Hall
What happened
Across the Americas, enslaved Africans who escaped plantations formed maroon communities in terrain too remote or difficult for colonial militias to easily reach, mountainous interiors in Jamaica, forested river borders in Suriname, and similar refuges elsewhere. In Jamaica, Maroon communities in the eastern mountains fought British colonial forces to a standstill for decades; unable to defeat them, the British colonial government signed treaties with the Leeward Maroons in 1738 and the Windward Maroons in 1739, granting them recognized autonomy. In Suriname, which passed from English to Dutch control under the 1667 Treaty of Breda, enslaved people who escaped plantations along the Commewijne and Marowijne Rivers built their own villages from the late seventeenth century onward; the Ndyuka Maroons there signed a peace treaty with Dutch authorities in 1760, drafted in part by a formerly enslaved man from Boston named Adyako Benti Basiton, that granted them territorial autonomy. Maroon communities descended from these settlements, including Jamaica's Charles Town, Moore Town, Accompong Town, and Scott's Hall, survive today.
Why it matters
Maroon communities are direct, sustained evidence that enslaved Africans resisted the plantation system by building alternative societies, not only through individual escape or occasional revolt, and that colonial powers were sometimes forced to recognize that resistance through negotiated treaties rather than military victory. Their persistence into the present, as legally distinct communities in Jamaica and Suriname today, is a direct continuity from the resistance built during the height of the slave trade.
How we know
Colonial Williamsburg's Slavery and Remembrance project documents the Jamaican and Surinamese maroon treaties and their negotiated terms, drawing on colonial treaty records and subsequent historical scholarship on both communities.
Sources
- Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Slavery and Remembrance. Maroon Communities in the Americas · General sourceslaveryandremembrance.org · Cited as a "reference" source (no stronger domain match).
- National Library of Jamaica. The Maroons · Primary source (author-declared)nlj.gov.jm · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Part of a timelineThe Atlantic Slave Trade29 events · Four centuries in which European traders forced an estimated 12.5 million Africans onto ships bound for the Americas, and the enslaved people, revolts, and abolitionists who fought it from the first crossing to the lastView all →