This is an impressive book. Inspired by Mavis C. Campbell’s three separate books on the Trelawny Town Maroons of Jamaica, who were deported to Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1796 and relocated to Sierra Leone in West Africa in 1800,Footnote 1 Ruma Chopra takes up Campbell’s “challenge to put the Trelawney [sic] Town Maroons’ migrations within a single framework” (p. 199) and admirably succeeds in her goal. The Trelawny Town Maroons, descendants of enslaved people from Africa, were the largest community of escaped slaves (about 660 persons) in the British plantation colony of Jamaica, and Chopra situates their serial migrations within the complexities of slavery and the anti-slavery movement in the colonial British Atlantic context, giving them a place in global history.
The book is divided into three sections, on Jamaica, Nova Scotia, and Sierra Leone, with an Introduction and Epilogue. The Introduction provides an overview of the Trelawny Town Maroons and the argument of the book. Chopra argues that following the 1738–1739 treaties between the planters and the Jamaican Maroons, “the Maroons served as a buffer between the slaves and the planters, preserving white freedom and black slavery” (p. 1) by capturing and returning runaway slaves, and that “[b]y the 1790s over 75 percent of Maroon men had creolized by taking on the names of their white patrons” (p. 4). However, following the Second Maroon War between the planters and the Trelawny Town Maroons in 1795–1796, these Maroons (who surrendered) were betrayed by the colonists and deported to Nova Scotia in 1796. Chopra sees her work as making three major contributions. First, by focusing on the Trelawny Town Maroons in three British colonies, it captures “the possibilities and contradictions of antislavery discourse during a moment of British expansionism” (pp. 5–6). Second, by exploring the relationship between the Maroons and their white patrons, it situates “the Maroons within a history of loyalism as well as the history of slavery” (p. 9). Third, by also placing the Maroons “within the framework of immigration and creolization” (p.10), she highlights the Maroons’ strategy of accommodation as well as resistance.
The first section on Jamaica has three chapters. Chapter one, “War”, provides more detail on the six Maroon communities in Jamaica’s mountains, including their two colonial wars and treaties, and then focuses on the Second Maroon War between Trelawny Town and the colonists (who had varying views on the Maroons). Chapter two, “Bloodhounds”, describes the use of Cuban bloodhounds by Governor Balcarres in the Trelawny Town war, the humanitarian debates in Britain and Jamaica about the bloodhounds, and the surrender of the Maroons. Chapter three, “Deportation”, outlines the controversial deportation of the Maroons to Canada and the arrival of 568 Maroons (with two Superintendents) at the garrison of Halifax, Nova Scotia, where they were met by the Anglican Governor Sir John Wentworth.
The second section on Nova Scotia likewise has three chapters. Chapter four, “Conversion”, describes Governor Wentworth’s vision of “civilizing” the Maroons through religious conversion and farming. The Maroons (settled at Preston and Boydville) adopted a strategy of “studied humility” (p. 81), provided wage labour to build fortifications against French invasion, were favourably distinguished from Black Loyalist ex-slaves, and viewed as the black equivalent of the native Mi’kmaq Indians. However, Wentworth was unable to Christianize the Maroons, who retained their creolized Jamaican culture, resisted farming and longed for home. Chapter five, “Winter”, outlines the start of the Maroons’ crusade against both their banishment and the cold and the humanitarian debates in Canada and Britain about the exiled Maroons. Chapter six, “Resistance”, focuses on the escalation of Maroon resistance to settlement in Nova Scotia, their numerous petitions to sympathizers in Britain, the British Secretary of State’s plan to relocate the Maroons to Sierra Leone (where some Black Loyalists had settled in 1792), and the arrival of 551 Maroons with their Superintendent George Ross (Scottish agent for the Sierra Leone Company) at Freetown in 1800.
The third section comprises two chapters on Sierra Leone. Chapter seven, “Crisis”, outlines the welcome to the Maroons by Governor Thomas Ludlam at Freetown, especially as the Nova Scotian Black Loyalists had just revolted against establishing a plantation society (without slavery). Although the Maroons refused to sign papers regulating their behaviour, they expressed loyalty to the Crown and provided military aid to subdue the Nova Scotians (who allied with natives such as the Temne). However, the Maroons faced disease and starvation and did not initially accommodate to Sierra Leone. Chapter eight, “Accommodation”, delineates how, by 1805, after years of yearning for Jamaica, some Maroons became reconciled to life near Freetown where they received land grants, served as a stand-by militia, and named streets after regions in Jamaica. By 1808, some Maroons adopted Christianity (though Maroon death rituals were still practiced). By 1811 (when there were 807 Trelawny Town Maroons in Sierra Leone), some Maroons and Nova Scotians (through alliance with the British) had moved into the lower civil service in a three-tiered hierarchical society of whites, free blacks, and natives. By 1815, the Maroons were involved in other non-agricultural occupations such as publicans, silversmiths, and constables. By the 1830s, they had built their own church in Freetown, named Maroon Chapel, which still endures. Meanwhile, after the Sierra Leone Company began relinquishing the colony to the Crown in 1802, due to continuing Nova Scotian and native uprisings, Sierra Leone became a British Crown Colony following the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807.
The Epilogue documents how, despite the settlement of some Trelawny Town Maroons near Freetown, other Maroons returned to Jamaica in 1841 (after the abolition of slavery in 1833 and Emancipation in 1838) as indentured labourers along with other Africans (many from Sierra Leone). Chopra argues that “[o]nly a resilient, creolized community would have dared to return to Jamaica” (p. 186). She also concludes that “[b]y examining the serial migrations of the Trelawney Town Maroons we capture something which otherwise would remain lost: the Maroons’ repeatedly successful efforts at achieving self-emancipation” (p. 191). She further argues that these serial migrations reflected the Maroons’ resistance to the continuing inequality with the colonial white elites. However, as her fine study shows, the success of this resistance drew on the Maroons’ alliances with these elites. African indenture failed in the British West Indies (and was replaced by Asian indentured labour) and the Jamaican Maroons continued their alliance with the planters by aiding the militia and the police.
The book is not, however, without flaws. For example, in describing the six Jamaican Maroon communities, there is no mention of the Leeward and Windward Maroon polities (in the west-central Cockpit Country and north-eastern Blue Mountains respectively) that were consolidated after the treaties of 1738–1739 following the First Maroon War. The geography of Jamaica and its Maroon communities is also sometimes unclear. In discussing the deportation of 568 Trelawny Town Maroons, Chopra states that “[o]ther Trelawney Town Maroons in the northeastern part of the island, in Westmoreland Parish, who had lived outside of Trelawney Town before the war and who stayed out of the rebellion continued to live separately from both Maroons and white society” (p. 226). However, Westmoreland Parish is in the south-west of the island. And Westmoreland is not in the “northwest” (p. 24). Likewise, she refers to “the Trelawney and Accompong Maroons in the northern mountains” (p. 17). However, these two communities (comprising the Leeward Maroon polity) were in the west-central mountains, with Accompong in the southern parish of St Elizabeth.
Moreover, although the book is very thoroughly researched and documented, with extensive notes and an impressive bibliography of primary printed and secondary sources, Chopra might have usefully consulted my own work on the transformation of the Leeward Maroon communities of Trelawny Town and Accompong to the present day.Footnote 2 Much of what she covers on the history of the Trelawny Town Maroons in Jamaica is synthesized in my earlier work. In addition, that study would have enriched her Epilogue as it uncovers the continuing saga of Trelawny Town (now renamed Maroon Town), where descendants of Maroons, colonists, and slaves have forged further transformations of freedom. My research in Trelawny Town/Maroon Town and Accompong also reveals the creolization process among the Leeward Maroons, including their complex relations with white elites and black and coloured non-Maroons as well as the creole kinship system and death rituals that persisted among the Trelawny Town Maroons in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone. In addition, although the book has an excellent Index and List of Abbreviations, it would have benefitted from a List of Illustrations.
