Exceptional Resistance: Anti-Colonial Narratives and Constructions of Autonomy Among the Accompong Maroons of Jamaica

Abstract

The story of the Jamaican Maroons, communities of mixed African and Indigenous descent who evaded slavery and in the 17th century and successfully fought off the British occupation to obtain autonomous rule over their settlements, is a remarkable yet oft-overlooked one. It behooves the scholarly community and the world at large to take a closer look at this story, for the insights that it might provide into conversations on diaspora, pan-Africanism, Indigeneity, and nation-building in (post)colonial contexts. Based on archival analysis and ethnographic fieldwork in the Maroon town of Accompong, this inquiry traces historical and more recent developments in Maroon culture and identity construction, seeking to interrogate and dismantle colonial alienations of the Maroons, and to better understand the Maroons’ physical and metaphysical challenges to empire have unfolded and continue to evolve.