Coromantee, Coromantins, Coromanti or Kormantine (derived from the name of the Ghanaian slave fort Fort Kormantine in the Ghanaian town of Kormantse, Central Ghana) is an English-language term for enslaved people from the Akan ethnic group, taken from the Gold Coast region in modern-day Ghana. The term was primarily used in the Caribbean and is now considered archaic.
The name Coromantee, Kromantyn or Kromanti, in both Jamaica and Suriname, is derived from the Fanti town of their imprisonment known as Kormantse. The Fantes and British captured their rivals the Asantes and these captives were sent to British colonies such as Jamaica. While Dutch Komenada Fantes allied themselves to capture British allied Fantes to Dutch colonies such as Suriname.[1] Due to their militaristic background, Coromantins organized dozens of slave rebellions in Jamaica and elsewhere in the Americas. Their fierce and rebellious nature became so notorious among European slave traders in the 18th century that an Act was proposed to ban the importation of Akan people from the Gold Coast despite their reputation as strong workers.[2] Most European slave merchants came to understand that the Akan, while primarily peaceful and hardworking, were a proud and fiercely independent people who fought vehemently to protect their vast territories from encroachment by other expanding groups and also fought off the Dutch, Prussians, and Portuguese.
History
An engraving by William Blake illustrating "A negro hung by his ribs from a gallows," from Captain John Stedman's Narrative of a Five Years Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, 1792.
1690 Rebellion
Several rebellions in the 1700s were attributed to Coromantees. According to enslaver and colonial administrator Edward Long, the first rebellion occurred in 1690 between three or four hundred enslaved people in Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, who, after killing a white owner, seized firearms and provisions and killed an overseer at the neighbouring plantation.[3] A militia formed and eventually suppressed the rebellion, hanging the leader. Several rebels fled and joined the Maroons. Long also describes the incident where an enslaver was overpowered by a group of Coromantees who, after killing him, cut off his head and turned his skull into a drinking bowl. However, the "drinking of blood" is more than likely anti-African propaganda, though Coromantee and especially Asante war tactics were known to use fear in their opponents.[4] In 1739, the leader of the Western Maroons, Cudjoe (Prince Kojo), signed a treaty with the British, ensuring the Maroons would be left alone, provided they did not help other slave rebellions.[5]
On the night of 6 April 1712, a group of more than twenty black enslaved people, the majority of whom were believed to be Coromantee, set fire to a building on Maiden Lane near Broadway. While the white traffickers tried to put out the fire, the enslaved black folks, armed with guns, hatchets, and swords, defended themselves from the whites and then ran off. Eight whites died, and seven were wounded. Over the next few days, colonial forces arrested seventy black people and jailed them. Twenty-seven were put on trial, 21 of whom were convicted and sentenced to death.[6]
Led by Cudjoe and Queen Nanny (Kojo and Nana), the First Maroon War was a conflict between Maroons in Jamaica and the colonial British authorities that reached a climax in 1731. In 1739–40, the British government in Jamaica recognized that it could not defeat the Maroons, so they agreed with them instead. The Maroons were to remain in their five main towns: Accompong, Cudjoe's Town (Trelawny Town), Moore Town (formerly New Nanny Town), Scott's Hall (Jamaica) and Charles Town, Jamaica, living under their own rulers and a British supervisor.
The 1733 slave insurrection on St. John in the Danish West Indies (now St. John, United States Virgin Islands) started on 23 November 1733, when 150 enslaved Africans from (present-day Ghana) revolted against the owners and managers of the island's plantations. Lasting several months into August 1734, the slave rebellion was one of the earliest and longest slave revolts in the Americas. The Akwamu enslaved people captured the fort in Coral Bay and took control of most of the island. They intended to resume crop production under their own authority and use Africans of other tribes as slave labor.[7]
Planters regained control by the end of May 1734, after the Akwamu were defeated by several hundred better-armed French and Swiss troops sent in April from Martinique, a French colony. The colonial militia continued to hunt down maroons and finally declared the rebellion at an end in late August 1734.[8]
1736 Antigua slave rebellion
In 1736, on the island of Antigua, an enslaved African known as Prince Klaas (whose real name was thought to be Court or Kwaku Takyi) planned an uprising in which whites would be massacred. Court was crowned "King of the Coromantees" in a pasture outside the capital of St. John's, in what white observers thought was a colourful spectacle, but was for the Africans a ritual declaration of war on the white enslavers. Due to information obtained from other enslaved people, colonists discovered and suppressed the plot. Prince Klaas and four accomplices were caught and executed by the breaking wheel.[9] They hung and starved six Africans and burnt another 58 at the stake. The site of these executions is now the Antigua Recreation Ground.[10]
In 1741, a supposed plot of arson in the Province of New York was allegedly conducted by three enslaved men, Cuffee, Prince, and Caesar. These three men were alleged to have burned several buildings, including the home of Lieutenant Governor George Clarke. The leaders, Cuffee and Quack (Kwaku), were tried for arson, found guilty, and burned at the stake. In total, they burnt 13 black men at the stake and hung 17, along with four whites. Among those arrested when the plot was discovered were 12 men and women of Akan origin. Seventy people were deported from New York. There is considerable historical debate as to how these fires were started.
In 1760, another conspiracy known as Tacky's War was hatched. Long claims that almost all enslaved Coromantin on the island were involved without any suspicion from the whites. They planned to overthrow British rule and establish an African kingdom in Jamaica. Tacky and his forces were able to take over several plantations and kill the white plantation owners. However, they were ultimately betrayed by an enslaved man named Yankee, whom Long describes as wanting to defend his master's house and "assist the white men". Yankee ran to the neighbouring estate and, with the help of another enslaved man, alerted the rest of the plantation owners.[11] The British enlisted the help of Jamaican Maroons, who were themselves descendants of the Akan ethnic group, to defeat the Coromantins. Long describes a British man and a Mulatto man as each having killed three Coromantins.
Eventually, Tacky was killed by a sharpshooter named Davy the Maroon, who was a Maroon officer in Scott's Hall.[12]
In 1763, a slave rebellion in Berbice, in present-day Guyana, was led by a Coromantin man named Cuffy or Kofi and his deputy Akra or Akara. The slave rebellion lasted from February 1763 into 1764.[13] Cuffy, like Tacky, was born in West Africa before being trafficked and enslaved. He led a revolt of more than 2,500 against the colony's regime. After acquiring firearms, the rebels attacked plantations.[14] They gained an advantage after taking the house of Peerboom. They told the whites inside that they could leave, but the rebels killed many as they did and took several prisoners, including the wife of a plantation owner, whom Cuffy kept as his wife.
After several months, a dispute between Cuffy and Akra led to a war. On 2 April 1763, Cuffy wrote to Governor van Hoogenheim saying that he did not want a war against the whites and proposed a partition of Berbice with the whites occupying the coastal areas and the blacks the interior. Akara's faction won, and Cuffy killed himself. The anniversary of Cuffy's slave rebellion, 23 February, is Republic Day in Guyana, and Cuffy is a national hero commemorated in a large monument in the capital, Georgetown.[15]
1765 Conspiracy
Coromantee enslaved people were also behind a conspiracy in 1765 to revolt. The leaders of the rebellion sealed their pact with an oath. Coromantee leaders Blackwell and Quamin (Kwame) ambushed and killed a group of colonial militiamen at a fort near Port Maria, Jamaica, as well as other whites in the area.[16] They intended to ally with the Maroons to split up the island. The Coromantins were to give the Maroons the forests while the Coromantins would control the cultivated land. The Maroons did not agree because of their treaty and existing agreement with colonial government.[17]
Anti-Coromantee measures
In 1765, a bill was proposed to prevent the importation of Coromantees but was not passed. Edward Long, an anti-Coromantee writer, states:
Such a bill, if passed into law would have struck at very root of evil. No more Coromantins would have been brought to infest this country, but instead of their savage race, the island would have been supplied with Blacks of a more docile tractable disposition and better inclined to peace and agriculture.[18]
Colonists later devised ways of separating Coromantins from each other by housing them separately, placing them with other enslaved people, and stricter monitoring. Since groups such as the Igbos were hardly reported to have been maroons, Igbo women were paired with Coromantee men to subdue the latter due to the idea that Igbo women were bound to their first-born sons' birthplace.[19]
1766 Rebellion
Thirty-three newly arrived Coromantins killed at least 19 whites in Westmoreland Parish, Jamaica. It was discovered when a young enslaved girl gave up their plans. All of the conspirators were either executed or sold.[18]
The Second Maroon War of 1795–1796 was an eight-month conflict between the Maroons of Trelawney Town, a maroon settlement created at the end of the First Maroon War, located in the parish of St James, but named after governor Edward Trelawny, and the British colonials who controlled the island. The other Jamaican Maroon communities did not participate in this rebellion, and their treaty with the British remained in place.
Barbados was also a central commercial point to which enslaved people from the Gold Coast were imported before further dispersal to other British colonies such as Jamaica and British Guiana. Enslaved people were imported from the Gold Coast to Barbados from the 17th century onward to about the early 19th century. The slave revolt on 14 April 1816 in Barbados, also known as the Bussa's Rebellion, was led by an enslaved man named Bussa. Not much is known about his life before the revolt; scholars today are currently debating his possible origins. Bussa was likely a Coromantee, yet there is also reasonable speculation that he may have descended from the Igbo peoples of modern-day south-eastern Nigeria. It is also possible that Bussa had both ancestries since enslaved peoples trafficked before the rebellion (mid- to late 16th-century shift in colonial demand for enslaved Africans from the Slave Coast) were kidnapped primarily from the Gold Coast and underwent subsequent creolization of the island's enslaved African population. The Bussa's Rebellion, along with other persistent slave rebellions throughout the Caribbean, had given the British Colonial government a further incentive to pass and enact the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, officially abolishing slavery as an institution in all of its Caribbean territories.
In 1822, an alleged conspiracy by enslaved Africans in the United States brought from the Caribbean was organized by an enslaved man named Denmark Vesey or Telemaque. Historian Douglas Egerton suggested that Vesey could be of Coromantee (an Akan-speaking people) origin, based on remembrance by a free black carpenter who knew Vesey toward the end of his life.[20] Inspired by the revolutionary spirit and actions of enslaved Africans during the 1791 Haitian Revolution and furious at the closing of the African Church, Vesey began to plan a slave rebellion.
His insurrection, which was to take place on Bastille Day, 14 July 1822, became known to thousands of blacks throughout Charleston, South Carolina, and along the Carolina coast. The plot called for Vesey and his group of enslaved people and free blacks to execute their enslavers and temporarily liberate the city of Charleston. Vesey and his followers planned to sail to Haiti to escape retaliation. Two enslaved men opposed to Vesey's scheme leaked the plot. Charleston authorities charged 131 men with conspiracy. In total, 67 men were convicted and 35 hanged, including Denmark Vesey.[21][22]
1823 Demerara Rebellion
Slaves force the retreat of European soldiers led by Lt. Brady in Guyana
Quamina (Kwamina) Gladstone, a Coromantee enslaved man in British Guiana (now Guyana), and his son Jack Gladstone led the Demerara rebellion of 1823, one of the most significant slave revolts in the British colonies before slavery was abolished. He was a carpenter by trade and worked on an estate owned by Sir John Gladstone. He was implicated in the revolt by the colonial authorities, apprehended, and executed on 16 September 1823. He is considered a national hero in Guyana, and there are streets named after him in Georgetown and the village of Beterverwagting on the East Coast Demerara.[23]
On Monday, 18 August 1823, Quamina and Jack Gladstone, both enslaved on Success plantation – who had adopted the surname of their master by convention – led their peers to revolt against the harsh conditions and maltreatment.[24] Those on Le Resouvenir, where Smith's chapel was situated, also rebelled. Quamina Gladstone was a member of Smith's church,[25] and the population there included: 2,500 whites, 2,500 freed blacks, and 77,000 enslaved people;[26] Quamina had been one of five chosen to become deacons by the congregation soon after Smith's arrival.[27] Following the arrival of news from Britain that measures aimed at improving the treatment of enslaved people in the colonies had been passed, Jack had heard a rumour that their masters had received instructions to set them free but were refusing to do so.[28] In the weeks before the revolt, he sought confirmation of the veracity of the rumours from other enslaved people, particularly those who worked for those in a position to know: he thus obtained information from Susanna, housekeeper/mistress of John Hamilton of Le Resouvenir; from Daniel, the Governor's servant; Joe Simpson from Le Reduit, and others. Specifically, Joe Simpson had written a letter saying their freedom was imminent, which heeded them to be patient.[29] Jack wrote a letter (signing his father's name) to the members of the chapel informing them of the "new law".[28]
Being very close to Jack, he supported his son's aspirations to be free by supporting the fight for the rights of enslaved people. But being a rational man,[30] and heeding the advice of Rev. Smith, he urged him to tell the other enslaved people, particularly the Christians, not to rebel. He sent Manuel and Seaton on this mission. When he knew the rebellion was imminent, he urged restraint and made his fellow slaves promise a peaceful strike.[31] Jack led tens of thousands of enslaved people to rise against their enslavers.[28] After the enslaved people's defeat in a major battle at Bachelor's Adventure, Jack fled into the woods. A "handsome reward"[32] of one thousand guilders was offered for the capture of Jack, Quamina, and about twenty other "fugitives".[33] Jack and his wife were captured by Capt. McTurk at Chateau Margo on 6 September after a three-hour standoff.[34] Quamina remained at large until he was captured on 16 September in the fields of Chateau Margo. He was executed, and his body was hung up in chains by the side of a public road in front of Success.[35]
Before becoming enslaved, Coromantins were usually part of highly organized and stratified Akan groups such as the Asante Empire and the Fante Confederacy. Akan states were not all the same, but the 40 groups in the mid-17th century shared a common political language and culture.[36] These groups also had shared mythology – and a single, supreme God, Nyame – and Anansi stories. These stories spread to the New World and became Anancy, Anansi Drew, or Br'er Rabbit stories in Jamaica, The Bahamas, and the Southern United States, respectively.
According to Long, Akan or "Coromantee" culture obliterated any other African customs, and incoming non-Akan Africans had to submit to the culture of the dominant Akan population in Jamaica. Akan deities referred to as Abosom in the Twi and Fante dialects were documented, and enslaved Akans would praise Nyankopong (erroneously written by the British as Accompong); libations would be poured to Asase Yaa (erroneously written as "Assarci") and Bosom Epo the sea god. Bonsam was referred to as the god of evil. The John Canoe festival was created in Jamaica and the Caribbean by enslaved Akans who sided with the man known as John Canoe. John Canoe was a man from Axim, Ghana, an Akan from the Ahanta. He was a soldier for the Germans until one day, he turned his back on them for his Ahanta people and sided with Nzima and Dutch Fante troops to take the area from the Germans and other Europeans. The news of his victory reached Jamaica, and he was celebrated ever since that Christmas of 1708 when he had first defeated German forces for Axim. Twenty years later, his stronghold was broken by neighboring Fante forces supported by English merchants. This resulted in the Ahanta, Nzima and Asante warriors becoming captives of the Fante and being taken to Jamaica as prisoners of war, numbering some 20,000 men.[3]
Akans also shared the concept of the soul or day names. Evidence of this is seen in the names of several rebellion organizers such as Cuffy (Kofi), Cudjoe (Kojo), or Nanny (Nana) Bump.[37][38] Names of some notable Coromantee leaders – such as Cudjoe, Cuffy, and Quamina – correspond to the Akan day names Kojo, Kwame, Kofi, and Kwamena, respectively. The word maroon became the Jamaican English term to mean "black person". Similarly, a white individual was called "obroni" (Akan) by the enslaved populace.[39]
Other Coromantee revolts followed, but these were all quickly suppressed. Coromantees (enslaved and runaway Maroons) and their Akan, imported from Ghana (the Gold Coast), ultimately influenced most of the black Jamaican culture: language, architecture, and food. After the British abolition of slavery in 1833, their influence and reputation began to wane as Coromantins were fully integrated into the larger British-influenced Jamaican society.
However, Akan loanwords make up the most significant part of the African influence in Jamaican patois.[39] Also, Patois has Akan arrangement and grammar.[40][failed verification] The Akan language has also influenced the Jamaican Maroon population with their Maroon Spirit language.
Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave is a relatively short work of prose fiction by Aphra Behn (1640–1689),[41] published in 1688, concerning the love of its hero, an enslaved African in Surinam in the 1660s, and the author's own experiences in the new South American colony. Oroonoko is the grandson of a Coromantin African king, Prince Oroonoko, who falls in love with Imoinda, the daughter of that king's top general.[42]
The king, too, falls in love with Imoinda. He gives her the sacred veil, thus commanding her to become one of his wives, even though she has already married Oroonoko. After unwillingly spending time in the king's harem (the Otan), Imoinda and Oroonoko plan a tryst with the help of the sympathetic Onahal and Aboan. They are eventually discovered, and because she has lost her virginity, Imoinda is sold into slavery.[43] The king's guilt, however, leads him to falsely inform Oroonoko that she has been executed since death was thought to be better than slavery. Later, after winning another tribal war, Oroonoko is betrayed and captured by an English captain who plans to enslave him and his men. The captain transports both Imoinda and Oroonoko to the colony of Surinam. The two lovers are reunited there, under the new Christian names of Caesar and Clemene, even though Imoinda's beauty has attracted the unwanted desires of other enslaved people and the Cornish gentleman, Trefry.[44]
Upon Imoinda's pregnancy, Oroonoko petitions for their return to the homeland. But after being continuously ignored, he organizes a slave revolt. The enslaved people are hunted down by the military forces and compelled to surrender on Deputy Governor Byam's promise of amnesty. Yet, when the enslaved people surrender, Oroonoko and the others are punished and whipped. Oroonoko decides to kill Byam to avenge his honor and express his natural worth. But to protect Imoinda from violation and subjugation after his death, he decides to kill her. The two lovers discuss the plan, and with a smile on her face, Imoinda willingly dies by his hand. A few days later, Oroonoko is found mourning by her decapitated body and is kept from killing himself, only to be publicly executed. During his death by dismemberment, Oroonoko calmly smokes a pipe and stoically withstands all the pain without crying out.[43]
Related Research Articles
A slave rebellion is an armed uprising by slaves, as a way of fighting for their freedom. Rebellions of slaves have occurred in nearly all societies that practice slavery or have practiced slavery in the past. A desire for freedom and the dream of successful rebellion is often the greatest object of song, art, and culture amongst the enslaved population. These events, however, are often violently opposed and suppressed by slaveholders.
Maroons are descendants of Africans in the Americas and Islands of the Indian Ocean who escaped from slavery and formed their own settlements. They often mixed with indigenous peoples, eventually evolving into separate creole cultures such as the Garifuna and the Mascogos.
Old Nanny Town was a village in the Blue Mountains of Portland Parish, north-eastern Jamaica, used as a stronghold of Jamaican Maroons. They were led in the early 18th century by an Ashanti escaped slave known as Granny Nanny, or Queen Nanny. The town held out against repeated attacks from the colonial militia before being abandoned in 1734.
Coffy, also spelled as Cuffy, Kofi or Koffi, was an Akan man who was captured in his native West Africa and stolen for slavery to work on the plantations of the Dutch colony of Berbice in present-day Guyana. In 1763, he led a major slave revolt of more than 3,800 slaves against the colonial regime. Today, he is a national hero in Guyana.
The Akan people are a Kwa group living primarily in present-day Ghana and in parts of Ivory Coast and Togo in West Africa. The Akan speak dialects within the Central Tano branch of the Potou–Tano subfamily of the Niger–Congo family. Subgroups of the Akan people include: the Agona, Akuapem, Akwamu, Akyem, Anyi, Ashanti, Baoulé, Bono, Chakosi, Fante, Kwahu, Sefwi, Wassa, Ahanta, and Nzema, among others. The Akan subgroups all have cultural attributes in common; most notably the tracing of matrilineal descent in the inheritance of property, and for succession to high political office.
Bussa's rebellion was the largest slave revolt in Barbadian history. The rebellion takes its name from the African-born slave, Bussa, who led the rebellion. The rebellion, which was eventually defeated by the colonial militia, was the first of three mass slave rebellions in the British West Indies that shook public faith in slavery in the years leading up to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire and emancipation of former slaves. It was followed by the Demerara rebellion of 1823 and by the Baptist War in Jamaica in 1831–1832; these are often referred to as the "late slave rebellions".
The Akan people of Ghana frequently name their children after the day of the week they were born and the order in which they were born. These "day names" have further meanings concerning the soul and character of the person. Middle names have considerably more variety and can refer to their birth order, twin status, or an ancestor's middle name.
Afro-Guyanese are generally descended from the enslaved people brought to Guyana from the coast of West Africa to work on sugar plantations during the era of the Atlantic slave trade. Coming from a wide array of backgrounds and enduring conditions that severely constrained their ability to preserve their respective cultural traditions contributed to the adoption of Christianity and the values of British colonists.
The Berbice slave uprising was a slave revolt in Guyana that began on 23 February 1763 and lasted to December, with leaders including Coffy. The first major slave revolt in South America, it is seen as a major event in Guyana's anti-colonial struggles, and when Guyana became a republic in 1970 the state declared 23 February as a day to commemorate the start of the Berbice slave revolt.
The First Maroon War was a conflict between the Jamaican Maroons and the colonial British authorities that started around 1728 and continued until the peace treaties of 1739 and 1740. It was led by self-liberated Africans who set up communities in the mountains. The name "Maroon" was given to these Africans, and for many years they fought the British colonial Government of Jamaica for their freedom. The maroons were very skilled, particularly in guerrilla warfare. It was followed about half a century later by the Second Maroon War.
The New York Slave Revolt of 1712 was an uprising in New York City, in the Province of New York, of 23 Black slaves. They killed nine whites and injured another six before they were stopped. More than 70 black people were arrested and jailed. Of these, 27 were put on trial, and 21 convicted and executed.
Tacky's War, Tacky's Revolt, or Tacky's Rebellion was a widespread fight for their freedom by enslaved people in the British Colony of Jamaica in the 1760s. Led by Akan people —tribes including Ashanti, Fanti, Nzema and Akyem—it was loosely led by a Fanti royal and warlord called Tacky (TwiTakyi) in eastern Jamaica.
Jamaican Maroons descend from Africans who freed themselves from slavery on the Colony of Jamaica and established communities of free black people in the island's mountainous interior, primarily in the eastern parishes. Africans who were enslaved during Spanish rule over Jamaica (1493–1655) may have been the first to develop such refugee communities.
Jack Gladstone was an enslaved Guianese man who led the Demerara rebellion of 1823, one of the large slave rebellions in the British Empire. He was captured and tried after the rebellion, and deported.
The Demerara rebellion of 1823 was an uprising involving between 9,000 and 12,000 enslaved people that took place in the British colony of Demerara-Essequibo in what is now Guyana. The exact number of how many took part in the uprising is a matter of debate. The rebellion, which began on 18 August 1823 and lasted for two days. Their goal was full emancipation. The uprising was triggered by a widespread but mistaken belief that Parliament had passed a law that abolished slavery and that this was being withheld by the colonial rulers. Instigated chiefly by Jack Gladstone, an enslaved man from the "Success" plantation, the rebellion also involved his father, Quamina, and other senior members of their church group. Its English pastor, John Smith, was implicated.
Quamina Gladstone, most often referred to simply as Quamina, was a Guyanese slave from Africa and father of Jack Gladstone. He and his son were involved in the Demerara rebellion of 1823, one of the largest slave revolts in the British colonies before slavery was abolished.
Igbo people in Jamaica were trafficked by Europeans onto the island between the 18th and 19th centuries as enslaved labour on plantations. Igbo people constituted a large portion of the African population enslaved people in Jamaica. Jamaica received the largest amount of enslaved people from the biafra region than anywhere else in the diaspora during the slave trade. Some slave censuses detailed the large number of enslaved Igbo people on various plantations throughout the island on different dates throughout the 18th century. Their presence was a large part in forming Jamaican culture, Igbo cultural influence remains in language, dance, music, folklore, cuisine, religion and mannerisms. In Jamaica the Igbo were often referred to as Eboe or Ibo. There are a substantial number of Igbo language loanwords in Jamaican Patois. Igbo people mostly populated the northwestern section of the island.
Cudjoe, Codjoe or Captain Cudjoe, sometimes spelled Cudjo – corresponding to the Akan day name Kojo, Codjoe or Kwadwo – was a Maroon leader in Jamaica during the time of Nanny of the Maroons. In Twi, Cudjoe or Kojo is the name given to a boy born on a Monday. He has been described as "the greatest of the Maroon leaders."
The Crown Colony of Jamaica and Dependencies was a British colony from 1655, when it was captured by the English Protectorate from the Spanish Empire. Jamaica became a British colony from 1707 and a Crown colony in 1866. The Colony was primarily used for sugarcane production, and experienced many slave rebellions over the course of British rule. Jamaica was granted independence in 1962.
Free black people in Jamaica fell into two categories. Some secured their freedom officially, and lived within the slave communities of the Colony of Jamaica. Others ran away from slavery, and formed independent communities in the forested mountains of the interior. This latter group included the Jamaican Maroons, and subsequent fugitives from the sugar and coffee plantations of coastal Jamaica.
References
↑ Edwards, B. (1972). The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies. United States: Arno Press.
↑ Crooks, John Joseph (1973), Records Relating to the Gold Coast Settlements from 1750 to 1874 (London: Taylor & Francis), p. 62. ISBN978-0-7146-1647-6.
↑ Hughes, Ben (2021). When I Die I Shall Return to My Own Land: The New York Slave Revolt of 1712. Westholme Publishing. ISBN9781594163562.
↑ Sebro, Louise (2013), "The 1733 Slave Revolt on the Island of St. John: Continuity and Change from Africa to the Americas", Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity, Contributions to Global Historical Archaeology, Springer New York, vol.37, pp.261–274, doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-6202-6_15, ISBN978-1-4614-6201-9
↑ Révauger, Cécile (October 2008). The Abolition of Slavery – The British Debate 1787–1840. Presse Universitaire de France. pp.105–106. ISBN978-2-13-057110-0.
Behn, A., C. Gallagher, & S. Stern (2000). Oroonoko, or, The royal slave. Bedford Cultural Editions. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's.
Williams, Brackette (1990), "Dutchman Ghosts and the History Mystery: Ritual, Colonizer, and Colonized Interpretations of the 1763 Berbice Slave Rebellion", Journal of Historical Sociology, 3 (2): 133–165, doi:10.1111/j.1467-6443.1990.tb00094.x .
Egerton, Douglas R. He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesey, 2nd edn. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004.
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