60199616-flight-to-freedom-african-runaways-and-maroons-in-the-americas

222 Flight to Freedom
hardly have existed under the military conditions in which the pre-treaty settlements
were established and maintained; and that at the centre or headquarters
a more oligarchic – or at least less democratic – system must have
prevailed. However, there was no reason why such an oligarchic system
should have existed at the village level. We know that what Thoden van
Velzen describes could not have been patterned on European models existing
at any time in Suriname because no such models ever existed. It was therefore
either sui generis or based largely on African models.
Numerous descriptions exist of traditional African models that parallel
what Thoden van Velzen saw, perhaps most notably among the segmented
(or so-called stateless) societies of southeast Nigeria – Igbo (Ibo), Ijo (Ijaw),
Efik – and the Delta from which many enslaved persons in the Caribbean
were drawn (Webster and Boahen 1980, 98–110, 137–40; Jones 1963; Dike
1956). The Ndjuka electoral pattern might therefore have closely resembled
what Africans had practised in their homeland. In these African societies,
elected rulers generally could not govern despotically, though they had a lot
of influence. All important matters relating to the community were expected
to be debated by the senior members of the community, and sometimes by
the full assembly of adult men. When the British tried to change the Igbo
system, which had lasted well into the colonial period, they encountered
numerous protests and a few riots (Isichei 1976; Ikime 1966, 559–73). We
know today that, in the majority of African societies, even the most powerful
rulers were constrained by checks and balances on their power, through tradition
and religious taboos (see below), as was the case in Asante, Dahomey
and Oyo, main areas from which transatlantic captives were drawn. 11 We
therefore need to look more critically at the alleged transformation of the
elected ruler from a democratic to an authoritarian, and sometimes a
despotic, figure in Maroon communities, and at what factors accounted for
that transformation, if it indeed occurred.
At the highest level, the command structure of most Maroon communities,
while often built on the military systems of the Europeans in the
Americas, nevertheless retained important African features, foremost among
which were the councils of government. How, and how much, these operated
in specific Maroon communities of the Americas remain uncertain, but there
seems to be emerging consensus that they operated to a greater or lesser
extent. The maximum ruler did exercise some degree of personal authority
and might even, in certain circumstances, order the banishment or execution