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Maroons and Revolutionary Struggle
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Three-Fingered Jack, whom they also killed (Campbell 1990, 155, 158). The
Ndjuka Maroons played a seminal role in the last phase of the Boni Wars
from 1789 to 1793, in which the Boni Maroons were finally defeated (Thoden
van Velzen 1995, 114).
Nonetheless, we must be careful not to go to extremes in assessing the
post-treaty Maroons. Campbell (1990, 7) does so when she asserts that
the willingness of the treaty Maroons throughout the region to ally with the
slaveholding regimes was as pervasive as their resistance in former times.
Taking the contrary point of view, Mullin (1992, 48–49, 293) asserts, in the
case of Jamaica, that the policy of employing treaties to gain Maroon allies
was a clear failure, and that Maroons should not be regarded as a sort of rural
police apprehending runaways. He notes that the Whites always distrusted
the treaty Maroons and feared that they would join the insurgents in servile
uprisings. He states further that in spite of the assistance that the Leeward
Maroons, in particular, gave in the suppression of the Tackey revolt, one colonial
governor expressed the view in the 1770s that their behaviour during that
revolt confirmed that they could not be relied on to defend the country in
times of social unrest (Mullin 1992, 49, 293). When the Maroon uprising took
place in 1795, several enslaved persons joined the ranks of the insurgents.
Many Whites viewed the uprising as the confirmation of their fears that all
Blacks, treaty Maroons or not, were a perfidious breed and could never be
trusted fully – not, of course, taking into account their own failure to treat
the Maroons with the respect due to them. It was hardly surprising that after
the suppression of the uprising a large number of Maroons were exiled to
Nova Scotia.
Clearly, treaties did not stop large-scale marronage; in fact, it is quite possible
that they encouraged other enslaved persons to abscond and set up new
communities, in the hope that they too would secure formal recognition of
their freedom through a treaty. For this reason, some slaveholders stoutly
opposed all negotiations by the authoritarian state with the Maroons. 8
Suriname provides an outstanding example of the escalation of Maroon wars
after the battles with the Ndjukas, Saramakas and Matawais (the main
threats up to that time) had ceased as a result of treaties in 1760, 1762 and
1767, respectively. The most extensive wars commenced around 1768 against
the new and perhaps more fearsome Aluku (Boni) Maroons. The government
was forced at one point to hire mercenaries – dealers in death, according
to García (1989, 76) – to assist the regular soldiers and citizen militias,