AP® African American Studies review sheet from Aim for Five (aimforfive.com/african-american-studies/units/2/2-15)
Unit 2 · Topic 2.15
2.15 Maroon Societies and Autonomous Black Communities
Across the Americas, people who escaped slavery built hidden, self-governing maroon communities. Some lasted only a few years, while others, like Palmares in Brazil, lasted nearly a century, and maroon leaders such as Queen Nanny of Jamaica fought wars against colonial powers to defend their freedom.
Key terms
- maroons
- marronage
- Great Dismal Swamp
- quilombo
- palenque
- Palmares
What maroon communities were
Maroons were people who escaped slavery and formed their own free communities. The communities included self-emancipated people and children born free there. They usually grew up in remote, hard-to-reach places, such as mountains, forests and swamps, where enslavers couldn't easily follow.
Maroon communities were autonomous, meaning they governed themselves. African languages and customs from many regions blended and thrived there. Life was hard: maroons faced illness, hunger and the constant threat of attack and recapture. Some communities lasted a few years; others lasted a century.
Maroons across the diaspora
The Portuguese word quilombo comes from kilombo, a word for a war camp in Kimbundu, a Bantu language of West Central Africa. In Angola, Queen Njinga (1.10) had used kilombos as fortified camps where people who escaped Portuguese slavery could find safety and military training.
| Place | Name for maroon communities | Example |
|---|---|---|
| United States | Maroon communities | The Great Dismal Swamp between Virginia and North Carolina; maroons also lived among Native nations, such as the Seminoles (2.17) |
| Spanish America | Palenques | Bayano's community in Panama in the 1500s |
| Brazil | Quilombos | Palmares, the largest, which lasted nearly 100 years in the 1600s |
| Jamaica | Maroon towns | Communities led by Queen Nanny in the 1700s |
Maroon wars and treaties
Maroon leaders and their militias fought wars against colonial governments to protect their communities' freedom. These maroon wars were different from slave revolts: revolts tried to overthrow slavery where it stood, while maroon wars defended free communities that already existed.
Bayano led a maroon community in Panama in wars against the Spanish for several years in the 1500s. In the 1700s, Queen Nanny led the Windward Maroons of Jamaica against the British; she is now one of Jamaica's National Heroes.
Some maroon groups made treaties with colonial governments to secure their freedom and land. The price could be high: some treaties required maroons to return future runaways and help put down slave revolts.
Reading the required images
Three images, made by white European artists, show how outsiders pictured maroons. A 1796 engraving portrays Leonard Parkinson, a Jamaican maroon captain during a war with the British in the 1790s. An 1801 print shows maroons waiting in ambush on a Jamaican estate. Richard Ansdell's 1862 painting The Hunted Slaves shows freedom seekers fighting off attacking dogs in a swamp. Ask how each artist presents maroons: as dangerous enemies, as heroes, or as victims, and what the artist's audience might have wanted to see.
Worked examples
Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.
- Example 1
Distinguishing two forms of resistance
Explain one difference between a maroon war and a slave revolt.
Show the solutionHide the solution
- Step 1: Define a slave revolt: enslaved people rising up against enslavers where they were held.
- Step 2: Define a maroon war: free maroon communities fighting to protect their existing freedom and land.
- Step 3: Give an example of a maroon war.
Answer: Model answer: In a slave revolt, enslaved people rose up against their enslavers, as at Stono in 1739. In a maroon war, people who had already escaped and built free communities fought colonial governments to defend that freedom, as Queen Nanny's Windward Maroons did against the British in Jamaica in the 1700s.
Common mistakes
- Thinking maroons existed only in the Caribbean. They lived in the US too, in places like the Great Dismal Swamp.
- Treating every maroon community as permanently opposed to colonial powers. Some signed treaties that required them to return runaways.
- Mixing up the terms: palenque (Spanish America), quilombo (Brazil).
On the exam
- Know one maroon leader and one community from at least two places.
- For the required images, think about the artist's point of view and audience.
Connected topics
Videos
Check yourself
3 questions on 2.15 Maroon Societies and Autonomous Black Communities. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.
A 1796 engraving shows Leonard Parkinson, a leader of the Maroons of Jamaica, striding barefoot and shirtless, gripping a musket in both hands, with a pouch and a sword at his side. The caption says it was taken "from the Life." It was published during the Second Maroon War, when British colonial forces fought Maroon communities in the island's mountains.
Description written for this practice set of Leonard Parkinson, a Captain of the Maroons, engraving by Abraham Raimbach, 1796
The engraving best illustrates which feature of maroon communities?
Some maroon communities, like Jamaica's earlier in the 1700s, signed treaties with colonial governments. A common condition of such treaties was that maroons
Which place was a maroon refuge within what is now the United States?
0 of 3 answered