Marronage and the Dialectics of Spatial Sovereignty in Colonial Jamaica

Abstract

Jamaica’s colonial plantations have long served as examples of the brutality and oppression that characterized Caribbean slave regimes. Yet these sites consisted of landscapes which were multivalent and complex and where slaves often sought control over their own lives through their manipulation of and movement through space. This chapter explores the continuum of spatial sovereignty exerted by the slaves within the plantations of Jamaica. Drawing from archaeological and documentary sources, we discuss the related phenomena of grand marronage, petite marronage, and the presence of field houses throughout the plantation landscape. These field houses functioned as places of refuge which were neither part of the established plantation world nor that of the Grand Maroons. We argue that in order to gain a deeper understanding of the sociospatial dynamics of the colonial plantation complex, we must look to these in-between spaces.KeywordsJamaicaMarronagePlantationLandscapeSlavesField houses