Towards the arboreal side-effects of marronage: Black geographies and ecologies of the Jamaican forest

Abstract

The English colonial plan of converting Jamaica into a settler colony was challenged by the Maroons who established communities in the interior of the island. Living in the forests at the edge of the expanding plantation system, Maroons were feared by aspiring white settlercolonists. The zone where the plantation and white settlements met the Maroon de-facto territory became a frontier zone, where race, belonging, and freedom were contested. The Maroons inspired Black revolt and dreams of freedom, but after signing treaties ending their war against the English in the mid-18th century, the Maroons became dreaded by non-Maroon Blacks in Jamaica. Fear of the Maroons had productive and protective effects on the physical environment; the conservation of much of Jamaica's interior was one of these effects. The paper uses colonial era admissions of this fear as openings for showing how Jamaican conservation was shaped by the Maroons as spatial actors. The paper proposes conceptualizing the afforesting outcomes of marronage as arboreal side-effects, geographical and ecological consequences that are denied in foremost accounts of colonial forest conservation. The paper illustrates the importance of considering Black spatial thought, race and the geographic imaginary (Black Geographies) alongside the connections between antiblackness, the exploitation of nature, and the imperatives of ecological justice (Black ecologies). Reading Maroon practices and histories through and as Black geographies, the paper argues for a subaltern environmental history of Jamaica that affirms Black spatial agency and epistemologies. Consequently, the paper helps clarify marronage as a material-ecological as well as social-political process that is always shaped by the morphology of power and the landscape.