Transformations of Freedom in the Land of the Maroons: Creolization in the Cockpits, Jamaica

Abstract

Jean Besson, Transformations of Freedom in the Land of the Maroons: Creolization in the Cockpits, Jamaica. Kingston: Ian Randle, 2016. 367 pp.REVIEWED BY ELIZABETH THOMAS-HOPETHIS DETAILED COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CREOLISATION IN MAROON and non-Maroon communities of Jamaica is intended by the author to rectify a hitherto neglected aspect of studies of Afro-Caribbean culture. Here, the comparison focuses upon three communities at the Maroon/non-Maroon interface in the Jamaican Cockpit Country: Accompong, Maroon Town and Aberdeen. In Accompong, the identity of the villagers is associated with the land fought for and won by their ancestors in the Maroon Wars. Maroon Town, on the other hand, although located on the main site of the First Maroon War, thereby becoming an independent Maroon enclave, lost its original status as part of the Maroon polity following its betrayal and subsequent defeat in the Second Maroon War. Thereafter, the people became part of the surrounding peasant community, claiming descent from early planters and slaves as well as Maroons. Aberdeen did not exist until after Emancipation, when it was founded as a village of freed slaves close to Accompong.Following an initial discussion of creolisation, Besson outlines the major historical themes that impacted the communities under study. Emphasis is placed on the Maroon Wars of the 1700s which led to the establishment of the Leeward Maroon polity, and a summary is provided of the major slave rebellion of 1831-32, the abolition of slavery (1807) and finally the emancipation (1834) and full freedom (1838) of slaves. The historical experiences of marronage, slavery and the plantation laid the foundations for the development of Maroon identity that has been variously represented and commemorated in these villages. The author explores the nature of creolisation as processes of indigenisation, and the emergence of the meaning of belonging and purpose that has continued throughout the changing wider national and international events associated with globalisation. These have included the migration of many of the villagers to the UK and USA, as well as the communities' engagement with tourism. In tracing the processes of creolisation in these three settlements that have variously emerged, Besson identified what she interpreted to be the essential elements in the process of creolisation: the tripartite structure of separation or rupture, transition or bridging of disjuncture, and incorporation or reparation. The result was variations in creolisation, argued by Besson to be based on adaptation, negotiation and forming social alliances, culture-building and place-making. These elements are demonstrated most forcibly in the creolisation of the Accompong commons.In Accompong, identification with the Maroon polity and early Maroons involved the symbolic relocating of the main site of the Maroon Wars to Accompong. There is strong connection with the land, involving the incorporation of the forest first as provision grounds, then as commons, and with the sacred burial places of successive generations of Maroons. The Maroon identity is further preserved in the rituals that connect the living with the spirits of the ancestors; the living gaining protection and spiritual power through spirit possession (Myal). …