Crossed Histories

Say the word “maroon” and most people will think if not of the colour, then of being stranded on a desert island. They might imagine a Robinson Crusoe scenario, where an interchangeable tropical location provides a backdrop to a (usually male, usually white) struggle for survival. But there is an older, Caribbean genealogy to the word that takes us back to the history of slavery.

Maroons were Caribbean rebels: Africans and their descendants who had escaped plantations to form their own communities. Settling in hard-to-reach mountain ranges and stretches of rainforest, they had to defend themselves against societies that sought to re-­enslave them. “Petit marronage” was a more ambiguous practice whereby enslaved people would disappear for days or months, only to eventually return to the plantation. As a form of resistance, petit marronage involved a complex dynamic between freedom and...