Guiana maroon communities sustained continuous independent marronage for centuries

Evidence

Finally, in the British and French Guianas and Dutch Suriname, there occurred the most extraordinary instances of marronage, the formation of what in the literature is rightly referred to as the “Bush Negro tribes.” These people—the Saramaka, Matawai, Kwinti, and the Djuka, Aluku, and Paramaka—constitute the most enduring and oldest examples of continuous marronage. They are a people who, in the instance of Suriname, could be until quite recently in this century described as constituting “a state within a state.” Their history, too, begins in the seventeenth century, somewhere near its second quarter. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 687

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the specific Bush Negro tribes and frames them as ‘a state within a state.’
• XREF: connects to: Marronage took many forms, from staying near plantations to fleeing to towns — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 188; Palmares’ geography of natural defense made the maroon state viable — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 663