Jamaican maroon societies grew primarily through slave rebellions and escape

Evidence

During the next eighty years, two major maroon societies were formed in the highlands of Jamaica. One, the Windward Maroons, settling in the eastern mountains, had as its nucleus the Spanish maroons and those who subsequently joined them from the English plantations and towns. The other, the Leeward Maroons of the west-central interior, came into being in 1673 after the first of the slave rebellions during the English period. In 1690, another major rebellion, beginning on the Sutton estate, added more than 200 refugees to the Leeward settlements complex. Such was the primary fashion in which the settlements grew and maintained themselves: The maroon societies were formed, and their numbers increased, largely by slave rebellions and by individual and group escapes from the plantations. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 674

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing material on Palmares and maroon communities across the African diaspora — Maroon societies compare directly to the Palmares quilombo discussed in your antipolitics notes and Robinson’s earlier Brazilian material.