Jamaican maroons replicated African and Brazilian political structures.

Evidence

Though Akan-speakers seemed to have been dominant among these Jamaican maroons, the political structure of the Leeward Maroons closely followed that found among the more central African palmaristas in Brazil. Cudjoe, who became a dominant Leeward maroon chieftain in the 1730s, employed a paramilitary organization that combined central authority with decentralized settlement. On the other hand, Kopytoff notes, “by the 1730s, the maroons in the east had coalesced into a kind of cooperative federation in contrast.” One clear distinction, though, between the Jamaican and Brazilian Blacks was the presence of “obeah men and women, magical practitioners” among the Windward and Leeward maroons. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 678

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Shows the spread of a single African political rationality across distant slave societies, central to the Black radical tradition’s coherence.

Related

• Two durable maroon societies formed in the Jamaican highlands. (similarity 0.86)
• Jamaican maroon societies grew primarily through slave rebellions and escape (similarity 0.84)
• Maroon communities prefigured the Haitian revolution as a living challenge to colonial ideology (similarity 0.80)
• Maroons were integral participants in the genesis of the Haitian Revolution (similarity 0.80)
• Maroon growth came chiefly from slave rebellions and escapes. (similarity 0.79)
• Maroon communities appeared wherever slavery and refuge terrain coexisted. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Two durable maroon societies formed in the Jamaican highlands. #corroborates (0.80) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 674