Review by Choice Review
In her splendidly researched and argued book, Chopra (San Jose State Univ.) reconstructs the serial relocations of the Trelawney Town Maroons from the mountainous interior of northwest Jamaica (then a British colony) to British Nova Scotia (to which they were deported by the British in 1796) and then to British Sierra Leone (where they self-exiled in 1800). For almost a half century prior to 1796, the Maroons, formerly slaves, preserved their freedom by capturing runaway slaves and, as slaveholders themselves, providing a buffer between the planters and bonds people. They maintained an uneasy truce with Jamaica's plantation elite. In this highly original study, Chopra unveils how free black communities negotiated slavery in three different venues. Throughout she offers fresh observations on the history of British expansionism, creolization, black migrations, Atlantic revolutions, slave and Maroon societies, and gradualist antislavery. The author underscores not only human tenacity and cultural integration, but also the complexity of categorizing the Maroons. They repeatedly resisted white overseers and accommodated themselves to the power of whites and to their empowerment over other blacks. Theirs was a saga of grief, resilience, and tenacity within the context of European imperialism in the Americas and the brutalization of men and women from Africa. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty --John David Smith, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
