Nadia Tabit, “Betrayal by Treaty?: Refuting the Notion of Maroon Betrayal in the Treaties of 1739”
Mentor: Rebecca Shumway, History
In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jamaica, during the late Spanish and early British periods, the Maroons were Africans who fled slavery and developed free settlements. While the self-liberated Maroons are praised for securing their own freedom, they are also remembered by some as collaborators with slavery and colonialism for signing treaties with the British. The Anglo-Maroon treaties of 1739 between the Jamaican Maroons and the British authority required the former to arrest runaways and to aid in the suppression of slave revolts. Did signing the treaties make the Maroons traitors to their countrymen? This paper, in closely examining the separate treaties concluded by Maroon leaders and envoys of the British crown in 1739, seeks to argue that the Maroons did not betray their countrymen by signing treaties with their British antagonists. I base this argument first on the fact that the Maroons were misled about the nature of the documents they signed and secondly on the fact that signing the treaties was an act of self-preservation that should not be perceived as a betrayal. This paper engages with primary source documents to exhibit how the British cheated the Maroons through deceptive clauses and dishonest explanations. Next, it considers how signing the treaties was the Maroons’ only means to protect their freedom and maximize their chances of survival as a sovereign community. Finally, it ends by discussing how the notion that Maroons were traitors to the cause of Black liberation is based on anachronistic assumptions about racial solidarity. This paper aims to complicate the prevailing imagery that has tended to reduce the Jamaican Maroons to “traitors.” I also hope to demonstrate that care should be taken in our moral evaluations of the Maroons and other people from the past.
Thank you for viewing my presentation! My name is Nadia Tabit and I recently graduated from UWM this past December with a BA in History. I worked on this project with during my senior capstone course organized around the theme “Africans, Slavery, and the Atlantic World” with Dr. Shumway. Dr. Shumway supported us in designed and writing an original research paper that investigated a historical subject within the broad topic of the Atlantic World and Africa between c. 1450 and 1850. Thank you to Dr. Shumway and my classmates who encouraged meaningful analyses of focused arguments and built a safe, supportive, virtual learning environment amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Great job, Nadia!
Very interesting paper! I am especially impressed by your careful reading of the treaties and your clearly organized oral presentation. One thing that it made me wonder about was the larger history of treaty-making in the Anglo-North American world. How did these treaties and their imposition (?) on the Maroons compare to, say, the treaties of the United States with indigenous peoples. In any case, I agree with Prof. Shumway. Great job!