ABSTRACT
Resistance, passive and active, rebellion and marronage were inherent to the condition under which the plantation slaves in the American colonies lived. Marronage, that is the choice of a hard but free existence in the hinterlands of the plantation colonies, was the ultimate consequence of resistance. On the one hand, the slave-owners' attempts at getting back what they considered as their property and, on the other, the Maroons' attacks on the plantations to steal victuals, weapons, powder and additions to their numbers (especially women), led to escalating guerilla warfare. In most cases the Maroons got the worst of it and their communities ceased to exist. There were however a number of Maroon communities which managed to hold their own. Two of these will form the comparative subjects of this paper: the Maroons of Jamaica and those of Surinam. The similarities and differences in the development of both groups will be examined using a number of important historical events such as the origin of the groups, the guerilla wars, the relationship with the colonial communities, the concluded peace treaties, and the extent of their geographical, social and economic isolation. What is, in the first place, most striking is the extent of the similarities in the histories of both groups, and yet the results of these histories also show clear differences. I shall attempt to clarify how eventually the process of differentiation was accomplished.
