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Ethnogenesis in the Guianas and Jamaica: Two Maroon Cases
- University of Iowa Press
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Kenneth Bilby Ethnogenesis in the Guianas and Jamaica Two Maroon Cases The term ethnogenesis, though it entered the English language only a few decades ago, has become well established in the social science lexicon. The growing currency of the term in anthropology reflects an increasing awareness of the fact that sociocultural systems and identities are rarely as static or as closed as was once thought. In current usage, ethnogenesis most often denotes a gradual process through which older ethnic categories and boundaries are redefined. Sometimes it is also used to refer to the transformation or shifting salience of preexisting cultural identities as they become politicized in new contexts. Only rarely is the term applied to cases of full-fledged, truly new ethnogenesis; that is, the rapid formation of entirely new societies and cultures when individuals of diverse backgrounds are suddenly thrown together by fate and forced to create societies afresh. Perhaps this is because these societies are more the exception than the rule in human history. Such societies have been characterized by anthropologists as neoteric or cenogenic, for they cannot be said to have grown entirely, or even primarily, out of any previously existing society; they embody unique and unprecedented biological and cultural blends (Gonzalez 1970; Bilby 1988). Many of these new societies owe their existence to the major uphea,als and displacements of persons associated with European conquest and expansion during the last five centuries, with the African slave trade playil ig a particularly prominent role. Because of their relatively recent and rap;d formation and 120 Ethnogenesis in the Guianas and Jamaica their typically small scale, these societies provide us with a unique opportunity to explore some of the ways in which groups of uprooted and displaced individuals have managed to construct new social orders and cultural identities out of multiple pasts. Among the new peoples that sprang into being as a result of European conquest and colonization are the Maroon societies of the Americas. These societies are composed of descendants of enslaved Africans who escaped from plantations and created new societies and cultures beyond the reach of the European colonial powers. Maroon communities were once spread across the slaveholding areas of the Western Hemisphere, but only a few have survived to the present.! The Windward Maroons ofJamaica and the Aluku, or Boni, of French Guiana and Surinam are two such present-day Maroon peoples. This essay compares the Jamaican Maroon and Aluku cases, focusing on processes of ethnogenesis and examining how economic factors, religious ideology , and cultural notions of kinship have intersected in the construction of new identities and new forms of solidarity.2 The Jamaican Case: The Early Years The first major groupings of Maroons in Jamaica emerged when the British wrested the colony from Spain in 1655 and large numbers of Spanish slaves took advantage of the turmoil to flee to the mountainous interior. Some groups sided with one or the other of the European adversaries, while others remained aloof from the conflict.3 Among these early Maroons were both Africans, veterans of the transatlantic voyage, and Creoles, born in Jamaica. In later years the original Spanish Creoles were joined by Creole slaves born and raised in what had become a British colony. The African-born Maroons, judging from both historical and contemporary evidence, represented a complex spectrum of geographical and cultural regions, ranging from Senegambia and the Gold Coast down through the Congo-Angola area and even into East Africa.4 Although individuals belonging to certain broad ethnolinguistic categories, such as those labeled "Congos" or "Coromantees" by the Europeans, may have been numerically dominant at different periods, there were always smaller numbers of individuals from a wide variety ofother African ethnic groups present, and the ethnic balance continued to shift over time. At any rate, it is certain that many different African languages and cultural backgrounds were represented among the Maroons throughout the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (Kopytoff 1976a: 37-42). Very little can be said with certainty about how the early rebels who escaped from the plantations and banded together in common cause organized them- [3.144.95.248] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 18:55 GMT) Ethnogenesis in the Guianas and Jamaica 121 selves politically and how they actually coalesced into new societies. Nonetheless , a few general statements can be made based on our limited knowledge of life among the Maroons prior to 1739, the year of their landmark peace treaty with the British. First, initial groupings tended to grow...