Swearing by the Past, Swearing to the Future: Sacred Oaths, Alliances, and Treaties Among the Guianese and Jamaican Maroons

Abstract

This article attempts to enhance our understanding of the treaties made between Maroons and European colonial governments by viewing fragmentary historical data, both written and oral, alongside information on present-day Maroon life gathered by the author and a number of other anthropologists. It is argued that the data assembled from these varied sources can best be understood when interpreted with reference to what we know of oath-taking procedures in those African societies from which the Maroons' ancestors were drawn. This approach, combining history and comparative ethnography, can help us achieve a more balanced perspective on the treaties, the status of which remains unresolved in those countries where Maroons have survived as distinct populations until today.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 21 citations exist upstream.