Werner Zips reveals in this book that the search for fundamental truths about
the historical Maroons has really just begun.

Kenneth Bilby
Research Associate, Smithsonian Institution

In 1975, Nanny was declared the first and, is to date, the only female National Hero in Jamaica. Though revered as a leader of the Maroons – that group of runaway slaves who fought the British during the 18th century and established free communities in the mountainous interior of Jamaica, maintaining their freedom and independence – much of Nanny’s story and that of the Maroons has been from oral tradition which paints a different picture from the Eurocentric historiography of colonial sources.

Using an ethnohistorical approach that combines political and legal anthropology with an African interpretive framework, Anthropologist Werner Zips takes Nanny’s key role in the Maroon societies to probe into the African political, legal, social and religious experiences throughout the periods of slavery, colonial rule and postcolonial nation building to provide a new perspective on the Maroons beyond the African cultural retentions in the New World.

Contents

Foreword by Kenneth M. Bilby

Preface: The Porcupine Fights for Justice

Introduction: Encounters with History – History of Encounters

1. Ethnohistorical Appraisal of the ‘Historical Present’ 
2. The Logic of Maroon Political Praxis: Some Theoretical and Methodological Notes
3. Routes from the Roots – Africa in Jamaica
4. A Comparative Dimension of West Africa and the Caribbean: On the Structural History of Chieftaincy among the Maroons 
5. Engendering History: Comparative Reconstruction of Female Political Participation in Jamaica and West Africa 
6. Sanctified by Blood Sacrifice – The 1738/1739 Peace Treaty as the Basis for Maroon Sovereignty

Epilogue: The ‘Maroon’ Struggle as Part of an African Freedom Struggle by Mutabaruka

About The Author

Werner Zips studied law and anthropology in Vienna. He is Professor in the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna and has written numerous articles and books on legal anthropology, political anthropology, ethnohistory, and Caribbean and African studies. He is the author of Black Rebels, African-Caribbean Freedom Fighters in Jamaica and the editor of Rastafari: A Universal Philosophy in the Third Millenium. He has also directed numerous films on Jamaica, Cuba, Ghana and various Asian countries.