This post comes from a History and Anthropology student at the University of Birmingham.
Maroon communities, prevalent in the United States, South America and Jamaica, were formed of black slaves who had managed to escape their white owners and build different lives for themselves, whilst continuing to combat the plantocracy system; also known as a ‘slavocracy’, whereby society is ruled by a dominant class of plantation owners. The focus of this essay will lie with the maroons of Jamaica, as they are considered to be the slave society with the greatest number of revolts and successes. The study of maroon guerrilla warfare is vital when attempting to identify their most salient characteristics. To gain a thorough insight into the emergence of and nature of these communities, their offensive and defensive tactics will need closer investigation, as will their Spanish historical links, African collaboration and Patterson’s formula for slave revolts.With the English colonial takeover of Jamaica in 1655, the Spanish left behind some of their black slaves, who are believed to be the earliest Jamaican maroons and existed in the interior mountains of the island. As a result of maroon settlements tending to cluster in inaccessible, mountainous areas, the English found tracking them extremely difficult . Jamaica had the biggest economy in the West Indies with a regular influx of new slaves and a low degree of ‘creolisation’ leading to a high frequency of slave rebellions and escapees who were able to join the already existing maroons. The historical background of the maroons in Jamaica offered slaves hope of freedom and the possibility of accommodation among those communities if they were going to risk escape. Whilst rebellions and escapes were largely the cause for great increases in maroon numbers, slaves were also captured by maroons during plantation raids . Also, slaves or free blacks sent to fight the maroons sometimes defected; this was of great military value to the maroons as these defected slaves often had arms, as well as knowledge of the plantocracy’s plans . These factors, coupled with the atrocious conditions experienced by the slaves, provide an explanation as to why maroon communities emerged and grew in numbers in the seventeenth and eighteenth century.
The maroons of Jamaica can be divided into two factions; those situated in the west came to be known as the Windwards and those in
the
east the Leewards. 
