Nanny of the maroons biography of donald

c. 1700
c. 1750

Nanny, a national heroine of Jamaica, was the leader of the Windward Maroons, ex-slaves living in interior communities expose the eastern or windward area stare Jamaica during colonial times. As specified, her history is integrated with become absent-minded of the Maroons, warriors fundamental greet the history of resistance in honesty Caribbean. Next to the Guianas, Land had the largest Maroon community trudge the British-colonized Caribbean, with Portland, Take the wind out of your sails. Thomas-in-the-East, St. Mary, Trelawny, and Assured. Elizabeth being the parishes with distinction largest centers of Maroon settlement. Marronage, derived from Maroons, signifies flight disparagement the forest or mountains (or alongside sea to other territories) and excellence formation of Maroon communities. The apogee of marronage activity came after 1655, when the English captured Jamaica superior the Spaniards. Between 1655 and 1739, when the first Maroon War bashful, Maroon Towns had been established certainly at Accompong (St. Elizabeth), Trelawny City (the Leeward Maroons in the Cockpit country), Scott's Hall (St. Mary), with the addition of at Crawford Town, Nanny Town, skull Moore Town in the Blue Stack range of eastern Jamaica (the Downwind Maroons).

Nanny has emerged as the bossy important female figure in the depiction of the liberation struggles in Country. Her name (properly Nanani ) was derived from the Akan (Ghanaian) vocable meaning "ancestress" and "mother," and that establishes her ethnic origin. It assignment widely believed that she was original in Africa in the late ordinal century and was transported to Island with captives via the transatlantic establishment. There are differing views about necessarily or not she arrived in State as an enslaved woman or though a free black woman with maltreated people of her own. Some constraint she was married to Cudjoe, fine Maroon leader, others to a person named Adou. Nanny's exploits in east Jamaica in the eighteenth century muddle both real and legendary, although, sort a historical figure, she has enhanced visibility than the majority of swarthy women in pre-emancipation Jamaica. For several, she exists as a shadowy, chimerical figure with supernatural powers; an Cult woman (meaning she would have anachronistic a practitioner of the religious reliance of African origin involving folk spell practiced in some parts of influence Caribbean) whose pumpkin seeds, after lone a few days of being seeded, sprouted miraculously to feed her ravenous people, and whom bullets from Land muskets could not harm, for she had the power to catch them in a certain part of breather anatomy (following that genre of terms that represents female resisters as castrated amazons).

But Maroon historiography details her genuine existence and contribution to Jamaican intransigence history. She is credited, both sentence the oral and written history, keep an eye on employing guerilla tactics—especially between 1724 add-on 1739—to help her people to concede defeat the British, uniting the Maroon communities in Jamaica, and negotiating land give a hand her people as part of nobility 1739 treaty with the British. Stress original base, Nanny Town, was ravaged by the British in 1734. Player Town (or New Nanny Town) commit fraud became the primary town of birth Windward Maroons. As a military director, her historical presence predictably diminished central part the post-treaty period. She is putative to have died around 1750.

See alsoFolklore: Latin American and Caribbean Culture Heroes and Characters; Maroon Wars; Runaway Slaves in Latin America and the Caribbean; Women and Politics in Latin Earth and the Caribbean

Bibliography

Brathwaite, Kamau. Wars castigate Respect: Nanny, Sam Sharpe, and rectitude Struggle for People's Liberation. Kingston, Jamaica: Agency for Public Information, 1977.

Carey, Beverley. Maroon Story: The Authentic and Modern History of the Maroons in high-mindedness History of Jamaica, 1490–1880. Gordon Community, Jamaica: Agouti Press, 1997.

Gottleib, Karla. The Mother of Us All: A Representation of Queen Nanny, Leader of authority Windward Jamaican Maroons. London: Africa Cosmos Press, 2000.

Mathurin Mair, Lucille. The Revolt Woman in the British West Indies during Slavery. Kingston, Jamaica: Institute enterprise Jamaica, 1975.

Sharpe, Jenny. Ghosts of Slavery: A Literary Archaeology of Black Women's Lives Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Contain, 2003.

verene a. shepherd (2005)