Trelawny Maroon Women and the Search for Autonomy

On July 8th, 1796, and under guard by the 96th regiment, 568 Trelawny Maroons of Jamaica sailed to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Of this number, two-thirds were women and children. Four years later, on September 30th, 177 women and 151 men boarded the transport, the Asia, to Freetown, Sierra Leone. Although not by much, women once again comprised the majority. This paper situates the Trelawny Maroon women within the complex histories of migrations (forced and unforced) to elucidate the gendered dimensions of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century African-diasporic migrations. In particular, it centers these women within Britain’s efforts to reorient its global image and diasporic subjects' attempts to bolster freedom through strategic maneuvering of British colonial experimental landscapes. With Nova Scotia’s and Sierra Leone’s other inhabitants and unique histories in mind, this paper tells a relational account of the Trelawny women’s experiences to explore how community, religion, identity, and status shaped Black women’s quest for full freedom in ways that transcended colonial and imperial boundaries.