The treaties between Maroon communities and colonial powers are among the most consequential legal documents produced in the history of the Americas — and among the least studied. They are consequential because they represent the formal legal acknowledgment by the colonial power that the Maroon communities had rights that the empire was obligated to respect. They are understudied because colonial historiography has consistently treated them as minor administrative incidents rather than as the legally significant events they are.

The Treaty of Cudjoe, signed on March 1, 1739, between the British colonial government of Jamaica and the Leeward Maroon leader Cudjoe, granted the Leeward Maroon community 1,500 acres of land in the Cockpit Country of western Jamaica, the right to self-governance within that territory, the freedom of all Maroons then living, and the right to trade with Jamaican towns. The treaty was witnessed and signed by both parties. It was recorded in the colonial archives. It has been upheld by the Jamaican Supreme Court in 2018 as a valid and currently binding legal instrument. The rights it conferred are not historical. They are current.

The Treaty Framework — What the Documents Actually Say

The treaty between the British colonial government and the Windward Maroon community, signed in 1740, similarly granted territorial rights, self-governance, and the legal freedom of the Windward Maroon people. The Saramaka treaties in Suriname — signed between the Dutch colonial government and the Saramaka Maroon community in 1762 — granted similar rights, including the right to self-governance in a defined territory and the formal recognition of Saramaka freedom.

The Saramaka treaties are the basis of the most significant international law ruling on Maroon rights ever issued. In 2007, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in Saramaka People v. Suriname that the Saramaka people held collective territorial rights over their traditional lands that Suriname was legally obligated to respect, that Suriname had violated those rights by granting logging and mining concessions over Saramaka territory without adequate consultation and consent, and that Suriname was required to remediate those violations and protect Saramaka territorial rights going forward. The ruling drew on the 1762 treaties as evidence of the long-standing recognition of Saramaka sovereignty. The treaties from 1762 produced legal consequences in 2007. They will produce legal consequences in the future.

Treaty Rights Today — The Living Legal Instruments

The contemporary legal relevance of the Maroon treaties is not merely historical or symbolic. The Accompong Maroon community of St. Elizabeth, Jamaica — the direct successor community to the Leeward Maroons who signed the Treaty of Cudjoe — has been engaged in active legal and political assertion of the treaty rights since at least the 1990s. The 2018 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the treaty as a currently binding legal instrument was a significant victory for the Accompong community’s rights claims. But it was also the beginning of a process, not the end. The rights recognized in the treaty — territorial rights, self-governance rights, the right to be consulted about activities that affect Maroon territory — are rights that the Jamaican government is now legally obligated to respect. Whether and how that obligation is honored is an ongoing political and legal contest.

The Windward Maroon community of Moore Town in Portland, Jamaica, faces similar legal questions about the territorial and self-governance rights recognized in the 1740 treaty. The Maroon communities of Suriname are engaged in ongoing legal proceedings about the territorial rights recognized in the Saramaka decision and subsequent rulings. The Quilombo communities of Brazil — the descendants of Palmares and other Maroon communities — have constitutional rights under the 1988 Brazilian Constitution to the territories their communities have historically occupied, but the titling process has been slow and contested. The treaties are not finished documents. They are ongoing legal instruments whose interpretation and enforcement are live questions in courts and legislatures across the Americas.