On Maroonage: The Historical Roots of New Afrikan Nationhood
A historical materialist analysis on why maroons were the proto-vanguard of the North American continent.
Note: Read Mao’s “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan” (1927) to understand why the national question in “America” is vital to liberating “America.”
Maroons have a unique history on the North, Central, and Southern American land mass of America. One that is contested in the North and beloved and acknowledged in the South. However, maroonage - meaning the specific act of a slave escaping from bondage - is not a unique phenomenon in the history of revolutionary warfare and liberation. In fact, Marxists should view maroonage in a similar fashion to how the early Communist Party of China viewed the Boxer Rebellion and peasant uprisings in general. Even Marx himself considered Spartacus, the Roman slave turned feared rebel, one of the finest figures in history.
This is all to say that maroonage is the continuation of the legacy and historical necessity of intervention through rebellion when there is a lack of a working class and a lack of a party to execute the will of that class. In the Chesapeake region of Virginia, “pattyrollers” or patrols who were groups of poor, armed white men were tasked specifically with hunting down Maroons and escaped slaves. These patrols would later become the material and military basis of the modern police which has killed more Black people every since George Floyd’s death in 2020. Like the Black Liberation Army, Black Panther Party, the Deacons of Defense, and the African Blood Brotherhood — Maroonage resolved the contradiction of slavery through rebellion and captivity through freedom. The Communist Party of China, despite acknowledging the obvious non-proletarian origins of the Society of Harmonius Fists, recognizes that without that group: the conversation of anti-imperialism would have never been brought up as a national solution to eliminating the colonizers and compradors that created the Century of Humiliation in China. It is safe to say that without our maroons, freedmen escaping to the North, and the martyrs who died under criminal circumstances with revolutionary honor from the plantations to the cities and the prisons then the realization for the development of a party could have never been realized and rigorously acknowledged as a historical necessity. So to does the Worker’s Party of New Afrika need to see ourselves as our own liberators (echoing comrade Jalil Muntaqim’s decisive call to action) and those who want to escape the plantation, not survive and thrive on it. Maroonage is the basis of the New Afrikan Worker’s Party and and the progenitor of revolutionary communism in North America. It is an historical epoch overshadowing all revolutionary movements in America from the Blackbeard pirates1 to John Brown’s militia to the Battle of Blair Mountain. But most importantly, it is the historical, scientific and economic foundations of a New Afrikan nation on North American soil.2
Africans in Virginia formed closed societies to practice martial arts and what we call “root doctoring,” a practice also called Hoodoo which is a religion indigenous to Africans on the North American continent and practiced predominantly by women. Reflecting the historical and cultural signficance of the matriarch within African cultures as pillars and foundational organizers, primary caretakers, and leaders in our communities. The logic behind these practices illustrates a similar logic as to why “Boxers” fled urban environments filled with corruption, European Christianity, and opium to cleanse their mind, spirits, and bodies against the material harms caused by colonialism and Western imperialism using peasant wisdom as some call it. Martial arts such as knocking & kicking, wrestling, pugilism became important communal activities for enslaved Africans to strengthen the mind and spirit under captivity and Maroonage was merely the ultimate expression of this.3
Root doctoring was such as an important feature in many African societies in America that even plantation owners took stock and noticed immediately that those slaves who were root doctors commanded higher levels of respect from their peers. Reflecting a historical pan-African solidarity showing that despite the many places Africans in America have been kidnapped from, Africa will always be apart of us. Root doctors are also called conjurers and male conjurers in particular we said to harbor traits aligned with resistance and rebellion, George Washington Carver was considered a conjurer before he was viewed as a peanut farmer which is a fact that is glossed over despite its significance. The basis of any nation’s economy is agriculture. And if New Afrika was birthed into existence, Dr. Carver’s archive of works would provide significant answers we need in addressing one of the key issues strangling our nation: food sovereignty.4 However, despite the importance and significance of certain male conjurers: women dominated these roles and were viewed as extremely vital in their communities while occupying said roles.
African women on plantations were leaders and organizers. They took decisive action in trade, agriculture, and even combat due to the violent realities of slavery and the fact that enslaved Africans were not “gendered” in the way that that European men and women were.5 They worked, wrestled, and trained with men AND women. There are even stories of enslaved bondswomen ferociously beating would-be rapists and floggers with martial prowess and deadly precision. Therefore work and even play was not gendered as rigorously as some ahistorical actors might imply. In other words, Africans and Europeans did not have the same gender categories. But instead European gender categories were imposed upon Africans - this is not unique to our population either. African women were denied gender yet had it used against them when it was suited to produce more “laborers” via forced breeding and when their own children had to be enslaved due to the violent transgressions of European planters. African women, as the great Claudia Jones theorized succinctly, are triple oppressed on the basis of race, gender (or the weaponization of it), and class (or enslavement) and during slavery this dehumanization created the conditions for what was known as maroonage.
Escaping the plantation was the only way for Africans, regardless of gender, to become fully human again and the slave rebellion was merely a phase in regaining that natural humanity back. Maroon settlements specifically drew from African military science which had mastered the following since Kush defeated Rome - retreat to the interior, remain self-sufficient, engage in a protracted war of attrition. Many Maroons carried guns or had unique swordsmanship skills that combined guns and machetes, many also partnered with or were considered pirates (like the Black Caesar legends, a pirate moniker that was used to describe different Black pirate captains and crrews) and these fighting tactics can be seen in common raiding and ambushing tactics used by them. Even those who were unarmed were typically unarmed out of confidence in having the skills to acquire arms from would be patrolmen — this reflects a military doctrine that predates both Mao, Che, and Giap as far as guerilla warfare. Clausewitz and Engels too, to be blunt.
One can define slavery as “permanent, violent domination of natally aliented people” which is historically consistent if we begin with capitalism’s origins in 1492. Even Frederick Douglasss discusses the feeling of liberation when engaged in revolutionary violence against one’s captor. He himself says that it gave him honor and self-worth, echoing and predating Frantz Fanon’s “On Violence” chapter in The Wretched of the Earth.6 Even before the wave of anti-colonial uprisings and specifically before the Civil War broke out over the question of slavery versus industrial capitalism, Frederick Douglass who was the leading figure in 19th century abolitionist politics illustrated through his own personal narrative that violence is a cleansing force for the colonized. Whether they have theorized it in writing for themselves or not.
Maroonage was not only a development that gave Africans in America communal martial and survival skills. But it was an act that provided physiological, psychological, and spatial liberation to a nation under violent captivity and colonial subjugation. The Worker’s Party of New Afrika must reflect on this legacy and not just seek to copy it but to transcend it to honor our martyrs and finish the task of liberating our nation from the plantation and finding honor in steadfastness, land, and national unity.
70% of Edward “Blackbeard” Teach’s pirate crew was African.
Desch-Obi, TJ. 2021. Fighting for Honor: History of African Martial Arts in the Atlantic World. University of South Carolina Press.
"While defense of personal honor could lead to physical conflict, often more serious forms of retribution fell on those who betrayed the steadfastness of the community.” - TJ Desch Obi
Zafar, Rafia. 2015. Carver’s Food Movement. https://commonreader.wustl.edu/c/carvers-food-movement/.
Davis, Angela. 1981. Women, Race, and Class.
Douglass, Frederick. 1845. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.