‘Maroon’ is a collective term for communities across the Americas descended from self-liberated slaves who moved to remote areas and intermarried with Indigenous groups, forming a distinctive creole culture that combined Indigenous and West African customs.

In Jamaica, Maroon communities established themselves in the Blue Mountains in the centre of the island. By the early eighteenth century, Maroons and colonial authorities increasingly came into conflict as sugar plantations were expanded and the Maroon population grew. Maroons often raided plantations and supported revolts by enslaved people. Colonial authorities and those involved in the slave trade saw these actions as a humiliation and sought to wipe out the Maroons in order to open up more land for cultivation.

In 1795, the leader of the Maroon community at Trelawny Town (also known by its pre-1739 name Cudjoe's Town), Montague James, petitioned the Jamaican Assembly for more land and protested the capture and flogging of two Trelawny Maroons for stealing pigs. The governor, Alexander Lindsay, 6th Earl of Balcarres, panicked by the events of the Haitian Revolution and fearing a similar uprising on the island, arrested James and ordered that the town be put down. This led to the outbreak of a guerrilla conflict (known as the Second Maroon War) that would last for eight months, in which, despite being heavily outnumbered, the Maroons managed to force a stalemate.

Following the British introduction of scorched earth policies against the town, in December 1795, James and other Maroon commanders surrendered on the condition that they could remain on the island. While accepted by the colonial authorities, Balcarres gave the Maroons only a few days to surrender in person. Suspicious of the governor’s intentions, many Maroons waited a few months before formally surrendering and Balcarres used this as an excuse to deport the entire population of Trelawny Town to Nova Scotia. While some Maroons gained a reprieve, just under 600 were transported. After suffering for several years in Canada, in 1800, James managed to gain passage for the community to Sierra Leone, where a Black colony was being established at Freetown.

This book contains the published proceedings of the Jamaican Assembly during the conflict. Covering the period 30 November 1795 to 1 May 1796 and published that November, it describes the surrender of the Trelawny Maroons and the Assembly's decision to deport them.