Nanny’s Asafo Warriors: The Jamaican Maroons’ African Experience

In 1975, Nanny was declared the first, and is so far the only female National Hero in Jamaica. This was seen as a breakthrough in acknowledging the historical dimension of her people, the Maroons, as freedom fighters. The Maroons are, to this day, viewed in some quarters as a self-styled military elite who abandoned their fellow Africans on the plantations once they had procured their own freedom through the signing of peace treaties with the British Crown. However, Nanny s Asafo Warriors has documented that much of what is taken for granted concerning the Maroons history are mere reiterations of the enslavers constructions. Werner Zips takes Nanny s key role in the Maroon societies from the seventeenth century to the present as a point of departure to probe into the African political, legal, social and religious experiences throughout the periods of slavery, colonial rule and postcolonial nation building. Nanny s Asafo Warriors may still inspire the resistance against all form of inequality in the African Diaspora.