Cudjoe was the best-known leader of Jamaica's Leeward Maroons, a formidable war chief who consolidated scattered rebel bands, forced the British into the 1739 treaty, and then became one of the clearest examples of how hard-won maroon freedom could be folded back into the policing of slavery.
In the ScholarshipHow historians have read this figure.
How historians and scholars have interpreted this figure across different analytical traditions.
Campbell's The Maroons of Jamaica provides the most comprehensive historical account of Cudjoe's role as the leader of the Leeward Maroons whose treaty with the British colonial government in 1739 ended decades of maroon warfare in western Jamaica. Campbell documents how Cudjoe's military success — which the colonial government could not decisively defeat — forced the British to negotiate a peace that recognized the Leeward Maroons' freedom and territorial autonomy in exchange for their agreement to return escaped slaves and assist in suppressing future slave rebellions. The treaty's controversial provisions have been debated by historians ever since: was Cudjoe a maroon leader who secured his community's survival at the cost of other enslaved people, or a pragmatist whose terms represented the best achievable outcome in a context where the alternative was continued war with uncertain prospects?
Cudjoe's 1739 treaty with the British secured Leeward Maroon freedom and territorial autonomy — but its provisions requiring return of escaped slaves made it a compromised victory debated by historians ever since.
Gonzalez's Maroon Nation situates Cudjoe and the Jamaican maroon treaties within the comparative framework of maroon societies across the Atlantic world — reading them as examples of the complex negotiations between maroon autonomy and accommodation that defined maroon politics wherever they emerged. Gonzalez's comparative methodology allows her to read Cudjoe's treaty not simply as a Jamaican story but as one instance of the structural dilemma that maroon leaders consistently faced: how to secure a community's survival within a colonial world that would never fully accept their autonomy. Her framework contextualizes the treaty's controversial slave-return clause within the broader pattern of maroon diplomacy, suggesting that the terms Cudjoe accepted were less exceptional than critics have claimed — a reflection of the structural constraints all maroon leaders navigated.
Cudjoe's treaty is one instance of the structural dilemma all maroon leaders faced — how to secure community survival within a colonial world that would never fully accept their autonomy; the controversial terms were less exceptional than critics claim.