Editing History of Jamaica (section)

====Maroons====
{{Main|Jamaican Maroons#History}}

When the English captured [[Jamaica]] in 1655, the Spanish colonists fled, leaving a large number of African slaves. These former Spanish slaves organised under the leadership of rival captains [[Juan de Serras]] and [[Juan de Bolas]]. These [[Jamaican Maroons]] intermarried with the [[Arawak]] people, and established distinct independent communities in the mountainous interior of Jamaica. They survived by subsistence farming and periodic raids of plantations. Over time, the Maroons came to control large areas of the Jamaican interior.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Sainsbury|first1=W. Noel|title=America and West Indies|journal=Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies|volume=1, 5|issue=1574–1660, 1661–1668}}</ref>

In the second half of the seventeenth century, de Serras fought regular campaigns against English colonial forces, even attacking the capital of [[Spanish Town]], and he was never defeated by the English. Throughout the seventeenth century, and in the first few decades of the eighteenth century, Maroon forces frequently defeated the British in small-scale skirmishes. The British colonial authorities dispatched numerous expeditions in an attempt to subdue them, but the Maroons successfully fought a guerrilla campaign against the British in the mountainous interior, and forced the British government to seek peace terms to end the expensive conflict.<ref>Mavis Campbell, ''The Maroons of Jamaica 1655–1796: a History of Resistance, Collaboration & Betrayal'' (Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey, 1988), pp. 14–35.</ref>

In the early eighteenth century, English-speaking escaped [[Asante people|Ashanti]] slaves were at the forefront of the Maroon fighting against the British.