In the Forests of Freedom: The Fighting Maroons of Dominica

In this detailed and brilliantly researched book the Dominican historian Lennox Honychurch tells the enthralling and untold story of how the Maroons - escaped slaves - of the Caribbean isalnd of Dominica challenged the colonial powers in a heroic struggle to create a free and self-sufficient society. "The brave people who held out in Dominica's mountain wilderness for generations against the military forces of two colonial empires have had their story well told at last. Their spirits can now be at rest," writes Adam Hochschild, author of Bury the Chains. The Maroons (escaped slaves) of Jamaica are famous. Not so the Maroons of another Caribbean island - Dominica, also a former British colony. Dominica's Maroons once controlled much of this wild and mountainous island but few details of their story of resistance and ultimate defeat have been known - until now. Written by Dominica's leading historian, In the Forests of Freedom is a stirring account of how a displaced and enslaved people challenged the British empire in their struggle to create a free and self-sufficient society. From the Africans who took refuge on the island in the 16th century, through the two brutal Maroon Wars in the last decades of slavery, to the building of a post-emancipation nation, In the Forests of Freedom takes the reader deep into the hinterland of the Dominica story. A stirring account of how a displaced and enslaved people fought to create a free and self-sufficient society on the Caribbean island of Dominica. Lennox Honychurch. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 222-225) And Index.