The first signs of slave rebellion on…
1540 CE to 1551 CE
As a result, more plantations had been abandoned.
The attacks had became so common that a formal complaint was lodged by local Portuguese authorities in 1531 claiming that too many settlers and black citizens were being killed in the fights, and that the island would be lost if the problem remained unresolved.
As a solution, in 1533 local authorities had engaged in a 'bush war' led by a 'bush captain' using militia units to suppress the maroon combatants.
A significant event in the maroon fight for freedom occurs in 1549, when two men claiming to have been born free men from the macambos are taken in by a wealthy mulatto planter named Ana de Chaves.
With the support of de Chaves, the two men send in a petition to the king to be labeled free men instead of slaves.
The monarch ends up approving the request.
The largest occurrence of marronage happens simultaneously to the sugar boom of the mid-sixteenth century, when the number of plantation slaves increases exponentially.
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Middle Africa
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