Caribbean

Queen Nanny of the Maroons

Jamaica

Queen Nanny, Granny Nanny or Nanny of the Maroons ONH (c. 1686 – c. 1733), was an 18th-century leader of the Jamaican Maroons. She led a community of formerly enslaved Africans called the Windward Maroons. In the early 18th century, under the leadership of Nanny, the Windward Maroons fought a guerrilla war over many years against British authorities in the Colony of Jamaica in what became known as the First Maroon War.

Much of what is known about her comes from oral history, as little textual evidence exists. According to Maroon legend, Queen Nanny was born in what is today Ghana of the Ashanti people. According to the oral tradition and at least one documentary source, she was never enslaved. Although widely assumed that she arrived in Jamaica as a slave, how she arrived in Jamaica is not certain.

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