The process of reconquista in Spain ended with the final conquest of the last Muslim possession, Granada, in 1492, as Columbus with his Andalusian mariners embarked on his adventures in the Atlantic. While Christian demands for religious homogeneity led to the forceful conversion or exile of the Muslim population from Spain, the natives in the West Indies perished in millions due to diseases and cruelties more atrocious and unnatural than any recorded of untutored and savage barbarians’. 1 Negro slaves brought from Spain’s houses of Muslim captives to work in the mines and in the production of sugar died as rapidly as the Indians, but as they continued to be replenished from Spain many resorted to jihad or holy wars against the indignity of slavery. A common resistance to the slave system and one which was perhaps the most vexing to the owners was the flight from servitude to establish their own communities based on their tradition and culture in inhospitable and inaccessible areas. They became the cimarrones or the Maroons and Maroon communities, also called Quilombos in Brazil, became a common feature in the New World plantation economy. Marronage initiated by the Spanish Maroons became the nucleus of the Maroon society in Jamaica under the British.
