The classic work on the history and beliefs of the Rastafarians, whose roots of protest go back to the seventeenth-century maroon societies of escaped slaves in Jamaica. Based on an extensive study of the Rastafarians, their history, their ideology, and their influence in Jamaica, <i>The Rastafarians</i> is an important contribution to the sociology of religion and to our knowledge of the variety of religious expressions that have grown up during the West African Diaspora in the Western Hemisphere.