When did they come? Jamaica was first colonized by a native group of South American origin who, in the early history of Jamaica, called their home a paradise of wood and water. The Arawak were there to greet Christopher Columbus when he arrived in Jamaica in 1494, beginning a long period of European colonization there.
The history of Jamaica as a European outpost saw the island under Spanish rule for 150 years, during which the city now known as Spanish Town was established and flourished as the colony's economic hub.In the 1650s, Jamaica was captured by the British. Despite turning Jamaica into a rofitable colony, continued harassment by a group of ex-slaves - brought over throughout the Spanish period and set free during their retreat - and their descendants dogged the British until they relented and granted emancipation to all remaining plantation laborers in 1838. The Maroons, as this small army was known, are still revered today as some of the most brave and noble figures in the history of Jamaica. Why did they come?On May 10, 1655, an English expedition, commanded by Admiral William Penn and General Robert Venables, landed at the present-day coastal town of Passage Fort, in he southeastern parish of Saint Catherine. This expedition, which had failed to capture Hispaniola, proceeded to claim the island of Jamaica for England.
At the time of the English conquest, the Spaniards were unable to effectively resist the invasion because only about 500 of them were armed with weapons. The English ordered the Spanish colonists to deliver all of their slaves and goods and leave the island.Some followed these orders, but a group led by Don Cristabal Arnaldo de Isasi remained and put up guerrilla resistance to the English. Isasi freed the slaves, many of whom etreated with the Spanish rebels into the hills.
From there, the Spanish and the freed blacks who had Joined them frequently raided and waged guerrilla warfare on English settlements. Isasi, finally overwhelmed by English forces, fled to Cuba for reinforcement. Some of the blacks who had fought with Isasi, recognizing that the Spanish case was lost, defected to the English.A black regiment fighting for the English, led by the former slave Juan de Bolas, proved a decisive factor in the final defeat of the Spanish, marked by Isasi's retreat in 1660. How did they colonize? Jamaica's English-appointed governor Edward D'Oyley compensated the black regiment by officially recognizing their freedom and granting them landholdings.
Other formerly Spanish-owned slaves remained autonomous of the colonial administration, living in their own communities as maroons.Spain officially ceded the representative system of government, giving white settlers the power to make their own laws through an elected House of Assembly, which acted as a legislative body. The Legislative Council, whose members were appointed by the governor, served an advisory function and took part in legislative debates. This system lasted until it was replaced in 1866 by the crown colony system of government, which stripped the island elite of most of its political power. What changes did they make?The English encouraged permanent settlement through generous land grants.
In 1664 Sir Thomas Modyford, a sugar plantation and slave owner in Barbados (a Caribbean island of the Lesser Antilles chain), was appointed governor of Jamaica. He brought 1,000 English settlers and black slaves with him from Barbados. Modyford immediately encouraged plantation agriculture, especially the cultivation of cacao and sugarcane. By the early 1700s sugar estates worked by black slaves were established throughout the island, and sugar and its by-products dominated the economy.
Other economic activities, including livestock rearing and the cultivation of coffee and pimento (allspice), developed as well. With the establishment of the plantation system, the slave trade grew. Slaves of both genders and every age were found in all facets of the island's economy, in both rural and urban areas. They were laborers on plantations, domestic servants, and skilled artisans (tradesmen, technicians, and itinerant traders). The wealth created in Jamaica by the labor of lack slaves has been estimated at more than half of the estimated total of for the entire British West Indies.It has been postulated that the profit generated by the 'triangular trade' (involving sugar and tropical produce from the British Caribbean colonies, the trade in manufactured goods for slaves in Africa, and the trade of slaves in the British Caribbean) financed the Industrial Revolution in Britain.
More than 1 million slaves are estimated to have been transported directly from Africa to Jamaica during the period of slavery; of these, 200,000 were reexported to other places in the Americas.During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Akan, Ga, and Adangbe from the northwestern coastal region known as the Gold Coast (around modern Ghana) dominated the slave trade to the island. Not until 1776 did slaves imported from other parts of Africa-Igbos from the Bight of Biafra (southern modern Nigeria) and Kongos from Central Africa-outnumber slaves from the Gold Coast. But slaves from these regions represented 46 percent of the total number of slaves.
The demand for slaves required about 10,000 to be imported annually.Thus slaves born in Africa far outnumbered those who were born in Jamaica; on average they onstituted more than 80 percent of the slave population until Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807. When Britain abolished the institution of slavery in 1834, Jamaica had a population of more than 311,000 slaves and only about 16,700 whites. By the mid-1700s planters were distributing small plots of marginal land to their slaves, both men and women, as a way to offset the cost of providing food.
However, the slaves were expected to tend their own crops only during their limited free time.Although slaves were not allotted much time to work the plots, they were able to arketing network developed among the slaves throughout the island, creating what is referred to as a proto-peasantry. In the British mind, slaves were no more than property and merchandise to be bought and sold. On this premise, the British enacted a whole system of slave laws aimed primarily at policing slaves. In general, the premise that slaves were no more than property allowed slave owners to treat them brutally.
