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History: |
From various
previous accounts we were told that Jamaica's first known inhabitants were the Arawak Indians.
However recently there is new evidence that the first inhabitants of the
island were the Tainos. The National Heritage Trust (NHT) has just
recently concluded a intense study of the original inhabiters of Jamaica
and after studying the artifacts found that they were not similar to the
those of the other Arawaks in the region but bear a remarkable likeness to
the Taino Indians. It was therefore concluded that it was the Tanios and
not the Arawaks who first inhabited Jamaica. The NHT is now working with
the Ministry of Education to have this information changed in the school
books. (The Arawak Indians are American Indians from the Greater Antilles
and South America) Previous accounts have also stated that Jamaica was first settled by Amerindians.
In 1494
on May 4, Christopher Columbus arrived at the island of
Jamaica. This was on his second voyage to the New World, which was
afterwards called America. Columbus annexed the island in the name of his
master and mistress. the King and Queen of Spain. But it was not occupied
until Juan de Esquivel came from Santo Domingo in 1509. and for 146 years
Jamaica remained a Spanish colony.
Jamaica was then inhabited by a gentle race of people called the Arawaks
or Tainos (Amerindians).
They had probably come from the country now known as Guyana, where Arawak
Indians are still to be found. They were short people, rather stout, with
straight black hair and flattish noses; they were copper-coloured. They
lived in huts shaped like those of the peasants of
Jamaica.
They slept in hammocks. They made rough seats of wood, and spears tipped
with stone, or with the teeth of sharks. They did not have the bow and
arrow. The men were skilful fishermen, and caught fish and turtle to eat.
They made their cooking vessels out of clay, and burnt them in fire till
they became hard. The women grew cassava, corn and sweet potatoes for
food. Cotton grew wild in the island, and they twisted the fibre into
cloth, strips of which they wore around their waists. They also wore
strings of beads and shells.
But the Spaniards made slaves of them and
put them to difficult tasks. The Spaniards treated the Arawaks so harshly
that in about fifty years all of them were dead. They had numbered fully
sixty thousand. The Spaniards got slaves from Africa to take their place.
The
Spaniards first settled on that part of the northern coast of Jamaica
which is now known as the parish of St. Ann. There they built a town
called Sevilla Nueva, or New Seville. Afterwards they moved to the
southern part of the island and built the town of St. Jago de la Vega (St.
James of the Plain), which is still called Spanish
Town. The island was given to the
Columbus
family as a personal estate in 1540, but they did nothing to develop it.
The Spanish colony in Jamaica was never a very large or a very flourishing
one.
In 1655
on May 10, a body of English sailors and soldiers landed at Passage Fort,
in Kingston harbour, and marched towards Spanish Town. They were commanded by Admiral Penn and General Venables,
who had been sent by Oliver Cromwell to capture the
island of
Hispaniola. Penn and Venables failed to take the city of Santo Domingo and
sailed on to Jamaica. On May 11, the Spaniards surrendered. They were
allowed a few days to leave the island. Some of them went to Cuba, but
others secretly went to the northside of Jamaica.
In the month of October, General Sedgwicke
arrived from England and took charge of the colony. Many of the English
sailors and soldiers, and the people who came with Sedgwicke, died from
the fevers of the country and the hard food and water they consumed.
Sedgwicke himself died shortly after his arrival, and General Brayne was
sent out to manage the affairs of the colony. He expected he would be
attacked by the Spaniards of Cuba, and so he fortified the positions
occupied by the English. General Brayne died in 1656, and General Doyley,
an officer of the army, became Governor.
In 1657
Don Cristobal Arnaldo de Ysassi led strong guerrilla forces in the
interior. He had been appointed the last Spanish Governor of Jamaica.
Two expeditions from Cuba came to the north coast to help him. General
Doyley attacked both times by sailing around the island from Kingston. He
defeated Ysassi near Ocho Rios in 1657 and at Rio Nuevo in 1658, the last
named being the biggest battle ever fought in Jamaica. Ysassi continued to
hold out until 1660, when the defection of Maroon allies made his cause
hopeless, and he and his followers escaped to Cuba in canoes.
In 1661
a Commission arrived from England formally appointing Doyley as Governor
of Jamaica, and commanding him to establish a Council to assist him in the
government of the colony. This Council was to be elected by the colonists.
In 1662
Lord Windsor arrived as Governor of Jamaica. He brought
with him a Royal Proclamation declaring that all children born of English
subjects in Jamaica should be regarded as free citizens of England. Lord
Windsor retired from the Government of Jamaica within the year, and Sir
Charles Lyttleton became Deputy Governor. There were then 4,205 persons in
Jamaica. Santiago de Cuba was captured and looted by Admiral Myngs.
In 1663
an expedition sailed from Jamaica to attack the Spanish town of Campeche,
in Central America.
After some misfortunes, this effort succeeded, and much booty and many
ships were taken by the English. In the same year we first hear of the
English trying to suppress the Maroons. These were descendants of former
slaves of the Spanish. They escaped to the mountains and forests in the
interior, where they lived a wild, free life and, it was rumoured,
murdered every white person they came across. An expedition was sent
against them under Juan de Bolas, a former Maroon who had aided the
English. The soldiers were defeated. Peace was patched up shortly
afterwards between the Maroons and the English, but it did not last for
long.
In 1664
the first House of Assembly was called together. It consisted of twenty
members elected by the people. It met at Spanish Town and passed 45 laws for the government of
the colony.
Sir Thomas
Modyford arrived from Barbados with a thousand settlers. He was a
Barbadian planter and had once governed Barbados before he was sent to
Jamaica as Governor. He helped and protected the English buccaneers under
Henry Morgan who had moved to Port Royal from
Tortuga.
The ships and the plunder they brought vastly enriched Port Royal.
Modyford encouraged agriculture, especially the cultivation of cocoa and
the sugar-cane. During this time a large number of slaves were brought
from Africa to Jamaica. However, the slave trade with Jamaica had
commenced before this date.
In 1673
there were 17,272 persons in Jamaica. In that year Sir Henry Morgan became
Lieutenant-Governor.
In 1674
Lord Vaughan arrived as Governor. The next year 1,200
settlers from Surinam came to Jamaica and started sugar planting.
In 1677
Lord Vaughan left Jamaica, and Sir Henry Morgan once more became
Lieutenant-Governor. He was again Lieutenant-Governor in 1680. This was
the same Henry Morgan who, in 1668, attacked Porto Bello on the Isthmus of
Panama, and plundered it. In 1671, leading a body of buccaneers from Jamaica,
he attacked and captured the old city of Panama, plundered it and burnt it
to the ground.
In 1678
the Earl of Carlisle arrived as Governor. He brought with him instructions
that before any laws were passed by the House of Assembly, a draft of them
should be submitted to the King for his alterations or approval. Before
this, the House of Assembly had first passed laws, and then sent them to England
for the KingΖs approval. The House strongly protested against this change,
which would have reduced its power and authority very much. After a long
struggle, the English Government yielded, and the old system was
continued.
In 1687
the Duke of Albemarle as Governor. With him came Sir Hans
Sloane as his physician. Sir Hans Sloane wrote two large volumes on
Jamaica. Albemarle favoured Sir Henry Morgan, who died in 1688 and was
buried with honours at Port Royal.
In 1690
the Earl of Inchiquin arrived as Governor. During this year
a rebellion of the slaves took place at Chapelton in Clarendon. It was
suppressed, and the ringleaders were executed. Some of the slaves,
however, escaped to the mountains, where they joined the Maroons.
In 1692
Sir William Beeston became Governor of Jamaica.
On June 7, the great Port Royal earthquake
occurred. Port Royal was then the chief city in Jamaica, famous for its
riches. The House of Assembly met there. The buccaneers took their prizes
there. The houses were substantially built of stone. The inhabitants lived
a wild, reckless life, and Port Royal was described as one of the
wickedest places on earth.
At about 20 minutes to 12, on the forenoon
of June, the 7, the inhabitants of the town were startled by a noise like
thunder, which seemed to come from the north. Immediately the earth began
to shake, and then the walls of the houses fell on every side. There were
three shocks. The first was not very severe; the last was the worst. A
considerable portion of the city sank beneath the sea. The sea receded,
then rushed back with terrible force, sweeping over the land and drowning
hundreds of persons. Thousands perished. Minor shocks occurred all that
day and for several days afterwards. The earthquake was felt all over the
island; great landslides occurred and some springs disappeared. The dead
bodies of the people floated in harbour and rotted on the land. Port Royal
was almost completely ruined. Its surviving inhabitants endeavored to
restore what was left of it to its former importance, but in 1704, a fire
broke out in one of its warehouses and destroyed every building except the
forts.
During the social unrest of the 1930's, two major political parties were
formed - the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) by Alexander Bustamante,
and the People's National Party (PNP) by Norman Manley. Jamaica joined
the West Indies Federation in 1958, but withdrew following a referendum
in 1961. The country gained independence in 1962. The PNP instituted a
democratic socialist government from 1974-80, and the JLP established
free-enterprise government from 1980. |
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Economic Summary: |
The Jamaican economy is heavily dependent
on services, which now account for more than 60% of GDP. The country
continues to derive most of its foreign exchange from tourism,
remittances, and bauxite/alumina. Jamaica's economy, already saddled with
a record of sluggish growth, was hit hard by Hurricane Ivan in late 2004,
but has made a gradual recovery. But the economy faces long-term
problems: high but declining interest rates, increased foreign
competition, exchange rate instability, a sizable merchandise trade
deficit, large-scale unemployment and underemployment, and a high debt
burden - the result of government bailouts to ailing sectors of the
economy, most notably the financial sector in the mid-to-late 1990s.
Following a strategy begun in 2004, Jamaica has reduced its public debt to
133.3% of GDP. Inflation also had declined to 5.8% at the end of 2006.
High unemployment exacerbates the serious crime problem, including gang
violence fueled by the drug trade. The government faces the difficult
prospect of having to achieve fiscal discipline in order to maintain debt
payments while simultaneously attacking the serious crime problem that is
hampering economic growth.
The manufacturing sector is the second largest after distribution.
Activities include the processing of sugar, food, beverages and tobacco,
as well as production of chemicals, metals and construction materials;
and the assembly of electrical appliances and apparel.
Bauxite is a principal industry and merchandise export earner.
Reserves is estimated at 1.9 billion tonnes. This country ranks as
the world's third largest producer of bauxite, after Australia and
Guinea.
Agriculture, forestry and fishing accounted
for 8.4% of GDP in 1996,
earning some US$225m in foreign exchange, and providing 23% of total
employment. Approximately 270,000 hectares of land are cultivated,
while nearly one-fifth of the total land area is forested.
There are considerable resources of both freshwater and sea fish.
Production of freshwater fish has remained fairly constant throughout
the 1990s while the marine catch recorded a small growth level.
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National Anthem: |
Jamaica Land We Love
Eternal Father bless our land,
Guard us with Thy Might Hand
Keep us free from evil powers,
Be our light through countless hours.
To our Leaders Great Defender,
Grant true wisdom from above.
Justice, Truth be ours forever,
Jamaica, Land we love.
Jamaica, Jamaica, Jamaica land we love.
Teach us true respect for all,
Stir response to duty's call,
Strengthen us the weak to cherish,
Give us vision lest we perish.
Knowledge send us Heavenly Father,
Grant true wisdom from above.
Justice, Truth be ours forever,
Jamaica, Land we love.
Jamaica, Jamaica, Jamaica land we love
(Words by Hugh Sherlock; music by Robert
Lightbourne)
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