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Who colonized Jamaica?

Caribbean — the powers that ruled Jamaica, the dates, and what independence did and did not change.

In short

Who colonized Jamaica?

Spain, then Britain. Spain claimed the island in 1494; Britain took it in 1655 and ran it as a sugar-and-slavery colony until independence on 6 August 1962.

Jamaica was the profit centre of British Caribbean slavery and the site of its most sustained resistance, from the Maroon wars to the Baptist War that hastened abolition.

Reference

Who ruled Jamaica, and when

before 1494
Taíno
1494–1655
Spain
1655–1962
Britain

At a glance

Key facts

Colonising powers
Spain, Britain
Independence
6 August 1962
Compensation
£20m paid in 1834 — to slaveholders, not the enslaved
British taxpayer
That loan was only fully repaid in 2015
Maroons
Independent Maroon communities forced Britain to treaty terms in 1739

Chronology

Key dates

  1. 1655

    England seizes Jamaica from Spain.

  2. 1700s

    Sugar boom; the enslaved population outnumbers the free ten to one.

  3. 1760

    Tacky's Revolt.

  4. 1831–32

    The Baptist War, the largest slave rebellion in the British Caribbean.

  5. 1834/1838

    Abolition and the end of 'apprenticeship'.

  6. 1865

    Morant Bay rebellion crushed; hundreds executed.

Context

What the record shows

Abolition was structured as a property settlement: £20 million to owners, and four more years of unpaid 'apprenticeship' from the people freed.

Questions

Frequently asked

Who colonised Jamaica?
Spain from 1494 and Britain from 1655 until independence in 1962.
Who was compensated at abolition?
Slaveholders. The British government paid £20 million to owners in 1834; the enslaved received nothing and were bound to unpaid apprenticeship until 1838.
When did Jamaica become independent?
6 August 1962.

Read on

Related in the archive

References

Sources — colonial Jamaica

  1. [1]Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Seville, 1552).
  2. [2]Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  3. [3]Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Monthly Review Press, 1971; English 1973).
  4. [4]Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
  5. [5]Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (Random House, 1991).
  6. [6]Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (Hurst, 2017).
  7. [7]Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt, 2005).
  8. [8]Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Wisconsin, 2009).
  9. [9]Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
  10. [10]Jürgen Zimmerer, "The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism", Patterns of Prejudice 39:2 (2005), on the German South-West Africa → Holocaust lineage.
  11. [11]Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972).
  12. [12]Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), Chapter 31 ("Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist").

All works cited in good faith for documentary, educational and critical use. Errors and omissions: contact the archive.