Colonial Rule

Before Jamaica was an independent country it was a European colony for more than 350 years.  Travel back in time and learn more about Jamaica's colonial past.

Transcript

Before we begin, it behooves me to mention that in my research for this episode the names Arawak and Taino were used interchangeably when referring to Jamaica’s Indigenous people.  Some sources such as the Jamaica Information Service suggest, Taino is the name of the indigenous people while Arawak is their spoken language.  During this episode, I will refer to the Indigenous Jamaicans as Tainos.

Welcome to Small Excellence where I discuss various nations around the world.  I'm your host Ngai.  This season we are speaking about my homeland, Jamaica.  In this episode, I want to share the story of Jamaica under colonial rule.

On his second voyage to the Americas, Christopher Columbus discovered Jamaica, May 3, 1494. He claimed the island in the name of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, though it was not settled for another fifteen years.  When the Spanish first captured Jamaica from the Tainos they continued using the Taino name for the island, Xaymaca, eventually changing the name to Jamaica. For a period, in the early 16th century, the island was called Xaymaca and Jamaica simultaneously.    The island remained a Spanish colony for approximately 150 years. 

Columbus first heard about Jamaica from the Indigenous inhabitants of present-day Cuba who were comprised of Tainos, Cibonneys and Guanajatabeyes.  Because the Indigenous Cubans referred to Jamaica as, “the land of blessed gold,” Columbus believed there was much gold to be had there.   To his dismay when he arrived in Jamaica there was no gold on the island. After annexing the island, the Spaniards tortured and killed many of the Tainos during the process of taking their land, ultimately enslaving the remaining Tainos forcing them to grow sugarcane and tobacco. Due to the harsh treatment, agonizing labor, and European diseases, the Tainos on the island all died within fifty years of their initial encounter with the Europeans.  In their stead, West Africans were brought in to take the place of the Tainos as slaves because they were essentially more robust thus they feared better in terms of being able to withstand the barbarisms of the Spaniards.

Under the Spanish the development of Jamaica was unspectacular.  Spain showed little interest in the island, consequently not many settlers came to live there.  In 1509 Columbus’ son Diego Columbus, directed a conquistador, Juan de Esquivel, who would become the first governor of Jamaica, to increase colonization efforts on the island. The settlement of Jamaica was finally underway with the island’s first official capital called Sevilla la Nueva or New Seville which was no more than a glorified village of about 80 citizens.  This was the first permanent European settlement on the island, located in what is currently St. Ann’s parish.  Due to the health concerns that arose from Sevilla la Nueva’s proximity to a mangrove swamp the settlement was relocated twice, once in 1518 and finally in 1534 when it was renamed Villa de la Vega and later called Santiago de la Vega or St. Jago De La Vega, present day Spanish Town.  St. Jago De La Vega became the capital under Spain because it had many excellent buildings, developed roads, along with an outstanding water supply system.  This, however, was a poor choice as a capital because it didn’t have a port, and without a port commerce was limited and with that so to was the development of the island.

St. Jago de la Vega remained the capital under Spanish rule until 1655 when the island is conquered by England.  The British kept St. Jago de la Vega as the island’s capital though the settlement’s name was changed to Spanish Town. As of 2022, Spanish Town holds the title as the capital of a country in the Western Hemisphere aka the Americas, for the longest continuous period, from 1534 to 1872, which is more than 300 years.

At the time of this European colonial expansion, there were two types of colonies, settler colonies and slave colonies. Settler colonies were territories in which people from the occupying country, would migrate to the New World with the intention of remaining.  A slave colony functioned more like an outpost that was used to supply products which were mostly agricultural and raw materials to the occupying country. Jamaica was a slave colony under Spain because not very many Spaniards ever settled there; making the relationship between Spain and Jamaica a country and town relationship, where Jamaica was the country, the rural area with the natural resources, and Spain was the town, the city region and consumer of the natural resources.  Think the Hunger Games were the districts, Jamaica in this instance, supplied the capital, Spain.  The lack of Spaniards inhabiting the island is the primary reason the British experienced very little resistance in conquering and occupying the territory for themselves. Spain wasn’t interested in making Jamaica a settler colony. 

Although Jamaica was conquered by the British in 1655, it remained a disputed Spanish territory until 1670 when through the treaty of Madrid Spain also known as the Godolphin Treaty, Spain officially transferred control of Jamaica to England.  To think this podcast could have been in Spanish in another life.

After the English Civil war in 1649, Charles the 1st, the then king was tried and executed. The charge against him was high treason for going to war against his own people. Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protectorate of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1653. In 1654 Oliver Cromwell commanded Admiral Penn and General Venables to take Hispaniola from Spain. They met overwhelming resistance and had to abandon the venture. So as not to return to England empty handed, Penn and Venables, attacked and conquered Jamaica in 1655 as a conciliatory prize for their previous failure in Hispaniola. 

Jamaica remained a British colony from 1655 to 1962. When the British conquered Jamaica from Spain, the Spaniards set their slaves free. These slaves ran into the hills and became known as the maroons. The Maroons lived in very inaccessible parts of the hill country, so the English were unable to recapture them.

The British instead actively took part in and further developed the chattel slavery trade of West Africans in the Americas.  They also treated their slaves with the same amount of savagery as the Spanish via subjugation through various acts of violence.  The system of chattel slavery was so callous that even the slave owner’s children from relations with slave women were born into bondage.

No matter the infraction or perceived offense by a slave the form of punishment was severe, dehumanizing and by design meant to deter others from doing the same.  Types of punishments were whipping, imprisonment, shackling, branding, burning, hanging and mutilation. Sometimes even rape was used as a form of punishment. Punishments were meted out in full view of the other slaves. In the case of whipping more than one slave driver was used in administering the beating, because one individual became so tired during the process.  In spite of the punishments some slaves attempted to escape from their life in bondage. Escaped slaves were hunted down with dogs and guns. Those who were recaptured were severely punished and repeat offenders were even killed. 

Bakra, is a word that originated during this time with multiple meanings rooted in the realities of plantation life and flogging as a punishment.  The first definition was white person and/or slave master.  A second and more gruesome meaning is defined as being whipped by an overseer or slave driver until the back was torn raw; the word itself is a combination and shortening of the words, back and raw.  It must be remembered that slave drivers were slaves themselves.  To maintain their position and not be relegated to working in the fields or to some lower position they would visit extreme acts of brutality on the other slaves. The life of a Jamaican slave was short-lived due to poor working conditions, very long working hours, 10 to 16 hours 6 days a week, excessive, cruel punishments, and inadequate nutrition.  Once condemned to a life of bondage the average life expectancy was 7 years.  Diseases and the deficiency in medical knowledge at that time were contributing factors to the high death rate on the Jamaican plantations with the death rate of the slaves being higher than that of their birth rate.  This encouraged an increase in the importation of people to be enslaved. It is said that when a plantation acquired a slave, it would take them 3 ½ years to clear all the expenses for that slave and make the expected profit.

Slavery under the British went on for approximately 160 years in Jamaica.  In the early 1800s the abolitionist movement pressured England in to ending the slave trade.  Slavery in its entirety in Jamaica ended in 1838. While the abolitionist movement must be commended for its role in ending the practice of slavery there were additional contributing factors such as the economic costs of slave produced sugar.  Sugar produced via slave labor became more expensive and less profitable than sugar produced by non-slave labor.  

The slave trade was abolished in 1834, and a four-year transitional period was put in place to extend slavery.  Theoretically no additional people were transported from West Africa to be sold as slaves in any British territories.  In my opinion, it’s safe to assume that at this time some slaves were obtained on the black-market. This four-year transitional period was called the apprenticeship period.  During this time, the slaves were supposedly given the opportunity to become proficient in some skill. This was a ridiculous proposal since these were the same so-called skills they performed before the apprenticeship period while in bondage.  Following the apprenticeship period when slavery truly ended on August 1, 1838, the slave owners were compensated for the loss of their property, the slaves. However, the slaves were not compensated for working hundreds of years without compensation, under arduous conditions; in other words, reparations were not provided. They were just set free, it was not even legal for them to be on the land on which they stood, because it belonged to someone else, meaning they were now trespassing. 

After slavery, the biracial people at the time had more money and other assets than the unambiguous Black people. The reason for this is simple, the fathers of these biracial people were the former slave masters; most had no wives or official family, so they willed everything that they owned to their biracial offspring. It was fashionable for some of the biracial people of the time to claim that their mothers were married to an Englishman, Scotsman, Irishman, or otherwise European man. This lie granted them bragging rights and gave an appearance of family decency.

I hope that you have garnered some knowledge from this episode.  Walk good, my friends.