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Jamaica: the Maroons, the Black Irish, and perhaps the last Black Pope
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Mike111: [QB] Before going on with Jamaica history: please note - The Jamaican governments history and Henry Louis Gates Jr. history of Jamaica, both clearly indicate and unquestioning acceptance of the Albino version of history, which we prove on a daily basis to be lies. So critical judgment should be exercised when reading this short version from the Gates Jamaican history site, which is being used because it includes more interesting details. Jamaica http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43/130.html http://africana.com/tt/1122.htm By Veront Satchell, Africana.com, 1999 Independent country in the Caribbean and a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations, located south of Cuba and west of Haiti in the Caribbean Sea. Jamaica is the third largest island of the Greater Antilles (island chain in the West Indies that encompasses the nations of Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico). Although Jamaica has a diverse population, Afro-Jamaicans constitute the overwhelming majority. The 1991 census recorded a total population of 2.3 million. Blacks accounted for 2.08 million, or 90.5 percent of the total population, while whites accounted for 5,200, or 0.2 percent. East Indians made up 1.3 percent and Chinese 0.3 percent. Other ethnic groups as well as small numbers of Syrians, Lebanese, and Jews made up 0.5 percent. People of mixed descent accounted for 7.3 percent of the population. Recognition of this diversity led the framers of Jamaica's constitution at independence, in 1962, to choose as the island's motto 'Out of Many, One People,' suggesting that despite racial and ethnic differences, all live united as one Jamaican people. However, racism and color discrimination-the legacy of more than three centuries of slavery-persist to this day in Jamaica, although in a very subtle and suppressed way. Since slavery was abolished in 1834, blacks have achieved much upward social mobility, primarily through entrepreneurship and education. They seem to control political power, especially since Percival Patterson became prime minister in 1992, the first black man to hold that office. Economic power, however, continues to elude the black majority, and many issues concerning race have not been fully resolved in Jamaica. EUROPEAN CONQUEST AND COLONIZATION Archaeological finds suggest that the Native American Tainos were the first to settle the island of Jamaica, which they called Xaymaca (meaning 'land of springs' or 'land of wood and water'). Estimates for the Taino population at the time of the Spanish arrival in the late 1400s vary widely, with the lowest estimates ranging from 6,000 to 9,000 and the highest from 60,000 to 100,000. Taino villages were distributed throughout the island, with the majority situated near the coastline and adjacent to rivers. The Tainos were a seafaring people who relied on fishing to provide a large part of their diet. They also were agriculturalists, cultivating cassava, maize, sweet potatoes, and arrowroot. They traded with Native American communities living on neighboring islands in the Greater Antilles. For administrative purposes, the Tainos divided the island into provinces that were ruled over by a cacique (chief) assisted by subchiefs. Spanish Conquest During his second voyage to the Americas, European explorer Christopher Columbus learned of Jamaica from the indigenous people on the island of Cuba. He set foot on the northern part of Jamaica, at present-day Saint Ann's Bay, on May 4, 1494. After defeating the Tainos' initial resistance, Columbus seized the island for Spain. Spain sent Juan de Esquivel to establish a settlement in 1509, beginning Spain's effective colonization of Jamaica. The Spanish established Sevilla la Nueva on the northern part of the island as their first administrative center but abandoned it in 1523 for Saint Jago de la Vega (now Spanish Town) in the south. Interest in Jamaica faded when it became obvious there was no gold, and the island became a backwater in the Spanish Empire. As late as the time of the English conquest in 1655, the island remained underdeveloped, poor, and sparsely populated. The Spanish lived just above subsistence level, developing a small-scale pig and cattle ranching economy. They also practiced small-scale agricultural cultivation for domestic consumption and for sale to the few Europe-bound vessels. The Spanish colonists instituted a regime of forced labor of the Taino. Although indigenous peoples in the Spanish colonies were legally exempted from slavery by royal decree in 1542, the colonists were able to compel the Tainos to work for them under the systems of encomienda and repartimiento. Overwork in the mines and fields, combined with contact with European diseases, resulted in the annihilation of Jamaica's indigenous population by the mid-1600s. The Spanish began importing black slaves shortly after King Ferdinand authorized the governor of Hispaniola (island encompassing present-day Haiti and Dominican Republic) to import Christian blacks (ladinos) from Spain in 1501. The first black slaves brought to Jamaica did not come directly from Africa but were either Africans, or the descendants of Africans, who had been enslaved for a time in Spain. In 1518 King Charles I of Spain (Ferdinand's successor) signed a four-year contract, or asiento, allowing an annual supply of 4,000 African slaves to enter Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. Slaves then came directly from Africa. By 1611 Jamaica had a population of 558 black slaves, 107 free blacks, and between 1,200 and 1,400 Spaniards. English Conquest 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 the 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 retreated 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. 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 island to England under the Treaty of Madrid in 1670. The English established a 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. THE SLAVE TRADE AND PLANTATION ECONOMY 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 black slaves has been estimated at £18,000,000, more than half of the estimated total of £30,000,000 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 constituted 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. [End quote] [/QB][/QUOTE]
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