Jamaica in the Atlantic World to 1838
- LAST REVIEWED: 15 August 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 April 2018
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0287
- LAST REVIEWED: 15 August 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 April 2018
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0287
Introduction
Jamaica’s engagement with the wider Atlantic world began with Columbus’s sailing past during his second voyage in 1494. The island’s colonial experience was then shaped by two invasions: a Spanish settlement in 1514 and an English assault in 1655. The Taíno had undertaken some subsistence agriculture, but the European seizure imposed export-driven economies. Forced labor and introduced diseases led to the precipitous collapse of the Taíno population with enslaved Africans introduced from the early 1500s. The island’s transition to a sparsely settled agricultural backwater hastened in 1536 after it was transferred to Columbus’s heirs. A reduced labor force encouraged a shift toward pastoral farming, although cocoa was planted in the 1640s. In 1655 an English expedition invaded. Some of the island’s Spanish and African-Jamaican settlers sustained a five-year resistance, leading to substantial cultural breaks.
Despite some senior English officers’ expectations of failure Jamaica was retained as an English colony. Port Royal, its principal port, thrived. Trading with Spain’s mainland colonies saw their silver and cocoa exchanged for enslaved Africans and European textiles. Some of the profits, alongside the markets that victualling the smugglers’ ships provided, helped to fund a slave-based commercial agriculture. From the 1670s this was increasingly based on sugar. Massive numbers of enslaved Africans were shipped to Jamaica from the 1670s until the end of Britain’s participation in the transatlantic slave trade in 1807. African cultural practices survived, contributing to a distinctive Creole folk culture, music, and language, as well as strategies for conspiracies and uprisings. A distinct white Creole culture also developed that was not dislodged by warfare or rebellions. The peace treaties that ended the First Maroon War in 1738 and 1739 allowed the African-Jamaican Maroons to develop as a further free group. Although Maroon communities faced internal tensions cooperating with the colonial government, most survived, and their populations increased. By the mid-18th century the island’s free people of color also sustained a positive birth rate. From the late 18th century developments on the island were increasingly influenced by the prolonged wars with France and her allies, the “Humanitarian Revolution,” and falling prices for sugar and coffee. Despite pushbacks by pro-slavery groups, emancipation came to Jamaica and Britain’s other slave-holding colonies in 1834.
General Overviews
There is no substantial modern survey of Jamaica’s past, although Bryan 2000 is an introduction to the major issues in writing a modern history of the island, Sherlock and Bennett 1998 aimed to provide a post-independence narrative and is used in the island’s schools, while Buisseret 1996 offers a historical introduction to the overlaps between Jamaica’s topography and its history. In a historiographical overview, Johnson 1999 describes the successive published histories of Jamaica. Robertson 2005 explores the island’s former capital and its place in Jamaican society from 1534 to 2000, while Curtin 2007 introduces local landscapes and local priorities. Four general surveys of Britain’s 17th- and 18th-century colonies in the region also deliver useful comparisons: Mulcahy 2014, Delle 2014 (cited under Case Studies of Individual Estates), and Burnard 2015 each consider the late-17th- to early-19th-century American and West Indian colonies, where Jamaica is a major feature in both their analyses, while Burnard and Garrigus 2016 compares Jamaica and St. Domingue. All offer suggestive insights into what was distinctive about Jamaica and its society in this period. Other older surveys are available, with Hurwitz and Hurwitz 1971, a sensible coverage of the state of play at Jamaican independence, and Beckford and Witter 1982 among the most passionate—and contentious.
Beckford, George, and Michael Witter. Small Garden . . . Bitter Weed: The Political Economy of Struggle and Change in Jamaica. London: Zed, 1982.
A strongly felt survey of Jamaican history written at the end of the socialist-dominated 1970s which seeks to trace the island’s development as a socialist society. Passionately written with some suggestive insights and many powerful turns of phrase.
Bryan, Patrick. Inside Out and Outside In: Factors in the Creation of Contemporary Jamaica. Kingston, Jamaica: Grace Kennedy Foundation, 2000.
A personal overview of the themes shaping the island’s development. An effort to delineate key factors that have shaped the island’s culture and its development.
Buisseret, David. Historic Jamaica from the Air. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 1996.
A replacement edition of David Buisseret and Jack Tyndale-Biscoe, Historic Jamaica From the Air (Bridgetown, Jamaica: Caribbean Universities Press, 1969). Has aerial photographs of the island with an informed historical commentary. The second edition is heavily revised and includes different photographs. Each edition offers a distinct overview of the island’s history and topography. Both editions repay close reading.
Burnard, Trevor. Planters, Merchants and Slaves: Plantation Societies in British America, 1650–1820. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226286242.001.0001
A wide-ranging study filled with comparisons that are often phrased in contentious terms. Jamaica looms large in the analysis.
Burnard, Trevor, and John Garrigus. The Plantation Machine: Atlantic Capitalism in French Saint-Domingue and British Jamaica. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
A comparison of the island territories that became Britain and France’s most profitable 18th-century colonies—and in Saint-Domingue’s case the site of one of the first successful post-slave revolt nations, too.
Curtin, Marguerite R. The Story of Hanover: A Jamaican Parish. Kingston, Jamaica: Marguerite R. Curtin, 2007.
An illustrated history of a predominantly rural parish. Short and accessible, this and her Story of Westmorland: A Jamaican Parish (2010) offer an introduction to local chronologies and landscapes.
Hart, Richard. Occupation & Control: The British in Jamaica 1660–1962. Kingston, Jamaica: Arawak, 2013.
A breakdown of administrative developments in Jamaica across the whole colonial period. An invaluable reference text.
Hurwitz, Samuel J., and Edith Hurwitz. Jamaica: A Historical Portrait. London: Pall Mall, 1971.
Still a serviceable overview of the pre-independence discussions that cites North American comparisons and acknowledges the Jewish presence on the island.
Johnson, Howard. “Historiography of Jamaica.” In Methodology and Historiography of the Caribbean. Edited by B. W. Higman, 478–530. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan for UNESCO, 1999.
Surveys locally written histories by generation and then by decade.
Mulcahy, Matthew. Hubs of Empire: The Southeastern Lowcountry and British Caribbean. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014.
A comparative survey of the early Atlantic settlements in mainland North America and the contemporary British settlements in the Caribbean. More social than political or military in its emphases.
Robertson, James. Gone is the Ancient Glory: Spanish Town, Jamaica, 1534–2000. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 2005.
An urban survey extending from the Spanish period to the end of the 20th century of the town that served as the island’s capital under the Spaniards from 1534 and then under the English until the 1870s. Jamaica’s history viewed from the town’s streets and squares.
Sherlock, Philip, and Hazel Bennett. The Story of the Jamaican People. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 1998.
An overview of Jamaica’s history with some flashes of Sherlock’s insight, but on many questions it does not move far beyond colonial-era surveys.
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Article
- Abolition of Slavery
- Abolitionism and Africa
- Africa and the Atlantic World
- African American Religions
- African Religion and Culture
- African Retailers and Small Artisans in the Atlantic World
- Age of Atlantic Revolutions, The
- Alexander von Humboldt and Transatlantic Studies
- America, Pre-Contact
- American Revolution, The
- Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Popery
- Argentina
- Army, British
- Arsenals
- Art and Artists
- Asia and the Americas and the Iberian Empires
- Atlantic Biographies
- Atlantic Creoles
- Atlantic History and Hemispheric History
- Atlantic Migration
- Atlantic New Orleans: 18th and 19th Centuries
- Atlantic Trade and the British Economy
- Atlantic Trade and the European Economy
- Bacon's Rebellion
- Baltic Sea
- Baptists
- Barbados in the Atlantic World
- Barbary States
- Benguela
- Berbice in the Atlantic World
- Black Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Bolívar, Simón
- Borderlands
- Bourbon Reforms in the Spanish Atlantic, The
- Brazil
- Brazil and Africa
- Brazilian Independence
- Britain and Empire, 1685-1730
- British Atlantic Architectures
- British Atlantic World
- Buenos Aires in the Atlantic World
- Cabato, Giovanni (John Cabot)
- Cannibalism
- Capitalism
- Captain John Smith
- Captivity
- Captivity in Africa
- Captivity in North America
- Caribbean, The
- Cartier, Jacques
- Castas
- Catholicism
- Cattle in the Atlantic World
- Central American Independence
- Central Europe and the Atlantic World
- Charleston
- Chartered Companies, British and Dutch
- Cherokee
- Childhood
- Chinese Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World
- Chocolate
- Church and Slavery
- Cities and Urbanization in Portuguese America
- Citizenship in the Atlantic World
- Class and Social Structure
- Climate
- Clothing
- Coastal/Coastwide Trade
- Cod in the Atlantic World
- Coffee
- Colonial Governance in Spanish America
- Colonial Governance in the Atlantic World
- Colonialism and Postcolonialism
- Colonization, Ideologies of
- Colonization of English America
- Communications in the Atlantic World
- Comparative Indigenous History of the Americas
- Confraternities
- Constitutions
- Continental America
- Cook, Captain James
- Cortes of Cádiz
- Cosmopolitanism
- Cotton
- Credit and Debt
- Creek Indians in the Atlantic World, The
- Creolization
- Criminal Transportation in the Atlantic World
- Crowds in the Atlantic World
- Cuba
- Currency
- Death in the Atlantic World
- Demography of the Atlantic World
- Diaspora, Jewish
- Diaspora, The Acadian
- Disease in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Production and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Slave Trades in the Americas
- Dreams and Dreaming
- Dutch Atlantic World
- Dutch Brazil
- Dutch Caribbean and Guianas, The
- Early Modern Amazonia
- Early Modern France
- Economy and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Economy of British America, The
- Edwards, Jonathan
- Elites
- Emancipation
- Emotions
- Empire and State Formation
- Enlightenment, The
- Environment and the Natural World
- Ethnicity
- Europe and Africa
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Northern
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Western
- European Enslavement of Indigenous People in the Americas
- European, Javanese and African and Indentured Servitude in...
- Evangelicalism and Conversion
- Female Slave Owners
- Feminism
- First Contact and Early Colonization of Brazil
- Fiscality
- Fiscal-Military State
- Food
- Forts, Fortresses, and Fortifications
- Founding Myths of the Americas
- France and Empire
- France and its Empire in the Indian Ocean
- France and the British Isles from 1640 to 1789
- Free People of Color
- Free Ports in the Atlantic World
- French Army and the Atlantic World, The
- French Atlantic World
- French Emancipation
- French Revolution, The
- Gardens
- Gender in Iberian America
- Gender in North America
- Gender in the Atlantic World
- Gender in the Caribbean
- George Montagu Dunk, Second Earl of Halifax
- Georgia in the Atlantic World
- German Influences in America
- Germans in the Atlantic World
- Giovanni da Verrazzano, Explorer
- Glasgow
- Glorious Revolution
- Godparents and Godparenting
- Great Awakening
- Green Atlantic: the Irish in the Atlantic World
- Guianas, The
- Haitian Revolution, The
- Hanoverian Britain
- Havana in the Atlantic World
- Hinterlands of the Atlantic World
- Histories and Historiographies of the Atlantic World
- Honor
- Huguenots
- Hunger and Food Shortages
- Iberian Atlantic World, 1600-1800
- Iberian Empires, 1600-1800
- Iberian Inquisitions
- Idea of Atlantic History, The
- Impact of the French Revolution on the Caribbean, The
- Indentured Servitude
- Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World, Indian
- India, The Atlantic Ocean and
- Indigenous Knowledge
- Indigo in the Atlantic World
- Insurance
- Internal Slave Migrations in the Americas
- Interracial Marriage in the Atlantic World
- Ireland and the Atlantic World
- Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)
- Islam and the Atlantic World
- Itinerant Traders, Peddlers, and Hawkers
- Jamaica in the Atlantic World
- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jesuits
- Jews and Blacks
- Labor Systems
- Land and Propert in the Atlantic World
- Language, State, and Empire
- Languages, Caribbean Creole
- Latin American Independence
- Law and Slavery
- Legal Culture
- Leisure in the British Atlantic World
- Letters and Letter Writing
- Lima
- Literature and Culture
- Literature of the British Caribbean
- Literature, Slavery and Colonization
- Liverpool in The Atlantic World 1500-1833
- Louverture, Toussaint
- Loyalism
- Lutherans
- Mahogany
- Manumission
- Maps in the Atlantic World
- Maritime Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Maritime Literature
- Markets in the Atlantic World
- Maroons and Marronage
- Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World
- Maryland
- Material Culture in the Atlantic World
- Material Culture of Slavery in the British Atlantic
- Medicine in the Atlantic World
- Mennonites
- Mental Disorder in the Atlantic World
- Mercantilism
- Merchants in the Atlantic World
- Merchants' Networks
- Mestizos
- Mexico
- Migrations and Diasporas
- Minas Gerais
- Miners
- Mining, Gold, and Silver
- Missionaries
- Missionaries, Native American
- Money and Banking in the Atlantic Economy
- Monroe, James
- Moravians
- Morris, Gouverneur
- Music and Music Making
- Napoléon Bonaparte and the Atlantic World
- Nation and Empire in Northern Atlantic History
- Nation, Nationhood, and Nationalism
- Native American Histories in North America
- Native American Networks
- Native American Religions
- Native Americans and Africans
- Native Americans and the American Revolution
- Native Americans and the Atlantic World
- Native Americans in Cities
- Native Americans in Europe
- Native North American Women
- Native Peoples of Brazil
- Natural History
- Networks for Migrations and Mobility
- Networks of Science and Scientists
- New England in the Atlantic World
- New France and Louisiana
- New York City
- News
- Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World
- Nineteenth-Century France
- Nobility and Gentry in the Early Modern Atlantic World
- North Africa and the Atlantic World
- Northern New Spain
- Novel in the Age of Revolution, The
- Oceanic History
- Oceans
- Pacific, The
- Paine, Thomas
- Papacy and the Atlantic World
- Paris
- People of African Descent in Early Modern Europe
- Peru
- Pets and Domesticated Animals in the Atlantic World
- Philadelphia
- Philanthropy
- Phillis Wheatley
- Piracy
- Plantations in the Atlantic World
- Plants
- Poetry in the British Atlantic
- Political Participation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic...
- Polygamy and Bigamy
- Port Cities, British
- Port Cities, British American
- Port Cities, French
- Port Cities, French American
- Port Cities, Iberian
- Ports, African
- Portugal and Brazile in the Age of Revolutions
- Portugal, Early Modern
- Portuguese Atlantic World
- Potosi
- Poverty in the Early Modern English Atlantic
- Pre-Columbian Transatlantic Voyages
- Pregnancy and Reproduction
- Print Culture in the British Atlantic
- Proprietary Colonies
- Protestantism
- Puritanism
- Quakers
- Quebec and the Atlantic World, 1760–1867
- Quilombos
- Race and Racism
- Race, The Idea of
- Reconstruction, Democracy, and United States Imperialism
- Red Atlantic
- Refugees, Saint-Domingue
- Religion
- Religion and Colonization
- Religion in the British Civil Wars
- Religious Border-Crossing
- Religious Networks
- Representations of Slavery
- Republicanism
- Rice in the Atlantic World
- Rio de Janeiro
- Rum
- Rumor
- Russia and North America
- Sailors
- Saint Domingue
- Saint-Louis, Senegal
- Salvador da Bahia
- Scandinavian Chartered Companies
- Science and Technology (in Literature of the Atlantic Worl...
- Science, History of
- Scotland and the Atlantic World
- Sea Creatures in the Atlantic World
- Second-Hand Trade
- Settlement and Region in British America, 1607-1763
- Seven Years' War, The
- Seville
- Sex and Sexuality in the Atlantic World
- Shakers
- Shakespeare and the Atlantic World
- Ships and Shipping
- Signares
- Silk
- Slave Codes
- Slave Names and Naming in the Anglophone Atlantic
- Slave Owners In The British Atlantic
- Slave Rebellions
- Slave Resistance in the Atlantic World
- Slave Trade and Natural Science, The
- Slave Trade, The Atlantic
- Slavery and Empire
- Slavery and Fear
- Slavery and Gender
- Slavery and the Family
- Slavery, Atlantic
- Slavery, Health, and Medicine
- Slavery in Africa
- Slavery in Brazil
- Slavery in British America
- Slavery in British and American Literature
- Slavery in Danish America
- Slavery in Dutch America and the West Indies
- Slavery in New England
- Slavery in North America, The Growth and Decline of
- Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa
- Slavery in the French Atlantic World
- Slavery, Native American
- Slavery, Public Memory and Heritage of
- Slavery, The Origins of
- Slavery, Urban
- Smuggling
- São Paulo
- Sociability in the British Atlantic
- Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts...
- Soldiers
- South Atlantic
- South Atlantic Creole Archipelagos
- South Carolina
- Sovereignty and the Law
- Spain, Early Modern
- Spanish America After Independence, 1825-1900
- Spanish American Port Cities
- Spanish Atlantic World
- Spanish Colonization to 1650
- Subjecthood in the Atlantic World
- Sugar in the Atlantic World
- Swedish Atlantic World, The
- Technology, Inventing, and Patenting
- Textiles in the Atlantic World
- Texts, Printing, and the Book
- The American West
- The Danish Atlantic World
- The French Lesser Antilles
- The Fur Trade
- The Spanish Caribbean
- Theater
- Time(scapes) in the Atlantic World
- Tobacco
- Toleration in the Atlantic World
- Transatlantic Political Economy
- Travel Writing (in the Atlantic World)
- Tudor and Stuart Britain in the Wider World, 1485-1685
- Universities
- USA and Empire in the 19th Century
- Venezuela and the Atlantic World
- Violence
- Visual Art and Representation
- War and Trade
- War of 1812
- War of the Spanish Succession
- Warfare
- Warfare in Spanish America
- Warfare in 17th-Century North America
- Warfare, Medicine, and Disease in the Atlantic World
- Weavers
- West Indian Economic Decline
- Whitefield, George
- Whiteness in the Atlantic World
- William Blackstone
- William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611)
- William Wilberforce
- Wine
- Witchcraft in the Atlantic World
- Women and the Law
- Women Prophets