The island – “discovered” by Christopher Columbus in 1494 – was settled by the Spanish early in the 16th century. The Native Taino, who had inhabited Jamaica for centuries, were gradually exterminated and replaced by African slaves. England seized the island in 1655 and established a plantation economy based on sugar, cocoa, and coffee. The abolition of slavery in 1834 freed a quarter million slaves, many of whom became small farmers. Jamaica gradually increased its independence from Britain. In 1958, it joined other British Caribbean colonies in forming the Federation of the West Indies. Jamaica withdrew from the Federation in 1961 and gained full independence in 1962. Deteriorating economic conditions during the 1970s led to recurrent violence as rival gangs affiliated with the major political parties evolved into powerful organized crime networks involved in international drug smuggling and money laundering. Violent crime, drug trafficking, corruption, the COVID-19 pandemic, and poverty pose significant challenges to the government today. Nonetheless, many rural and resort areas remain relatively safe and contribute substantially to the economy.

Economy

Upper middle-income Caribbean island economy; ongoing debt restructuring; hurricane-vulnerable economy; high crime, youth unemployment, and poverty; susceptible to commodity shocks from ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Population

The population is 2,820,982 (2023 est.) which consists of Black 92.1%, mixed 6.1%, East Indian 0.8%, other 0.4%, unspecified 0.7% (2011 est.)

Afro-Jamaicans are Jamaicans of predominant Sub-Saharan African descent. They represent the largest ethnic group in the country. Most Jamaicans of mixed-race descent self-report as just Jamaican.

The ethnogenesis of the Black Jamaican people stemmed from the Atlantic slave trade of the 16th century, when enslaved Africans were transported as slaves to Jamaica and other parts of the Americas. The first Africans to arrive in Jamaica came in 1513 from the Iberian Peninsula. When the English invaded Jamaica in 1655, many of them fought with their Spanish masters, who gave them their freedom, and then fled to the mountains, resisting the English colonial administration for decades, becoming known as Maroons. During the period of British rule, slaves brought into Jamaica were primarily Akan, some of whom ran away and joined with Maroons and even took over as leaders.

Based on slave ship records, enslaved Africans mostly came from the Akan people (Akwamu, Ashanti, Akyem Fante and Bono) followed by Igbo people, Ibibio people, Kongo people, the Yoruba and the Fon people. Akan (then called Coromantee) culture was the dominant African culture in Jamaica.

Originally in earlier British colonization, the island before the 1750s was in fact mainly Akan imported. However, between 1663 and 1700, only six per cent of slave ships to Jamaica listed their origin as the Gold Coast, while between 1700 and 1720 that figure went up to 27 per cent. The number of Akan slaves arriving in Jamaica from Kormantin ports only increased in the early 18th century. But due to frequent rebellions from the then known “Coromantee” that often joined the slave rebellion group known as the Jamaican Maroons, other groups were sent to Jamaica. The Akan population was still maintained, since they were the preference of British planters in Jamaica because they were “better workers”, according to these planters. According to the Slave Voyages Archives, though the Igbo had the highest importation numbers, they were only imported to Montego Bay and St. Ann’s Bay ports, while the Akan (mainly Gold Coast) were more dispersed across the island and were a majority imported to seven of 14 of the island’s ports (each parish has one port).

Field slaves fetched £25–75 while skilled slaves such as carpenters fetched prices as high as £300. The majority of the house slaves were mulattoes. On reaching the plantation, the slaves underwent a “seasoning” process in which they were placed with an experienced slave who taught them the ways of the estate. Although the initial slave traders were the Portuguese and the Dutch, between 1750 and 1807 (the year in which the British Empire abolished the slave trade), Britain “dominated the buying and selling of slaves to the Americas”. They were also Brown/Mulatto or mixed-race people at the time who had more privileges than the Black slaves and usually held higher-paying jobs and occupations. Shipbuilding flourished and manufacturing expanded: the “process of industrialization in England from the second quarter of the eighteenth century as to an important extent a response to colonial demands for rails, axes, buckets, coaches, clocks, saddles…and a thousand other things”.