When was jamaica colonized by britain

Following the conquest, Spain repeatedly attempted to recapture Jamaica. The Brethren was made up of a group of pirates who were descendants of cattle-hunting boucaniers later Anglicised to buccaneers , who had turned to piracy after being robbed by the Spanish and subsequently thrown out of Hispaniola. These pirates concentrated their attacks on Spanish shipping, whose interests were considered the major threat to the town.

Around the same time that pirates were invited to Port Royal, England launched a series of attacks against Spanish shipping vessels and coastal towns.

By sending the newly appointed privateers after Spanish ships and settlements, England had successfully set up a system of defense for Port Royal. Jamaica became a haven of privateers, buccaneers, and occasionally outright pirates: Christopher Myngs, Edward Mansvelt, and most famously, Henry Morgan. This settlement also improved the supply of slaves and resulted in more protection, including military support, for the planters against foreign competition.

However, the English colonial authorities continued to have difficulties suppressing the Spanish Maroons, who made their homes in the mountainous interior, and mounted periodic raids on estates and towns, such as Spanish Town. The Karmahaly Maroons continued to stay in the forested mountains, and periodically fought the English.

Two-thirds of the town sank into the sea immediately after the main shock. After the earthquake, the town was partially rebuilt but the colonial government was relocated to Spanish Town, which had been the capital under Spanish rule. Port Royal was further devastated by a fire in and a hurricane in Most of the sea trade moved to Kingston.

By the late 18th century, Port Royal was largely abandoned. In the midth century, sugarcane had been brought into the British West Indies by the Dutch, from Brazil. Upon landing in Jamaica and other islands, they quickly urged local growers to change their main crops from cotton and tobacco to sugarcane.

With depressed prices of cotton and tobacco, due mainly to stiff competition from the North American colonies, the farmers switched, leading to a boom in the Caribbean economies. Sugarcane was quickly snapped up by the British, who used it in cakes and to sweeten tea. The sugar industry was labour-intensive and the British brought hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans to Jamaica.

By , the median-size plantation in Jamaica had about slaves, and nearly one of every four bondsmen lived on units that had at least slaves.

In The Book of Night Women, author Marlon James indicates that the ratio of slave owner to enslaved Africans is James also depicts atrocities that slave owners subjected slaves to, and violent resistance from the slaves; numerous slaves died in pursuit of freedom. After slavery was abolished in , sugarcane plantations used a variety of forms of labour including workers imported from India under contracts of indenture.

When the British captured Jamaica in , the Spanish colonists fled, leaving a large number of African slaves. These former Spanish slaves created three Palenques, or settlements.

The third chose to join those who had previously escaped from the Spanish to live and intermarry with the Arawak people. Each group of Maroons established distinct independent communities in the mountainous interior of Jamaica. They survived by subsistence farming and periodic raids of plantations. Over time, the Maroons came to control large areas of the Jamaican interior Early in the 18th century, the Maroons took a heavy toll on the British troops and local militia sent against them in the interior, in what came to be known as the First Maroon War.

The First Maroon War came to an end with a —40 agreement between the Maroons and the British government. In exchange, they were asked to agree not to harbour new runaway slaves, but rather to help catch them. This last clause in the treaty naturally caused a split between the Maroons and the rest of the black population, although from time to time runaways from the plantations still found their way into Maroon settlements. Another provision of the agreement was that the Maroons would serve to protect the island from invaders.

The latter was because the Maroons were revered by the British as skilled warriors. As he grew older, however, Cudjoe became increasingly disillusioned. He ran into quarrels with his lieutenants and with other Maroon groups. He felt that the only hope for the future was honorable peace with the enemy, which was just what the British were thinking. The treaty should be seen in this light. A year later, the even more rebellious Windward Maroons of Trelawny Town also agreed to sign a treaty under pressure from both white Jamaicans and the Leeward Maroons.

In May , Tacky, a slave overseer on the Frontier plantation in Saint Mary Parish, led a group of enslaved Africans in taking over the Frontier and Trinity plantations while killing their enslavers.

They then marched to the storeroom at Fort Haldane, where the munitions to defend the town of Port Maria were kept. After killing the storekeeper, Tacky and his men stole nearly 4 barrels of gunpowder and 40 firearms with shot, before marching on to overrun the plantations at Heywood Hall and Esher. By dawn, hundreds of other slaves had joined Tacky and his followers. One slave from Esher decided to slip away and sound the alarm Obeahmen Caribbean witch doctors quickly circulated around the camp dispensing a powder that they claimed would protect the men from injury in battle and loudly proclaimed that an Obeahman could not be killed.

Confidence was high. Many of the rebels, confidence shaken, returned to their plantations. Tacky and 25 or so men decided to fight on.

Tacky and his men went running through the woods being chased by the Maroons and their legendary marksman, Davy the Maroon. While running at full speed, Davy shot Tacky and cut off his head as evidence of his feat, for which he would be richly rewarded. In , the Second Maroon War was instigated when two Maroons were flogged by a black slave for allegedly stealing two pigs. When six Maroon leaders came to the British to present their grievances, the British took them as prisoners.

The war lasted for five months as a bloody stalemate. The British 5, troops and militia outnumbered the Maroons ten to one, but the mountainous and forested topography of Jamaica proved ideal for guerrilla warfare. The Maroons surrendered in December The governor of Jamaica ratified the treaty, but gave the Maroons only three days to present themselves to beg forgiveness on 1 January Suspicious of British intentions, most of the Maroons did not surrender until mid-March.

The British used the contrived breach of treaty as a pretext to deport the entire Trelawny Town Maroons to Nova Scotia. The militia retreated to Montego Bay while the Black Regiment advanced an invasion of estates in the hills, inviting more slaves to join while burning houses, fields and other properties, setting off a trail of fires through the Great River Valley in Westmoreland and St.

Elizabeth to St James. The rebellion was suppressed by British forces under the control of Sir Willoughby Cotton. The reaction of the Jamaican Government and plantocracy was far more brutal. An account by Henry Bleby described how three or four simultaneous executions were commonly observed; bodies would be allowed to pile up until workhouse slaves carted the bodies away at night and buried them in mass graves outside town.

The brutality of the plantocracy during the revolt is thought to have accelerated the process of emancipation, with initial measures beginning in Because of the loss of property and life in the Baptist War rebellion, the British Parliament held two inquiries.

Their reports on conditions contributed greatly to the abolition movement and passage of the law to abolish slavery as of August 1, , throughout the British Empire.

The period after emancipation in initially was marked by a conflict between the plantocracy and elements in the Colonial Office over the extent to which individual freedom should be coupled with political participation for blacks. In the assembly changed the voting qualifications in a way that enabled a majority of blacks and people of mixed race browns or mulattos to vote.

Nevertheless, at the end of the 19th century and in the early years of the 20th century, the crown began to allow some Jamaicans — mostly local merchants, urban professionals, and artisans—into the appointed councils. The rebellion was sparked on 7 October, when a black man was put on trial and imprisoned for allegedly trespassing on a long-abandoned plantation. While pursuing Geoghegon, the two policeman were beaten with sticks and stones.

The following Monday arrest warrants were issued for several men for rioting, resisting arrest, and assaulting the police. Among them was Baptist preacher Paul Bogle. A few days later on 11 October, Mr.

However, the territories in the Caribbean were retained within the empire. Like the other British-Caribbean colonies, Jamaica was a slave society. Enslaved people, imported to the region from West Africa via the transatlantic slave trade made up the majority of the population. These people were victims of a brutal and oppressive regime, which exploited their labour in pursuit of profit.

Enslaved people were bought and sold as property and most of them were put to work on plantations, such as the sugar plantations of Jamaica. However, strong competition from the North American colonies meant that prices in these crops were falling. The owners of the large Caribbean plantations decided to switch to growing sugar cane. The plantation owners purchased enslaved people to provide the labour for this work.

The sugar cane plant was the main crop produced on the numerous plantations throughout the Caribbean during the 18th and 19th centuries. These plantations produced 80—90 per cent of the sugar consumed in Western Europe. Almost every island was covered with sugar plantations and mills for refining the cane for its sweet properties. Until the abolition of slavery, the main source of labour was enslaved African people. Between and the trade in sugar increased dramatically due to the increasing popularity of sugar to sweeten luxury drinks such as tea and coffee.

In , Britain's sugar consumption was 4 pounds weight per person, a century later that had risen to 18 pounds per person. The increased availability and popularity of sugar was due to a gradual increase in the standard of living whereas before only the very rich could afford such luxuries as sugar and the discovery of more New World colonies which were ideally suited to the growing of luxury crops such as sugar.

Although sugar was the most important crop in the Caribbean, other crops such as coffee, indigo and rice were also grown.