Post-Emancipation Life

         To assert that slaves actually achieved their own emancipation by resistance would be to overstate the case. The freeing of the British slaves in 1838, in common with the ending of the British trade in slaves years earlier, could only be achieved by parliamentary decree. In 1834 Britain initiated the four year period of “apprenticeship” in the West Indies that was to grant full “emancipation: to slaves in 1838. This “emancipation” was to promise slaves this set of institutions constituting “freedom”: “emancipation” proposed a narrative development in which wage labor, contract, marriage, and family would be the formal institutions through which modern freedom could be attained and the condition of slavery overcome. Yet emancipation clearly did not establish freedom for black peoples in the British West Indies, many of whom were still confined to the plantation and others who left bound in economic servitude and poverty. The socialization of former slaves into liberal promises of freedom in Jamaica was part of the gradual disciplining of blacks into wage work, which Marx would call “another form of slavery”.

         The British inserted the Chinese so-called free laborers at the critical time of slave emancipation, calculating that they would occupy an intermediary position within this governmentality in which the colonized became human through development of economic and political freedom.

         Emancipation removed the legal infrastructure of slavery, but it also removed the systems of support for both the plantation owners and the ex-slaves. The former slave was free not to work for his former owner, or indeed for anyone but himself. But he was not free to make use of the provision grounds on the estate or of the estate ‘hospital’, or to receive the periodic handouts of clothing and imported food that were part of the routine of estate life under the lamented institution.

         Liberation of the slaves reduced the estate owner’s assets, for which he was generously compensated by the British Parliament- Jamaican planters receiving almost one-third of the total reparations paid out across the empire. It also sent up his costs since labor now had to be paid for. These two factors, combined with the lower costs for sugar production to other (slave) producers around the world, resulted in a wage being offered to the former slaves by the planters that was derisory, and did as much as emancipation itself to promote the establishment of an independent Jamaican peasantry.

After emancipation in 1838, thousands of blacks withdrew their labor from the plantations and settled on crown lands as peasants or small farmers. Some, with savings built up over years from the sale of foodstuffs from their provision grounds, and assisted by missionaries were able to buy small plots for themselves. The Jamaican sugar industry had been in decline for some years before the end of slavery. In 1846 the British parliament passed a Free Trade Bill, under which the protective duties that had long favored British West Indian sugar exports were abolished. Many planters lost their holdings to the British merchants to whom they had been in debt for some time. Hundreds of planters and their families and other whites, left the island during the mid-to late nineteenth century.

Citations:

Craton, Michael. Empire, Enslavement, and Freedom in the  Caribbean. 265.

Mordecai, Martin. Culture and Customs of Jamaica. 15.

Stoler, Ann Laura. Haunted by Empire: Geographies of intimacy in     North American History. 201.

Jamaican Independence

         Although politically tumultuous, the years following the French Revolution were quiet on Jamaica. Few slave uprisings occurred, and wars seemed to be finally at an end. However, when Britain called for the end of slavery, Jamaica’s planters were faced with a situation they certainly did not want. Anti-slavery sentiment in Britain had been growing for approximately two centuries before finally coming to a head in the early 1800s with the passing of a ban on the importation of slaves in the Caribbean colonies as well as a law declaring slave trade illegal. However, these laws did little to change the way of life of Jamaica’s settlers. Their distance from England made it easy for the colonists to simply ignore these laws.

         Jamaica, the largest and most populous of the British islands, was one of the arenas in which large numbers of slaves struggled for their freedom with unflagging determination. Their successes, initially partial were finally crowned by the achievement of the abolition of slavery at a considerably earlier date than would have been possibly without their intervention. What was distinctive about the British West Indies in the eighteenth century was their failure to become settler societies and their reliance on the exploitation of African slaves for their prosperity. Every British colony, of course, was exploitative of environment and people.

         In 1807 the African slave trade was abolished by Parliament, effective January 1, 1808. Theoretically this meant that no more slaves could be brought from Africa to the colonies in the British West Indies, but slaves could be transported from one colony to the other.

In 1823 the British government pledged to adopt measures for the abolition of slavery in the colonies. In the ensuing years there was a considerably exchange of letters on the subject between Britain and the colonies, particularly the legislatures and planters. The slaves by this time were agitated about their status, as the slave trade had already been abolished. In 1824 there was a slave insurrection in Hanover, followed in 1831 by a more widespread insurrection in the county of Cornwall. In June 1833 the governor of Jamaica wrote a proclamation to the slaves to clarify their status. By December 1833 there was a bill for the abolition of slavery, and it became effective on August 1, 1834. At that time all slaves became apprentices. They remained working for the same slave masters but earned very low wages. They also remained subject to the brutality of slavery pressed upon them by their abusive masters. This system failed and it too was abolished. Slaves received their unrestricted freedom on August 1, 1838.

         At independence, Jamaica’s population consisted of 76.8% Black, 16.9% mixed race, 0.9% white, 0.6% Chinese, 1.7% Indian, and 3.1% “other”. Although the numerical preponderance of Blacks was glaring, it could not subsume the presence of the other races, whose roles and niches in the society had been firmly carved by the time of independence. In essence, then, the new nation was multiracial. But from the onset the architects of Jamaica’s nationhood, intended to drastically reduce or obliterate racial consciousness as an essential, defining trait of the nation. This resolve is encapsulated in the motto adopted “Out of Many, One People”. This was meant to be more than just rhetoric, it was to be at the heart of the spirit of an ideology for nationhood.

Citations:

Hart, Richard. Slaves Who Abolished Slavery: Blacks in Rebellion. 2. Print.

Monteith, Kathleen E.A. Jamaica in Slavery and Freedom: History, Heritage and Culture. 73. Print.

Jamaica's Labor Force

            Who was put to work on the island of Jamaica? Who was responsible for fulfilling the labor needs of the economy? The English began with the importation of the Irish ancestors who came as indentured labor. They were followed by the Africans who came as slave labor. They were joined by the Scots also as indentured labor. As the economy grew, those who had been persecuted in their host countries came to seek a better way of life. These people included Jews who originated from the Iberian Peninsula and Huguenots from Catholic Europe. Later, the Arab Christians from the collapsing Ottoman Empire made their way to Jamaica.

            During the early stages of the development of slave society in colonial Jamaica planters initially purchased adult Africans to serve as physical laborers. They sought healthy, young men and women who could provide the brute force necessary to convert the forested island into productive plantations. As the slave society matured, planters found a need for slave laborers outside of agriculture. The labor force on mature plantations can be divided into four categories: field hands, skilled laborers, domestics, and marginal employees- each having a distinct hierarchy. The prominent members of each category formed the slave elite of the plantation. Color and race were often more important than ability in determining which bondmen were promoted to these positions. Slave owners largely preferred to train males for positions that required skill and specialization. Moreover, they preferred to employ lighter skinned and usually locally born workers in positions that involved close contact with the white household. Many bondmen learned these skilled and semi-skilled trades from white artisans and domestics, and then passed them on to their friends and kinsmen. Soon, it became difficult for African migrants to become domestics or skilled craftsmen, despite their particular talents. The enslaved men and women who were elevated to skilled, semi-skilled, or domestic occupations were largely of either biracial descent or island born because planters assumed that they were more refined and familiar with white customs than African born bondmen.

            Jamaica’s colonial transition from dependence on transshipment and trade to agro-industrial production was gradual and driven by a massive forced migration of enslaved African labor into Jamaica. In addition to the economic impact enslaved laborers had on the island, they also brought with them ways of doing things, cultural knowledge that shaped the material and social landscapes of Jamaica. By the end of Queen Anne’s War in 1713, the plantation had become the dominant economic institution in Jamaica and African slavery the social foundation of its success. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the sugar industry was the cornerstone of Jamaica’s economy, and slavery was the primary organizing principle of labor. The plantation system also created a context in which enslaved peoples of African descent refashioned the world they were entering using organizing frameworks brought from West Africa and applying them in new contexts, yet the plantation was a regime that required strict structural control over the daily lives and economic world of the people who provided the plantation’s labor.

Citations:

Dell, James A. Out of Many, One People: The Historical Archaeology of Colonial Jamaica. 2011. 1-8.

Johnson, Amy Marie. Expectations of Slavery: African captives, White planters, and Slavery. 116- 120.

OUT OF MANY, ONE PEOPLE

            The concept of race has many different definitions. The different variations as they appear in Jamaica are different when compared to other Caribbean islands as well as the United States.The contrasts between Haiti and Martinique and between Puerto Rico and Ecuador naturally make one want to compare the American set of racial categories with that of another English-speaking New World culture. Like the United States, Jamaica was also a British colony with a slave economy, but its history is very different from our own. Thus, based on cultural reasoning, one would expect it to have developed a different folk taxonomy from ours. Its categoris would however be expected to show greater similarities to American ones than those of Haiti, Martinique or Puerto Rico. That is, despite Jamaica’s geographical proximity in the Caribbean to the latter three and similarity in climate, small size and insular form, one would predict that the British cultural influence would predominate in the formation of racial categories. This is, in fact, the case, despite Jamaican categories being based primarily on physical appearance rather than on ancestry.

            Social class is very important in Jamaica, money counts more than color. With regard to physical appearance, however African and European ancestry predominate and there has been considerable mixture among people from these backgrounds over the years. Although other groups are present, most Jamaicans view their physical appearance as resulting from both African and European traits- a common, expected, and nonproblematic state of affairs. Variation in physical appearance with a family is the norm and terms exist to refer to some of these differences.

            Unlike the situation in the Latin cultures just discussed, the main physical trait used to classify people in the Afro-European domain is skin color. Facial features, hair texture, and color and eye color are not usually used. Because intermediate shades are seen as the norms, the terms “black” and “white” apply to extremes and are rarely used for Jamaicans. Instead, distinctions are made primarily in the mid-range of skin as “fair” (or “light” or “red”), “brown” and “dark”. Thus, it would not be uncommon for a couple to have a fair child, a brown child, and a dark child, and for them and other Jamaicans to describe them that way if asked to do so. This is in contrast to the United States, where all three would be considered black. It also contrasts with the other cultures described above, where as in Jamaica, they would receive different classifications- but where skin color alone would provide insufficient information to categorize them.

            For Jamaicans in the United States, our folk taxonomy seems both impoverished and wrong. It seems impoverished because it offers only the two options of black and white, where Jamaicans routinely make more distinctions. And it seems wrong because it misclassifies people as white or black (usually just black) when they are actually something in between. Another way of putting this is to say that while both Americans and Jamaicans use the English words “white” and “black” in their folk taxonomies, the words refer to different overlapping groups of people and thus have different meanings in the two cultures. In the airplane example, someone who gets on as a black in New York City can get off in Kingston as fair or brown or dark.

Citations:

            Fish, Jefferson M. The Concept of Race and Psychotherapy.  21-22. 2010. Print.

            Johnson, Violet Showers. Racial Frontiers in Jamaica’s Nonracial Nationhood.  1-2.

Religion in Colonial Jamaica

            Much of the Caribbean’s colonial history contributed to the islands’ current religious practices. Jamaica is no exception. Though originally colonized by the Spanish, who were Catholic, the British took control of Jamaica early in the island’s history. They brought Protestantism- particularly the Church of England or Anglican faith- to the islands.

            Although many Irish-Catholic servants migrated to the island early in its colonial history, the importation of slaves soon overtook the usefulness of such servants. These European servants were freed after only a few years of service. The slaves were educated in the religion of their masters, which was usually Anglican. But majority of slave owners did not permit their slaves to be education in matters of religion. Many slaves, like the first generation of imports, had their own religions.

            Evidence of the cultural tenacity of religious Africanism was much stronger in the slave cultures of the Caribbean and South America than on the plantations of the American South. Jamaican slaves clung to traditional beliefs and practices associated with witchcraft and sorcery.

            Obean and myalism had roots among those West African traditions that stressed the dual potential of magicoreligious powers for help or harm. The obeahman or sorcerer practiced negative spiritual medicine. The myalman counteracted with positive spiritual medicine, which came through dancing and possession trances, sometimes referred to as Jamaican Cumina, an ancestral cult. Though the African gods did not survive by name in Jamaica, as they did in Haitian vaudou, enslaved Africans clung to beliefs in family spirits and “ancestral zombies”, sometimes in support of rebellion. The colonial planters and their representatives guarded against the influence of obeahmen, whose charms were said to protect insurgents from the weapons of whites.

            When at any time sudden or untimely death overtakes any of their companions, they impute it to the malicious art of some practioners in Obeah, or Obi, which is a term of African origin, and signifies sorcery or witchcraft. The practice of this art has a very powerful effect on the negroes, for, in a considerable degree, it gives a bias to their general conduct, dispositions, and manners.

            The professors of Obi are, and always were, natives of Africa, and none other, and they have brought the science with them from Africa to Jamaica, where it is so universally practiced.

            The Jamaican planters, who always comprised a small fraction of the island’s population and who commanded few police and limited military resources, considered that the key to slave control was the planter’s own unlimited power. To this end they assumed that as owners they had to have total control of their workforce and, as assemblymen they permitted the colonial state very limited rights to make statute law regulating slave labor.

            Religion was not regarded as an assistance to slave control. In the first place it interposed an authority figure with claims to supernatural powers between themselves and the slaves. Christian beliefs in England, moreover, once the Catholic Church was destroyed and Protestant sects and churches flourished, had become expressions of intellectual and class conflict rather than instruments of class cohesion, and the English Revolution had affirmed their disruptive potential. At the same time the organizational weakness of the state Anglican Church, which scarcely mustered manpower enough to serve the planter’s ritual requirements, complemented their reluctance to expose the workers to the uncertain effects of Christian instruction. By the end of the seventeenth century, the heathenness of the Africans was being used to justify their enslavement.

Citations:

Olmos, Margarite fernandez. Creole religions of the caribbean: an introduction from vodou and santeria. 2011. 22.

Sernett, Milton C. African American religious history: a documentary   witness. 1993. 20-21.

           

Conflicts

The first known inhabitants of Jamaica were the Tainos, an Arawak-speaking tribe that traveled throughout the Caribbean after leaving South America. The Tainos left very little evidence of their time on the island, but their influence was profound. The Tainos' Arawak name for the island was “Xaymaca,” which means “land of wood and water.” This was later written phonetically by Spanish explorers, who substituted a J for the X at the beginning of the word.

Before the arrival of the Spaniards, the Tainos farmed and fished and were even the creators of the hammock. Unlike many other islands in the area, they were never at war with the Carib tribes that peppered the region. After the arrival of the Spanish, Jamaica’s history was no longer as peaceful; the Tainos’ new enemy was the Spanish, who began enslaving the natives around the time they established their first settlement in 1510.

This settlement was Sevilla Nueva, “New Seville.” By the late 16th century, the Tainos had been almost completely wiped out, whether from the hard farm labor, European disease, or by their own hand—committing suicide to escape slavery. There were almost none left, and many Africans were imported to replace the Tainos as slaves

Later many settlers moved to Villa de la Vega, “City on the Plains,” now called Spanish Town. Spanish Town became the center for the Spanish colonists and was often attacked by the British. In both 1596 and 1643, the British sacked Spanish Town, and in 1655 captured it after failing an assault on Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic). It took five years to defeat the Spanish, who eventually fled to Cuba.

However, before fleeing, the Spanish freed and armed their slaves. Most of these freed slaves ran to the interior of the island and formed the Maroons, a group which still exists today. The Maroons waged guerrilla war against the British colonists and are respected for their ability to defeat the British in battles throughout the early colonial period.

The British encouraged new settlers to come to the island through gifts of land, and soon the economy was booming through the business of the vast sugarcane plantations. Jamaica was the world’s largest producer of sugar, yielding 22 percent of the world’s supply during the 1700s. Sugarcane wasn’t the only cash crop grown on the islands, the British also produced cocoa and coffee plants for trade. However, many Africans were brought into slavery to help the British rise to this caliber of economic power on the island.

Slaves were treated poorly, especially after the American colonies split from England and the French Revolution, when feelings of freedom were stronger than before. In fact, Jamaica had more slave revolts than any other West Indian island. With frequent resistance and uprisings, anti-slavery feelings grew in Britain especially after the 1831 Christmas Rebellion, in which 20,000 slaves killed planters and ruined crops. The British owners convinced them to lay down their revolt with promises of abolition, which were never kept. Afterward, 400 slaves were hung, and many more were whipped.

European and Taino Relations

Tainos and Caribs were the inhabitants of the Caribbean when Columbus reached the Americas, both human groups became extinct soon after contact, decimated by the Spaniards and the diseases they brought.

When Spaniards landed on the coast of Jamaica in early May 1494, perhaps 50,000- 60,000 Tainos lived there (Sherlock and Bennett, 1998:48). By 1655, when the British invaded Spanish Jamaica, the Tainos were nearly extinct, and the few survivors lived in the vastness of the Blue Mountains. Jamaica was settled by the Spanish in 1509, and “under Spanish rule, Africans were brought to Jamaica from 1517 onwards as laborers to take the place of the native population, the Tainos/Arawaks, who became extinct as a result of diseases, and horrific abuses by the Spaniards” (Dalby, 1971, p.31).

Few and, for the most part, evil are the records of Spanish colonization in Jamaica. The sites of the early settlements are hard to trace, and the history of the 150 years, during which the Spaniards bore rule in the island, is little more than a blank. The Indians (Tainos), said to have been at first kindly treated, were afterwards exterminated, and the colony, which began with brightness and prosperity, gradually passed into obscurity and decay (Lucas 96). Jamaica had been at first intended as a place of supply for Spanish ships and expeditions, and its main trade is said to have consisted in providing fresh provisions for the homeward bound merchant ships. The island, being a half-open land, given up in great measure to forest and to pasture, it is not surprising that the colonists were few or that the Spaniards found Jamaica less attractive than the larger islands and the vast continent teeming with gold and silver (Lucas 97).

Terracotta figurines and Spanish coins found in association confirm that Taino inhabited parts of Jamaica when the British took over the island in 1655, indicating that some indigenous people, thought by some to have long since been exterminated, survived into the seventeenth century. Those finds challenge the myth that all the Amerindians in Jamaica had been exterminated before the arrival of the British (Hauser 148).

Under British government Jamaica became the headquarters of the British buccaneers. Their marauding exploits were permitted if not encouraged, by the British authorities in the island, and they regularly brought their booty to be sold in Jamaica, generally spending the proceeds in drink and rioting.

In Jamaica, the indigenous population is still being referred to as the Arawaks despite the adoption of the term Tainos, to distinguish the native population of the Greater Antilles from the Arawaks of South America. Irving Rouse defines the Tainos as “the ethnic group that inhabited the Bahamiam archipelago, most of the Greater Antilles and the northern part of the Lesser Antilles prior to and during the time of Columbus (1992, 185.) According to Rouse, in Columbus’s time, the Tainos lacked an overall name. The people referred to themselves by the names of the localities in which they lived- for example the Puerto Ricans called themselves Borinquem, their name for the island. Traditionally Jamaicans have been taught that Xaymaca was the Taino name given to the island, meaning “land abounding with springs” from which Jamaica- land of wood and water- was derived.

Citations"

Historical Linguistics 1997, pg. 323

Lectures on British Colonization and Empire: First Series (1660-1783) pg. 50

Lucas, Sir Charles Prestwood. The West Indies. pg. 96-98.

Atkinson, Lesley Gail. The earliest Inhabitants: the Dynamics of the Jamaican Taino.

Becoming Rasta: Origins of Rastafari Identity in Jamaica. pg. 29

Chang, Mildred M. The Jamaican Accompong Maroons: Continuities and Transformations. pg. 28

Hauser, Mark W. Out of Many, One People: The Historical Archaeology of Colonial Jamaica. Pg 148.

Jamaica's Indigenous Population

Now that we know who first settled Jamaica on the colonial front, let’s take a look at who first called Jamaica home and where exactly Jamaica is. First, let’s find Jamaica on a map in the midst of all the various Caribbean islands.

 Jamaica, approximately 146 miles from east to west and fifty-one miles at its widest, with an area of some 411 square miles, lies ninety miles south of Cuba and about the same distance west of the long and narrow peninsula of Haiti in that northern section of the Caribbean archipelago known as the Greater Antilles. The island of Jamaica is covered by rugged, inaccessible mountains with deep valleys.

Now let’s see who the first inhabitants of Jamaica were;

Many scholars argue that the first or earliest Jamaicans were Arawak Indians (also called Taino Indians) but not all scholars agree with that statement, “The first Jamaicans were not Arawaks, as is commonly believed, human beings came to Jamaica first from Central America” (Schafer, 1973). When Columbus came upon the island of Jamaica on May 5, 1494 he countered large permanent villages, each governed by a chief and thickly populated with Tainos (Rouse, 1992). The inhabitants of Jamaica before the first Spanish colonial settlers arrived in 1494, were indigenous Amerindians, engaged in communal agricultural production. This population estimated at about 60,000, was virtually eliminated by the time of the British settlement in 1655.

            Africans were brought to Jamaica under the Spaniards from 1517 onwards as laborers to take the place of the native population the Tainos/Arawaks who became extinct “as a result of diseases and horrific abuses by the Spaniards” (Dalby 1971, p.31). While the Spaniards were in possession of Jamaica, they derived little or no benefit from it, and many years elapsed before it became essentially productive to the English.

            By 1655, when the island was appropriated by the English, the population of Spanish and Africans numbered no more than 2,000, half of the slaves. By 1670, sugar plantations were established, leading to increased labor demand. Between 1673 and 1703 the population of African slaves grew from 10,000 to 45,000. A century later, around 1807, Africans comprised roughly 45 percent of the slave population.  

            The advent of these substantial African populations over a period of three and a half centuries quite naturally stamped a mark on the demographic profile and cultural tenor of Jamaican life. While it is possible, however, to associate some of Jamaica’s cultural features with a particular African ethnic group, the diversity of African peoples who settled the island makes particularization in certain cases difficult and even questionable.

            Jamaican society after the arrival and emancipation of the slave population proved to be a hybrid cultural mix of all the various African populations. In the period between the abolition of the slave trade and the emancipation of the slave population of Jamaica was essentially a closed population. Between the years 1800-1808, 86,821 African slaves were brought to Jamaica and only 7,885 were re-exported to different locations.

Citation

1 The Jamaican Accompong Maroons: Continuities and Transformations, 2008.

2  John Stewart, An Account of Jamaica, and its inhabitants

3  Glen Richards, Jamaica in slavery and freedom: history, heritage and culture.

4 Slave population and economy in Jamaica, 1807-1834

The First Settlements

When someone hears the word Jamaica only a few things come to mind; Bob Marley, marijuana, beautiful beaches, and delicious food.  But before Bob Marley made this island famous with his legendary music, Jamaica had somewhat of a dangerous beginning.

          Shortly after Christopher Columbus was appointed governor of the Indies in 1508, Jamaica was considered a dependency of Hispaniola. However, Jamaica had already been given to Diego de Nicusesa and Alonso de Ojeda and they used the island for a supply base for the Spanish. Shortly after, Juan de Esquivel was appointed governor of the island.  

The first settlement established in Jamaica, St. Ann, was used not only for its excellent location, but it was easy to protect and the Taino people there were accustomed to the Spanish. This settlement was called Sevilla la Nueva, or New Seville.  This settlement did not succeed partially due to its location near swamp lands, which was an unhealthy way to live. During the first 20 years of settlement, only 10 children grew up in the colony, although there was a much higher birthrate.

The second colony established on the island would be much more successful. On the south side of the island was a new settlement called Villa de la Vega, also known as St. Jago de la Vega, and then it would become known as simply Spanish Town. This city would soon become the capital of the island. Because Spanish Town had a great location and maintained its small size, it was of interest to pirates and the British, who wanted to take control of the island.

In the beginnings of the New World exploration, Spain claimed many of the islands as territories of the Spanish Crown; however, other European powers quickly decided to launch explorations of their own in attempts to take control of the Spanish lands. Thus, pirate attacks against many Caribbean islands, including Jamaica, raged through the region.

The first act of piracy in Jamaica was committed by the French in 1555. Although it was the first attack, it most certainly was not the last. Over the course of the next century the shores of Jamaica would be bombarded and looted by the French, Dutch, Italian Portuguese, and the British.  In 1597 Spanish Town was attacked and burnt to the ground by a fleet commanded by Sir Anthony Shirley of Britain.  The residents of Spanish Town offered little resistance.

By the end of the 16^th century Spain still held the only colonies in the Caribbean basin but Britain was preparing to make their move. In the first half of the 17^th century, Britain began to take great interest in Jamaica. In 1655, a British fleet appeared in Kingston Harbour prepared to raid the town and take the island for England. The Spanish leadership of the island came to an end.