Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, 240 kilometres (150 mi) in length and as much as 85 kilometres (50 mi) in width situated in the Caribbean Sea. more...

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It is 635 kilometres (391 mi) east of the Central American mainland, 150 kilometres (93 mi) south of Cuba, and 180 kilometres (112 mi) west of the island of Hispaniola, on which Haiti and the Dominican Republic are situated. Its indigenous Arawakan-speaking Taíno inhabitants named the island Xaymaca, meaning either the \"Land of Springs,\" or the \"Land of Wood and Water.\" Formerly a Spanish possession known as Santiago, then the British West Indies Crown colony of Jamaica. It is the third most populous Anglophone country in the Americas, after the United States and Canada. Jamaica is the biggest english speaking island in the carribean.

History

The original Arawak or Taino people from South America first settled on the island between 1000 and 400 BC. Although some claim they became virtually extinct following contact with Europeans, others claim that some survived. Whatever the case the culture of the Arawaks are deeply evident and rooted in the food they eat, some of the words used in the dialects, the cultural medicine they practise and the art culture which remained and is now housed at the British Museums.

Jamaica was claimed for Spain after Christopher Columbus first landed there in 1494. Columbus used it as his family's private estate. The British Admiral William Penn (father of William Penn of Pennsylvania) and General Venables seized the island in 1655. During its first 200 years of British rule, post Spanish rule, Jamaica became one of the world's leading sugar exporting nations and produced over 77,000 tons of sugar annually between 1820 and 1824, which was achieved through the massive use of imported African slave labour. When this wasn't enough the British imported Indian and Chinese indentured servants in the early 1800s that remained in Jamaica from then until present day. Over it's 300 years of slavery the majority of the population is visible African in features while having some Euro-Asiatic, Afro-Middle Eastern and Native Indian roots and features, but undoubtedly a unique culture combining all of its slave and indentured population.

By the beginning of the 19th century, the United Kingdom's heavy reliance on slavery resulted in blacks outnumbering whites by a ratio of almost 20 to one, leading to constant threat of revolt. Following a series of rebellions, slavery was formally abolished in 1834, with full emancipation from chattel slavery declared in 1838.

In 1945, Sir Horace Hector Hearne became Chief Justice and Keeper of the Records in Jamaica and sat in the Supreme Court, Kingston between 1945 and 1950/1951, going on to become Chief Justice in Kenya.

Read more at Wikipedia.org