Bob Marley's Jamaica page 2
Bob Marley's Jamaica
Constitutional monarchy in the West Indies
History
Jamaica’s history is in many ways a sad one. Since it was ”discovered”, its people have experienced a lot of oppression and racial segregation, both from the Spanish and the British.
Christopher Columbus came to Jamaica in 1494 and called the island Santiago, thinking it was the most beautiful thing one could feast ones eyes on, and up until 1655 Jamaica was under Spanish rule. Before Columbus came, arawak-talking Indians inhabited the island. But in a relative short period of time this people was eradicated and replaced by African slaves by 1517.
In 1655 the British Empire conquered the island from the Spanish, and held it until 1959 when Jamaica got an inner self-government, and furthermore got their independence in 1962. When the British took over, the inhabitants on the island fled up into the mountains and became known as the Maroons-people. During this time, the British Empire met quite bit of resistance from the Maroons-people, and in 1739 the Maroons got a limited independence. By that time, the British had imported new slaves to replace the ones who had fled.
In 1838 slavery was abolished in Jamaica, and many emigrated to the cost of Central America and the Caribbean.
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