Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0197/01974.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 39KB | 609 lines

$Unique_ID{COW01974}
$Pretitle{233J}
$Title{Jamaica
Chapter 1A.   General Information}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Rex A. Hudson, Daniel J. Seyler}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{jamaica
population
percent
british
jamaica's
political
rate
pnp
years
jamaican}
$Date{1987}
$Log{Coat of Arms*0197401.scf
Figure 2.*0197402.scf
Figure 3.*0197403.scf
}
Country:     Jamaica
Book:        Caribbean Commonwealth, An Area Study: Jamaica
Author:      Rex A. Hudson, Daniel J. Seyler
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1987

Chapter 1A.   General Information

[See Coat of Arms: Jamaican Coat of arms]

     Before the Spaniards occupied Jamaica in the early sixteenth century, the
island was inhabited by the Arawak Indians, who called it Xaymaca, meaning
"land of springs" or "land of wood and water." Lying on the trade routes
between the Old World and the New World, Jamaica served variously for
centuries as a way station for Spanish galleons, a market for slaves and goods
from many countries, and a prize for the Spaniards, the British, buccaneers,
and entrepreneurs. By far the largest of the English-speaking islands in size
and population, independent Jamaica has played a leading role within the
Commonwealth Caribbean and has been active in international organizations.

     Jamaica's story is one of independence that began in the seventeenth
century with the Maroons, runaway slaves who resisted the British colonizers
by carrying out hit-and-run attacks from the interior. Their 7,000 descendants
in the Cockpit Country have symbolized the fervent, sometimes belligerent,
love of freedom that is ingrained in the Jamaican people as a result of both
their British tutelage and their history of slavery. Independence came
quietly, however, without a revolutionary struggle, apparently reflecting the
lasting imprint of the British parliamentary legacy on Jamaican society.

     Despite its people's respect for the rule of law and the British
Westminster system of government, Jamaica's first twenty-five years as an
independent state were marked by significant increases in criminal violence
and political polarization. The extremely violent 1980 electoral campaign and
the boycott by the opposition party of the 1983 local elections strained the
island's two-party political system. In 1987 Jamaica was still bitterly
divided, both politically and socially. This trend seemed to belie the motto
beneath the Jamaican coat of arms, reading "Out of Many, One People." Both
kinds of violence on the island--political and criminal--have been attributed
among other things to Jamaican cultural and societal traits, the socioeconomic
structure of Jamaican politics, worsening economic conditions, narcotics
trafficking, and inadequate law enforcement.

     Notwithstanding the periodic outbursts of violence around elections and
the one-party legislative situation, the nation's well-institutionalized
political system remained generally intact during the first quarter- century
of independence. Jamaicans have cherished their inherited parliamentary system
of government, whose roots extend back to the seventeenth century. Despite the
divergent ideologies and intense antipathy of the two principal political
parties, they have recognized their common stake in the stability of political
life. Jamaica has no history of coups, assassinations of national leaders, or
racial confrontation. The two main parties have alternated in power every ten
years, and neither has ever retained power beyond its constitutionally
mandated term of office. It was widely expected that a changeover would result
from the elections constitutionally required in early 1989.

Historical Setting

     From May 5, 1494, when Christopher Columbus first set foot on what he
described as "the fairest isle that eyes have beheld," to its emergence as an
independent state on August 6, 1962, Jamaica passed through three main
periods. First, it served for nearly 150 years as a Spanish-held way station
for galleons en route to and from the Spanish Main (the mainland of Spanish
America). Second, from the mid-1600s until the abolition of slavery in 1834,
it was a sugar-producing, slave-worked plantation society. Thereafter, it was
a largely agricultural, British colony peopled mainly by black peasants and
workers.

     The Spanish adventurer Juan de Esquivel settled the island in 1509,
calling it Santiago, the name given it by Columbus. In the period of Spanish
dominance from 1509 to 1655, the Spaniards exploited the island's precious
metals and eradicated the Arawaks, who succumbed to imported diseases and
harsh slavery (see The Pre-European Population, ch. 1). An English naval force
sent by Oliver Cromwell attacked the island in 1655, forcing the small group
of Spanish defenders to capitulate in May of that year (see The European
Settlements, ch. 1). Within 3 years, the English had occupied the island,
whose population was only about 3,000 (equally divided between the Spaniards
and their slaves), but it took them many years to bring the rebellious slaves
under their control.

     Cromwell increased the island's white population by sending indentured
servants and prisoners captured in battles with the Irish and Scots, as well
as some common criminals. This practice was continued under Charles II, and
the white population was also augmented by immigrants from other Caribbean
islands and from the North American mainland, as well as by the English
buccaneers. But tropical diseases kept the number of whites well under 10,000
until about 1740.

     Although the slave population in the 1670s and 1680s never exceeded about
9,500, by the end of the seventeenth century imports of slaves increased the
black population to at least five times the number of whites. Thereafter,
Jamaica's blacks did not increase significantly in number until well into the
eighteenth century, in part because the slave ships coming from the west coast
of Africa preferred to unload at the islands of the Eastern Caribbean (see
Glossary). At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the number of slaves in
Jamaica did not exceed 45,000, but by 1800 it had increased to over 300,000.

     Beginning with the Stuart monarchy's appointment of a civil governor to
Jamaica in 1661, political patterns were established that lasted well into the
twentieth century. The second governor, Lord Windsor, brought with him in 1662
a proclamation from the king giving Jamaica's nonslave populace the rights of
English citizens, including the right to make their own laws. Although he
spent only ten weeks in Jamaica, Lord Windsor laid the foundations of a
governing system that was to last for two centuries: a crown-appointed
governor, an appointed advisory council that doubled as the upper house of the
legislature, and a locally elected--but highly unrepresentative--House of
Assembly.

     England gained formal possession of Jamaica from Spain in 1670 through
the Treaty of Madrid. Removing the pressing need for constant defense against
Spanish attack, this change served as an incentive to planting. For years,
however, the planter-dominated House of Assembly was in continual conflict
with the various governors and the Stuart kings; there were also contentious
factions within the assembly itself. For much of the 1670s and 1680s, Charles
II and James II and the assembly feuded over such matters as the purchase of
slaves from ships not run by the royal English trading company. The last
Stuart governor, the duke of Albemarle, who was more interested in treasure
hunting than in planting, turned the planter oligarchy out of office. After
the duke's death in 1688, the planters, who had fled Jamaica to London,
succeeded in lobbying James II to order a return to the pre-Albemarle
political arrangement, and the revolution that brought William III and Mary to
the throne in 1689 confirmed the local control of Jamaican planters belonging
to the assembly. This settlement also improved the supply of slaves and
resulted in greater protect