Country: Jamaica
Group: Afro-Jamaican
Date Finalized: 10/30/2020
Team: Maya Shrikant (lead), Abigail Pentecost, Ethan Pelland
Content Warning: slavery, war, abduction
Approximate Time Period: 1513-1838
Afro-Jamaicans represent the largest ethnic group in Jamaica and were subject to forced labor by different European settlers of the nation. There is strong evidence that the Atlantic slave trade started and perpetuated a long history of slavery within this ethnic group.
African slaves first arrived in Jamaica in 1513 because of the Spanish colonizers’ need for labor. Slaves came via the Iberian Peninsula (Akan, Igbo, Yoruba, Kongo, Fon and Ibibio people) after they were captured in war or abducted. After the British Empire captured the island, these early slaves were liberated by the Spanish and established their own identity (Maroons) from slaves that would be later imported from Africa (Gardner, 1909). In the 17th and 18th century, under British colonization, the number of Akan slaves on British sugar plantations increased from 40,000 to 300,000, as British slaveholders regarded them as “hard workers” (Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, 2017). Sugar, molasses and rum were exported to England and profits were used to finance slave ships to bring more slaves over from Africa. This practice was known as the Triangular Trade (Tortello, 2017). By 1832, the average plantation in Jamaica had about 150 slaves. Many conflicts arose between slaves and slaveholders including the First Maroon Way in 1655, Tacky’s revolt in 1760, the Second Maroon War in 1795 and the Baptist War in 1831. As a result of the Baptist War and the cease of British slave trade in 1807, the British Parliament held inquiries for the abolition movement. The law to abolish slavery passed in 1834, though the majority of Jamaican slaves were indentured to their former slaveholders’ service under an established “apprenticeship system” till 1838 (BHM Editorial Team, 2020). The data quality for this group was a 2, there were a multitude of academic and news sources that recounted much of the same history of slavery, though much of it focused on the culture of slavery.
Sources
- Gardner, William James (1909). History of Jamaica, From Its Discovery To The Year 1872. Appleton & Company. p. 184. ISBN 978-0415760997.
- Tortello, Rebecca. “The Arrival of the Africans”. Jamaica Gleaner: Pieces of the Past. Retrieved 29 August 2017.
- BHM Editorial Team “Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade”. Slavevoyages.org. Retrieved 29 August 2017.
- *, N. (2020, June 28). History of Jamaica. Black History Month 2020. https://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/article/section/jamaica/history-of-jamaica/