page_title: History of Jamaica
section_title: British colonisation
hierarchical_section_title: History of Jamaica / British rule (1655–1962) / 17th century / British colonisation
caption_attribution_description: Map of Jamaica
context_page_description: The Caribbean island of Jamaica was inhabited by the Arawak tribes prior to the arrival of Columbus in 1494. Early inhabitants of Jamaica named the land "Xaymaca", meaning "land of wood and water ". The Spanish enslaved the Arawak, who were so ravaged by their conflict with the Europeans and by foreign diseases that nearly killed the entire native population, which was extinct by 1600. The Spanish also transported hundreds of West African people to the island.
  In 1655, the English invaded Jamaica, defeating the Spanish colonists. African slaves took advantage of the political turmoil and escaped to the island's interior, forming independent communities. Meanwhile, on the coast, the English built the settlement of Port Royal, which became a base of operations for pirates and privateers, including Captain Henry Morgan.
  In the 19th century, sugar cane replaced piracy as British Jamaica's main source of income. The sugar industry was labour-intensive and the British brought hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans to Jamaica. By 1850 the black Jamaican population outnumbered the white population by a ratio of twenty to one.
context_section_description: Cromwell increased the island's European population by sending indentured servants and prisoners to Jamaica. Due to the wars in Ireland at this time two-thirds of this 17th-century European population was Irish.  But tropical diseases kept the number of Europeans under 10,000 until about 1740.  Although the African slave population in the 1670s and 1680s never exceeded 10,000, by the end of the 17th century imports of slaves increased the black population to at least five times the number of whites. Thereafter, Jamaica's African population did not increase significantly in number until well into the 18th century, in part because ships coming from the west coast of Africa preferred to unload at the islands of the Eastern Caribbean. At the beginning of the 18th century, the number of slaves in Jamaica did not exceed 45,000, but by 1800 it had increased to over 300,000.
caption: English map from the 1600s[16]
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