The vast majority of Jamaicans are of Sub-Saharan African descent, with minorities of Europeans, East Indians, Chinese, Middle Eastern, and others of mixed ancestry.
Africa in the Caribbean and the Resistance to Slavery
Most Jamaican slaves came from the region of modern day Ghana, Nigeria and Central Africa, and included the Akan, Ashanti, Yoruba, Ibo and Ibibio peoples. By the 18th century, Jamaica had become one of the most valuable British colonies.
No, Jamaica is not, geographically and politically, an African country. Jamaica is actually an idependent country situated in the Caribbean (considered part of the North American Continent) sea. Jamaica gained political independence from the British in 1962.
The vast majority of Jamaicans are of Sub-Saharan African descent, with minorities of Europeans, East Indians, Chinese, Middle Eastern, and others of mixed ancestry.
The ethnogenesis of the Black Jamaican people stemmed from the Atlantic slave trade of the 16th century, when enslaved Africans were transported as slaves to Jamaica and other parts of the Americas. The first Africans to arrive in Jamaica came in 1513 from the Iberian Peninsula.
Physically, they were light brown in colour, short and well-shaped with coarse, black hair. Their faces were broad and their noses flat. They grew cassava, sweet potatoes, maize (corn), fruits, vegetables, cotton and tobacco. Tobacco was grown on a large scale as smoking was their most popular pastime.
Historians have detected a significant increase in slave importation from the Bight of Biafra and West-Central Africa during the waning years of the slave trade, when the greatest number of enslaved Africans arrived in Jamaica.
The Caribbean Island of Jamaica was initially inhabited in approximately 600 AD or 650 AD by the Redware people, often associated with redware pottery. By roughly 800 AD, a second wave of inhabitance occurred by the Arawak tribes, including the Tainos, prior to the arrival of Columbus in 1494.
The first Africans arrived in Jamaica in 1513 as servants to the Spanish settlers. These Africans were freed by the Spanish when the English captured the island in 1655. They immediately fled to the mountains where they fought to retain their freedom and became the first Maroons.
Jamaican Patois, known locally as Patois (Patwa or Patwah) and called Jamaican Creole by linguists, is an English-based creole language with West African influences. A majority of non-English loan words are of Akan Ashanti origin.
Although English is the official language of Jamaica, the majority of the population speak Jamaican Patois. This is a creole language (See the lesson on creole on this web site) made up of an English superstrate and African substrate.
Jamaica's first inhabitants, the Tainos (also called the Arawaks), were a peaceful people believed to be from South America. It was the Tainos who met Christopher Columbus when he arrived on Jamaica's shores in 1494.
Christopher Columbus, who first sighted the island in 1494, called it Santiago, but the original indigenous name of Jamaica, or Xaymaca, has persisted. Columbus considered it to be “the fairest isle that eyes have beheld,” and many travelers still regard it as one of the most beautiful islands in the Caribbean.
The original inhabitants of Jamaica were the indigenous Taíno, an Arawak-speaking people who began arriving on Hispaniola by canoe from the Belize and the Yucatan peninsula sometime before 2000 BCE.
Race & Ethnicity
The largest Jamaica racial/ethnic groups are White (95.2%) followed by American Indian (2.8%) and Black (1.9%).
The majority of all people enslaved in the New World came from West Central Africa. Before 1519, all Africans carried into the Atlantic disembarked at Old World ports, mainly Europe and the offshore Atlantic islands.
The first, and smallest, wave, of Chinese migration occurred between 1854 and 1886when Chinese labourers were imported for plantation work. The second wave, between 1900 and the 1940's, was primarily an immigration of businessmen. The third wave consisted of Chinese immigrating to Jamaica since the 1980's.
Benjie points as an example to the island's produce, its yams and plantains, which were first brought from Africa to Jamaica during the days of slavery as fuel for enslaved Africans on the island's plantations.
The Chinese brought their tradition of gambling with them and introduced games like “Drop Pan”, “Whe Whe”, and “Rakka Piu”, also known as “Chinapoo” to the island. This game of chance tradition was adopted by Jamaicans who play modern games like “Cash Pot” (official Drop Pan) and “Lucky Five”.
Jamaican/Scottish surnames
The original cause of this is that Scottish prisoners of war from both the Cromwellian wars and the Jacobite rebellions were exiled to Jamaica, as were some of the Covenanters. Many of these exiles were indentured servants working alongside slaves of African descent in the sugar plantations.
Indo-Jamaicans are the descendants of people who came from the Indian subcontinent to Jamaica. Indians form the third largest ethnic group in Jamaica after Africans and Multiracials. Indo-Jamaicans. Total population. 21,584 (2011 census)
One of the oldest and most enduring cultures in the world was introduced to Jamaica when Indians came to work as indentured labourers. The first ship, SS Blundell, carrying 261 Indians arrived at Old Harbour Bay on May 10, 1845, and from 1930 onwards, Indian merchants and professionals have made Jamaica their home.
The majority of Jamaicans are of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, with significant European, East Asian (primarily Chinese), Indian, Lebanese, and mixed-race minorities.
The Arawaks or the Tainos, as some of them were called, were not tall people; they were of medium height or short and generally slim. Christopher Columbus in his journals described them as neither black nor white. It is believed that they had an olive complexion. They also had long, straight, coarse black hair.