Spanish Santiago Santiago | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1509–1655 | |||||||||||
Flag | |||||||||||
Status | Colony of Spain; part of the Spanish West Indies, New Spain | ||||||||||
Capital | Villa de la Vega | ||||||||||
Common languages | Spanish Taíno | ||||||||||
Government | |||||||||||
Ferdinand II of Aragon (First) Charles II of Spain (Last) | |||||||||||
Governor | |||||||||||
• 1510 - 1514 | Juan de Esquivel (First) | ||||||||||
• 1656 - 1660 | Cristóbal Arnaldo Isasi (Last) | ||||||||||
History | |||||||||||
• Established | 1509 | ||||||||||
• Disestablished | 1655 | ||||||||||
Currency | Spanish dollar | ||||||||||
| |||||||||||
Today part of | Jamaica |
Santiago was a Spanish territory of the Spanish West Indies and within the Viceroyalty of New Spain, in the Caribbean region. Its location is the present-day island and nation of Jamaica.
Around 650 AD, Jamaica was colonized by the people of the Ostionoid culture, [1] who likely came from South America. [2] Alligator Pond in Manchester Parish and Little River in St. Ann Parish are among the earliest known sites of this Ostionoid people, who lived near the coast and extensively hunted turtles and fish. [1]
Around 950 AD, the people of the Meillacan culture settled on both the coast and the interior of Jamaica, either absorbing the Ostionoid people or co-inhabiting the island with them. [1]
The Arawak–Taíno culture developed on Jamaica around 1200 AD. [3] They brought from South America a system of raising yuca known as "conuco." [4] To add nutrients to the soil, the Taíno burned local bushes and trees and heaped the ash into large mounds, into which they then planted yuca cuttings. [4] Most Taíno lived in large circular buildings (bohios), constructed with wooden poles, woven straw, and palm leaves. The Taino spoke an Arawakan language and did not have writing. Some words used by them, such as barbacoa ("barbecue"), hamaca ("hammock"), kanoa ("canoe"), tabaco ("tobacco"), yuca , batata ("sweet potato"), and juracán ("hurricane"), have been incorporated into both Spanish and English.[ citation needed ]
Christopher Columbus set sail on his second voyage to the Americas on September 24, 1493. [5] On November 3, 1493, he landed on an island that he named Dominica. On November 22, he landed on Hispaniola and spent some time exploring the interior of the island for gold. He left Hispaniola on April 24, 1494, and arrived at the island of Juana (Cuba) on April 30 and Jamaica (called "Xaymaca" by the indigenous Taíno, meaning "land of springs") on May 5. Columbus named the island Santiago and used it as a mini-state for his family.[ citation needed ]
He explored the south coast of Juana before returning to Hispaniola on August 20. After staying for a time on the western end, present-day Haiti, he finally returned to Spain. [6] Columbus returned to Jamaica during his fourth voyage to the Americas. He had been sailing around the Caribbean nearly a year when a storm beached his ships in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, on June 25, 1503. [7]
For a year Columbus and his men remained stranded on Jamaica. A Spaniard, Diego Mendez, and some natives paddled a canoe to get help from Hispaniola. The island's governor, Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres, detested Columbus and obstructed all efforts to rescue him and his men. In the meantime, Columbus allegedly mesmerized the natives by correctly predicting a lunar eclipse for February 29, 1504, using the Ephemeris of the German astronomer Regiomontanus. [8] Help finally arrived from the governor on June 29, 1504, and Columbus and his men arrived in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Castile, on November 7, 1504. [9] In 1505 Juan de Guzman, Duke of Medina Sidonia, in an agreement with Columbus proposed a project to populate the island but King Ferdinand turned it down.[ citation needed ]
The Taino referred to the island as "Xaymaca," but the Spanish gradually changed the name to "Jamaica." [10] In the so-called Admiral's map of 1507, the island was labeled as "Jamaiqua"; and in Peter Martyr's first tract from the Decades of the New World (published 1511--1521), he refers to it as both "Jamaica" and "Jamica." [10]
In 1509 the first Spanish settlement on the island was founded near St Ann's Bay and Santa Gloria. The settlement was named Sevilla la Nueva (or "New Seville"). The Spanish Empire began its official governance of Jamaica that year.[ citation needed ] At this time, Columbus's son, Diego, instructed conquistador Juan de Esquivel to formally occupy Jamaica in his name. [11] [lower-alpha 1] [lower-alpha 2] As early as 1510 Esquivel was officially appointed governor and the island was incorporated into the Viceroyalty of New Spain.[ citation needed ] Starting in 1510, a Jewish community sprang up in Jamaica, mainly comprising traders and merchants who were looking to avoid religious persecution back home. They were forced, however, to lead secret lives on the island, often calling themselves "Portugalis."[ citation needed ]
In 1534 the settlers moved to a new, healthier site away from the malaria infested marsh lands. Founded by the colonial governor of Jamaica, Francisco de Garay, they named it Our Lady of the Blessed Villa de la Vega (or, simply, Villa de la Vega). [12] [lower-alpha 3] [lower-alpha 4] The oldest cathedral in Jamaica was built there. Other settlements established by the Spanish included Esquivel (now Old Harbour Bay), Oristan (Bluefields), Savanna-la-Mar, Manterias (Montego Bay), Las Chorreras (Ocho Rios), Oracabeza, Puerto Santa Maria (Port Maria), Mellila (Annotto Bay) and Puerto Anton. [13] Partially due to absence of any gold or silver deposits, there were never significant Spanish communities on the island. [lower-alpha 5] [ citation needed ]
In 1595, pirates, buccaneers, and English privateers began to attack the island with some frequency. These attacks were a challenge to the papal bull that stated all territories of the New World belonged to the kingdoms of Castile and Portugal.[ citation needed ] In 1597, English privateer Anthony Shirley landed on Jamaica and plundered the island, marching on St Jago de la Vega with the help of a Taino guide. There, he sacked the town. [14] [15] Governor Fernando Melgarejo tried to protect the island from pirate raids, and in 1603 he successfully repelled an attack by Christopher Newport. [16] Other major attacks followed in 1603, 1640, and 1643.[ citation needed ]
In 1611, the population of Spanish Jamaica was 1,510, including 696 Spaniards, 107 free people of color, 74 Tainos, 558 black slaves, and 75 "foreigners". [17] That census, however, did not include those Taino who had fled to the mountainous interior, where they mingled with freed and run-away African slaves, and became the ancestors to the Jamaican Maroons of Nanny Town. [18]
The Spaniards enslaved many of the native people, overworking and harming them to the point that many had perished within fifty years of European arrival. [19] Subsequently, the lack of indigenous opportunity for labour was mended with the arrival of African slaves. [20] Disappointed in the lack of gold on the isle, the Spanish mainly used Jamaica as a military base to supply colonizing efforts in the mainland Americas. [21]
In 1643, pirate William Jackson landed at Caguaya, marched on St Jago de la Vega, and plundered it. [22] Oliver Cromwell launched the Western Design armada against Spain's colonies in the Caribbean. In April 1655, General Robert Venables led the armada in an attack on Spain's fort at Santo Domingo, Hispaniola. The Spanish repulsed this poorly-executed attack known as the Siege of Santo Domingo, however, and the English troops were soon decimated by disease. [23] [24] [25]
Weakened by fever and looking for an easy victory following their defeat at Santo Domingo, the English force then sailed for Jamaica, the only Spanish West Indies island that did not have new defensive works. In May 1655, around 7,000 English soldiers landed near Jamaica's Spanish Town capital. The English army, led by the British Admiral Sir William Penn and General Robert Venables, soon overwhelmed the small number of Spanish troops. [26] [lower-alpha 6] Most of the Spanish colonists fled after freeing their slaves, who scattered throughout the mountain regions and joinied the growing refugee community of Maroons. [lower-alpha 7]
In the following years, Spain made repeated attempts to recapture Jamaica. The Jewish community of the colony, in an effort to help prevent any future recovery of the island by Spain (and a renewal of the persecution they had suffered under the previous Spanish rule), encouraged the English governor to make the colony a base for pirates and privateers. They reasoned that with pirates installed on the island, the Spanish would be deterred from further attacks. British leaders agreed with this strategy. In response, the English governor of Jamaica, Edward D'Oyley, invited buccaneers to base themselves at Port Royal, starting in 1657. They helped to defend the region against Spanish attacks. Spain never recaptured Jamaica, losing the Battle of Ocho Rios in 1657 and the Battle of Rio Nuevo in 1658. When the Spanish Maroon leader, Juan de Bolas, switched sides and joined the English, the Spanish acting governor Ysasi finally conceded defeat in his attempts to reconquer the island. In 1660 Jamaica became a refuge for Jews, and attracted those who had been expelled from Spain, Portugal, and other Spanish colonies.[ citation needed ]
For England, the Colony of Jamaica was to be the "...dagger pointed at the heart of the Spanish Empire..." although in fact it was a possession of little economic value then. [25] Spain did not recognize Jamaica as a British colony until 1670 with the signing of that year's Treaty of Madrid when Spain finally gave Jamaica and the Cayman Islands to England.[ citation needed ]
Hispaniola is an island in the Caribbean that is part of the Greater Antilles. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and the region's second largest in area, after the island of Cuba.
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. Early inhabitants of Jamaica named the land "Xaymaca", meaning "land of wood and water". The Spanish enslaved the Arawak, who were ravaged further by diseases that the Spanish brought with them. Early historians believe that by 1602, the Arawak-speaking Taino tribes were extinct. However, some of the Taino escaped into the forested mountains of the interior, where they mixed with runaway African slaves, and survived free from first Spanish, and then English, rule.
The earliest arrival of people in the islands now known as The Bahamas was in the first millennium AD. The first inhabitants of the islands were the Lucayans, an Arawakan language-speaking Taino people, who arrived between about 500 and 800 AD from other islands of the Caribbean.
Buccaneers were a kind of privateers or free sailors particular to the Caribbean Sea during the 17th and 18th centuries. First established on northern Hispaniola as early as 1625, their heyday was from the Restoration in 1660 until about 1688, during a time when governments in the Caribbean area were not strong enough to suppress them.
The history of the Caribbean reveals the significant role the region played in the colonial struggles of the European powers since the 15th century. In the modern era, it remains strategically and economically important. In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean and claimed the region for Spain. The following year, the first Spanish settlements were established in the Caribbean. Although the Spanish conquests of the Aztec empire and the Inca empire in the early sixteenth century made Mexico and Peru more desirable places for Spanish exploration and settlement, the Caribbean remained strategically important.
The Arawak are a group of indigenous peoples of northern South America and of the Caribbean. Specifically, the term "Arawak" has been applied at various times from the Lokono of South America to the Taíno, who lived in the Greater Antilles and northern Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. All these groups spoke related Arawakan languages.
Maroons are descendants of Africans in the Americas and Islands of the Indian Ocean who escaped from slavery and formed their own settlements. They often mixed with indigenous peoples, eventually evolving into separate creole cultures such as the Garifuna and the Mascogos.
Queen Nanny, Granny Nanny, or Nanny of the Maroons ONH, was an 18th-century leader of the Jamaican Maroons. She led a community of formerly enslaved Africans called the Windward Maroons. In the early 18th century, under the leadership of Nanny, the Windward Maroons fought a guerrilla war over many years against British authorities in the Colony of Jamaica in what became known as the First Maroon War.
Higüey, or in full Salvaleón de Higüey, is the capital city of the eastern La Altagracia Province, in the Dominican Republic, and the eighth largest city of that country. The Yuma River flows through the urban areas of Higüey.
Frey Nicolás de Ovando was a Spanish soldier from a noble family and a Knight of the Order of Alcántara, a military order of Spain. He was Governor of the Indies (Hispaniola) from 1502 until 1509, sent by the Spanish crown to investigate the administration of Francisco de Bobadilla and re-establish order. His administration subdued rebellious Spaniards, and implemented the Encomienda system with the native Taíno population of Hispaniola.
Between 1492 and 1504, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus led four Spanish transatlantic maritime expeditions of discovery to the Caribbean, and to Central and South America. These voyages led to the widespread knowledge of the New World. This breakthrough inaugurated the period known as the Age of Discovery, which saw the colonization of the Americas, a related biological exchange, and trans-Atlantic trade. These events, the effects and consequences of which persist to the present, are often cited as the beginning of the modern era.
The Captaincy General of Santo Domingo was the first colony in the New World, established by Spain in 1492 on the island of Hispaniola. The colony, under the jurisdiction of the Real Audiencia of Santo Domingo, was granted administrative powers over the Spanish possessions in the Caribbean and most of its mainland coasts, making Santo Domingo the principal political entity of the early colonial period.
Juan de Esquivel was a Spanish colonist and first governor of the Colony of Santiago, now Jamaica.
Saint Ann's Bay is a settlement in Jamaica, the capital of Saint Ann Parish. It had a population of 10,961 at the 1991 census.
The Invasion of Jamaica took place in May 1655, during the 1654 to 1660 Anglo-Spanish War, when an English expeditionary force captured Spanish Jamaica. It was part of an ambitious plan by Oliver Cromwell to acquire new colonies in the Americas, known as the Western Design.
The Taíno were a historic indigenous people of the Caribbean, whose culture has been continued today by Taíno descendant communities and Taíno revivalist communities. At the time of European contact in the late 15th century, they were the principal inhabitants of most of what is now Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and the northern Lesser Antilles. The Lucayan branch of the Taíno were the first New World peoples encountered by Christopher Columbus, in the Bahama Archipelago on October 12, 1492. The Taíno spoke a dialect of the Arawakan language group. They lived in agricultural societies ruled by caciques with fixed settlements and a matrilineal system of kinship and inheritance. Taíno religion centered on the worship of zemis.
The Colony of Jamaica gained independence from the United Kingdom on 6 August 1962. In Jamaica, this date is celebrated as Independence Day, a national holiday.
Sebastián Lemba was an early Dominican slave rebel leader who led a prolonged maroon rebellion in the colony of Santo Domingo,. Born in Africa, a member of the Lemba tribe, hence the name. When Lemba was a young man he was captured and taken to companies in France and Spain around the year 1525, and was eventually transferred to the island of Hispaniola.
Around 650 AD, Jamaica was settled by the people of the Ostionoid culture, who likely came from South America. Alligator Pond in Manchester Parish and Little River in St. Ann Parish are among the earliest known sites of this Ostionoid culture, also known as the Redware culture. These people lived near the coast and extensively hunted turtles and fish.
Caonabo was a Taíno cacique (chieftain) of Hispaniola at the time of Christopher Columbus's arrival to the island. He was known for his fighting skills and his ferocity. He was married to Anacaona, who was the sister of another cacique named Bohechío.
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