Jamaica

Jamaica’s Taíno name, Xaymaca, is usually translated as land of wood and water. The Blue Mountains rise steeply in the east, and coffee from their misty slopes fetches high prices in Japan. To the west, the Cockpit Country is a maze of limestone hollows where runaway slaves found refuge. Dunn’s River Falls tumbles onto the beach near Ocho Rios, crocodiles bask in the mangroves of the Black River, and hurricanes threaten in late summer and autumn.

Columbus reached the island in 1494, and an English expedition seized it from Spain in 1655. Port Royal, the buccaneers’ town, slid largely into the sea in an earthquake in 1692. Sugar, worked by enslaved Africans, made Jamaica one of Britain’s richest colonies, but resistance never stopped: the Maroons forced a treaty in 1739, and Sam Sharpe’s rising of 1831–32 hastened emancipation. Marcus Garvey, born at St Ann’s Bay in 1887, preached pride across the African diaspora, and independence came in August 1962.

From ska and rocksteady to reggae and dancehall, Jamaican sound systems changed popular music, and Bob Marley carried Rastafari, a faith born here in the 1930s, around the world. Sprinting is a national obsession, fed by the Boys and Girls Championships, a schools meet that fills the National Stadium each spring. Ackee and saltfish is the national dish. Bauxite from the central parishes is refined into alumina, tourists fill Montego Bay and Negril, and Appleton Estate distils rum in the Nassau Valley.