History And Culture Of Jamaica
...States and Canada.
Although a small island in the Caribbean Sea, Jamaica is a melting pot of cultures from all around the world. From the beggining, the island was inhabited by ancient tribes with different coustoms, beliefs and backrounds.
Since Columbus discovered the island in 1494 nothing remained the same, the Spanish colonists assumed control of the island and forced most of it’s native inhabitants in to slavery. Due to slavery , disease and war the aboriginal people were exterminated in about two hundred years .The Spanish conquistadors had no interest in converting the natives to Christianity ,like they did with the Aztecs or the Mayans in south America, so they literally worked the Tainos to death. Bit by bit they were replaced by African slaves from which the modern black population descends from.
The Spanish rule lasted until 1655 ,when the English seized the island after many years of pirate attacks, even though they where recognized as rulers of the island only in 1670 through the Treaty of Madrid. Slavery was abolished by the English only in 1834 after hundreds of thousands slaves died on the sugar cane plantations.
Jamaiaca remained an English posesion until 1962 when independence but remained part of the English Commonwealth.
I find Jamaica interesting not only for it’s history but especially for it’s culture. Jamaican culture, at least its music, has , over the years sprung different music genres ,music trends and artists. Jamaica is the birthplace of genres like ska , dub and reggae and in recent years dancehall or jungle.
Not even the English language remained unchanged in Jamaica , most of the population speak Patwah or Patois, which is a mixture between American English, British English ,French and African dialects. Adapting the English language gave birth to a new dialect that has transformed a sentence like: ”The children are...
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