530 Years of
Land, Power
& Property

This archive spans five hundred and thirty years of land history — from the moment Christopher Columbus planted the Spanish flag on Jamaican soil in May 1494 and extinguished a communal land system that had sustained the Taíno people for centuries, to the present day when artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape how Jamaicans search for, value and purchase property.

Between those two moments lies one of the Caribbean’s most complex and contested land narratives: slavery and the plantation system that made land synonymous with suffering; emancipation and the Baptist missionaries who bought freedom plots for the newly freed; independence and the National Housing Trust that made homeownership a national aspiration; and the garrison communities, squatter settlements and gated enclaves that tell the story of inequality as clearly as any statistic. This is that story — told in full, told with rigour, and told with the respect it deserves.