The Making of Modern Jamaica

In the century and a half between Columbus’s landing and the English conquest, Spain built Jamaica’s first European towns, introduced the crops and livestock that would define the island’s economy, and — in the process — erased one civilization while laying the uncertain foundations of another.

Long before Europeans sighted the green hills of Xaymaca, an indigenous civilization had already shaped Jamaica’s landscape — building homes in harmony with the land, establishing communities along rivers and coasts, and cultivating a relationship with the island’s soil that would leave traces even in a world that tried to erase them.