The Arawak Indians, early residents who arrived from South America around 650 AD, named the island Xaymaca or “land of wood and water.” They lived peacefully on the land and the sea’s bounty.

Jamaica is the Caribbean’s third-largest island and was visited by Christopher Columbus in 1494 on his second voyage to the New World. When the Spanish arrived later, they were welcomed by the Arawaks, inventors of the hammock. In return, the Indians were executed or taken as slaves. The only thing that remains of this race the name they gave to the island.

The Spanish lost the island in 1655 to the English. Soon, slavery increased as sugar became a booming industry. During these years, the English tried to tame an area of the island in the Blue Mountains that they nicknamed “the land of look behind.” In this little-traveled region of Jamaica’s interior, soldiers feared attack by the Maroons, descendants of slaves who had escaped from the Spanish. Soldiers always rode two to a horse, one looking forward and one backward, in order to protect themselves. In 1739, the British gave the Maroons autonomy, and even today they retain a separateness from Jamaican authority.

In 1834, slavery was abolished, but the sugar industry continued. Later it was joined by the banana industry, and at the turn of the century visitors began to arrive aboard those banana boats. The tourism business grew to become Jamaica’s most important form of income.

After the abolition of slavery, Jamaica’s plantation owners looked for another source of labor. From 1838 to 1917, over 30,000 Indians immigrated to Jamaica, followed by about 5,000 Asians from 1860 to 1893 who came as indentured laborers. They were also joined by immigrants from the Middle East, primarily what is now Lebanon (although, in Jamaica, these residents are known as “Syrians.”)

Jamaica has been an independent nation since 1962.

Jamaica is divided into three counties: 1.  Surrey, which  has four parishes: Kingston (including Port Royal), St. Andrew, St. Thomas and Portland; 2.  Middlesex, which has five parishes: St. Catherine, St. Mary, Clarendon, St. Ann and Manchester; 3. Cornwall, which  has five parishes: St. Elizabeth, Trelawny, St. James, Hanover and Westmoreland.

The population of Jamaica is approximately 2.5 million people