Island Hopping Jamaica History

ISLAND HPPING

A Brief History of Jamaica

As with nearly all the islands of the Caribbean, Jamaica was first settled by Arawaks who arrived around 900 AD-650 AD from the Orinoco region of Venezuela and the Guianas. There is a huge variation in the numbers of Arawaks living on Jamaica at the end of the 15th century, estimates vary from 10,000 to 1,000,000 living on the island they called Xaymaca, the Land of Wood and Water, the Land of Springs. But one thing is fairly certain, the Arawaks on Jamaica were not under attack by the Caribs as their cousins in the Eastern Caribbean were.

Christopher Columbus, The Great Discoverer, stumbled across Jamaica quite by accident. Columbus had heard of Xamaca from the Indians on Cuba and while sailing along Cuba’s southern coast on his second voyage to the New World was blown off course and spotted Jamaica high on the horizon. Columbus arrived on Jamaica later that year and named the island St. Jago (Santiago), but the island’s Indian name survived Columbus’ moniker. Early Spanish historians and cartographers replaced the “X” with a “J” and the name appears for the first time in 1511 as Jamaica.

Columbus arrived on the northern coast of Jamaica on May 5, 1494, and named the island St. Jago, or Santiago, after St. James. His fleet was greeted by 70 canoes full of hostile Arawakan warriors who had heard of the violent tendencies of Columbus’ men from their Amerindian cousins on Hispaniola. Columbus continued on his route ignoring the Indians and he anchored on May 6 at St. Ann’s Bay (which he named Santa Gloria) on the northern shore of Jamaica and had his interpreter reassure the Indians of his good intentions. Columbus’ fleet was in dire need of repair and the Admiral sought to anchor his vessels at the mouth of the Rio Bueno. When his ship’s launch approached the shore it was attacked with blowdarts, but the Spaniards quickly repelled the attackers. After this incident many curious natives arrived at the bay and Columbus ordered his men to fire upon them with crossbows. This did the trick. The next morning the Arawaks returned with food, heaping platters of fish and fruit, and the Indians begged Columbus and his men not to leave. But on May 9, the repairs completed, Columbus and his fleet sailed west where they discovered the Golfo de Buen Tiemp, now known as Montego Bay. Columbus arrived at Portland Bight during the second week of August, 1494, and named the bay Bahia de la Vaca, Cow Bay, because of the number of manatees, sea cows, that he saw there. Columbus sailed away only to return to Jamaica three years later when he became stranded at St. Ann’s Bay for a year after the loss of two of his caravals.

Although Columbus claimed St. Jago for the Spanish sovereigns in 1494, the island was not occupied until 1509-1510, when Juan de Esquival arrived from Santo Domingo on Hispaniola with a group of settlers. The Spaniards settled in along the northern coast of Jamaica at St. Ann and built a town called Sevilla Nueva, New Seville, in 1510, and began a search for gold. Surrounded by swamps, fever hit the group hard and King Charles I finally permitted the survivors to move to the southern side of the island where they constructed the town of St. Jago de la Vega, St. James of the Plain, which is now known as Spanish Town. The island of Jamaica was eventually given to the family of Christopher Columbus in 1540 as their personal estate, but nothing ever came of the Columbus family’s short dominion over the island, in fact, the Spanish colony on Jamaica never grew very large or flourished. The indigenous Amerindians died by the thousands of European diseases and those that survived that did not survive the Spanish. By the mid-1600s there were no Amerindians left on the island and it would take the arrival the British to change things for the better.

In 1596, a British force of 500 men under the command of Sir Anthony Shirley landed near Kingston and eventually sacked the poorly defended Spanish Town. In 1643, Spanish Town was again sacked by a much smaller force under the command of Captain William Jackson. Spain did nothing to help her colonists on Jamaica and continued that policy until her people were driven from Jamaica entirely, but not before becoming a thorn in the side of the British.

In May of 1655, nearly three centuries of British rule began when 38 English ships and almost 8,000 soldiers landed at Passage Fort in Kingston Harbour and marched toward Spanish Town, under orders from Oliver Cromwell who was seeking revenge for the deportation of English settlers from St. Kitts in 1629 and the subsequent numerous attacks on British shipping by the Spaniards. As part of a plan called the Western Design, Cromwell first sent his troops, under the command of Admiral William Penn and General Robert Venables, to take Santo Domingo on Hispaniola. Failing miserably at that, Cromwell sent the survivors (the British lost over 4,000 men in that poorly executed attack) to Jamaica where on May 11, the entrenched Spanish colonists (only about 1,500, of which only about 500 could bear arms) decided to surrender after being promised that they would not be harmed and would be allowed to leave the island. The Spanish freed some 1,500 slaves and emptied the town of anything of value before the arrival of the British and fled into the hills and to the northern coast of Jamaica where many fled to Cuba while others held out against the British for almost five years.

When the British arrived in Spanish Town they found it empty and in anger destroyed most of the settlement. The freed slaves fled to the mountains and were organized into a fighting force by Don Cristóbal Amaldo de Ysassi, the Spanish Governor of Jamaica at the time. Ysassi’s plan was for the freed slaves to harass the British troops until the Spanish could return and retake the island. These freed slaves, who would later become known as the Maroons, settled in St. Catherine Parish and along the Rio Juana. The name Maroon is the British corruption of the Spanish cimarrones, meaning wild or untamed. The numbers of the Maroons grew as more and more runaway slaves flocked to their cause, and their continual raiding of the British plantations was a thorn in the side of the British colonists. The British offered land and full freedom to any Maroon who surrendered, but their offer fell on deaf ears. The Maroons continued to fight the British for the next 76 years costing the British many lives lost, hundred of thousands of pounds, and some 44 acts of the Assembly. For more information on the Maroons, see the section entitled The Maroons in the chapter The Local Cultures.

By October of 1655, British General Sedgwicke arrived from England and took charge of the fledgling colony and shortly after their arrival most of the settlers, Sedgwicke included, succumbed to fever. Sedgwicke’s replacement General Brayne, feared a retaliatory attack by the Spanish from Cuba and fortified the defenses of the island. As expected, in 1657, de Ysassi, returned to Jamaica leading two contingents of guerilla forces from Cuba into the interior of Jamaica via the northern coast of Jamaica. General Brayne’s replacement, General D’Oyley, attacked the Spaniards by sailing around the island from Kingston and defeated Ysassi near Ocho Rios in 1657 at the Battle of Los Chomeros and again at Rio Nuevo in 1658 in the largest battle ever fought on Jamaica’s shores. Even though he was defeated by a much stronger British force, Ysassi continued to hold out in the interior until 1660 when he and his men fled to Cuba in canoes. In 1661, D’Oyley was appointed Governor of Jamaica and established the first governing council on the island. During this time many of the officers who served under Penn and Venables in 1655 were presented with huge estates and who immediately began building defenses of their lands as well as Kingston and constructing no less than five forts at Port Royal.

In 1663 the British made the first real efforts at suppressing the Maroons who were rumored to have murdered every white man they came across. A former Maroon, Juna de Bolas, turned traitor and led a British contingent against his own people, but was defeated. This led to a very short and very uneasy peace between the Maroons and the British colonists. For more information on the Maroons, see the section The Maroons in the chapter Local Cultures.

By this time Port Royal was emerging as a pirate haven and in 1673, the famed pirate, Sir Henry Morgan became Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica only to be replaced by Lord Vaughn in 1674, but later to reclaim the position in 1680. Morgan, who had successfully attacked and plundered Porto Bello and burned the old city of Panama less than three years earlier, and many other buccaneers moved their base of operations from the island of Tortuga, north of Hispaniola, to Port Royal, and the booty the brought to the docks to sell and trade enriched all involved. The British on Jamaica gained much by supporting the bucanneers and offering them safe haven. Not only did the buccaneers serve as protection for Jamaica from the Spanish, they also raided Spanish shipping and sold their goods at Port Royal with 10% of the take going to the Jamaican authorities. Morgan eventually died in 1688 and was buried with honors at Port Royal. Hot on the heels of this new income came the sugar industry, backed by then Governor Sir Thomas Modyford, who also pushed for cocoa production. This brought a huge influx of slaves to the island’s new plantation economy by 1675.

In 1690, a slave rebellion erupted at Chapelton in Clarendon but was eventually suppressed and the ringleaders executed. However, a large group of slaves, mostly Coromantees, an extremely brave and warlike people from Africa’s Gold Coast, escaped into the interior of Jamaica and aligned themselves with the Maroons already living there.

Two years later an event occurred which would forever change the map of Jamaica, and roust the buccaneers from their nests. On June 7, 1692, at approximately 1140, everybody in the city of Port Royal was startled by what sounded like thunder from the north. Just as quickly the ground began to shake from the first of three shockwaves. Houses began to shake and fall, the second shockwave came and did little more damage, but the third tremor was the worst, it was felt all over the island of Jamaica. A great part of Port Royal was engulfed by the sea and thousands perished, their bodies floating for days in the harbor or rotting on land as minor quakes shook the area for several days. The survivors tried to rebuild the city, but in 1704 a fire broke out and destroyed every building except the forts.

In 1694, one year after the destruction of Port Royal, the town of Kingston was laid out on land that was, at that time, private property. But it wasn’t long before Kingston became a major settlement. At this time Jamaica was becoming known as a great sugar producing country with plantations also growing cocoa and sarsaparilla. At this time there were three classes of people in Jamaica, the white men who owned the property, the plantations, and ruled the land, were at the top of the pecking order. The second class was also made up of white men, but for the most part these men were little better than slaves (for an interesting take on this watch the movie Captain Blood starring Errol Flynn). It was the custom in those days for Great Britain to send criminals to her colonies for periods of 5-10 years. These men were purchased like slaves by the planters and were treated the same as any of their other slaves. After they had served their time these men, if they survived, were granted their freedom. The third class were the slaves brought over from West Africa who had little if any hope of ever being free unless they were fortunate enough to escape and hook up with the Maroons.

France and England happened to be at war in 1694 when a French fleet under Admiral du Casse attacked Jamaica. For an entire month his fleet landed troops on the northern and eastern shores of Jamaica and plundered every plantation they could find. On July 19, 1694, 1,500 experienced French troops landed at Carlisle Bay in Clarendon to find it defended by only a few hundred British colonists and some slaves. The colonists were soon backed up by several hundred more from nearby plantations and after several days of fierce fighting the British drove the French back to the sea, but not before the French troops had destroyed some 100 estates and plantations and stole 1,300 slaves.

In 1702, British Admiral Bendow sailed from Port Royal in search of du Casse and his fleet. Bendow found the French off the coast of Columbia and attacked them immediately. For five days Benbow and his fleet relentlessly fought the French before Benbow was wounded in the leg. In light of Benbow’s condition, couple with fierce French resistance, two of the Admiral’s officers, Captains Kirby and Woods, persuaded the British fleet to return to Port Royal and safety. Kirby and Woods were tried for their conduct and shot, and Admiral Benbow died a few months later and was entombed in a Kingston church where heis remains still lie today.

For the next three decades the British were kept quite busy on Jamaica with the Maroons in what is called the First Maroon War. The Maroons were very active during these years and made regular attacks on plantations and their owners. Agriculture was taking a downswing and it was reflected in the economy with some dismay about the future of Jamaica. In 1711, a great storm destroyed much of the parish of Westmoreland and took many lives and still the Maroons fought their guerilla war. In 1718, coffee was introduced into Jamaica by then Governor Sir Nicholas Lawes. Pirates were also becoming a thorn in the side of planters at this time and Lawes did much to repress piratical activity on his island. The First Maroon War was in full swing and in 1728 two regiments of British soldiers had to be brought in from Gibraltar to protect Jamaican planters and their estates. Finally, the British managed to wipe out a Maroon stronghold in the Blue Mountains called Nanny Town which was a great boost for the Brits against the Maroon warriors.

On January 6, 1738, Cudjoe, the great Maroon leader, and Colonel Guthrie of the British Army met and signed the peace treaty with an exchange of hats as a sign of friendship. Although historians claim that the treaty was signed under a huge tree called Cudjoe’s Tree and today called the Kinda One Family Tree, Maroon historians claim different. They say the Peace Cave was the sight of the official signing, Colonel Guthrie and Cudjoe performing a blood brother ceremony instead of exchanging hats. The official document is even harder to discern, some day that it is in the care of a trusted Maroon elder and its location a secret of the highest priority. The treaty gave official recognition to the Maroons as a free people and deeded them 1,500 acres of land. It also allowed them to administer their own laws, gave them freedom from taxes, allowed the Maroons to hunt wild boar anywhere except within 3 miles of a town or plantation, and it bound the Maroons to fight with the British should any outside party attempt to invade Jamaica, such as the French from Haiti or the Spanish form Cuba. The Maroons were also bound to hand over any new runaway slaves and in later years some Maroons became slave hunters.

Although the next 50 years saw peace on the home front with the Maroons, England was at war with Spain and in 1741 some Jamaican troops took part in a disastrous attempt to capture Cartegena by Admiral Vernon and another failed attempt the following year when Governor Trelawney sought to capture the Isthmus of Panama. At home, several more slave rebellions broke out and Jamaica suffered from storms and earthquakes once again. In 1754, Kingston became the capital of Jamaica and the Assembly began to hold their meetings their.

A large slave rebellion in 1760 took place in St. Mary under the leadership of a slave called Tacky. The slaves seized the town of Port Maria on the northern coast and murdered all the white people they could find. British troops put down the violent rebellion killing some 400 slaves and deporting another 600 to British Honduras, now known as Belize. By 1775, there were almost a quarter of a million people living on Jamaica, of which over 192,000 were slaves. Jamaicans received a scare when in 1778, a French fleet sailed for the West Indies and martial law was declared on Jamaica fearing the flee was intent on taking Jamaica. All of the island’s defenses were fortified and the legendary Horatio Nelson was made governor of Fort Charles in Port Royal in 1779, but the French fleet failed to arrive in Jamaican waters.

But a few years later another French fleet was intent on taking Jamaica when Admiral Rodney defeated the French Admiral de Grasse off Dominica on April 12, 1782, at the Battle of The Saintes. Rodney brought the captured French ships to Port Royal and the grateful residents of Jamaica erected a marble statue of their hero in Spanish Town Square.

After the American Revolution, many Loyalists fled to Jamaica while some went to the Cayman Islands, Canada, and the Bahamas, bringing their slaves with them, but it would not be long now until the slaves were free. In 1772, several British judges declared that should a slave set foot in England that he or she would become free. This was due to Granville Sharpe who took three slaves to England to secure their freedom. In 1793, a detachment of British troops and black soldiers from Jamaica went to Haiti to come to the aid of British planters who were irate over France freeing the slaves on the island. The troops took a few Haitian cities with many of their ranks dying from disease. The British were eventually routed by Toussaint l’Ouverture just as trouble once again arose with the Maroons in Jamaica. The Second Maroon War broke out when 300 Trelawney Maroons revolted when two Maroons were flogged in Montego Bay instead of being handed back to their own people for punishment. The British employed 5,000 troops and quickly rounded up the Maroons using dogs to flush them from their hiding places in the mountains and forced them to sue for peace. A reward of 10 pounds was offered for every Maroon captured during this period.

After the signing of the peace treaty to end the Second Maroon War, the British thought it time to get rid of the Maroon problem entirely. The government captured some 543 Maroons and exiled them to Halifax, Nova Scotia, on June 26, 1796. The Canadian government quickly found out that the Maroons were not the fine settlers they first thought them to be and decided that the best course of action was to remove the Maroons from Canadian soil. After much negotiation with the government of Sierra Leone in West Africa, the Maroons were shipped off to Freetown Harbour, Sierra Leone, on October 1, 1880, completing a circle begun almost two centuries before when the Maroon’s ancestors were stolen from their homelands in West Africa.

The beginning of the 19th century brought a boost to the economy when the largest crop of sugar ever produced in Jamaica was exported in 1803. In the same year Kingston became a true city with a Mayor, 12 Aldermen, and 12 Counselors. In 1805, another French fleet threatened the island, but never actually attacked Jamaica, eventually being defeated by Lord Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar. Jamaica’s importance as a naval base declined after the Battle of Trafalgar and the goods previously smuggled into the island for sale and barter diminished as well. In 1807, the slave trade between Africa and Jamaica was abolished by an act of Parliament and after March 1, 1808, no more slaves were brought to Jamaica, although by this time over one million salves had been imported from Africa and by the time the trade was abolished there were almost 320,000 slaves on the island of Jamaica who suddenly found themselves worth much more to their owners since there was no new supply. As a result the way slaves were treated changed as they were no longer worked beyond the limits of their endurance. Many slaves were allowed to cultivate a small piece of land one day in every two weeks for their own sustenance. Those with an overage of product were allowed to sell their crop and many slaves suddenly found themselves with money; some slaves subsequently purchased their own freedom or freedom for their children.

Even with all the advances in the way the slaves were treated, to the consternation of the Jamaican planters the slaves still rebelled. In 1808, there was a mutiny by black recruits of the 2nd West India Regiment at Fort Augusta; the recruits were shot and killed by their superiors. An 1809 conspiracy of rebellious slaves was discovered in Kingston. The ringleaders were put to death when it was discovered that they intended to burn the city and murder all the white inhabitants. In 1823, the British government drafted a set of instructions for making the lives of the slaves easier but the Jamaican planters objected to any interference on their island saying that their current code kept the slaves “…happy and comfortable, in every respect, as the labouring class in any part of the world.” The abolitionists in England to up stand on one side of the issue and Jamaican planters took up a reciprocal stand claiming injustice in the way that Britain was interfering in their lives. Some slaves heard of the debate and got the idea that the King had granted them freedom and that they were wrongly being kept in bondage by their owners. On December 28, 1831, a huge slave insurrection, the Christmas Rebellion, broke out in St. James Parish and rapidly spread to the parishes of Trelawney, Hanover, Westmoreland, St. Elizabeth, and Manchester and was hugely instrumental in bringing about the abolition of slavery on Jamaica. Led by a Sam Sharpe, the 20,000 slave strong rebellion lasted for over four months until May 23, 1832 when the slaves were tricked into laying down their arms. Some 400 of the rebellion’s leaders were rounded up and hanged in Charles Square in Montego Bay (now known as Sam Sharpe Square), while hundreds of others were whipped. Sharpe’s remains were buried in the sand along the edge of the bay but were later recovered and today lie beneath the pulpit at the Burchell Baptist Church. In 1832, the Earl of Mulgrave became governor of Jamaica and urged new measures aimed at better treatment of the slaves, but the local politicians declined to act on the governor’s suggestions and the British Parliament decided it was time to act decisively and passed The Abolition Act on August 28, 1833, which stated that all slave children under the age of six should be set free. The act also allowed for a 6 year period of apprenticeship from 1834-1840 after which every slave in the British Empire would be set free. The ruling also permitted some £20,000,000 to be paid to the slave holders as recompense with £5,853,975 going to the Jamaican slaveholders. The apprenticeship system failed miserably and by August of 1838 was allowed to cease by an act of Parliament and Jamaica’s slaves found themselves to be free at last with celebrations all over the island including a ritual burial of slave chains and shackles in Spanish Town.

Many of the newly freed slaves did not wish to work for their former owners complaining of the small wages offered and the planters in return began to order their former slaves off their lands, destroying their huts and felling the fruit trees they were cultivating. With no effective and economical workforce the plantations began to go out of cultivation, which was not helped by a drought between the years of 1839-1841. In 1841, planters imported new workers from Africa to work their lands but the immigrants failed as slave replacements and the practice quickly ended. Soon indentured servants from India began to arrive on Jamaica’s shores as they did in many other Caribbean islands but still the sugar economy only got worse. Even with a free trade agreement Jamaica could not compete with Cuba on the world’s sugar market and the economy remained in a downward spiral. A cholera epidemic in 1850 didn’t help matters, wiping out over 32,000 people and which was soon followed by a smallpox epidemic that also took many lives. Many sugar plantations folded and England had to lend Jamaica vast amounts of money to pay off the debts that the tiny island had accumulated as the disputes between the dwindling number of planters and the laborers continued which had grown year by year as the planter’s profits shrank.

Part of Jamaica’s economical problems was due to the transition from a slave economy to a wage labor economy as most slaves refused to work for the starvation wagers offered by the sugar estates and chose to fend for themselves. But the planter’s were still in power as only property owners had the right to vote. The Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865 came about during the American Civil War years when the U.S. naval blockade of Jamaica cut off vital supplies and former slaves, desperate over conditions and injustice rebelled only to have the uprising quelled in short order. In retribution for the uprising some 600 were executed and almost as many flogged, while thousands of homes were burnt. The brutality of the government’s response provoked an outcry in England which in turn marked the beginning of a more liberal era on the island during which time the Crown took over the local government and some great strides were made. In 1869 a communications cable with Europe was established, the local rail line was extended, nickel coins were first used in Jamaica, and a college was established by 1876 and the first scholarship awarded in 1881.

By 1898, the economy of Jamaica was still in a bad way, there had been another drought and Jamaican sugar was selling at very low prices, and bananas had not yet become a major export. The government did something that we would consider extraordinary today, they cut their own costs with much internal opposition. By the beginning of the 1900s a line of steamers was inaugurated between Jamaica and England which helped open up the market for Jamaican bananas. On January 14, 1907 a massive earthquake destroyed Kingston at 3:30 PM. Over eight hundred persons were killed and the city nearly leveled by a series of three shocks that took place within 20 seconds. But within a few years Kingston was rebuilt including new public and government buildings. Over the next two decades the island’s economy improved thanks in no small part to the burgeoning banana, coffee, and cocoa export business. The railway system was enlarged, a number of schools and hospitals were constructed, and more and more people were becoming landowners (and some women property owners achieved the right to vote). When World War I came about Jamaica answered the call sending some 10,000 men to the front, but suffered from a lack of shipping to take her products to market as happens to some countries during wartime. The Jamaican soldiers fought bravely, especially in Palestine against the Turks.

Soon banana growers banded together to obtain the best prices for their goods and to ensure timely shipments. By 1938 labor disputes would often erupt into violence and Jamaica’s first labor union was established. World War II came and saw the United States enter into an agreement with Britain which allowed the U.S. to build a base at Portland Bight and another in Clarendon Parrish. In 1947, an important conference took place in Montego Bay in which representatives of all the British Caribbean peoples met to give consideration to uniting under a single government. What would have happened had they said yes to that idea is anybody’s guess. Some say it would have been a mistake, others say it would have given the nations involved an economic boost and world status. But either way, it never truly came as some would have hoped about after years of reports and debates, it became more an economic federation that a true Caribbean nation as some had hoped. However in 1957, a final Federation Conference took place on Jamaica and the term West Indies was adopted for the federation and Trinidad was elected as the federation’s capital. That same year Jamaica received full internal self-government from the Crown which meant a complete change of the political structure that had existed for nearly 300 years. One of the government’s first acts was a vote by the people of Jamaica on whether or not to stay in the West Indies Federation, by a small majority Jamaica voted to withdraw from the newly formed federation and in turn she asked Britain for her independence in 1962.

On August 16, 1962, Jamaica became an independent state within the British Commonwealth and Alexander Bustamente was the first Prime Minister. Jamaica’s post-independence politics were dominated for years by two cousins, Bustaments, who formed the first trade union in the Caribbean just prior to WWII and later formed the Jamaican Labor Party (JLP), and Norman Manley, whose People's National Party (PNP) was the first political party on the island when it was convened in 1938. Manley's son, Michael, led the PNP towards democratic socialism in the mid-1970s, causing a capital flight at a time when Jamaica could ill afford it. Inflation soared above 50%, unemployment skyrocketed and society became increasingly polarized, culminating in fully-fledged warfare during the campaigns preceding the 1976 election. Heavily armed groups of JLP and PNP supporters began killing each other in the partisan slums of Kingston and a state of emergency was declared. But the PNP won the election by a wide margin and Manley continued with his socialist agenda which did nothing to please the government of the United States. Economic sanctions were established against Jamaica and soon businesses ceased their backing of Manley and the Jamaican economy, and tourism in particular, went into a sharp decline. During this time Jamaicans lived as if they were under siege and almost 700 people were killed in events leading up to the elections of 1980 which were won by the JLP’s Edward Seaga.

Edward Seaga turned around the Jamaican economy, severed ties with Cuba, and supported President Ronald Reagan and the government of the United States, in fact, when Reagan became President in 1980, Seaga was the first foreign ruler to visit the new leader in Washington D.C. So close did Jamaica’s ties become with the United States that Jamaica even provided troops for the 1983 invasion of Grenada. In 1989, a “reinvented” Michael Manley returned to power. Manley quietly re-established relations with Cuba, but gone from his administration were the anti-US rhetoric that characterized his earlier administration. Due to failing health, Manly retired in 1992 and handed over the reins of government to Jamaica’s first black Prime Minister, Percival James Patterson. A year later Patterson defeated Seaga in an election and Seaga never again gained the support he once had. Patterson won again in 1997, but in 1999, Jamaica erupted in nationwide riots after Patterson’s government announced a 30% increase in the gasoline tax. Almost immediately sugaarcane fields around Kingston and Montego Bay were burned and arson and looting was rampant. Within three days of this announcement the government rescinded the gasoline tax.

In July of 2001, a renewal of gang violence claimed 27 lives and just a few months later, in January of 2002, seven more lives were lost for the same reasons. In February of 2002, the police retaliated by killing five people who were leaving a crime scene and immediately people began complaining about police violence. But even with all the violence clouding the issues, Patterson won a fourth term in office and announced that he hoped that Jamaica would be a republic by the time he leaves office in 2007.