Jamaica is one of those places which remained under foreign rule much longer than anyone probably realized; it didn’t gain its independence until 1962, before which it spent a little over three centuries as a British colony. Though its previous European tenants, the Spanish, had gifted it the uninspired name of Santiago (St. James), the British managed a hairsbreadth more historical sensitivity by opting for Jamaica, an Anglicization of the Arawak Xaymaca, meaning “land of wood and water”.
Though slightly better-known than other well-touristed locales of the West Indies, Jamaica’s status in popular knowledge is limited to its notoriety in the transatlantic slave trade, in which slaves from West Africa were rather unhappily exported to the Caribbean, where they were sold to sugar plantations, the sugar of which was used to make rum and other goods, which were then shipped to Europe and New England, where the proceeds from their sale allowed for the further purchase of involuntary labor from Africa. Jamaica’s other crowning achievement is the cultural institution of Bob Marley, whose musical contributions were immense, but whose legacy in the form of pot popularization and Rastafari I could do without.
Though notorious for its production of marijuana (“Jamaica Red” is one popular variety) and duly famous for its Blue Mountain coffee, tourism is Jamaica’s most lucrative and important industry, comprising about half of its national income. This past week, my new wife and I, by way of a honeymoon, became one of approximately 1.3 million people to visit Jamaica every year.
