THE BEGINNING OF ENTANGLEMENT: CONQUEST AND PLANTATIONS
Step back to the mid-1600s. England’s fleet seized Jamaica from Spain in 1655, and with it, a new chapter in Britain’s imperial story began. The island was not empty. The Taíno and Arawak had lived there, but disease and conquest had already devastated their numbers. Britain inherited not a blank canvas, but one scarred by colonial violence.
What followed was the sugar revolution. Fertile Jamaican soil became the perfect ground for sugarcane. Sugar was not simply a crop; it was the white gold of empire. Plantations exploded across the island, demanding cheap, expendable labour. Enslaved Africans were shipped across the Atlantic in their hundreds of thousands, bodies turned into capital. The cruelty was systemic: forced labour, beatings, rape, families torn apart. And yet, through this brutality, a culture was born—resistance, rhythm, and community that would one day shake the world.
