7 ATLASES

History of Jamaica in maps

Jamaica as it appears in 7 interactive history atlases, from 1750 to 2015: Jamaica. Each era below lists who ruled the land and when control changed, linked to the dated map that shows it.

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WW2 is free in full, and chapter 1 of every atlas is free. A free account opens 3 more chapters a day. Starter, at $9 a month, opens all 21 with no daily limit — see the plans.

Free printable Feminism and the Tunisian Revolution study guide, sent by email ↓

Map of women’s rights in May 1970, showing Jamaica — MAP OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN MAY 1970

These maps are reconstructed from published sources · Cliopatria v0.2.1 historical polities · ILO: Equal Remuneration Convention C100 · Natural Earth 1:10m countries and physical geography · Natural Earth 1:10m administrative references (US states and Berlin)

Source details

Cliopatria contributors / Seshat Global History Databank. CC BY 4.0 · Selected source records; component selection, documented unions and date proxies; projected for display.
International Labour Organization. Factual historical evidence; no source prose reproduced
Natural Earth. Public domain · Property selection and semantic ID normalization; full coordinates retained. An upstream Egyptian ring self-intersection is repaired with area change below 1e-9 square degrees; see natural-earth-admin0-review.json.
Natural Earth. Public domain

Modern reference outlines locate the historical thematic data. The underlying rights/protest classifications remain unchanged.

Germany uses dated East/West source extents together with a Berlin reference; Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union use reviewed historical extents. For Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, the 1953–68 references are retained where later Cliopatria records show military occupation rather than treaty-party territory.

reconstruction: 1953–1968 · reconstruction: 1958–1989; 1953–1972 · reconstruction: Cartographic device · vector: 1949–1990 · vector: 1953–1968 · vector: 1963–1975

Layer records and reconstruction methods

What was Jamaica before it was Jamaica? The sections below follow this land through every era covered by the Maps of History atlases: who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed. Each line links to the dated map. Modern borders serve as an approximation, as each atlas says on the map itself.

Jamaica (British) · Industrial Revolution

Jamaica was Britain’s richest Caribbean colony in the eighteenth century. Its sugar, produced by enslaved Africans numbering about 300,000 by 1800, enriched Bristol, Liverpool and London. A rebellion led by Samuel Sharpe in 1831–32 hastened abolition, and slavery ended in 1834–38. Britain compensated the slave-owners, while the people they had enslaved received nothing.

c. 1750

Colony or dependency — the opening position

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Jamaica · Age of Revolutions

APR 1775

Britain & its empire — the opening position

AGE OF REVOLUTIONS: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Jamaica · Haiti and Kenya independence

In 1789 Jamaica was Britain’s richest sugar island and held a quarter of a million enslaved people. It was also the base from which Britain launched its invasion of Saint-Domingue in 1793. Jamaica’s governors watched Haiti closely; one sent home the printed declaration of 1804, which historians found two centuries later. Jamaica’s own enslaved people rose in the great rebellion of 1831–32. Slavery ended in 1834–38, and the island became independent on 6 August 1962, a year before Kenya.

1789	Under colonial rule — the opening position
1975	Other states and societies

HAITI AND KENYA INDEPENDENCE: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

British Jamaica · American Civil War

Abolition had made British Jamaica free in 1834–38, and Americans argued over what the example showed. Planters called it ruin; abolitionists took it as proof. In October 1865, freedpeople protesting over land and justice took part in the Morant Bay rebellion. Governor Eyre suppressed it with some 400 executions, setting off a furious controversy in Britain. The empire that lectured Washington on slavery now faced a question of its own: what was freedom worth without land or votes? Reconstruction was failing to answer that question too.