History Geography and Politics of Jamaica
History, Geography and Politics of Jamaica
Jamaica is one of the three islands in the Northern Caribbean forming the Greater Antilles. It's the largest English-speaking country in the Caribbean Sea, stretching 146 miles from east to west. Lying 550 miles north of the Panama-Canal and and 700 miles south of Miami.
In the northern part of Jamaica lays popular tourist resorts such as Montego Bay and Runaway Bay. Both Montego Bay and Runaway Bay has very fine coral beaches with crystal white sand. In this northern part of the island there's also large sugar- and citrusfruit plantages. On the western tip lays Negril, once a remote swampy but now all beachcombers paradise. The southern region of the island has a rugged coastline where big and majestetic mountains crush sea weavs. The center part of the island is to bigger part a mountain range. This central mountain which is dominated by the 2,200 meter Blue Mountain, divides the south coast from the north and stretches from Half Moon Bay to Portland.
Christopher Columbus "discovered" Jamaica on his voyage to the "New World" on May the fifth, 1492, the island was colonised by the Spanish, and the natives were exterminated.
The native settlers had long before Christopher Columbus discovered the counrty. This people wich were the Arawak Indians, had sailed from the south in their dugout canoes about 650 AD.
The Arawaks had an estimated population about 100,000 at their peak. They were a brown-skinned, short and slightly built peolpe with straight black hair, broad faces and wide flat noses. Todays population of Jamaica is about 2,1 million and 625,000 live in Kingston, the capital city.
In 1655 the land was conquered by the Englishmen and came under the Britsh crown. The Englishmen imported loads of negro slaves to country, hereby the country is mainly black. Jamaica's independence from GB was on August the 6 , 1962, and land became an independent state and a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations, with the Queen of England as the titular head of state, or represented locally by the Governor-General. Jamiaca has it's own parliament with democratic selected representives.
TOURISM AND INCOMES
Since the turn of century , sugar, banana, citrus and coffee have become the main crops for export and the sourcee of income and work for thousands.
Beginning in the early 1950's the mining of aluminia and bauxite - the raw ore...