Colony of Santiago in the context of "Spanish West Indies"

Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean, covering 10,990 square kilometres (4,240 sq mi). It is the third-largest island in the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean, after Cuba and the island of Hispaniola. Jamaica lies about 145 km (78 nmi) south of Cuba, 191 km (103 nmi) west of Hispaniola (the island containing Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and 215 km (116 nmi) southeast of the Cayman Islands (a British Overseas Territory). With 2.8 million people, Jamaica is the third most populous Anglophone country in the Americas and the fourth most populous country in the Caribbean. Kingston is the country's capital and largest city.

The indigenous Taíno peoples of the island gradually came under Spanish rule after the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1494. Many of the indigenous people either were killed or died of diseases, after which the Spanish brought large numbers of Africans to Jamaica as slaves. The island remained a possession of Spain, under the name Santiago, until 1655, when England (part of what would become the Kingdom of Great Britain) conquered it and named it Jamaica. It became an important part of the colonial British West Indies. Under Britain's colonial rule, Jamaica became a leading sugar exporter, with a plantation economy dependent on continued importation of African slaves and their descendants. The British fully emancipated all slaves in 1838, and many freedmen chose to have subsistence farms rather than to work on plantations. Beginning in the 1840s, the British began using Chinese and Indian indentured labourers for plantation work. Jamaicans achieved independence from the United Kingdom on 6 August 1962.