Happy Independence Day, Jamaica!
The island celebrates 51 years of independence from the U.K.
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Out of Many, One People - Jamaica might be a small island, but its cultural dominance across the globe makes this Caribbean country a mighty force. Because Aug. 6 marks Jamaica’s 51st year of independence from British rule, BET.com has compiled a timeline of the nation’s history and several landmark moments. — Patrice Peck (Photos: Universal History Archive/Getty Images; Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images; Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
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Spanish Rule - By the time Italian explorer and colonizer Christopher Columbus arrived in the small island country in 1494, there were more than 200 village sites inhabited by the indigenous Taino people who originated from South America. Europe’s westward expansion in the early 1500s brought Spanish occupation, diseases that killed much of the indigenous community and the transatlantic slave trade.(Photo: Illustrated London News/Getty Images)
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British Rule - After forcibly removing the Spanish in 1655, the British seized Jamaica and the nation turned into one of the world’s leading sugar-exporting, slave-dependent nations.(Photo: HultonArchive/Illustrated London News/Getty Images)
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The Maroons - Once the British ousted the Spanish, the former slaves of the Spanish colonists retreated into Jamaica’s mountains. There they lived with the maroons, former slaves who had previously fled from the Spanish to join the Tainos. The maroons battled the British throughout the 18th century and maintained their freedom in the mountains for centuries during slavery.(Photo: Earl leaf/Michael Ochs Archive/Getty Images)
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Independence Day - Slavery was abolished in Jamaica in 1838 following a series of rebellions on the island and changing attitudes regarding the slave trade in Great Britain. Over the next 124 years, Jamaica would become a crown colony, bananas would replace the sugar industry, a new constitution would revive local self-governance and universal voting rights for adults would be implemented.(Photo: George Freston/Fox Photos/Getty Images)
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A Time for Change - In 1962, Jamaica gained independence within the British Commonwealth. Alexander Bustamente of the Jamaican Labor Party (JLP) would become prime minster. A decade of strong economic growth thanks to strong private investments in natural resources, tourism and more gave way to an economic deterioration in the 1980s.(Photo: Keystone/Getty Images)
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Government and Politics - Political power in Jamaica has alternated between the social-democratic People’s National Party and the conservative Jamaica Labor Party since independence from Britain, according to BBC. Violence has been known to occur during election time, but the results are typically accepted. The current prime minister and the nation’s first female head of government, Portia Simpson-Miller, is leader of the PNP and she claimed her second victory in a close 2011 election.(Photo: REUTERS/Gilbert Bellamy)
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Natural Resources - A majority of the Jamaican economy relies on services, with mining and tourism being the top earners of foreign exchange. Yet, the global recession had a huge negative impact on the country’s economy from 2007 to 2009. As a result, the government established an initiative in 2010 to manage the country’s debt.(Photos: Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Detroit Free Press/MCT/Landov)
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Poverty and Crime - The luxurious tourist resorts and beautiful flora of Jamaica juxtapose the country’s widespread poverty and crime, most of which occurs in the packed and impoverished urban areas and gang neighborhoods. With one of the world’s highest murder rates, the Jamaican government and police have had to enlist its military and external help to subdue violent unrest and drug smuggling.(JAMAICA RIOTS)