By: Alison Wickham
This is the fifth week that I will be sharing research that I have done on the country of Jamaica. For this next post I will be talking about the the background of ethnocentrism and the effects it has had on Jamaica’s people. Ethnocentrism refers to thinking one’s own group’s ways are superior to others. In Jamaica’s instance the the groups which held this attitude towards the country were the Spanish and English.
Firstly, the Spanish conquest took ahold of Jamaica in the late 1400’s. At the time the original inhabitants were the Tainos, an American-Indian group. The Spanish enslaved this group and introduced European diseases to their population which ultimately led to the their extinction on the island. In turn, the Spanish brought slaves from other countries to the island, aiding their production in crops such as tobacco, vegetables and most importantly sugarcane.
When the English came to the island in 1655 both Spaniards and slaves fled. They expelled the Spanish from the island within five years. The English proceeded to bring West Africans to the island to be used as slaves in the sugar industry. The Spaniards eventually gave British rule of Jamaica in 1670 under the treaty of Madrid which granted the British, “the settlement of all disputes in America”.
Jamaica is still suffering the effects of this neocolonialism and the country has yet to regain their full potential. Jamaica’s economy is still largely controlled by the income of tourists. One article describes the countries current need of self development telling the reader that, “Development starts with the people being able to resist complete foreign acculturation by thinking rationally and working effectively in consonance with the environment on which they depend. A failure to define development in this manner results only in envelopment,” (Nelson, 2011). The country is fairly new in terms of the people which inhabit the island which can slow the development of a country. The country is also still recovering from the effects of their past. Many factors go into Jamaica’s slow growth, but ultimately the country has a long way to go before the effects of ethnocentrism are unseen.
Sources
https://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20110509/letters/letters1.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_of_Jamaica#:~:text=Sugar%20became%20Britain’s%20largest%20import,of%20enslaved%20Africans%20to%20Jamaica.
https://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20110509/letters/letters1.html