History, heritage and memory in modern Jamaica

Jamaica is a land of old immigrants. Few modern Jamaicans can trace ancestral connections to the peoples who inhabited the island before the arrival of Columbus in 1494, and few can identify foreparents in the period of Spanish rule that lasted to 1655. Similarly, although the new peoples who have come to Jamaica over the last 200 years, — mostly Indians and Chinese— had a significant cultural impact, their numbers have been relatively modest.