This episode recounts the devastating exile of over 500 Trelawny Town Maroons from Jamaica to Nova Scotia, Canada, following the Second Maroon War in 1796. Despite facing a betrayal of promised terms of surrender, the British government deported them to Halifax, where they arrived in July 1796 and were immediately used as a critical source of labor due to a local shortage. Accustomed to the tropics, the Maroons struggled with the cold climate and demands to abandon their traditional Akan spiritual and social practices, while providing essential labor for military construction, such as the Halifax Citadel. After years of tireless petitioning against these harsh conditions and their double exile, the majority shipped to the British anti-slavery colony of Sierra Leone, departing Nova Scotia in 1800.

When slavery ended in Jamaica, freedom didn’t come without resistance. Planters and the colonial government feared the newly freed would claim the island’s fertile highlands and build lives beyond their control. Their answer was the German Settlement Plan — a program to import hundreds of Europeans to farm, populate, and occupy Jamaica’s interior.This episode explores how those “attempts at shaping freedom” sought to contain emancipation, and how the plan’s legacy endures in the hills of Seaford Town and beyond.

Jamaica’s surnames tell the story of a global crossroads. Though most Jamaicans are of African descent, the island’s names are largely European—especially British and Scottish. Exploring these names uncovers the complex intersections of slavery, migration, and identity that define Jamaica’s past and present.

England’s decisive entry came with the 1655 conquest, bringing new laws, the Anglican Church, and a plantation economy geared to sugar and Atlantic trade. Port Royal boomed as a privateering and mercantile hub until the 1692 earthquake shifted power toward Kingston and Spanish Town. English planters, merchants, and officials shaped the island’s institutions and profited from enslaved labor; after emancipation (1834–1838), many estates and trading houses adapted to a wage economy. Though numerically small, the English imprint—legal frameworks, townscapes, churches, and commercial networks—remains foundational to Jamaica’s political and economic history.

Irish migration to Jamaica grew in the 1600s, driven by war, displacement, and indenture—especially after the Cromwellian campaigns and the English conquest of 1655. Some arrived as soldiers and overseers; others as bound laborers who later became artisans, shopkeepers, and small farmers. Their presence threaded through plantation life—entangled with slavery’s profits—while Catholic parishes, surnames, and place-names like Irish Town marked their footprint. After emancipation, families stayed, businesses adapted, and Irish-Jamaican identities folded into the island’s civic and cultural life.

Spain’s Jamaica began with Columbus in 1494 and formal colonization by 1509. Early capitals—Sevilla la Nueva (near St Ann’s Bay) and later St Jago de la Vega (Spanish Town)—anchored a small colony built on encomienda labor and the rapid collapse of the Taíno population, followed by the importation of enslaved Africans. Ranching outpaced sugar, missions dotted the interior, and maroon communities formed from runaways resisting colonial control. In 1655 the English seized the island, but Spain’s imprint endured—in place-names, Catholic sites, land grants, irrigation works, and fragments of architecture—foundations that still thread through Jamaica’s landscape and memory.

Rethinking the Industrial RevolutionFor over two centuries, Britain has celebrated the Cort Process as a hallmark of English innovation — the iron-refining technique that powered railways, bridges, and the rise of empire. But new research is challenging that story.In 2023, historian Dr. Jenny Bulstrode published groundbreaking evidence suggesting that a group of 76 highly skilled Black ironworkers in Jamaica may have developed a key iron-refining method years before Henry Cort filed his famous patents. Their expertise, forged at a foundry near Morant Bay, drew on centuries-old African metallurgical traditions and may have shaped one of the Industrial Revolution’s pivotal technologies.🎙️ In this episode, we investigate how Jamaican innovation, colonial power, and industrial ambition intersected — and why this history is only now being brought to light.📜 Sources include Bulstrode’s peer-reviewed research (History and Technology, 2023), colonial records, and African ironworking histories.Read: https://fiwiroots.com/articles/metallurgy-cort.html

Step into 18th-century Jamaica, where fragile treaties, land concessions, and calculated strategies of divide-and-rule shaped a volatile peace between Britain and the Maroons. This episode unpacks the First Maroon War and the unequal treaties that followed — agreements designed not only to end open conflict, but to fracture alliances and entrench colonial control.

For centuries, records declared the Taíno “extinct”—a paper verdict shaped by epidemic, forced labor, and time. Yet families, language, and lifeways endured. This episode follows that living return. For the human line behind the history, the historical novel The Secret Pact—set in Maroon-era Jamaica—threads those themes through a fast-paced tale of rebellion, suspense, and intrigue.

From 1655 to 1809, over a million Africans were transported to Jamaica, making the island one of the largest destinations in the transatlantic slave trade. Drawn mainly from West and Central Africa, they endured brutal plantation conditions, resisted through rebellion and maroon communities, and laid the foundations of Jamaica’s culture and identity. Emancipation in 1838 ended slavery, but their legacy continued to shape the island’s language, music, spirituality, and national character.

NOTE: This episode includes material from The Forgotten Chapters—sections that did not appear in the book—and references a 2023 study by Dr Jenny Bulstrode arguing that enslaved Black metallurgists in Jamaica influenced wrought-iron production.

The Chinese presence in Jamaica began in 1854 with the arrival of the first two groups of indentured laborers. Brought to the island after the abolition of slavery, they were initially deployed on sugar plantations. Subsequent waves, drawing primarily from southern China, arrived in the years that followed. Though conditions were challenging, the community gradually diversified, shifting from field labor to becoming the indispensable backbone of community shops and groceries. This successful transition allowed the Chinese community to become an integral and significant contributor to the cultural and economic fabric of Jamaican society.

Mary Seacole was a Jamaican-born nurse and businesswoman who faced racial and gender discrimination yet persevered to make an extraordinary contribution during the Crimean War. Refused official nursing roles, including with Florence Nightingale’s team, she financed her own voyage to Crimea and established the British Hotel near the front lines. More than just a place for food and rest, the British Hotel became a vital haven where Seacole personally cared for wounded soldiers, often venturing into battle zones under fire. Known affectionately as "Mother Seacole," she earned deep respect for her bravery, compassion, and dedication. Seacole also broke new ground by publishing the first autobiography written by a Black woman in Britain, sharing her remarkable story of resilience and service. Her legacy challenges traditional histories and celebrates a trailblazer whose efforts saved and comforted many in one of history’s bloodiest conflicts.

In 1948, hundreds of Jamaicans and other Caribbean men and women sailed to Britain, promised citizenship and invited to help rebuild after the war. Driven by hope for a better life and greater opportunities for their children, they became the Windrush Generation — working, paying taxes, raising families, and building new lives. Yet decades later, many faced a shocking injustice. Branded as illegal immigrants, they were denied healthcare, jobs, housing — even threatened with deportation. This is the story of the Windrush Generation: how the colonies answered Britain’s call, only to be betrayed by the very system they helped rebuild.

ABOUT FIWIROOTS FiwiRoots is a non-profit initiative dedicated to preserving the heritage and culture of Jamaica. Its name, which is a Jamaican term meaning "Our Heritage," introduces an audio series that brings the island's history, traditions, and untold stories to life. The episodes explore the events and influences that have shaped Jamaica's people and culture, from historical events to herbal remedies.

In a special deep dive, we explore the shocking story behind a key chapter from the book 'The Timeline of Jamaica' by Glen Carty.

The 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica sent a bloody aftershock across the Atlantic, igniting a firestorm of public debate that drew in celebrated British figures like Charles Darwin and Charles Dickens. We go beyond the history to reveal how this remote uprising forced Britain's elite to take a side in one of the most significant moral and political controversies of the Victorian era.

Featured:

• The Morant Bay Rebellion (1865)

• The book 'The Timeline of Jamaica' by Glen Carty

• Charles Darwin & Charles Dickens

• The legacy of the British Empire"

  
  

  To learn more, or to purchase the book, visit Amazon: [ The Timeline of Jamaica ]

  [ Fiwi Roots ]