Columbus used it as his family's private estate.
The Spanish claimed the Islands.
The Caribs and the Arawaks were progressively wiped out by the after-effects of the Spanish conquest, with the more peaceful Arawak tribes suffering the greater losses.
The Spanish were continuously harassed by the native Caribs and by pirates and buccaneers who attacked the Spanish galleons which were carrying riches back to Spain.
The pirates who operated in the Islands included Blackbeard, Calico Jack, Anne Bonny, Henry Morgan, Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake
The British seized the island in 1670
Jamaica became the world's largest sugar exporting nation with the massive use of imported African slave labor
The Jamaican sugar plantations, worked by African slaves, lead to a slave trading and slave auctions
In 1838 slavery was formally abolished
1914 - 1918 WW1
1939 - 1945 WW11
August 1945 The United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
1958 Jamaica became a province of the Federation of the West Indies
Jamaica separated from the federation and became independent, within the British Commonwealth, in 1962.