The 1997 victory marked the first time any Jamaican political party has won three consecutive general elections since the introduction of universal suffrage to Jamaica in 1944. The current composition of the lower house of Jamaica's Parliament is 49 PNP and 11 JLP. The JLP won a long-held PNP parliamentary seat in a March 2001 by-election. The NDM, a break away faction of the JLP, failed to win any seats in the 1997 election.
Sugar and slavery made Jamaica one of the most valuable possessions in the world for more than 150 years. The colony's slaves, who outnumbered their white masters 300,000 to 30,000 in 1800, mounted over a dozen major slave conspiracies and uprisings in the 1600s and 1700.
Jamaica's music has become popular across much of the world. Reggae's popularity is especially popular through the international fame of Bob Marley. Jamaican music has also had an effect on the musical development of other countries, such as the practice of toasting, which was brought to New York City and became rapping, one of the four elements of hip hop. British styles as Lovers rock and jungle also originate in Jamaican music.
Jamaica has traditionally had a two party system, with power often alternating between the People's National Party and Jamaican Labour Party.
Jamaica operates as a mixed, free market economy with state enterprises as well as private sector businesses. Major sectors of the Jamaican economy include agriculture, mining, manufacturing, tourism and financial and insurance services. Tourism and mining are the leading foreign exchange earners.
Kumina is both the religion and the music practiced by the people of eastern Jamaica. These people have retained the drumming and dancing of the Bantu-speaking peoples of the Congo. Like the Kongo practitioners from Cuba, they have kept a large amount of the Kongo language alive. In the Americas there are many Kongo-derived religions still being practiced today.
The country faces some serious problems but has the potential for growth and modernization. The Jamaican economy suffered its fourth consecutive year of negative growth (0.4%) in 1999. In 2000, Jamaica may have experienced its first year of positive growth since 1995.
Chris Blackwell's Island Records became the biggest label promoting Jamaican music to the international market. Due to afilliation with the record industry in the UK and First world funding, Island had the distribution to vastly increase exposure of reggae to the global pop market, especially in the UK where a significant population of Jamaican immigrants had relocated for economic opportunities not available at home. Blackwell's stable of artists included Millie Small, singer of the first major Jamaican music UK radio hit, 1964's "My Boy Lollipop."
It is not to be confused with what linguists call Jamaican Creole, sometimes known as "Jamaican", though typically referred to in Jamaica as Patois or dialect; nor with the vocabulary and language approach of the Rastafarian movement. ("Patois" is a French term referring to broken or improper French but in Jamaica it refers to Jamaican Creole, which Jamaicans have traditionally seen as broken" or incorrect English).
The British also used Jamaica's free people of color, 10,000 strong by 1800, to keep the enslaved population in check. During Christmas of 1831, a large scale slave revolt (involving as many as 60,000 of the island's 300,000 slave population) known as the Baptist War broke, but it was suppressed by the militia of the Jamaican plantocracy ten days later in early 1832.
In May 1655, British forces in the form of a joint expedition by Admiral Sir William Penn (father of the founder of Pennsylvania), and General Robert Venables seized the island. In 1657 the Governor invited the Buccaneers to base themselves at Port Royal to deter Spanish aggression. In 1657 and 1658 the Spanish, sailing from Cuba, failed at the battles of Ocho Rios and Rio Nuevo in their attempts to retake the island, and in 1657 Admiral Robert Blake defeated the Spanish West Indian Fleet.
Reggae quickly became one of the most popular forms of music in the world, due in large part to the immense international success of Bob Marley & the Wailers.
The 1907 Catholic Encyclopedia wrote, "A review of the period of Spanish occupation is one which reflects very little credit on Spanish colonial administration in those days. Their treatment of the aboriginal inhabitants, whom they are accused of having practically exterminated, is a grave charge, and if true, cannot be condoned on the plea that such conduct was characteristic of the age, and that as bad or worse was perpetrated by other nations even in later years."
Jamaican English or Jamaican Standard English is a dialect of English encompassing in a very unique way, parts and mergers of both American English and British English dialects. Typically it uses British English spellings but does not reject American English spellings.