The Timeline of Jamaica

Beyond Babylon: The Forgotten History of Rastafari 08.06.2026 23min

History is often written by the victors, but the true story of Rastafari was forged by those the world chose to ignore. Beyond Babylon: The Forgotten History of Rastafari peels back the layers of colonial record-keeping to explore the birth, struggle, and evolution of a movement that redefined identity, faith, and resistance.In this deep-dive episode, we move past the stereotypes to uncover the radical roots of the Rastafari consciousness. From the isolated hills of 1930s Jamaica to the establishment of the revolutionary Pinnacle settlement, we navigate the convergence of biblical prophecy, the coronation of Haile Selassie I, and the visceral reclamation of self-worth against a backdrop of systemic oppression.This episode of the Forgotten Chapters bridges the gap between the official timeline and the lived experience—recovering the voices, the music, and the philosophy that turned a marginalized community into a global beacon of defiance.📖 EXPLORE THE BOOKS**The Timeline of Jamaica** (Non-Fiction): A formal chronological history of Jamaica's development from Pre-1494 to 1962. 👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F484WYWB/**The Secret Pact** (Historical Fiction): A novel of mystery and intrigue set in 1740s Jamaica, the aftermath of the Second Maroon War. 👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D1PGRFBJ/**The Covenant of Glass** (Caribbean Gothic): A chilling story of Obeah, de Laurence, and bindings set in the heart of Jamaica. 👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DQ94X4N7/🔗 CONNECT Support the preservation of Jamaican heritage and explore our full collection of resources: https://FiwiRoots.com

The Cow Called Jamaica Hope: How a Jamaican Engineered a Better Cow for the Tropics 04.06.2026 20min

Jamaica is known for reggae, sprint legends, Blue Mountain coffee, and a culture that seems too large for one small island. But there is something else Jamaica gave the tropics — something far less famous, but deeply important. A cow. Not just any cow.A cow designed for heat, hillsides, ticks, poor pasture, and the daily struggle of small farmers who needed milk, income, and a way out of poverty.At a time when European dairy cattle failed in the tropics, and local cattle could survive but barely produced enough milk, one Jamaican scientist looked at the problem and decided Jamaica would not simply import an answer.Jamaica would build one.This is the story of the cow called Jamaica Hope — and how Dr Thomas Lecky, a Jamaican, engineered a better cow for the tropics.

A Mother’s Legacy — A Haunting Prequel 14.05.2026 21min

The Narrative Series: Voices from the PastIn this episode we step into Glen Carty’s, A Mother’s Legacy, the haunting prequel to The Secret Pact. This is the story behind Silas — the man whose fate becomes the gravity around which The Secret Pact turns. He is the one others will risk everything to protect. He is the one his enemies are determined to crush. His existence defined the extremes: life and death.But before Silas became the man at the center of the storm, he was a nine-year-old boy sitting close to his mother, listening as she reached back into memory.Through her stories, A Mother’s Legacy takes us back to the source of the fire — to the visceral memories of the Middle Passage, the harsh reality of seasoning, and the quiet, subversive power of a woman who refused to be hollowed out by history.Her words are not simply tales from the past. They are gifts of identity, warnings about the world, and lessons in freedom, dignity, and survival.In this intimate beginning, memory becomes inheritance — and a mother’s story becomes the first spark of a son’s awakening.THE NARRATIVE SERIES: VOICES FROM THE PASTHistory is not only found in dates, documents, and official records. It also lives in the fears people carried, the choices they faced, the losses they endured, and the small acts of courage that helped them survive.While The Timeline of Jamaica traces the formal arc of the nation, and The Forgotten Chapters explores the stories history too often leaves behind, The Narrative Series: Voices from the Past steps into the human experience behind the record.Drawn from the growing collection of historical novels published by Fiwi Roots Publishing, this series sits beside the research, timelines, and archival work of Fiwi Roots. Its purpose is not to replace history, but to bring it closer — to give readers a way to step into the period and imagine what life may have felt like for the people who lived through it.Through historical fiction, these stories explore the weight of bondage, war, exile, survival, love, betrayal, and hope as they may have been experienced by ordinary people caught inside extraordinary times.Here, history is not distant. It has breath, memory, and consequence.***THE NARRATIVE SERIES: VOICES FROM THE PASTHistory is not only found in dates, documents, and official records. It also lives in the fears people carried, the choices they faced, the losses they endured, and the small acts of courage that helped them survive.While The Timeline of Jamaica traces the formal arc of the nation, and The Forgotten Chapters explores the stories history too often leaves behind, The Narrative Series: Voices from the Past steps into the human experience behind the record.Drawn from the growing collection of historical novels published by Fiwi Roots Publishing, this series sits beside the research, timelines, and archival work of Fiwi Roots. Its purpose is not to replace history, but to bring it closer — to give readers a way to step into the period and imagine what life may have felt like for the people who lived through it.Through historical fiction, these stories explore the weight of bondage, war, exile, survival, love, betrayal, and hope as they may have been experienced by ordinary people caught inside extraordinary times.Here, history is not distant. It has breath, memory, and consequence.

Against All Odds: The Rise of Jamaica’s First Black Millionaire in the 1800s 02.05.2026 21min

Born in 1820, just 18 years before the end of enslavement, George Stiebel entered a world designed to keep him at the bottom. He was the son of a German Jewish merchant and a Black Jamaican mother—a man born into the 'middle' of a rigid colonial caste system.His journey from a ship’s carpenter to Jamaica’s first Black millionaire was not a straight line, but a path carved through the 1800s by way of sea-faring risks, to the gold mines of Venezuela, surviving imprisonment in Cuba and Hispaniola and failure before finding his fortune.Within 35 years after emancipation was declared, Stiebel had achieved what was once legally and socially unthinkable. By 1873, while the island was still grappling with the deep scars of its plantation past, he returned to Jamaican shores not as a subject of the old order, but as its most successful entrepreneur.He didn't just amass a fortune; he shattered the glass ceiling of the Victorian Caribbean. By purchasing the land for Devon House on the corner of Hope and Trafalgar Road, he forced the colonial elite to witness a new reality: the wealthiest man in Jamaica was a man of color. In just four decades of the ink being dry on the Emancipation Proclamation, George Stiebel had moved from the margins of society to the very center of its most exclusive circle—proving that while the world was designed to keep him down, he had the grit to buy the ground they stood on.For more on the story: https://jamaicagreathouses.com/devonhouse/index.html

The $3.5 Billion Secret: How the Diaspora Sustains Jamaica 24.03.2026 18min

History often records migration as a change of address, but for the Jamaican diaspora, leaving the island is a calculated strategy for survival and a powerful macroeconomic engine. In this episode, we explore the "Modern Era" (1990s–Present), where the movement of people has evolved into a fluid, multi-directional network of capital and culture.We dive deep into the "Circularity" of the Global Jamaican—from the $3.5 billion in annual remittances that anchor the nation’s GDP to the poignant phenomenon of the "Returning Resident."The Waves of Migration: Full Series Playlist🔗 Watch the complete series here: [INSERT YOUR PLAYLIST LINK HERE]Series Roadmap:Currently Playing: The $3.5 Billion Secret (Modern Era)Coming Soon: The Silver Men: Surviving the Deadliest Job (Panama 1850–1914)A Project of © Fiwi RootsThis series is based on the historical research found at https://jamaicatimeline.com. All research and narratives are curated by Glen Carty to preserve the long-view of Jamaican history.

Port Royal’s Thames Street: The Machine That Laundered an Empire 04.02.2026 15min

In 1680, Port Royal wasn’t run from taverns or pirate decks. It was run from 500 yards of brick warehouses on Thames Street.While the world saw "the wickedest city on earth," a tight network of Sephardic Jewish merchants saw a counting house. They financed the privateers, absorbed the Spanish silver, and quietly transformed raw plunder into legitimate English capital.This wasn’t chaos. It was a system—precise, legal, and devastatingly efficient.🎧 The merchant engine behind the pirate myth.📖 EXPLORE THE BOOKS**The Timeline of Jamaica** (Non-Fiction): A formal chronological history of Jamaica's development from Pre-1494 to 1962. 👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F484WYWB/**The Secret Pact** (Historical Fiction): A novel of mystery and intrigue set in 1740s Jamaica, the aftermath of the Second Maroon War. 👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D1PGRFBJ/**The Covenant of Glass** (Caribbean Gothic): A chilling story of Obeah, de Laurence, and bindings set in the heart of Jamaica. 👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DQ94X4N7/🔗 CONNECT Support the preservation of Jamaican heritage and explore our full collection of resources: https://FiwiRoots.com

Spanish Town: The Intelligence Engine Behind Jamaica’s Fall 02.02.2026 20min

The invasion faltered. The Spanish fled. The colony should have collapsed into chaos.Instead, it held.Not because of soldiers or ships—but because the system survived.Long before Port Royal counted silver, Spanish Town counted information. Through ledgers, letters, and merchant correspondence, a Sephardic trading community preserved the intelligence that made the English hold on Jamaica workable.This wasn’t espionage. It was infrastructure.🎧 The system that survived conquest—and made empire possible.Prequel to the episode, Port Royal’s Thames Street: The Machine That Laundered an Empire—where that intelligence was finally converted into capital, credit, and empire.

The Syrians & Lebanese in Jamaica 28.01.2026 13min

Syrian and Lebanese immigrants arrived in the 1890s as Ottoman subjects, many starting as itinerant peddlers—on foot or with a donkey, credit book in hand, along Jamaica’s rural roads. Loads became stalls, stalls became shops, and shops grew into retail and wholesale networks. Families, associations, and a hyphenated identity took root, and by the mid-20th century their surnames appear across commerce, media, philanthropy, and politics. This episode traces adaptation, promise, and belonging—how early peddlers helped shape everyday Jamaican life and built lasting legacies in business, culture, and civic life.

The Arrival of East Indians in Jamaica: Contracts & Crossings 21.01.2026 14min

Between 1845 and 1916, roughly 37,000 Indians arrived in Jamaica as indentured laborers, the first 261 docking at Old Harbour aboard the SS Blundell on May 10, 1845. Many intended to return after their contracts, but only about 38% repatriated; most settled and became the island’s largest ethnic minority. Harsh plantation conditions, shifting policies, and the stop-start promises of land or cash shaped their choices, while restricted mobility and scarce ships complicated returns. By the early 20th century, repatriation had largely faded, and the community put down roots that now account for about 3% of Jamaica’s population—an enduring legacy born of obligation, resilience, and home-making far from home.

The Jews in Jamaica: From Iberia to Port Royal 14.01.2026 13min

Jamaica’s Jewish story begins with Sephardic exiles from Spain and Portugal who, under Spanish rule, often lived as secret Jews. After the English conquest in 1655, they could practice openly and grew into a vital mercantile community—first in Port Royal, then in Spanish Town and Kingston. Despite periods of restriction, civil rights expanded in the early 19th century, and Jewish Jamaicans helped drive trade, finance, and civic life far beyond their numbers. Today, their synagogues, cemeteries, and family names mark a small but enduring community woven into the island’s cultural and economic history.

Thistles & Sugar: The Scots in Jamaica 07.01.2026 13min

Scottish migration to Jamaica gathered pace after 1655, when soldiers, merchants, and later waves of indentured workers and overseers crossed the Atlantic in search of fortune. Many found roles on sugar estates—as planters, bookkeepers, and traders—while others built shops and shipping links that tied the island to Glasgow and the Clyde. Their presence left a long trail of surnames, congregations, and place-names, and, like other Europeans on the island, the Scots were deeply entangled in plantation slavery and its profits. After emancipation, families remained, businesses adapted, and Scottish-Jamaican identities took root in civic life, commerce, and culture. A small population by numbers, their imprint on Jamaica’s economic and social history is outsized and lasting.

Cold Betrayal: Trelawny Town Maroons Exiled to Nova Scotia, Canada 31.12.2025 12min

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.

German Settlement in Jamaica: Attempts at Shaping Freedom 24.12.2025 13min

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.

Unpacking Jamaica's Surnames: Echoes of Past Empires & Loss of Identity 16.12.2025 6min

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.

The English Conquest of Jamaica — Commerce, Slavery & Empire 09.12.2025 14min

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.

The Irish in Jamaica: Settlement & Legacy 02.12.2025 14min

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.

Jamaica under the Spanish 25.11.2025 11min

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.

Did one of the Industrial Revolution’s biggest breakthroughs actually start in Jamaica? 13.10.2025 17min

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

The First Maroon War: Promises, Punishments, and Divide-and-Rule 12.10.2025 14min

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.

Origins & Life of the Taíno — Jamaica’s Original People 10.10.2025 14min

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.