Jamaica

From the Taino land of Xaymaca to a sovereign Caribbean nation whose reggae and runners carry its name across the world.

Jamaica's history runs from the Arawak-speaking Taino, who called the island Xaymaca, through Columbus's arrival in 1494 and a Spanish colony that all but annihilated them. The English conquest of 1655 built a brutal sugar-and-slavery economy, the wealth and wickedness of buccaneer Port Royal, and a centuries-long struggle for freedom led by the Maroons of the Blue and John Crow Mountains and by rebels from Tacky to Sam Sharpe. Emancipation in 1838 and the Morant Bay rebellion of 1865 gave way to the Pan-Africanism of Marcus Garvey, the rise of Rastafari, a labour movement, and the two-party democracy of Bustamante and Manley. Independence came on 6 August 1962, since when this small nation has projected outsized cultural and sporting power through reggae, Bob Marley, and the world's fastest sprinters.