Later many settlers moved to Villa de la Vega, “City on the Plains,” now called Spanish Town. Spanish Town became the centre for the Spanish colonists and was often attacked by the British. In both 1596 and 1643, the British sacked Spanish Town, and in 1655 captured it after failing in an assault on Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic). It took five years to defeat the Spanish, who eventually fled to Cuba.

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However, before fleeing, the Spanish freed and armed their slaves. Most of these freed slaves ran to the interior of the island and formed the Maroons, a group which still exists today. The Maroons waged guerilla war against the British colonists and were respected for their ability to defeat the British in battles throughout the early colonial period.



The British encouraged new settlers to come to the island through gifts of land, and soon the economy was booming through the business of the vast Sugarcane plantations.​ Jamaica was the world’s largest producer of sugar, yielding 22 percent of the world’s supply during the 1700s. Sugarcane wasn't the only cash crop grown on the islands, the British also produced cocoa and coffee plants for trade. However, many Africans were brought into slavery to help the British rise to this calibre of economic power on the island.



Slaves were treated poorly, especially after the American colonies split from England and the French Revolution, where feelings of freedom were stronger than before. In fact, Jamaica had more slave revolts than any other West Indian island. With frequent resistance and uprisings, anti-slavery feelings grew in Britain especially after the 1831 Christmas Rebellion, in which 20,000 slaves killed planters and ruined crops. The British owners convinced them to lay down their revolt with promises of abolition, which were never kept. Afterwards,  400 slaves were hung, and many more were whipped.

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Source: http://jamaica-guide.info/past.and.present/history/index.html