TWO European powers in particular — the Spanish and the English —dominated economic activities in Jamaica during the period of colonisation and slavery, spanning a period of 456 years.

The Spanish period of occupation officially began in 1506 and ended with the signing of the Treaty of Madrid (1670) between England and Spain, when the island was finally ceded to the English. So although our history written by the English gave the impression that the capture of the island from the Spaniards in 1655 by the British invasion forces, led by Admiral Penn and General Venables, gave ownership to the English, that was just not the case. It was the Treaty of Madrid 15 years later that finally, after several failed attempts by Spain to recapture Jamaica, gave the English invaders full legal control of the country. This was in exchange for the English getting rid of their pirates and Buccaneers including Henry Morgan who, according to some claims, was put before a firing squad and shot in Honduras. I might add that contrary to what we believe here about Port Royal, it was NOT Morgan’s largest base in the Caribbean Basin …. Cuzomel, Honduras, was.

The defeat of the Spanish by the English at the battles of Ocho Rios (1658) and the battle of Rio Nuevo (1659) resulted in the last Spanish Governor Arnaldo de Yassi running away from the island to Cuba. The cave in which he was hiding and from which he fled is today known as the Runaway Caves in the parish of St Ann. The name of the caves was not derived from it being a hiding place for runaway slaves as is commonly believed although, undoubtedly, slaves running away from their plantation would avail themselves of the use of such facilities. But they could not run away and hide so close to the main highway instead of proceeding into the fastness of the wild.

Additionally, if the cave in Runaway Bay got its name simply because slaves ran away to there, then every cave in Jamaica would have had the same name. Both the Spaniards and the English used predominantly African slave labour to maintain economic activities, whether it was cattle rearing by the Spaniards or sugar, logwood and tobacco production by the English. Although the island saw a change in colonial ownership between the two European powers one thing remained consistent, and that was an increasingly massive inflow of African slave labour until the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, but not the abolition of slavery itself until 31 years later. It is these African slaves and later the indentured labourers from Ireland, India and China who became the new working class within the Jamaican labour force, with Africans outnumbering by a wide margin the composition of that labour force. The Africans, former slaves, received no compensation for their enslavement for a period of 456 years, while at the time of British emancipation of the slave the slave masters were compensated in the British West Indies to the tune of 10 million pounds, and absentee plantation owners living in England — most of whom never knew or even visited their plantation in Jamaica… received an additional amount of twice that for the loss of their slaves totalling 20 million pounds.

So the African slaves who worked on the sugar, cattle and logwood plantations, built the bridges, aqueducts, great houses, churches, and worked in the mines throughout the British West Indies were organised into persistent poverty through the colonial system’s denial of any reward for labour or compensation at the end of that slave labour. That historical injustice has created an energy force of its own dynamic to manifest in a historical landscape of organised wealth and poverty in Jamaica. And so the generations of the rich continue to be rich and the generation of the poor continue to be poor. The same pattern can be seen also in a broader global context, as the warlords and landlords of feudalism became the oligarchs of mercantilism and the oligarchs of mercantilism became the capitalist entrepreneur or the new industrial bourgeoise of the Industrial Revolution and the birth of capitalism.

Different rigging of the world economy over centuries, but the same families and classes continue to dominate through organised slavery and organised poverty even in freedom, so-called. Adam Smith, a Jew, and known as the father of free market capitalism in 1776, at the time of the American Declaration of Independence across the Atlantic… produced his treatise on the Wealth of Nations. Smith argued that of the elemental factors of production: land, labour, capital and technology, any factor that can be put to the greatest alternate use when combined in production… such factor must receive the greatest reward/returns from the wealth or revenue created from such combined activities.

It stands to reason that cash (capital) is the factor that can be put to greatest alternate use. So a medical doctor whose labour skills may not be able to fly an aircraft but has cash, can pay to hire the services of a pilot. Since capital gets the greatest return from income generated in productive activities arising from the combination of the factors of production, and since income determines one’s social class, then the owners of land and capital in particular become the ruling class. Adam Smith’s manoeuvre which strengthened the hands of descendants of feudalism’s warlords and landlords, of mercantilism’s oligarchs and of capitalism’s entrepreneurs saw the industrialists and landed gentry of Europe unreservedly and enthusiastically giving their support to Smith’s propositions, creating a philosophical model of free market capitalism that would dominate the world economy-arriving at its zenith with the advent of globalisation and liberalisation, consolidating, through a sleight of Smith’s hand, a polarisation of income between the rich and the poor of this world. From the land barons to oil barons to railroad barons and now to edge fund managers, the owners of money particularly… (not labour, inspite of the number of academic degrees)… who have been running the world. And that’s where true political power in the world economic system really resides, not so much in the political realm — be it democracy, communism or the hybrid of various political philosophical models. It is the rich who finance revolutions resulting in governments overthrow or political leaders’ assassinations on the one hand or the finance of political parties’ election campaigns, on the other hand. Money talk. For example it was the rich and powerful Jewish Rothchilds family, based in democratic America, who funded the overthrow of the tsarist autocracy of Russia’s Nicholas II to establish communism on that side of the Altlantic Ocean.

Of the 17 members in Stalin’s Cabinet after the Russian Revolution in 1917, 15 were Jewish! Take careful note, please! No wonder that the number one concern of the United Nations and international agencies in the 21st century is not just the fear of war and terrorism, but of growing, global income inequality and increasing poverty! Feudalism warlords and landlords — a different capitalist economic phase but same families and same social class. Mercantilism oligarchs, another different economic phase in the evolution of capitalism and the capitalist entrepreneurs, yet another different economic phase and name but same class and families as in mercantilism.

The common thread weaving throughout human history, from the Dark Ages to the Enlightenment to the Industrial Revolution into globalisation and post-modernism, is that the ownership of money and arable lands trumps the ownership of labour, as capitalism evolved through its various stages and phases. It should not be difficult to see by now that if wealth is globally and historically organised… poverty is also organised. And the Jamaican situation is no exception. The Spanish Maroons in their palenques (settlements) — led by Juan de Sierras and Juan de Bolas who received a mountain named after him between St Catherine and Clarendon, the Juan De Bolas Mountain, by the English after switching sides from supporting the Spaniards, and received acres of infertile mountainous land … their black descendants fared no better economically than the English Maroons who fought and captured, for a fee, the remaining black population fleeing from slavery on the island of Jamaica.

Poor-quality land, and lots of it, has been the consistent cause of the persistent poverty of both the descendants of the Spanish and English Maroons. The cascading rivers that inundate the fertile plains below Maroon lands, as the rainfall dislodges the calcium, phosphorous and other minerals from the rocks high up in the mountain on Maroon lands… these are transported to the alluvium plains, fertilising and enhancing productivity of the soil and resulting in higher economic yields for the wealthy farmland owners consolidating their financial strength even as the Maroons, over time, had become the poorest of the poor within the society.

This, while clinging on to vast acreages of rocky ravines and infertile and marginally productive lands. These lands were good to wage guerilla warfare but as soon as hostility ceased and activities shifted from war to economics… the Maroons became the losers, clinging on to the pride of a past which has long passed.

The owners on the alluvium plains, enjoying economies of scale due to huge fertile land ownership and therefore remaining perpetual winners, by the time the Maroons came to the realisation that they were subtly tricked by the English in the signing of those two peace treaties, getting large swathes of economically infertile and non-productive lands in 1739… 2,700 acres for the Western Maroons and 1741… 1,000 acres for Eastern maroons, their fate was firmly sealed to a life of persistent poverty. And bitter divisions between the two groups of Maroons, in respect to a better land deal treaty for the Leeward groupings, has never healed.

This explains why the Maroons from Crawford Town, Moore Town and Charles Town boarded a ship in Port Antonio, disembarked in Falmouth and walked to upper St James to side with the British Government and shoot down or capture the “Trelawny Town” Maroons in their rebellion known in history as the Second Maroon War in 1795.

A matching pair of ears, as proof of death, earned the Eastern Maroons 50 pounds each. More anon on this vicious affair which saw the “Trelawneys” numbering 600 men, women and children, being seized and transported by ship from the island to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and three years later to Freetown, Sierra Leone in West Africa. The Trelawny Town Maroons, or what was left of them, were tricked with a promise of full pardon by Governor Balcarres if they reported to Montego Bay. The rest of the majority black population, while fighting and winning their freedom in 1838 which they bequeathed to their descendants, remained in a rigged economic structure where many were only free to decide on the best ways to remain poor.

Denial is one such useful tool it seems. And the existing yawning gap between economic education and economic expectations becomes unhelpful to the vast majority in our continuing poor choices to advance individual and collective wealth and prosperityas the primary and binary objectives of any civilised society. Jamaica’s first loan with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in 1977, was called a “rescue”. Over 41 years later the country is still being “rescued” even as we have failed 11 of the 15-medium term agreements entered into with the fund. This, after the IMF has helped the country to pass two of the remaining four agreements through waivers and debt forgiveness. And this situation is not only a JLP or PNP Government problem… it is a problem for all of us.

The father of relativity, Albert Einstein once said: “Problems cannot be solved at the same level of thought that existed when the problems were first created. They require a higher level of thought.” I agree. For if we diagnose wrongly, we will prescribe wrongly regardless of how good we sound… as pretty talk marinated by high-quality public relations tactics will not solve Jamaica’s problem. It is behaviour that will. Sustainable action, not sustainable talking and unfulfilled promises.

Shalman Scott is a political historian and analyst. He is the first Mayor of the city of Montego Bay.