Prior to the arrival of Columbus in 1494, Jamaica was inhabited by Arawaks, living in simple communities based on fishing, hunting, and small scale cultivation of cassava. The impact of the contact with the Spanish was traumatic, and these communities disappeared in 70-80 years. Plunder, disruption of economic activities, new diseases, and migration decimated the indigenous population. Only a few artifacts-facts, examples of which are on display at the small museum at White Marl, and a few Spanish corruptions of place names (such as Ocho Rios) remain from this period. Otherwise, there is no Arawak influence on the subsequent development of life on the island

After a brief period of experimenting with indentured European labor, the British turned to large scale importation of Africans to be used as slaves on the sugar plantations. In its hey-day, Jamaica was one of "the jewels in the English crown" because of the fabulous prosperity it brought to the English plantation owners directly, and indirectly to those cities, such as Liverpool and Bristol, which serviced the trade with Jamaica and the rest of the British Caribbean (West Indies). Plantation slavery was based on the Triangular trade among England (manufactured goods), Africa (slaves), and the Caribbean (sugar), which itself was the basis for what later emerged as the international economy. International trade was so important to the Jamaican economy that when the American war of independence disrupted trade between what was then the "North American colonies" and the Caribbean, 15,000 thousands of slaves died of starvation in Jamaica alone.