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Description: Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His Worlds
Chronology
PublisherYale Center for British Art
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00018.003
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Chronology
Courtney J. Martin and Alexander Lee
1494 Christopher Columbus arrived at the island of Jamaica; annexed it for the King and Queen of Spain.
1509–1655 Spanish occupation of Jamaica; the island was used as a base for the conquest of other areas in the Americas.
1655 English forces attacked Jamaica. The Spanish surrendered after freeing their slaves, who formed the first group of Maroons on the island.
1657 General Edward D’Oyley (1617–1675) became the first governor of the colony (1657–62).
1657–60 Spanish forces aiming to re-take Jamaica attacked the island. Defeated by D’Oyley near Ocho Rios in 1657 and at Rio Nuevo in 1658, they held out until 1660, when the defection of Maroon allies made their cause hopeless.
1661 D’Oyley formally appointed governor of Jamaica by a commission from England. A new system of governance by a governor and council appointed by the Crown remained in effect until 1865. The colonists elected a Legislative Assembly.
1662 Thomas, Lord Windsor (ca. 1627–1687) arrived from England as governor of Jamaica (1662–64).
1664 The first meeting of the Assembly was called in Spanish Town. The triangular trade was established. Sugar and, to a lesser extent, tobacco, cotton, ginger, cocoa, and coffee were planted.
1670 England gained formal possession of Jamaica from Spain through the Treaty of Madrid. The black population outnumbered the white population.
1673 The first documented slave revolt in Jamaica.
1687–88 Sir Hans Sloane visited Jamaica.
1692 An earthquake destroyed Port Royal. A disastrous fire ravaged the partly reconstructed town in 1704.
1700 A Jewish market and Jewish shops thrived in Spanish Town, in the vicinity of Monk Street.
1701–25 Sir Hans Sloane’s Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers, and Jamaica published in London (cat. 4).
1713 Treaty of Utrecht. Britain acquired the assiento, an official contract to supply 4,800 African slaves per year to all of the Spanish colonies, including those in the West Indies, Mexico, and South and Central America.
1738 Edward Trelawny (1699–1754) governor of Jamaica (1738–52).
1739 Peace agreement signed by the government and Maroons following nearly forty years of revolts. Some Maroons, including the celebrated leader Nanny, resisted and continued to aid in rebellions against planters.
1760 Tackyi’s Revolt, a major uprising of the enslaved, harshly put down by the colonial authorities.
1772 Chief Justice Lord Mansfield’s judgment in the case of James Somerset made slavery de facto illegal in the British Isles.
ca. 1773 George Robertson made a group of oil paintings of William Beckford’s estate, including The Spring Head of Roaring River (cat. 13).
1774 Edward Long wrote History of Jamaica (cat. 11), a tract notable for its hostile characterization of the enslaved.
1775 George Robertson exhibited The Spring Head of Roaring River at the Society of Artists, London.
1775–83 American Revolution. Jamaica’s Assembly presented a petition to the King supporting the rights of the American colonies and insisting upon Jamaica’s right to self-governance. During the war, Jamaica was cut off from imports, which had been supplied by America.
1778 Six engravings based on George Robertson’s paintings of William Beckford’s Jamaican estates published by John Boydell in London (see cats. 1415).
1787 Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, soon thereafter known as the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade (SEAST), founded in London. The Society commissioned the widely disseminated “Am I not a Man and a Brother” emblem (see cats. 2226).
1789 Plymouth Committee of the seast issued a pamphlet illustrated with a plan of the Brooks slave ship. On behalf of the London Committee, James Phillips published the better-known print Description of a Slave Ship (cat. 27), which played an important role in the abolitionist campaign.
1789–99 French Revolution.
1791–1804 Revolution in Saint-Domingue (Haiti) sparked fear, in other islands and in Britain, of a successful, large-scale slave rebellion. From 1791 to 1794 many planters left Saint-Domingue and re-settled in Jamaica with their slaves.
1792 Consolidated Slave Acts of Jamaica passed. House of Lords rejected William Wilberforce’s bill to abolish the slave trade.
1794 Bryan Edwards’s The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies published in London (cat. 12).
1795 Isaac Mendes Belisario born in Kingston, Jamaica. Conflict between the Maroons, augmented by runaway slaves, and British forces. The British eventually subjugated the majority of the Maroons, many of whom were deported to Novia Scotia, and, four years later, moved to Sierra Leone.
1799 West India Dock Company established by Act of Parliament.
1807 March 25: British Parliament passed bill to abolish the transatlantic slave trade.
1808 May: Abolition of the slave trade came into effect. Thomas Clarkson’s The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament published in London (cat. 22).
ca. 1808–15 Artist William Berryman active in Jamaica (see cats. 4659).
1808 William Montagu, Duke of Manchester (1771–1843) governor of Jamaica (1808–11; 1813–27).
1814 First Baptist missionaries arrived in Jamaica.
1815 Isaac Mendes Belisario exhibited in London for the first time at the Royal Academy and at the Society of Painters in Oils and Water-Colours (see cat. 116). He exhibited subsequently at the Royal Academy in 1816, 1818, and 1831, and at the Society of Painters in Oils and Water-Colours in 1816, 1817, and 1818.
1820–21 Artist James Hakewill visited Jamaica.
1823–24 The Anti-Slavery Society formed by Quakers in Britain. Argyle War between slaves and planters in the St. George, St. Mary, and Hanover Parishes.
1824 Artist Adolphe Duperly arrived in Jamaica. Maroon town of We No Sen’, You No Come destroyed by the militia in Jamaica. William Knibb, Baptist missionary, arrived in Jamaica.
1824–25 James Hakewill’s A Picturesque Tour of the Island of Jamaica from Drawings Made in the Years 1820 and 1821 published in London (see cats. 7375).
1826 Jamaica Baptist Association founded with William Knibb as secretary.
1829 Somerset Lowry-Corry, 2nd Earl Belmore (1774–1841) governor of Jamaica (1829–32).
1831–32 “Christmas Rebellion”: Samuel Sharpe mobilized over sixty thousand of the enslaved in western Jamaica in a revolt against slavery, mostly through the network of the missionary churches. The revolt was violently suppressed by the colonial authorities.
1832 Isaac Mendes Belisario published his lithograph of Ellen Tree, his last documented artistic activity in London.
1832 Constantine Henry Phipps, Earl of Mulgrave (1797–1863) governor of Jamaica (1832–34).
1833 The British Parliament passed the Emancipation Act. The act stipulated that before full freedom there would be an “apprenticeship period” of six years for field laborers and four years for domestic workers, whereby they remained in service to their former masters. All children under the age of six were given immediate freedom. Compensation of £20 million was promised to former slaveholders.
1833 Adolphe Duperly published his prints of the “Christmas Rebellion”(cats. 7678).
1834 1 August: Emancipation Act came into effect. Howe Peter Browne, 2nd Marquess of Sligo (1788–1845) was governor of Jamaica (1834–36) and a leading advocate of the rights of apprentices on the island.
1835 Three shiploads of German laborers and artisans arrived in Jamaica slated for indentured service.
1835–36; 1837–38 Artist Joseph Bartholomew Kidd active in Jamaica.
1836 Sir Lionel Smith (1778–1842) governor of Jamaica (1836–39).
1837 January–May: Nicolino Calyo, topographical and history painter, in Jamaica to exhibit panoramic paintings. September: Isaac Mendes Belisario published first part of Sketches of Character (cats. 130; 133138); Richard Bridgens published first part of West India Scenery (cat. 165).
1838 Apprenticeship was abandoned two years earlier than planned, resulting in full emancipation, on 1 August. After emancipation, the government recruited ten thousand free Africans to Jamaica to counteract the labor shortage. Recruitment from Africa lasted until 1867.
1840 The Legislative Assembly in Jamaica changed the voting qualifications, enabling a majority of blacks and mixed-race citizens to vote.
1842 Maroon Lands Allotment Act passed, dividing communally owned Maroon lands and allocating them to individual owners. This was ignored by Moore Town and Accompong communities and was never enforced.
1843 Baptist missionary James Phillippo’s Jamaica: Past and Present published. William Knibb conducted a mass baptism at Brown’s Town in Trelawny, which was memorialized in a print published by George Baxter (cat. 214).
1843 A massive fire destroyed part of central Kingston, commemorated in prints by Adolphe Duperly after designs by Isaac Mendes Belisario (cats. 218220).
1844 Daguerrian Excursions, consisting of lithographs of Jamaica after daguerreotypes by Adolphe Duperly published in Kingston (cats. 227231).
1845 First group of Indians from northern India arrived in Jamaica as indentured servants.
1846 Britain passed the Sugar Duties Act, which eliminated Jamaica’s favored status as its primary supplier of sugar. This was implemented in stages and took full effect only in 1853. The British government placed Judaism (and British Jewish citizens) under the protection of the law.
1849 Isaac Mendes Belisario died in London.
1853–54 The first group of Chinese immigrants in Jamaica arrived from Hong Kong.
1862 Edward John Eyre (1815–1901) acting governor of Jamaica (1862–64).
1864 Edward John Eyre confirmed as governor of Jamaica (1864–65).
1865 Morant Bay Rebellion, led by black Baptist minister and voting landowner Paul Bogle in St. Thomas Parish to protest living conditions of the black population. Governor Eyre suppressed the rebellion with brutal force. Prominent mulatto businessman George William Gordon, accused of participation in the revolt, was executed. Controversy followed in both Jamaica and Britain.
1866–1944 Crown Colony rule followed the Morant Bay Rebellion. Planters, fearing another black rebellion, voted to dissolve the Legislative Assembly (the local government) and establish a system of direct rule from Britain, headed by a governor and his appointed representatives.
1867 Julia Margaret Cameron photographed Edward Eyre in London (cat. 233). American landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church exhibited in New York The Vale of St. Thomas, Jamaica, based on sketches made on a visit in 1865 (fig. 3.19).
1880–1914 More than twenty-five thousand black workers left Jamaica to construct the Panama Canal and to build the railroad in Costa Rica. Both migrations were significant alternatives to plantation wage labor and subsistence farming. The United States replaced Britain as Jamaica’s dominant trading partner.
1914 Outbreak of the First World War. 1 August: Marcus Garvey established the pan-African movement with the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Kingston.
1938 Three-month worker strike and labor rebellion in Jamaica resulted in the establishment of the People’s National Party (PNP) by Norman Manley to promote social and economic reform.
1962 Jamaican Independence. The island was reestablished as a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy, with a two-party system.
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