Slavery in Jamaica began with the Spanish, who controlled the island from 1494 to 1655 after taking it from the Indigenous Taíno people. They brought many enslaved people from Africa to provide forced labor. When the English took control of the island in 1655, they built an economy on the island based around sugar cane plantations, which depended on the continuation of slavery. The population of the island became predominantly Black, as more people were brought to be enslaved to satisfy the demands of the plantations. Sugar cane is a difficult crop to cultivate and harvest, and which still requires a complicated refinement process. In the early days of sugar plantations, refinement involved dangerous machinery and open fires. Conditions on the plantations were brutal and unrelenting. Unsurprisingly, there was constant unrest, with white enslavers fearing the outbreak of revolts, and maroon colonies (settlements of those who escaped slavery) sprouting up around the island.

With the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, the slave trade was outlawed, but slavery itself did not end in Jamaica. The law meant only that newly enslaved people could not be brought to Jamaica and that people who were already enslaved could not be sold.