sourced story
May 1655Reputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

England Seizes Jamaica

A failed attack on Spanish Hispaniola turns into an accidental conquest of Jamaica

On the timeline · around May 1655 · Elizabethan BeginningsElizabethan BeginningsEngland Seizes Jamaica16201630164016501660167016801690

Quick facts

Region
Jamaica
Commanders
Admiral William Penn, General Robert Venables
Formal cession
Treaty of Madrid, 1670

What happened

Oliver Cromwell's Western Design aimed to seize Spain's American possessions and cripple its silver-based empire. An English fleet under Admiral William Penn and General Robert Venables sailed for Hispaniola in 1654 to 1655, but its assault on Santo Domingo in April 1655 was a costly failure, with roughly a thousand men lost to disease and Spanish resistance. Rather than return home empty-handed, the expedition sailed on to Jamaica, which was sparsely defended, and took the island with little resistance in May 1655. Spain formally ceded Jamaica to England in the 1670 Treaty of Madrid. The colony's main harbour, Port Royal, became a notorious base for English-sponsored privateers and buccaneers who continued raiding Spanish shipping.

Why it matters

Jamaica gave England its most valuable Caribbean sugar colony and a base from which privateers harassed Spanish trade for decades, cementing English power in a region Spain had treated as its own for over a century.

How we know

UCLA's Department of History has published an account of the conquest drawing on English and Spanish administrative and military records of the Western Design campaign.

Sources

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