Cayman Islands

The Cayman Islands is an autonomous British Overseas Territory in the western Caribbean comprising of the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman. The capital city is George Town on Grand Cayman, which is the most populous of the three islands. The Cayman Islands is considered to be part of the Greater Antilles.

No archaeological evidence for an indigenous presence has been found on the Cayman Islands. Therefore, it is believed that they were discovered by Christopher Columbus on 10 May 1503 during his final voyage to the Americas. He named them ‘Las Tortugas’ due to the large number of turtles found on the islands. However, in the succeeding decades the islands began to be referred to as the Caymans, after the caimans present there. The first recorded permanent inhabitant of the Cayman Islands, Isaac Bodden, was born on Grand Cayman around 1661.

England took formal control of the Cayman Islands, along with Jamaica, as a result of the Treaty of Madrid of 1670. With settlement, after the first royal land grant by the Governor of Jamaica in 1734, came the perceived need for slaves. Many were brought to the islands from Africa. Slavery was abolished in the Cayman Islands in 1833.

On June 22 1863, the Cayman Islands became officially declared and administered as a dependency of the Crown Colony of Jamaica. The islands continued to be governed as part of the Colony of Jamaica until 1962, when they became a separate Crown colony while Jamaica became an independent Commonwealth realm.