Spanish Town’s Hidden Network: How Information Enabled the English Takeover of Jamaica

When Jamaica fell to the English in 1655, it did not fall cleanly. The invasion led by Penn and Venables was poorly executed, under-supplied, and initially close to failure. Spanish resistance continued for years from the interior, and the island’s transition from Spanish possession to English colony was anything but orderly. Yet within a remarkably short time, Jamaica—an afterthought in Spain’s empire—was being reorganized into a functional English base in the Caribbean.

That transformation did not happen by force of arms alone. It happened because information survived the conquest.

And that information was anchored not in Port Royal, where the money would later be spent, but inland, in Spanish Town—then known as Villa de la Vega.

Spanish Town: An Administrative Nerve Center

Under Spanish rule, Spanish Town was Jamaica’s political and administrative heart. Governors resided there. Legal records were kept there. Communications were routed through it. Although Jamaica was never a primary bullion colony, it sat within the orbit of Spain’s wider imperial economy, which was sustained by the Spanish silver train—the silver flowing from the Andes, across Panama, and into the Caribbean.

Spanish Town did not store silver, but it processed the paperwork, permissions, provisioning, and intelligence that allowed imperial systems to function. In that sense, it operated less as a warehouse and more as a filter—a place where information about ships, officials, shortages, and delays passed before moving onward.

That role became critically important in 1655.

A Community Built on Networks

Living within this administrative environment was a small but highly connected Sephardic Jewish community. Under Spanish rule, these families lived outwardly as New Christians—conversos—while maintaining commercial and familial ties across the Atlantic world.

Jamaica was unusual. Because the island was held under the proprietary authority of the Columbus family for much of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, active enforcement of the Inquisition was limited. This created space—never absolute safety, but relative tolerance—for converso merchants to operate.

Across the Atlantic, Sephardic trading networks linked Amsterdam, London, Curaçao, Barbados, and the Spanish Americas. These networks moved letters, credit instruments, market intelligence, and shipping news faster than official imperial channels. In an age when information traveled at the speed of sail, trusted correspondence was a strategic asset.

Spanish Town sat at the intersection of those currents.

1655: Collapse and Continuity

When the English arrived in 1655, Spanish authority fractured quickly. Officials fled inland. Administrative structures collapsed. But commercial knowledge did not disappear with them.

The English benefited almost immediately from local guidance. The fleet was piloted into Jamaican waters by Campoe Sabbatha, a Sephardic Jew familiar with the coast. In the aftermath of the invasion, members of the Jewish community acted as intermediaries during negotiations, helping to secure terms that allowed the so-called “Portuguese” population to remain on the island under English protection while Spanish officials were expelled.

This was not a conspiracy or a betrayal in the modern sense. It was a pragmatic response by a community long practiced in surviving regime change. For the English, it meant access to local knowledge at the precise moment they lacked it most.

From Administration to Enterprise

As Jamaica’s center of gravity shifted toward defense and maritime activity, the seat of economic power moved from Spanish Town to Port Royal—though the old city remained the island's official administrative heart. Wealth followed the harbor. But the skills that managed wealth—credit assessment, assaying, currency exchange, and trust-based finance—were already embedded in the island.

Sephardic merchants became indispensable intermediaries in Port Royal’s emerging economy. Privateers arrived with Spanish silver coins, plate, and goods that could not easily circulate in English markets. These materials required assessment, conversion, and documentation before they could be transformed into usable capital.

Merchants purchased such goods at a discount, assayed their value, converted them into bills of exchange or credit instruments, and reintegrated them into legal trade networks. What would later be criticized by competitors as monopolistic efficiency was, in reality, technical competence built over generations of Atlantic commerce.

Architecture and Adaptation

Spanish Town’s built environment reflected standard Spanish colonial design: inward-facing buildings arranged around private courtyards. These layouts were not created for secrecy, but they proved adaptable. Courtyards offered privacy for family life, storage of high-value goods, and religious practice away from public scrutiny.

What began as architectural convention became functional advantage. Over time, this spatial separation reinforced a distinction already present in the city: the difference between visible authority and invisible economic power.

The Wider Intelligence World

The importance of Sephardic intelligence networks was not limited to Jamaica. In England, merchants such as Simon de Caceres provided economic intelligence and geographic assessments to English officials during the 1650s. These reports formed part of the broader informational environment surrounding Oliver Cromwell’s Western Design, which sought to weaken Spanish dominance in the Caribbean.

Jamaica’s conquest cannot be reduced to any single advisor or community. But it is increasingly clear that English success depended as much on inherited knowledge as on military action.

A Machine That Survived Regime Change

By the 1670s, Port Royal merchants openly complained that Jewish traders dominated exchange, credit, and shipping finance. Their petitions testify—unintentionally—to the effectiveness of the system that had taken root.

Conclusion: Information Outlasts Empires

The English did not simply seize Jamaica in 1655. They inherited it—fragmented, unstable, and incomplete—and relied on local intermediaries, the Sephardic Jewish Network, to make it workable. Spanish Town was not a treasure vault. It was something more durable: a place where information accumulated, survived conquest, and quietly reshaped power.

"Money moves fast. Information moves faster."

🎧 This article serves as a prequel to Jewish Trade Networks Behind Port Royal's Pirate Economy—where that intelligence was finally converted into capital, credit, and empire.