Trinidad and Tobago

From the Carib and Arawak peoples and the long Spanish neglect of Trinidad to French planters, British conquest, indentured Indian labour, the birth of the steelpan, and an oil-rich republic.

Trinidad and Tobago is a twin-island nation off the coast of Venezuela whose layered history made it one of the most cosmopolitan societies in the Caribbean. Trinidad, sighted by Columbus in 1498, was claimed by Spain but largely neglected until the Cédula de Población of 1783 drew French Catholic planters and enslaved Africans, before Britain captured it in 1797; Tobago, fought over by the Dutch, Courlanders, French, and British more often than any other Caribbean island, was finally ceded to Britain in 1814. Emancipation in 1834–38 and the importation of indentured Indian labourers from 1845 forged the distinctive Afro- and Indo-Trinidadian society, the two islands were united into a single colony in 1889, and oil transformed the economy after 1908. Led by the historian Dr Eric Williams and his People's National Movement, the colony won independence from Britain on 31 August 1962 and became a republic in 1976 — a nation that gave the world Carnival, calypso, soca, and the steelpan.