A Description of Tobago in 1764

Description

This description of the Caribbean island of Tobago, in the Lesser Antilles, was published in 1764. Its writer was Sir William Young, the Elder (1724 or 1725-88). Young was born in the British West Indian colony of Antigua, and was a prominent sugar planter and administrator in the British Caribbean colonies.

Grenada, the Grenadines, St. Vincent, Dominica, and Tobago, were ceded to Britain in 1763, under the terms of the Treaty of Paris. The 1763 treaty ended the Seven Years’ War, which pitted Great Britain against France and Spain. The war was fought in Europe and in the European colonial possession in the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Right through the war, Britain occupied a number of Caribbean islands that belonged to its French and Spanish enemies, including Dominica.

When the war ended, France formally ceded several islands in the Eastern Caribbean, or Lesser Antilles, to Britain. Collectively, these newly acquired territories were known as the Ceded Islands. In return, Britain returned the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, which it had occupied Right through the war, to French keep an eye on.

Young’s 1764 description of the newly acquired island of Tobago was intended to encourage British people to settle the island and establish plantations there.

Sir William Young went on to serve as governor of Dominica. When he died he left most of his extensive Caribbean properties and plantations to his eldest son, who was also named William Young. The younger William Young served as governor of Tobago in the early 1800s.

Today Tobago is a part of the nation of Trinidad and Tobago. These two islands, alternatively, have different histories. The larger and more populous of the 2 islands, Trinidad, was settled earlier, by the Spanish. It remained under Spanish colonial rule from the 16th century until the late 18th century, when the British took over. Tobago, alternatively, was colonized later.

Tobago’s indigenous Kalinago (Island Carib) people put up decided resistance to colonization, undermining attempts to settle the island that began in the 17th century. Rival European powers also fought each other for keep an eye on of Tobago, especially the British and French. The island changed hands a number of times. Even if the French ceded Tobago to the British in the 1763 Treaty of Paris, France would capture the island again in later wars. Permanent British keep an eye on of Tobago was not established until after the end of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars in 1814.

After slavery was abolished in the British colonies from 1834-38, British planters in Trinidad brought in thousands of indentured laborers, mainly from India, but also from China and Portugal. As a result, modern Trinidad has an ethnically diverse population, with about half of the population being of East Indian descent, and most of the rest being of African descent, with significant European, East Asian, and Middle Eastern minorities. Tobago, alternatively, did not receive many contract workers, and its population remained mostly black.

Trinidad and Tobago joined the West Indies Federation in 1958, in conjunction with Jamaica, Barbados, and other islands in the British West Indies. Regional leaders planned for the West Indies Federation to turn into an independent federation of different islands within the British Commonwealth. The first Prime Minister of the Federation was Grantley Adams of Barbados. But the leaders of the different islands, especially Jamaica and Trinidad, the two largest, came into conflict with each other. In 1962, anti-federation Jamaican leader Alexander Bustamante defeated the pro-federation Norman Manley in local elections, and Jamaica withdrew from the federation. Trinidad’s Eric Williams withdrew soon afterward, so that Trinidad and Tobago became an independent nation in 1962. Without its 2 largest members, the West Indies Federation collapsed, and most of the other British West Indian islands became independent on their own in the 1960s and 1970s