Royal instructions dated 3 September 1776 to Trinidad governor Manuel Fálquez set out measures to encourage population and trade. The instructions prefigured later Spanish efforts to attract foreign Catholic settlers and plantation investors. The 1783 Cédula of Population would grant land according to settlers’ status and the number of enslaved people they brought, making human captivity part of the colony’s development plan. This entry records the earlier policy step, not the later Cédula itself.
A colonial ordinance dated 15 December records that two Indigenous prisoners from Arena, identified as Pedro and Luis, had been brought under guard. The dossier frames the men as suspects and...
A treaty signed at Madrid on 27 August 1701 authorized the French Royal Company of Guinea to supply enslaved Africans to Spain’s colonies. NALIS identifies this arrangement in its account of...
The Treaty of Paris, signed on 10 February 1763, transferred Tobago from France to Britain. Tobago was then a separate colony from Spanish-ruled Trinidad, but it is part of present-day Trinidad and...
On 11 November 1770, Sandy, an enslaved worker at Courland Estate in Tobago, and six others attacked a military post in an attempt to seize weapons and win freedom. After failing to take the post,...
On 7 June 1771, 38 of the 42 enslaved people at Bloody Bay Estate in Tobago escaped and established a maroon settlement in the surrounding hills. Their flight was a collective refusal of plantation...
👉 Spanish Crown issues instructions concerning Trinidad’s population and trade
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3 September 1776
Royal instructions dated 3 September 1776 to Trinidad governor Manuel Fálquez set out measures to encourage population and trade. The instructions prefigured later Spanish efforts to attract foreign...
On 29 April 1780, Governor Martin de Salaverría authorized Philippe-Rose Roume de Saint-Laurent to travel to French Caribbean islands and invite French and Irish residents to settle in Trinidad. The...
On 5 June 1781, Tobago’s British lieutenant governor George Ferguson agreed to French terms of surrender after French forces invaded the island. Tobago was a British colony built around plantation...
On 24 November 1783, Spain issued the Cedula of Population, opening Trinidad to immigration by Roman Catholic settlers from Spain’s allied nations, particularly French Caribbean colonies. Land grants,...
On 18 February 1797, British forces captured Trinidad after Spanish Governor José María Chacón capitulated at Valsayn. The change of imperial ruler did not free the people held in slavery or dismantle...
On 25 March 1802, the Treaty of Amiens formally left Trinidad in British hands, excepting it from the return of other Spanish and allied colonies occupied during the war. The treaty settled a...
