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 plan sought to expand colonization and agriculture through preferential settlement for Catholic newcomers. In the wider policy that followed, land grants were linked to enslaved people brought to the island, turning human trafficking into an incentive for plantation growth. This event reveals how colonial authorities designed migration and land policy around slaveholding.
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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...
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...
👉 Governor authorizes Roume de Saint-Laurent to recruit settlers
Huidig
29 April 1780
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...
On 25 March 1807, the British Parliament passed the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. The act prohibited British participation in the transatlantic slave trade, but it did not abolish...
