Colony of Trinidad and Tobago

The Colony of Trinidad and Tobago was the British crown colony formed in 1889, when the two islands — Trinidad, British since 1797, and Tobago, finally British after the second Treaty of Paris of 1814 — were incorporated into a single political entity. Tobago had changed hands between the British, French, Dutch and Courlanders before ending up in British hands; united with Trinidad, it lost its separate institutions, and the united colony was governed from Port of Spain, the capital the Trinidad colony had already grown into. Through the 1500–1945 window shown on the map the twin-island colony expanded its cocoa and sugar economy with indentured labour from India, its population a mixture of African, Indian, European and Chinese origins that made it unlike any other British West Indian island. The colony lasted until Trinidad and Tobago obtained its independence from the British Empire in 1962, becoming a realm in its own right and, in 1976, a republic.