Colony of Trinidad

The Colony of Trinidad was the colonial state on the island of Trinidad, first Spanish and later British. Christopher Columbus sighted and claimed the island for Spain on his third voyage in 1498, but Spain's hold long remained nominal: the first Spanish town, San José de Oruña, was founded by Antonio de Berrío in 1592, and the island was administered by Spanish hands from there until 1797, with the governor seated first at San José de Oruña and, in the late Spanish era, at Port of Spain. Because Spanish settlement stayed thin, the 1783 Cédula de Poblacion invited Catholic settlers of any European descent, and French planters with their enslaved Africans came to dominate the island's society and economy. A British expedition captured Trinidad in 1797, and the island was formally ceded to Britain by the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, becoming a British crown colony with Port of Spain as its capital. Sugar and, later, cacao drove a plantation economy worked by enslaved people until emancipation and then by indentured labourers from India. In 1889 the island was incorporated with Tobago into a single political entity, ending the separate Colony of Trinidad.