History
Tobago has been hotly contested over the centuries. The original Carib population fiercely defended their Tavaco (the name derived from the Indian word for tobacco), driving off several attempts by European colonists throughout the late 1500s and early 1600s. English sailors staked Britain's claim in 1580, but in 1658 the Dutch took over, calling it "Nieuw Vlissingen". Declared a no-man's-land in 1684 under the treaty of Aix La Chapelle, French, British and Dutch colonists lived fairly peaceably alongside free Africans, slaves and the remnants of the Caribs for the next eighty-odd years. But a French attempt to seize control in 1648 shook the neutral status and worried Britain enough for them to send a powerful fleet in 1672, taking possession of the island with swift precision. Plantation culture began in earnest soon after and the island rapidly became a highly efficient sugar, cotton and indigo factory. Africans were imported to work as slaves, and by 1772, 3000-odd were sweating it out under less than three hundred whites. The economy flourished, and by 1777, the island's eighty or so estates had exported 160,000 gallons of rum, 1,500,000lb of cotton, 5000lb of indigo and 24,000 hundredweights of sugar. The numerical might of the slave population led to many bloody uprisings , with planters doling out amputations and death by burning and hanging to the dissenters. From 1781 to 1814, the island changed hands four times in a tit for tat struggle between the French and British, ending in British control, after which another phase of successful sugar production ensued. In 1899, Tobago was made a ward of Trinidad, effectively becoming the bigger island's poor relation with little control over her own destiny. With the collapse of the sugar industry, the black population, including free Africans who arrived in the mid-1800s, clubbed together to farm the land - the "Len-Hand" system - still celebrated in the annual harvest festivals. In 1963, Hurricane Flora ravaged Tobago. In the restructuring programme that followed, attempts were made to diversify the economy, tentatively developing a tourist industry. By 1980, the island had her sovereignty partially restored when the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) was reconvened, with authority over the island's more mundane affairs. Nevertheless, with agriculture on the decline and tourism slowly becoming the main earner, the island's economic future is still uncertain; in 1998, Tobago was officially declared an underdeveloped and low-income region in order to qualify for aid from the UN and EU.
Your Tip for Tobago
Help other backpackers! Write your own guides and backpacking tips to Tobago - they will appear instantly on this page - Please only write a tip/guide to Tobago - visit the main Tobago forum to ask a question!
Please do not post links to your site here (they won't work) - please use the Tobago webguide section below! Thanks.
|
