Figure 1.--The British turned Trinidad into another Caribbean sugar island, but after emancipation, the former slaves did not want to work on the plantations. Indentured workers were imported from China and India. This helped to create the country's ethnic diversity. Here are Trinidadians with Indian origins. This commercial postcard for tourists dates from 1912.

Trinidad was for three centuries a part of the Spanish Empire. The Spanish showed little interest in Trinidad. The first settlement sid not appear until Domingo de Vera founded St. Joseph (1592). Sir Walter Raleigh looking for El Dorado landed on the island and reported only mosquitoes, bush and despair. He visited Pitch Lake and burned St. Joseph. Few Spanish settlers came to Trnidad. At one time there were only 160 Spanish settlers on the Island which became a haven both smugglers and pirates. Trinidad was a colonial backwater. Conditions were so poor on the Island that a settler wrote to the King complaining that they could only go to mass once a year and in clothes they had to borrow form each other. Some settlers arrived from the French islands (Martinique and Guadeloupe). The French Revolution devolved into two decades of war in Europe. A British invasion fleet seized the island (1797). The British were in full control by the Napoleonic Wars (1803). As the Spanish population was small, the British had little difficulty converting Trinidad into a British colony. The British comvered into another Caribbean sugar colony, importing captured Africans as slave labor. Economic conditions followed swings in sugar prices. Following a slave revolot in Jamica, Britain emancipasted slaves in the Empire (1834). The former slves did not want to work on the plantations. They preferred to live on subsistence agriculture. They did not prosper and most of the liberated slaves lived in poverty. An alternative was an indentured labor schemes (1852). Indentured workers were imported from South Asia and small numbers from China. This helped to create the country's ethnic diversity. The economy shifted after the turn of the 20th-century to petroleum. The economy continued to be based on agriculture. The discovery of oil has provided funds for economic development. Trams and railways were built (second half of the 19th Century). Oil was known to exist on the Island for centuries, but it had no substantial value. This changed in the early-20th century. The advent of the automobile and internal-comustion engine, the conversion of the British Royal Navy from coal to oil, and other developments radically changed the economic picture. Oil became a very valuable resource and fundamentally changed the Trinidaduan economy. Oil fiukds were developed in the Guayguaygare, Point Fortin, and Forest Reserve areas. Oil and petroleum producrs came to dominate the economy and in the process the country's demographics changed from a rural agricultural population to an urban one. The most imprtant economic sectors in modern Trinidad are: petroleum and petrochemicals, construction, services, and agriculture. The modern Trinidadian economy continues to be dominated by the petroleum industry which developed in the early-20th century. The petroleum resource and industry has provided Trinidad the highest percapit income level in the Commonwealth Caribbean--$$6,000 (1985). The petroleum indistry produves about 5 percent if the GDP. Trinidad id sepleting its oil resources, but has large-untapped gas resources.

Created: 9:21 AM 1/24/2011
Last updated: 9:21 AM 1/24/2011