Early Colonial Developments
Spain received the island of Trinidad as part of the fief of Christopher Columbus and controlled the island for nearly 300 years. The Spaniards subdued and enslaved the native Caribs and Arawaks but until the late 1700s paid little attention to Trinidad as other ventures were more profitable. As a result, Trinidad's population was only 2,763 in 1783. Amerindians composed 74 percent of that total (2,032). Although African slaves were first imported in 1517, they constituted only 11 percent of the population (310) in 1783. Indeed, the slave total was barely larger than the 295 free nonwhites who had emigrated from other islands. The remaining 126 Trinidadians were white.
In an effort to make Trinidad more profitable, the Spanish opened the island to immigration in 1776 and allowed Roman Catholic planters from other Eastern Caribbean islands to establish sugar plantations. Because French Catholic planters on the islands that had been granted to Britain after the Seven Years' War (1756—63) were subject to religious and political discrimination, they were attracted by Spanish promises of land grants and tax concessions in Trinidad. In seeking immigrants, Trinidad linked landownership to the ownership of slaves; the more slaves, the more land. Land grants were also given to free nonwhite immigrants, and all landed immigrants were offered citizenship rights after five years. As a result of this new policy, thousands of French planters and their slaves emigrated to the island in the 1780s and 1790s.
By 1797 the demographic structure of the island had changed completely. The population had expanded dramatically to 17,718, about 56 percent of whom were slaves. There were also 4,476 free nonwhites and 2,151 whites. The Amerindian community declined by 50 percent from the level achieved 14 years earlier and represented only 6 percent of the total population. As of 1797, there were hundreds of sugar, coffee, and cotton plantations producing for export.
The British, who were at war with Spain and France, conquered Trinidad in 1797 during the Caribbean unrest that followed the French Revolution. Trinidad was formally ceded to Britain in 1802. After debating how to govern the new island, the British finally decided on crown colony rule under a governor. As this was occurring, investors and colonists expanded the sugar plantations to take advantage of high sugar prices. During the first five years of British rule, the number of sugar estates increased markedly.
The British census of 1803 counted 28,000 people, a tenfold increase in 20 years; of these, there were 20,464 slaves, 5,275 free nonwhites, and 2,261 whites. About half of the free people and most of the slaves spoke French, and the rest of the population was divided between Spanish and English speakers. The Amerindian population continued to decline, with several hundred members scattered in rural settlements.
Tobago, Robinson Crusoe's island, changed hands twenty-two times between 1626 and 1814, as various European countries tried to secure possession of its safe anchorages. Its population in 1791 was 15,102, about 94 percent of whom were slaves. The British finally acquired Tobago permanently in 1814, after several previous attempts to conquer the island. The British continued to govern through a local assembly that they had installed during an earlier conquest of Tobago in 1763. Under this arrangement, political control rested with a number of British civil servants and the assembly, elected by a tiny electorate and supported by the sugar plantations.
The first volume of Daniel Defoe's most famous work, the immortal story — partly adventure, partly moralizing — of The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, was published on 25 April 1719. The story was founded on Dempier's "Voyage round the World" (1697), and still more on Alexander Selkirk's adventures, as communicated by Selkirk himself at a meeting with Defoe at the house of Mrs Damaris Daniel at Bristol. Selkirk afterwards told Mrs Daniel that he had handed over his papers to Defoe.
Alexander Selkirk or Selcraig, a sailing master, who in 1704, having quarrelled with the captain of his vessel, went ashore on the island of Juan Fernandez off the Pacific coast of South America, and remained there four years and four months, when he was taken off by an English vessel and brought back to his country. The narrative of his adventures was given more than once. Here was the germ of Robinson Crusoe. But the great book bore somewhat the same relation to it as Shakespeare's plays bore to the rude stories that suggested them. In Robinson Crusoe, the reader follows the solitary man step by step, and sees how admirably his life is imagined within the laws of probability, how he blunders and fails as well as succeeds. Robinson had a very great respect for the adversary, the Devil.
In "Islands and Their Mysteries", Alpheus Hyatt Verrill wrote "Perhaps you may think that Robinson Crusoe's island should be included among the fabulous islands; but Robinson Crusoe's island was very real, for the original of the story was the little island of Tobago just to the north of the mouth of the Orinoco. If anyone doubts this let him read his thumbworn tale of DeFoe's again with care. Does not Crusoe state how they were bound for the Barbadoes? Does he not describe the course they took after they were driven from their route by storm? Does he not mention the current and the muddy waters of the river "Oronoque"? Does he not speak of looking southward and seeing the mainland? Does he not speak of the Caribs who came to his island and left Man Friday? All this and much more proves beyond doubt that Crusoe led his lonely life on Tobago, and if anyone questions it let him travel to lovely Tobago and he will find it just as described. He may see Crusoe's cave; he will see the descendants of Robinson's goats upon the hills; he will find the very beach upon which Man Friday left his footprint and, if he takes the words of the native guide, he will see Crusoe's own footprints still preserved in the limestone rock of the island!"
Crusoe's shipwreck and adventures, his finding the footprint in the sand, his man " Friday," — the whole atmosphere of romance which surrounds the position of the civilized man fending for himself on a desert island — these made Defoe's great work an imperishable part of English literature.
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