The Past... and the Present

Tobago has had a long, hard history since the white man came. Declared "unoccupied" by 16th-century British sailors because only Carib and Arawak Indians dwelt on the island, it was some time before a permanent European settlement was established. First the Dutch arrived, then the English, followed by the Latvians, of all people, in 1634. Courlanders, as the Latvians were then known, struggled to establish a permanent foothold throughout much of the 17th century, battling off the Caribs, the Dutch, and the French.

In the museum at Fort King George, among the eclectic collection of everything from Amazonian dugouts to cases full of Amerindian pottery found on the island, a wall chart shows Tobago's changes of possession over the centuries: no fewer than 30, until 1814, when England gained lasting control. Back and forth and round and round, among the Dutch, English, Latvians, and French. Somehow, in the midst of this turmoil, plantations were established, and by the 1790s the slave population passed 14,000, outnumbering the whites by more than 20 to 1.

Tobago's modern-day villages, strung along the coast, are the remnants of those long-ago plantations, which fell into economic collapse after the end of slavery. Since then, agriculture has slumped still further. As Cynthia Alfred, culture officer of the Tobago House of Assembly, told me: "When folks sent their kids to high school in the fifties, they wanted them to have a better chance. They never thought most of them would not come back to the land." An ebullient woman, with an office in Fort King George, she says the government plans to keep tourism firmly in local hands.

"It's a shame about the land," Cynthia said, lamenting the demise of agriculture. She glanced out of her window at a huge rain tree festooned with orchids, which shaded the old powder magazine across the yard, a great squat stone building erected by the British and somewhat resembling an English church, then added: "But what can you do?"