Dr Rita Pemberton

When Tobago became a British colonial possession in 1763, it was destined to be made into a plantation colony to generate profits for its imperial possessors. The island was carved up into estates and its land resources distributed among the wealthy.

There were two immediate consequences: first, the land had to be free of all impediments, so there was no space for the indigenous population whose members had occupied the island for centuries. They were exploited, killed in warfare and squeezed out of the land they possessed, while plantations expanded.

Secondly, labour had to be imported to establish and maintain plantations, and, as had been the practice in the older colonies such as Barbados and Jamaica, Africans were imported to provide enslaved labour. In accordance with the widely accepted Barbados Slave Code of 1661, which established the legal status of enslaved Africans as property, the enslaved African people of Tobago had no rights.

The new plantation owners sought to protect their interests by seeking and obtaining imperial sanction for a representative body which they argued was essential to be able to make decisions on the security challenges they faced.

These came from two sources: the French, who continued to harbour hopes of reclaiming Tobago and the violent rebellions on the island during the 1770s, which came close to destroying the new plantations and panicked the island’s slavers. The slavers argued there was a need for immediate decision and action to deal with both challenges, and the imperial government conceded.

Tobago was administered under the old representative system, and in 1768 the Tobago Assembly and Council were established. Membership was restricted to white, Anglican, English-speaking male property owners at least 21 years of age. These bodies were responsible for the administration through enslavement and emancipation up to 1877, when crown colony government was introduced.

Hence, while the enslavers represented themselves and enjoyed a restricted democracy for over 100 years, the island was administered without representation of the mass of the population, since all officials were drawn from the slavers and their supporters.

But the freed population made their opinions known through various resistance strategies, which resulted in the termination of the old system of government and the introduction of direct crown rule in 1877. However, after emancipation, there developed a growing class of landowners; that movement was facilitated by the decline and crash of the sugar industry, which enabled some freed Africans to become substantial property owners who nursed the hope and expectation of the privilege to vote and participate in decision-making bodies.

This hope was dashed by colony government. For the African population, land-owning was the way to true liberation, but the post-emancipation years were marked by increased protest and resistance to the continued oppression of the black working class and the problems they faced. Members of this cl