1791: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the Haitian revolution- the only successful slave revolt in human history

1793: British retake Tobago.

1797: British conquest of Trinidad; Picton becomes first British governor.

1805: Spanish (and French) naval power broken at Trafalgar: British possessions in West Indies secure.

1806: Chinese indentures come in, but most of them die out.

1807: British Parliament unilaterally declares the abolition of the Transatlantic slave trade.

1808: Great Fire razes Port of Spain.

1813: Our first great artist Michel Jean Cazabon born

1816: Demobilized Africans who served in the British army during the American War of 1812 were settled in the Company villages in Moruga, Hardbargain and New Grant. Each “Merikin” soldier head of household was granted 16 acres.

1817: Governor Woodford purchases the abandoned Paradise sugar estate and nearby Hollandais Estate to establish a new Government House and lays out most of Paradise estate as Queen’s Park Savannah

1833: Slave Emancipation Act passed in the British Parliament.

1834: Emancipation of slaves. They become ‘apprentices’. They are told they must work six years more before they complete apprenticeship and receive true freedom. On August 1st the jubilant Africans celebrated “Canne Brulee” the beginnings of Jouvert and Carnival…

1837: Dagga leads unsuccessful mutiny of First West India Regiment at St. Joseph. He is executed. Royal Mail Line opens first steamship service between England and the West Indies.

1838: Apprenticeship ends early and formal, total abolition of slavery in the British West Indies begins.

1845: First East Indian Indentured labourers arrive in Trinidad. Between 1845 and 1917 143,000 Indians came to Trinidad. Less than one in four return to India.

1849: Governor Lord Harris divides Trinidad into counties and wards.

1851: First regular decennial census. Lord Harris introduces a system of public schools, a piped water supply for Port of Spain, and an inland postal service, and he establishes the Public Library.

1854: Cholera, which had reached Jamaica in 1851 strikes Trinidad, with high mortality.

1857: Establishment of the Queen’s Collegiate School, forerunner of Queen’s Royal Collage.

1863: St. Mary’s College established.

1867: Trinidad’s first oilwell drilled at Aripero by Captain Walter Darwent- one of the oldest in the world