The Arawaks enter Trinidad from South America about 300 BCE and spread rapidly north to the Lesser and Greater Antilles.

The agriculturist Arawaks, most likely of Venezuelan origin, begin in around 100 to occupy the uninhabited Lesser Antilles.

The term Arawak (from aru, the Lokono word for cassava flour), would be used to designate the natives encountered by the Spanish in the West Indies in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

These include the Taíno, who at the time of contact occupy the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas (Lucayan) and Bimini Florida, the Nepoya and Suppoyo of Trinidad, and the Igneri, who are supposed to have preceded the Caribs in the Lesser Antilles, together with related groups (including the Lokono) that live along the eastern coast of South America as far south as what is now Brazil.

Spanish settlers have established a port on the Gulf of Paria in western Trinidad, Puerto de los Hispanioles", later "Puerto de España,” near the site of the native fishing village of Cumucurapo ("place of the silk cotton trees"), located in the area today known as Mucurapo, west of the city center.

A Spanish garrison is posted in 1560 near the foot of the Laventille Hills, which today form the city's eastern boundary.

The part of today's downtown Port of Spain closest to the sea is at this time an area of tidal mudflats covered by mangroves.

The first Spanish buildings here are open mud-plastered ajoupas, interspersed between large silk cotton trees and other trees.

The fort is a mud-walled enclosure with a shack inside, a flagpole, two or three cannon, and few Spanish soldiers.

The Caribs are transient, traveling to the mainland (now Venezuela) and up the Orinoco River.

Zong had taken on drinking water at São Tomé and begun its voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to Jamaica on September 6.

On November 18 or 19, the ship nears Tobago in the Caribbean but fails to stop there to replenish its water supplies.

It is unclear who, if anyone, is in charge of the ship at this point, as Luke Collingwood had been gravely ill for some time.

The man who would normally have replaced him, first mate James Kelsall, had been previously suspended from duty following an argument on November 14.

Robert Stubbs had captained a slave ship several decades earlier and he temporarily commanded Zong during Collingwood's incapacitation, but he is not a registered member of the vessel's crew.

The Cedula of Population, a 1783 edict signed on November 24 by the representative of the King of Spain, José de Gálvez, opens Trinidad to immigration from, primarily, the French Caribbean islands.

Negotiated by Phillipe Rose Roume de Saint-Laurant, a key figure in Trinidad's colonial history, the edict consists of twenty-eight articles governing several forms of land grants to encourage population growth, naturalization of inhabitants, taxation, armament of slave owners, the duty and function of a militia to protect the island, and merchant and trade issues.

The edict invites persons of either gender and of the Roman Catholic faith to Trinidad who will swear loyalty to the Spanish Crown to receive land allotments in sizes depending on their race and heritage.

Specifically, it grants thirty-two English acres (one hundred and thirty thousand square meters) of land to each Roman Catholic who settles in Trinidad and half as much for each slave that they bring.

Sixteen acres (sixty-five thousand square meters) is offered to each free person of color, or gens de couleur libre, as they will later be known, and half as much for each slave they place on Trinidad.

The Cedula of Population has lain the foundation and growth of the population of Trinidad.

The Spanish who are in possession of the island contribute little towards advancements.

Trinidad is perfect due to its geographical location.

French planters with their slaves, free persons of color and mulattoes from neighboring islands of Grenada, Martinique, Guadeloupe and Dominica migrate to Trinidad during the French Revolution.

The Spanish also give many incentives to lure settlers to the island, including exemption from taxes for ten years and land grants in accordance to the terms set out in the Cedula.

These new immigrants establish local communities of Blanchisseuse, Champs Fleurs, Cascade, Carenage and Laventille.

Trinidad's population jumps from just under fourteen hundred in 1777 to over fifteen thousand by the end of 1789.

Spain, previously an ally of Great Britain, had been defeated in the War of the Pyrenees against France in 1795 and forced to sign the Peace of Basel.

An alliance convention between France and Spain had been signed the following year in 1796.

British forces in the Caribbean in 1796 have already taken French colonies such as Saint Lucia and later Dutch colonies in South America; Demerara and Essequibo.

With the Spanish now at war with Great Britain, the general Ralph Abercromby thinks it is right to necessarily render Spain's colonies an immediate object of attack.

His first target is the Spanish island of Trinidad, which being close proximity to Tobago which had been captured early in the war.

The island has been Spanish since the third voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1498 and since 1777 has a province of the Captaincy General of Venezuela.

On February 18, 1797, a fleet of eighteen warships under Abercromby's command of nvade and take the island.

Within a few days the last Spanish Governor, Don José María Chacón, peacefully surrenders the colony of Trinidad to Abercromby, without an effort at defense and without any casualties.

The sugar plantations that dominate the economy of Trinidad begin gradually to give ground to the cultivation of cacao.

Trinidadian chocolate becomes a high-priced, much sought-after commodity and the Colonial government opens land to settlers interested in establishing cacao estates.

This provides a fresh avenue of economic development to French Creoles (white Trinidadian elites descended from the original French settlers), who are being marginalized economically by large English business concerns who are buying up sugar plantations.

Venezuelan farmers with experience in cacao cultivation are also encouraged to settle in Trinidad, where they provide much of the early labor in these estates. (Many of the former cocoa-producing areas of Trinidad retain a distinctly Spanish flavor and many of the descendants of the Cocoa Panyols—from espagnol—remain in these areas including Trinidad's most famous cricketer, Brian Lara.)

Whitehall in England had announced in 1833 that slaves would be totally freed by 1840.

In the meantime, the government informed slaves that they must remain on their owners’ plantations and would have the status of "apprentices" for the next six years.

In the new British colony of Trinidad, on the 1st of August 1834, an unarmed group of mainly elderly Negroes being addressed by the Governor at Government House about the new laws, began chanting: "Pas de six ans. Point de six ans" ("Not six years. No six years"), shouting down the Governor.

Peaceful protests had continued until a resolution to abolish apprenticeship was passed and de facto freedom was achieved.

Full emancipation for all is legally granted ahead of schedule on August 1, 1838, making Trinidad the first British colony with slaves to completely abolish slavery.

1838 also sees the abolition of the "apprenticeship" system in Jamaica, Barbados, and the Leeward and Windward Islands.

The British West Indies plantations, which have imported almost four million enslaved Africans over the past few centuries, are left with only four hundred thousand blacks, now free.

The abolition of the slave trade in 1807 had left Trinidad with a severe shortage of labor, which become more acute after the abolition of slavery in 1833.

To deal with this problem, Trinidad imports indentured servants from the 1830s; the practice will continue until 1917.

Initially Chinese, free West Africans, and Portuguese from the island of Madeira had been imported.

In addition, numerous former slaves migrate from the Lesser Antilles to Trinidad to work.

In 1839, the British government begins a program of recruiting Indian laborers (or coolies) in Calcutta to be sent to Trinidad and British Guiana (now Guyana).

They bind themselves to work as indentured laborers for a set number of years on the plantations.

The mostly Hindu and Muslim laborers are compelled to work seven and a half hours a day, six days a week for three years, receiving about thirteen cents a day for their work.

At first, half of the recruits are women.