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Christopher Columbus saw Tobago during his fourth voyage but did not land on it instead, he named it Belaforme “because from a distance it seemed beautiful”.
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The island’s name was first recorded as Tabaco in a Spanish royal order in 1511. This was in reference to the islands shape, which resembled the fat cigars smoked by the Taíno inhabitants of the Greater Antilles. The Spanish raided Tobago to provide slave labour to the pearl fisheries in Margarita. This was authorised under a 1511 Spanish royal order which allowed the Spanish of Hispaniola to wage war on and enslave the inhabitants of the Windward Islands, Barbados, Tobago and Trinidad
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After the establishment of a permanent Spanish settlement in Trinidad in 1592, Tobago became the focus of their slave raids.
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Spanish slave raids from Margarita and Trinidad continued until at least the 1620s, decimating Tobago’s population
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In 1628 Jan de Moor, the burgomaster of Vlissingen in the Netherlands, acquired the rights to colonise Tobago from the Dutch West India Company. He established a colony of a hundred settlers called Nieuw Walcheren at Great Courland Bay and built a fort, Nieuw Vlissingen, near the modern town of Plymouth. The goal of the colony was to grow tobacco for export, but the colonists were also permitted to trade with the indigenous inhabitants.
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The indigenous inhabitants of Tobago were hostile to the colonisers; in 1628 a visiting warship from Zeeland lost 54 men in an encounter with a group of Amerindians whose identity was not recorded. The town was also subject to attack by Kalinago from Grenada and St. Vincent.
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The colony was abandoned in 1630, but was reestablished in 1633 by a fresh group of 200 settlers
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English settlers from Barbados attempted to establish a colony in Tobago in 1637, but they were attacked by Caribs shortly after their arrival and the colony was abandoned
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In 1639 a group of "a few hundred" settlers established a colony, but they abandoned it in 1640 after attacks by Kalinago from St. Vincent. Duke Friedrich Kettler of Courland tried to establish a colony on Tobago in 1639, but the colony failed.
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A new group of colonists arrived in 1642 and established tobacco and indigo plantations. This settlement was abandoned as a consequence of Carib attacks and a shortage of supplies. Duke Friedrich's successor, Jacob Kettler, made a second attempt in 1642 when he sent a few hundred colonists from Zeeland under the leadership of Cornelius Caroon. This settlement was attacked by Kalinago from St. Vincent and the survivors were evacuated to the Guiana coast by Arawaks from Trinidad.
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A fourth English colony was established in 1646 but only lasted a few months.
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A new colony was established on Great Courland Bay in 1654 near the ruins of the old Dutch fort at Plymouth. The fort was rebuilt and renamed Fort Jacobus. The settlers were a mixture of Dutch and Courlanders under the command of Willem Mollens, and they renamed the island Neu Kurland.
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A Dutch colony was established on the other side of the island, under the patronage of brothers Adriaen and Cornelius Lampsins, who were wealthy merchants from Walcheren in Zeeland.The Dutch named their settlement Lampsinsstad, which was built on the site of the current capital, Scarborough.
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When the Courlanders discovered the presence of the Dutch colony, they attacked it and forced the Dutch settlers to accept Couronian sovereignty. Lampsinsstad grew through the arrival of Jews, French Huguenots, and Dutch planters from Brazil who brought African slaves and Amerindian allies with them after they were forced out of Brazil by the Portuguese.
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The Courlander settlement attempted to maintain good relationships with the local Kalina population, but was attacked by Kalinago from St. Vincent and Arawaks from Trinidad. From a maximum of about 500 settlers, the colony shrank to 50 people by 1658
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In 1659, while Courland was at war in Europe, the Dutch colony mutinied and took control of the island. Fort Jacobus was renamed Fort Beveren after Hubert van Beveren, governor of the Dutch colony.
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By 1662, the Dutch settlement had grown to 1250 white settlers and between 400 and 500 enslaved Africans.
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In 1666, during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, Lampsinsstad was captured and looted by Jamaican buccaneers. The fort was occupied by English forces from Barbados and then captured by French forces from Grenada before being recaptured by the Dutch in 1667.
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New settlers from the Netherlands re-established the colony in 1668, but were attacked by Nepoyo from Trinidad. They were able to fend off the attacks with the help of Tobagonian Kalina, but were attacked again by Kalinago from St. Vincent.
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At the outbreak of the Third Anglo-Dutch War, the colony was captured and looted by Barbadians.
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After the end of that war, a new Dutch colony was established in 1676, but was attacked by the French in March of the following year. The resulting naval battle resulted in serious losses on both sides, and the French forces withdrew, but returned the following year, captured the island, and destroyed the settlement
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New Courlander settlers attempt to establish a colony in Tobago in 1680 and 1681 but they abandoned it in 1683.
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A final Courlander attempt to settle the island in 1686 was largely abandoned by 1687
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Claimed by both Britain and France, Tobago was left in the hands of its indigenous population after the 1690s. European settlement in Tobago had been "thwarted", to a large extent, by the combined resistance of the indigenous Kalina of Tobago and the mainland, and the Kalinago of the Lesser Antilles
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the last mention of the colony was a small group of settlers encountered by a Danish ship in 1693.
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The Treaty of Aix-la-Chappelle in 1748 designated Tobago neutral territory. Amerindians from Venezuela who sought to avoid being forced to settle in Capuchin mission villages, and Island Caribs from St. Vincent who sought to escape conflict with the Black Caribs, were among the groups who settled there in this period