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Trinidad and Tobago achieved full independence via the Trinidad and Tobago Independence Act 1962 on 31 August 1962 within the Commonwealth with Queen Elizabeth II as its titular head of state. On 1 August 1976, the country became a republic, and the last Governor-General, Sir Ellis Clarke, became the first President. [a]
After the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire, the plantation owners of Trinidad were desperate for new sources of labour. In 1839 the British government began a programme of recruiting Indian labourers in Calcutta to be sent to Trinidad. They bound themselves to work as indentured labourers for a set number of years on the plantations.
The Slave Act, like other slave laws in the British West Indies, was designed to ensure that in the course of acting as humans, slaves did not cease to function as property. Striking or wounding a white person, wounding another slave, setting fire to sugar cane fields or buildings, or attempting to leave the island were all punishable by death ...
In 1975 there was labour unrest when the major unions representing oil workers and sugar workers marched in San Fernando and were met by brutal police resistance. This became known as "Bloody Tuesday". Further unrest in the 1970s had little lasting impact.
It was not until the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 that the institution was finally abolished, but on a gradual basis. [30] Since slave owners in the various colonies (not only the Caribbean) were losing their unpaid labourers, the government set aside £20 million for compensation but it did not offer the former slaves any reparations. [31] [32]
Bath was captured by non-Muslim slave traders and transported to Trinidad in 1804 or 1805, just before the 1807 abolition of the slave trade. [2] Instead of being sold to a plantation, Bath was purchased by the government of put to work on the construction of Fort George, which was being constructed on the orders of the British governor, Thomas Hislop.
On 1 August 1985, Trinidad and Tobago became the first independent country to declare Emancipation Day as a public holiday to commemorate the abolition of slavery. Historically, 1 August was known as West Indian Emancipation Day and it became a key mobilisation tool and holiday for the antislavery movement in the United States .
William Hardin Burnley (21 April 1780 – 29 December 1850) [1] was an American-born British-Trinidadian planter who was the largest slave-owner in Trinidad in the nineteenth century. [2] [3] [1] [4] Born in New York City, he was the son of Hardin Burnley (1741–1823) and his wife, Catherine, née Maitland (1752/3–1827).