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Tobago, properly Tobaco, was discovered in 1498 by Columbus, who named it Assumption, and the British flag was first planted in 1580. It afterwards passed into the hands of the Dutch and then of the French, and was finally ceded to the British in 1814. Until 1889 it formed part of the colony of the Windward Islands, but in that year it was joined to Trinidad, its legal and fiscal arrangements, however, being kept distinct. Ten years later it became one of the wards of Trinidad, under a warden and magistrate; its revenue, expenditure and debt were merged into those of the united colony, and Trinidadian law, with very few exceptions, was made binding in Tobago.
Trinidad was discovered by Columbus in 1496. It remained in Spanish possession (although its then capital, San Jos de Oruna, was burned by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1595) until 1797, when a British expedition from Martinique caused its capitulation. It was finally ceded to Great Britain by the Treaty of Amiens in. 1802.
They became independent in 1962.
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