ABSTRACT
Chinese immigrants were brought to Trinidad as early as 1806, the year of the abolition of the slave trade to Trinidad and one year before its abolition to most of the rest of the British Caribbean. They came from Penang (Prince of Wales Island, Malaya), Macao (the Portuguese enclave on the coast of China) and Calcutta in India. In the intensely globalized world ushered in by Columbus, Chinese from Spanish Manila in the Philippines and elsewhere had actually long preceded the 1806 arrivals to the New World. Spanish shipping regularly plied the route between Manila, Spanish hub in Asia, and Acapulco in Mexico. As a result Chinese sailors and workers found themselves from the late sixteenth century in such places as Mexico, Peru and Minas Gerais in Brazil. Some were reported in Cuba in the late eighteenth century. Walton Look Lai mentions an unconfirmed report of five Chinese in Spanish Trinidad in 1796, one of whom may have stayed on in the island.
