Between 1853 and 1866 2,645 Chinese immigrants arrived in Trinidad as indentured labour for the sugar and cacao plantations.
Immigration peaked in the first half of the twentieth century, but was dramatically lowered after the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949.
[2] It was intended to be the first step in a plan to establish a settlement of free labourers and peasant farmers in what was then a newly acquired British colony.
[3] Royal Navy Captain William Layman suggested that it would be cheaper to establish new sugar plantations using free Chinese labour than it would with African slaves.
At the same time, British officials concerned in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution suggested that the settlement of Chinese immigrants in Trinidad would provide a buffer between the enslaved Africans and the whites.
[1] The group settled at Surveillance Estate in Cocorite, on the western edge of Port of Spain, the capital.