Tobago had been inhabited by Island Caribs at the time of European contact, which appears to have been English vistors in 1580.
According to the earliest English-language source cited in the Oxford English Dictionary, Tobago bore a name that has become the English word tobacco.
The first settlers are Courlanders in 1654, the Duchy of Courland becoming the smallest nation to colonize the Americas.
Courland has a population of only two hundred thousan and is itself a vassal of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at that time.
Under Duke Jacob Kettler, a Baltic German, it has established one of the largest merchant fleets in Europe.
During his travels to Western Europe, Jacob had become the eager proponent of mercantile ideas.
Metalworking and shipbuilding became much more developed.
Trading relations had been established not only with nearby countries, but also with Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal and others.
The Duchy's ships had undertaken trade voyages to the West Indies at least as early as 1637, when a Courland ship had attempted to found a colony on Tobago with 212 settlers.
An earlier European settlement on the island, a Dutch colony, formed in 1628, had been wiped out by the Spanish a few months earlier.
The first Courland colony was a failure, as was a second attempt in 1639.
Two ships under Captain Caroon with about three hundred settlers had by the beginning of the eighteenth century attempted to settle on the north coast near Courland Bay but were soon driven off by the Carib natives.
Then Courland's attention shifted and in 1651 the Duchy had gained its first successful colony but in Africa, on St. Andrews Island in the Gambia River, where they have established Fort Jacob.
Courland soon afterward decides to make still another attempt at a colony on Tobago.
The ship Das Wappen der Herzogin von Kurland ("The Arms of the Duchess of Courland") arrives on May 20, 1654, carrying forty-five cannons, twenty-five officers, one=twent-four Courlander soldiers and eighty families of colonists to occupy Tobago.
Captain Willem Mollens declares the island "New Courland" (Neu-Kurland).
A fort is erected on the southwest of the island, also called Fort Jacobus (Fort James) with the surrounding town called Jacobsstadt (Jamestown).
Other features are given Courland names such as Great Courland Bay, Jacobs (James) Bay, Courland Estate, Neu-Mitau (New Jelgava), Libau Bay and Little Courland Bay.
An Evangelical Lutheran church is built by the Courlanders in their first year on the island.
