1 Monty: Since we’re heading back to America, I’m just reading up on colonial history of the Americas.
2 Monty: The Caribbean island of Trinidad was named by Columbus La Isla de la Trinidad, or The Island of the Holy Trinity.
3 Monty: Its neighbouring island Tobago was named Tobaco by the Spanish, referring to its shape, similar to local cigars.
4 Monty: So the colony of Trinidad and Tobago is named after the Trinity and tobacco.
4 Prof. Jones: Holy smokes!

This is all true!

The British took Trinidad from the Spanish in the 1797 Invasion of Trinidad, although at the time most of the European population was in fact French settlers.

Tobago changed hands several few times. The Spanish raided the native inhabitants for slavery from 1511 to the 1620s, reducing the population enormously; the first European settlement was Dutch, in 1628, abandoned due to indigenous revolt in 1630, but re-established in 1633; the Spanish almost immediately destroyed the Dutch settlement; English settlers attempted to colonise throughout the next decade or so but were repulsed by the natives; as was a colonisation attempt by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; then throughout the 18th century various colonies were attempted by the Duchy of Courland, the Dutch, English, French, Spanish, and Swedish! Eventually in 1814 the Treaty of Paris ceded control of Tobago to the British.

Trinidad and Tobago were first united as a British colony 1889, as the consequence of the Trinidad and Tobago Act 1887 (passed by the British Parliament two years earlier), which declared that the previously separate colonies of each island would henceforth fall under a single colonial administration. The colony remained British until 1962, when it was granted independence. So during the era of this comic it was still a British colony.