A History of Modern Trinidad

In our current phase of renewed interest in the history and literature of Trinidad & Tobago, we have revisited Bridget Brereton's A History of Modern Trinidad, 1783-1962. A relatively straightforward history of about two pivotal centuries in the history of the island, Brereton covers the major points or historical ventures. The establishment of British colonial rule, slavery and the slave trade, emancipation, indentured Indian labor, labor protests and political agitation in the 1930s, the coming of independence and PNM rule under Eric Williams all receive attention. Trinidad's rapid development from the 1780s onward and its role as a frontier colony with a population drawn from all corners of the world contribute to our understanding of the Caribbean's transformational role in world history. It also helps us in our quest to understand how one tiny Caribbean island was able to produce a plethora of writers or intellectuals with a global impact.

Despite the book's title, early chapters do cover the Spanish colonial period. So, the reader learns that Trinidad was a remote, underpopulated colony from about 1592 until the 1780s, when Spanish authorities opened the colony to settlement from the French colonies and plantation development. The indigenous population was decimated but remained the main labor force of Spanish-owned estates on the island until the 1780s. By 1765, Trinidad's Christian indigenous population only numbered 1277 out of a total population of 2503. Spanish inability to develop the colony led to offers of settlement to French or other European Catholics and liberalized trade. Free land grants to settlers plus incentives for those to bring African slaves transformed the population of the island to the point where French settlers outnumbered Spanish residents by 1784. According to Brereton, sugar became the most important export of the colony in the 1790s. In addition to French planters from Grenada or other Antillean colonies, British traders became a significant factor in Port of Spain's rise as an entrepot in British trade with South America. As Trinidad shifted to a plantation colony, the population of Indian and Spanish-Indian (indigenous) descent lost land, migrated to the mainland, and, though retaining a presence in St. Joseph and the village of Arima, were displaced and replaced by an increasingly large enslaved population.  Refugees from Saint-Domingue, Martinique and Guadeloupe also contributed to the shift in the island's population as French and "patois" became the most widely spoken languages. 

The British takeover of the island beginning 1797 intensified slavery and the plantation economy. British governors denied political rights to free coloureds while the smuggling of slaves into Trinidad from other parts of the Caribbean continued. Demobilized West India Regiments soldiers plus African-American former slaves were settled in the island. Then emancipation and  the early termination of apprenticeship led to labor shortages for the plantation economy. Indian laborers and investments in modernizing sugar production kept the large estates afloat while smallholder farmers focused on cocoa or subsistence farming. Like her study of Trinidadian race relations from 1870-1900, the rest of the 19th century saw additional migration from Portuguese and West Indian sources that similarly changed the demographics of the island. Like the previous linguistic shift from Spanish to French and Creole, West Indian migration from other British territories led to English gradually becoming the language of the majority.

The 20th century introduced even more radical changes and developments. Trinidad in the 20th century experienced World War I through West Indian regiments stationed in locations like Egypt. The end of indenturedship from India, combined with labor protests, racial pride and activism (Marcus Garvey's influence on the TWA, for example) challenged the colonial state and exclusion of the majority of voting rights. Captain Cipriano, the subject of an early work by C.L.R. James, fought for constitutional reform in the 1920s which led to voting rights for more of the population. The impact of Garveyism, socialism, and Pan-Africanism continued to impact the TWA, thereby reaching the working masses, dockworker. The next decade, the 1930s, witnessed labor riots associated with Uriah Butler, oil workers, sugar workers, unionization campaigns. A further surge in racial solidarity and nationalism also arose in response to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Then, a wave of US influence during World War II shaped Port of Spain and popular culture, which indelibly left a mark on a young Naipaul. By 1946, universal suffrage was established for elections. With independence in the 1960s, the PNM and DLP political parties were established, each one, to Brereton, revolving around their respective racial groups (Black for the former, Indian for the latter). 

Brereton's short history of modern Trinidad adds remarkable contextual information for understanding Trinidadian writers such as C.L.R. James and V.S. Naipaul. The general overview helps explain how and why the PNM and DLP split along largely racial lines took place as a result of the generally urban, Afro-Trinidadian character of labor protests and parties that developed in the 1920s and 1930s. Whether or not Brereton's characterization of the PNM as a creation of a group of mostly black middle-class professionals who rallied round dominant personality of Eric Williams is a fair assessment is another debate, but that's certainly the impression one gains from the biased perspective of Naipaul. Nevertheless, the momentous two centuries in the history of Trinidad witnessed the island's rapid development from underpopulated Spanish colony with a large "Amerindian" population to a vital British colony in the West Indies with a population drawn from all over the world.