Trinidad and Tobago were separate colonies under the British Empire when in 1889 they were joined together as a crown colony. It was not until 1962 that they would achieve full independence within the Commonwealth of England and then became a republic in 1976. Trinidad and Tobago are part of a two party system and use a bicameral parliamentary system that is based off the Westminster System ( model of the UK system).
Eric Williams ( pictured above ) was an historian and scholar before coming into the public arena of politics. He was part of the People's National Movement in Trinidad and Tobago which would take them into independence from Britain. He was the first Prime Minister at the independence of T&T and would remain so until 1981.
Trinidad and Tobago peoples have many a story to tell, from the beginnings with the "discovery" by Christopher Columbus, through being a colony of Spain with French planters, slavery, switching to British hands to become their colony, emancipation, indentured servitude, a change in government, and then independence with a change into a republic. It is a land of multi-ethnicity that keeps changing and adapting as needed. It is a land where everything merges together in a story that is hard to follow with no real beginning and seemingly with no end in sight. Yet through this blog I have come to understand some of not only the Caribbean but also about these tiny islands just to the north of South America. It has been amazing to me that such small places hold so much of the "new worlds" history and that they were so important to the rest of the world when it came to economics. Before this I had little clue as to the amount of power these small islands in the Caribbean had and how much they are overlooked except when it comes to those who go there to sun on the beach with their little umbrella drinks. . . knowing the history of these islands has made think a little more about those places that may seem small and insignificant but by far are anything but. . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinidad_and_Tobago
http://gotrinidadandtobago.com/trinidad/carnival/ ( if you would like to know more about Carnival on Trinidad )
Sunday, November 17, 2013
After Slavery on Trinidad
After looking at this weeks post I decided to do things a little different for this blog. Take the time to look at the pictures and take a listen to the links.....it will tell its own story better than I ever could.
William Hardin Burnley, the biggest slave owner in Trinidad, did
everything in his power to prevent the emancipation of Africans in the
colony. When slavery ended, he was convinced that only Africans who had
tyrannical masters would benefit from emancipation. The rest, he opined,
‘Were too ignorant to understand the real position in which they were
placed ’(1). The link above talks about one man that was a planter on Trinidad during the time of the British government abolishing slavery.
The video that I have posted above I found on YouTube, it is slave narratives from the Southern area of the United States. There were no slave narratives that I could find coming from the Caribbean but when I watched this I had to share it because after hearing the words of these men and women that were slaves, it was almost no different than what would have been found on the islands in the Caribbean (including Trinidad).
Yet Africans were not the only people who were subjected to the work and brutality of the Caribbean plantations. Trinidad was a British colony and as such was one of the islands where Indians from the sub-continent were brought in as a labour force after "slavery". Yet if you listen to the next video that I have decided to post you will learn that the indentured servitude of these Indians were just another form of slavery.
I know that this a little different format then what I normally do, but I believe that I could personally not do this particular subject justice without the words and the voices of others. I hope that you take the time to not only listen but to hear what is being said about how the colonies made their money and who's back the colonies were built on. . .
I cannot even begin to imagine what life would have been like for enslaved people much less an enslaved woman on the Caribbean Islands when they were held by colonial powers, I personally have nothing to compare it to within my own life. The best that I can do to answer the blog prompt for this week is to read about what others have researched and written about enslaved women with the hope that I can even begin to do it justice.
Trinidad was like other Caribbean islands at the height of sugar growing when it came to who worked, women were not excluded from the labor in the fields, quite the opposite. Whoever was able bodied was out in the field doing their part, even " female slaves were to be given 'appropriate' jobs " (1) whether it be out working on the crops or more domestic "chores" in the house.These plantations were run like well oiled machines, everyone had a place, everyone did the work that they were suppose to do, and it didn't matter what your gender. The question that I believe needs to be asked at this point is why were black enslaved women put out into the field? For the time frame women were seen to be not as productive as a man and not as smart, so why were they used in this job? The simple answer to this was that black women were considered "less than", they were not women and according to one Mrs Carmichael (an Englishwoman)" [were] masculine, brutish, and lacking feminine sensitivities. . . [and] outside the pale of feminine identity" (2). Is it any wonder that with this type of idea about enslaved black women, that they would possibly be excluded from field work, I don't think so. Enslaved black women would be used as a means to an end no matter what they did in association with the plantation that they lived on. They were dehumanized, they were looked at by not only white women as "less than" but were also described that way by white men who oversaw them. Hilary Beckles stated that " plantation records prepared by white men. . . speak of black women's apparent ease at dropping children, [their] capacity for arduous physical labor, and general amazonian cast of character " (3) which also points to the idea that they were being defeminized.
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/slavery/banner4.htm
Yet Trinidad was a little different than most Caribbean islands, they had a shorter period of time as a "slave colony" because of the amount of time it took for the Spanish to even pay attention to it in an economic way. Slavery was the labour and social system for only about 50 years which is a very small amount of time when compared to other colonies (4). Even though this is the case, it would still have been a brutal life under the French and then the British regardless of the number of years that it occurred within Trinidad due to the category enslaved blacks were put into. Under Spanish rule there was a Code Noir that dictated how the slaves should be treated, such as " minimum quantities of food and clothing to be given to slaves. . . allowed two hours each day to work for themselves, either in their gardens or for wage. . . a slave could receive no more than 25 light lashes. . . Trinidad's Code Noir was widely hailed as the paradigm of benign slave treatment and Trinidad was regarded as a model slave colony of the Spanish empire " (5). This might have been what life would have been like for enslaved women in Trinidad, yet as we have seen laws might have been good in theory but not necessarily the reality especially when dealing with the French accepting the Spanish law. After the British took over the island these "codes" were modified and " the tone of the slave laws in Trinidad changed from that of safeguarding slaves from the excesses of greedy owners, to that of protecting owners from the spectre of unruly slaves " (6) due to rebellions that had sprung up in other Caribbean colonies.
Was slavery different on Trinidad? Maybe, but for the most part we only have the word of white men and women who saw them as different than themselves and treated them as such. If I can, for one moment begin to put myself in a enslaved black woman's shoes, I feel like my hopes would be almost non-existent and my fears would be many. I could hope that one day I would not be used in numerous ways, I could hope that the children I might of had would survive another day, I could hope for a freedom that seems to be a dream, I could hope to get enough food to keep going, yet all of these are just possible hopes. My fears are what would keep me going and motivate me through day after day of uncertainty until possibly my hopes would become my reality. Yet I can only say these things from the comfort of my own home with more than a century between me and those black slave woman. I can empathize, I can be livid at the accounts that I read about these women but I will never be able to truly understand what they went through and for me to even try does them a disservice because I can never know what it was like to be them.
1) A. Meredith John, " Plantation Slave Mortality in Trinidad." Population Studies, 42:2 (1988): 162.
2) Hilary McD. Beckles, " Historicizing Slavery in West Indian Feminisms." Feminist Review, 59 (1998): 36.
3) Hilary McD. Beckles, " Historicizing Slavery in West Indian Feminisms." Feminist Review, 59 (1998): 36.
4) http://www.trinidadexpress.com/commentaries/Was_slavery_different_in_Trinidad_-129242193.html 5) A. Meredith John, " Plantation Slave Mortality in Trinidad." Population Studies, 42:2 (1988): 162.
6) A. Meredith John, " Plantation Slave Mortality in Trinidad." Population Studies, 42:2 (1988): 162.
The above image may be familiar to most of those who know what the labour and crops were like within the Caribbean. . . slaves and sugar cane. This labour and this crop were just as true for Trinidad as it was for the other islands within the Caribbean, yet Trinidad had somewhat of a different history than other islands within the Caribbean. As I stated in previous blogs, the Spanish were the original European holders of this island and did not use it the way some of the other islands would be used. It wasn't until 1776 that the Spanish decided that the island could be used and developed in a way that would allow it to become more profitable for the empire. Due to the fact that Trinidad was left virtually untouched gave it the " time and opportunity to develop a distinctive identity strangely unlike that of the French or British Antilles after the sugar revolution of the 17th century. The society, relatively unstratified, lead to a fairly liberal treatment of slaves and a steady and sizeable increase of its coloured population " (1). In 1776 the Spanish began to allow immigration of the French Catholics to the island with promises of land and tax concessions, which in turn began the sugar economy on Trinidad during the 1780s and 1790s. This lead to a rise in the slave population which had been quite small up until that point, the Spanish linked the amount of land you were given to the amount of slaves you had so you can imagine that bringing in more slaves was an important issue to the French coming onto Trinidad. An interesting piece of information was brought to light while I was looking for labour needs for the island, not only were the French given land but " land grants were also given to free nonwhite
immigrants, and all landed immigrants were offered citizenship rights
after five years " (2). This would lead to a mix of different people on the island and the beginning of the rise in the population that was only 2,763 in 1783 to 17,719 in 1797 with approximately half that number being slaves. There would be more than just sugar being produced on this island, by 1797 there were " 159 sugar plantations, 130 coffee estates, 60 cacao ( the bean from which cocoa is derived ) estates, and 103 cotton estates " (3) and this is when the British Empire set their sights on the island of Trinidad.
With huge economic prosperity being generated on Trinidad, Britain made the move to capture it in 1797 and it was formally given to them in 1802. Sugar was still in high demand in Europe so in the following years the sugar plantations increased on the island to take advantage of the high sugar prices as well as a population increase until around 1807 when slaves were no longer being exported to Trinidad from West Africa. It would be 20 years before the complete abolishment of slavery by the British, yet in the time frame between 1807 and 1837 " abolition of the Slave Trade and restrictions on the introduction of slaves from British West Indian colonies drew sharp reaction from Trinidad planters faced with inadequate labour supplies " (4). So the wheels were set in motion to figure out a way to replenish the labour supply, this came about in the form of more immigration to the island of hired labour. There was an " influx [of] British West Indians, free Africans, Madeirans, Chinese and Indians " (5) onto Trinidad after 1837 in an effort to continue the agricultural economy that the island had become. This need for labour on Trinidad would allow the British Empire to use its control over its other commonwealths, like India, for the solution to the the problem. East Indians would become a cheap way to continue the plantations on the island through indentured servitude, they would be "brought to the Caribbean under an indentured contract system in which they had to provide cheap labor to the planter class on a temporary basis" (6) this would be the beginning of the Coolie System. This immigration lead to a host of problems and could be compared to the slavery of Africans and the indentured servitude of Europeans, even though rules and regulations were put in place to protect the immigrants from India " the indenture system was criticized for replicating the evils of the middle passage and slavery " (7). Young Indian men were the ones that were wanted with young Indian women being a small minority of the overall influx; this lead to violence among the men because of the gender ratio, social issues surrounding the family because of a breakdown in the caste system, and the introduction of two more religions being brought from India. So with this we can see that the need for labour was continuous on the island of Trinidad from the moment Europeans chose to make it an economic player on the world stage of sugar. As it changed hands the island changed with it, yet the subjugation of people was a constant when it came to the success of this island. . . it was on the backs of slaves and workers with indentured contracts that made this island what it is today with the unwelcome help of European empires.
1) Carl Campbell, "The rise of a free coloured plantocracy in Trinidad 1783-1813." Boletín de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe," 29 (1980): 33.
2) Sandra W. Meditz and Dennis M. Hanratty, editors. " Caribbean Islands: A Country Study." Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress,
1987. <http://countrystudies.us/caribbean-islands/>
3) Sandra W. Meditz and Dennis M. Hanratty, editors. " Caribbean Islands: A Country Study." Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress,
1987. <http://countrystudies.us/caribbean-islands/> 4) Marianne D. Ramesar, " PATTERNS OF REGIONAL SETTLEMENT AND ECONOMIC ACTIVITY BY IMMIGRANT GROUPS IN TRINIDAD: 1851-1900." Social and Economic Studies, 25:3 (1976):187.
5) Marianne D. Ramesar, " PATTERNS OF REGIONAL SETTLEMENT AND ECONOMIC ACTIVITY BY IMMIGRANT GROUPS IN TRINIDAD: 1851-1900." Social and Economic Studies, 25:3 (1976):187.
6) Lomarsh Roopnarine, "East Indian Indentured Emigration to the Caribbean: Beyond the Push and Pull Model." Caribbean Studies, 31:2 (2003):101.
7) Lomarsh Roopnarine, "East Indian Indentured Emigration to the Caribbean: Beyond the Push and Pull Model." Caribbean Studies, 31:2 (2003):108.
The history of religion on Trinidad and Tobago differ slightly depending on which colonial power came first to the island to claim it, but they are the same in the way that new religions came to the islands and were morphed by those who chose which religion(s) to follow. Trinidad started off with Catholic (Spanish), then there was Anglican (English), Methodist, Baptist, as well as African, and indigenous religions. Tobago started off as English Protestant, Moravian, Scotch Presbyterian, Methodist, and Catholic. (1) It is a maze to wander through when looking into the changing religions of these two islands because they include so many different religious groups and relationships in these groups, especially Trinidad where Hinduism and Islam are now part of the mix. All of the religions have integrated customs from one another, an example of this comes from "two African-derived religions, Yoruba "Shango". . . and Dahomean "Rada"[who] consider themselves also to be Roman Catholics and participate in Catholic rituals as part of their religious duties" (2), this is also true for the other religions on the island.
There are so many diverse cultures and ethnicities on this little island in the Caribbean, so is it any wonder that there are also going to be so many diverse religions? With so many people coming to Trinidad over the past few hundred years bringing their culture and their religion, it would stand to reason that people will embrace and use what they like from each one. It is comparable to the idea of the process of creolisation where "as the result of the twin processes of 'acculturation', the absorption of one culture by another and 'interculturation' , a more reciprocal and spontaneous process of enrichment and intermixture on both sides" (3), that this concept could also be applied to that of religion.
When I continued to think about religion and the role that it played and still plays on the island of Trinidad, it brought to mind one of the stories in Kristen Block's book Ordinary Lives In The Early Caribbean. This story of Nicolas Burundel shows the duality of Christianity during the Inquisition of the seventeenth century in the Caribbean, where being anything but Catholic was heresy. It also shows what some people will do almost anything to be left alone by those in power, saying they belong to one religious group and pretending to be something that they are not. This particular story is comparable to another that I found while on my search to finding what religion was like and what it entailed when it came to the people of Trinidad. It was interesting to see that the people participate in more than religious system and that it is completely acceptable to do so, "one Hindu became a Presbyterian to enter a mission normal school, changed to Catholic to qualify as a teacher in a Catholic school, and then embraced Islam to become the head teacher of a Muslim school". (4) There seems to be room in the religious system of today that did not exist three hundred years ago, where it is perfectly acceptable to change as long as there is the need to.
2) Daniel J. Crowley, "Plural and Differential Acculturation in Trinidad." American Anthropologist, 59:5 (1957): 821.
3) Rhoda Reddock, "Contestations Over Culture, Class, Gender And Identity In Trinidad And Tobago: 'The Little Tradition'." Caribbean Quarterly, 44:1/2 (March-June 1998): 64.
4) Daniel J. Crowley, "Plural and Differential Acculturation in Trinidad." American Anthropologist, 59:5 (1957): 822.
When it comes to the settlement of Trinidad it is a complex story to be told because the island switched hands between colonial powers numerous times over the years. The Spanish were the first to try and establish permanent settlements but were not able to accomplish this until around 1592. There were multiple attempts prior to 1592 with the idea that since the island "possessed no stores of precious metals or large groups of sedentary Indians to attract would-be conquistadores; its most significant role in the Empire was in the early years of conquest when attempts were made to establish a military base in the island from which expeditions in search of El Dorado could be mounted"(1). This idea of El Dorado goes along with what the Spanish had in mind while settling this island.....the thoughts of gold beyond anything that they had ever seen. The first governor of Trinidad, Antonio de Berrío, was the force behind the search for El Dorado and died without ever knowing that it did not exist. For years the Spanish searched for this kingdom but gold would have to be made in other ways after the expeditions yielded no such place.
Trading would seem to be the best alternative to making gold within this new settlement, but the trade would have to be involved with the English, Dutch, and the French. There seemed to be "definite evidence of an English presence [in Trinidad] . . .from 1569" (2) which only became known when the Spanish built their first settlement. So here we find tobacco coming into the picture through trade (when it could be done) and through smuggling (which would have been done more often ) with the Dutch and the English. The Spanish plantation owners also grew some sugar, cotton, and indigo but tobacco was the crop that they put most of their efforts into and was the livelihood of those on the island of Trinidad. As with everything concerning the colonies of the Caribbean, the politics of those in Europe would have an effect on those people that made this island their home. The reason behind the smuggling had to do with the reign of James I in which he chose to end hostilities with Spain by "upholding the important principle that Spain might rightfully claim a monopoly of trade only in those areas it effectively held" (3). Contraband trading went on for years from Trinidad with tobacco being the main export from the island in the hands of the Dutch and the English. It stands to reason that this trading was going on without the knowledge of the crown, but it also shows that there was a huge demand and a profit to be found in this commodity. It was enough to lure the different European powers to a small island in search of a way to make a living outside the rules and the regulations imposed on them from a far off monarch.
(1) Linda Newson, "Foreign Immigrants in Spanish America: Trinidad's Colonisation Experiment." Caribbean Studies, 19:1/2 (1979): 135.
(2) Joyce Lorimer, "The English Contraband Tobacco Trade in Trinidad and Guiana 1590-1617," in The Westward Enterprise: English Activities in Ireland, The Atlantic, and America, ed. K.R. Andrews et al. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979), 124.
(3) Joyce Lorimer, "The English Contraband Tobacco Trade in Trinidad and Guiana 1590-1617," in The Westward Enterprise: English Activities in Ireland, The Atlantic, and America, ed. K.R. Andrews et al. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979),126.
It is hard to truly know if the above photo is the truth when it comes to what the indigenous people of Trinidad looked like. The reason that we have these issues is due to the fact that " Spanish discoverers and early colonizers left us very few records concerning the people they first met in Trinidad and even those are not always reliable " (1). It is difficult to go back to a time where there is no written record that accurately describes the first people of these islands, we can only go by written accounts from a European perspective and what cultural remains can be found. The cultural remains can possibly give us a look into how their communities were set up, how their pottery looked, what they ate through looking at their midden heaps, and how the dead were buried along with what they might have thought important enough to bury with them. It is hard to know if these inhabitants were the Caribs or the Arawaks because there was no way to trace genetic lineages at the time when the first Europeans set foot on these islands.Trinidad today has a multi-ethic population and I would for one would love to see some genetic work on these populations in association with mitochondrial DNA and the movement of it through the world. It is thought that Trinidad has the "oldest Archaic site in the West Indies and that sometime between 5000 and 2000 BC, Archaic groups began migrating from Trinidad or mainland South America into the Lesser Antilles" (2).
When it comes to their social structure we can glean information about how their "villages" were set up and the number of people that could possibly inhabit that number of buildings. The layout could show if the houses were set up around a central area or if certain persons within the "village" had higher social rank. It is my belief that after reading some on the indigenous people prior to colonization that there is little to no proof as to any social stratification. Some of the burials that have been found contain no specific items of prestige and were only buried with a "water jar and food plates . . . to serve the deceased in his afterlife" (3). There is the idea that they moved around to follow resources and that their diet was mostly shellfish but there is also some evidence to suggest that they ate plants and animals that were not indigenous to the island, with the possibility that they would have come from South America ( this links back to the first paragraph concerning migration ).
Saladoid white-on-red sherds/ 500-250 BCE
http://ancientantilles.com/pariasphere.html
There is little we can know with any certainty when it comes to the first people to inhabit these islands. It is basically conjecture as to what the life of these indigenous people were like because there are no written records left by them that can tell us what their everyday life was like. Oral histories are a great place to start that can give us a look into the minds of these first people if we can find someone who knows the oral history. Archaeology is another great asset to finding out how the indigenous people lived but it is limited in scope due to what remains are left behind ( little of which are organic in nature ) and the theory that a particular archaeologist is working on. There is of course the European accounts but as previously stated they are biased due to perspective and motive.
It seems as if this will be a subject that will always be surrounded with much debate depending on who is discussing it. There will be those that will latch onto an idea and never be swayed despite new information that comes to light. There are those who will keep an open mind with regard to wanting to have new information as it comes along. So in essence it seems as though it depends ( again ) on the perspective and motive of those involved in the history of Trinidad.
(1) J.A. Bullbrook, "The Aboriginal Remains of Trinidad and the West Indies-I." Caribbean Quarterly, 1:1 (1949): 17.
(2) William F. Keegan, "West Indian Archaeology. 1. Overview and Foragers." Journal of Archaeological Research, 2:3 (1994): 266.
(3) J.A. Bullbrook, "The Aboriginal Remains of Trinidad and the West Indies-II." Caribbean Quarterly, 1:2 (1949): 12.
Welcome to the first post in my blog on the islands of Trinidad and Tobago which are located in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Venezuela. The history of these islands is where I will start my journey through them, for it is an interesting story to be told with many twists and turns along their paths.
So let us start with Trinidad, which according to history was "discovered" by Christopher Columbus on his third voyage in the year 1498. When Columbus first saw this land according to Bartolome De Las Casas " he named this land the island of Trinidad, because he had determined to give the first land he discovered that name " (1). This naming was based on the view that was formed with three mountains that were connected to one another and this could have been viewed, in that religious time frame, to be associated with the Holy Trinity. There was very little that interested the Spanish crown on the island for there were no minerals to be found and it took about 30 years to even appoint a governor for the island. In 1530 a conquistador, Antonio Sedeno , was to be Captain-General of Trinidad for life (2). This was a short lived occupancy for the island which would not have its first permanent settlement until about one hundred years later with the establishment of San Jose de Oruma. To assume that this island was unoccupied up until this point would be a mistake but that my friends is a story for another time.
So we continue our journey over to the island of Tobago, which was also "discovered" by Christopher Columbus on his third voyage, but he never landed on the island and no attempts were made to colonize Tobago (3). It was a separate entity from Trinidad until much later into the history of European settlement of these islands. It was named for " the tobacco cultivated by the original Carib population " (4) and was a much fought over piece of land due to the harbour and the fertile soil of the island by indigenous populations of the area. These attributes would come into play heading into the 1600's with European powers fighting over the soil, the harbour, and the peoples that occupied this island.
This may have been a little boring and stuffy for you as the reader of this, yet is is important to understand the beginnings of these islands from the different perspectives that we will encounter along our journey. This particular blog entry shows us the popular story told from a European perspective but there is another side to these beautiful islands and other stories to be told. So I hope that you will continue on this journey with me as we explore through time the life that these islands have taken on within the unwritten and written records of human existence.
(1) Symcox, Geoffrey, and Blair Sullivan, ed. Christopher Columbus and the Enterprise of the Indes: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2005. (2) http://www.discover-tt.com/trinidad/history.html (3) http://gotrinidadandtobago.com/trinidad-tobago-history/ (4) http://gotrinidadandtobago.com/trinidad-tobago-history/
