Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad 1870-1900

Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad 1870-1900

RACE RELATIONS IN COLONIAL TRINIDAD 1870-1900 BRIDGET BRERETON Lecturer in History, University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS London

Cambridge New Yor\ New Rochelle Melbourne Sydney

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The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York NY 10011-^211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon 13,28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Cambridge University Press 1979 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1979 First paperback edition 2002 Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Brereton, Bridget, 1946Race relations in colonial Trinidad, 1870-1900. Based on the author's thesis, University of the West Indies. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Trinidad and Tobago - History. 2. Trinidad and Tobago - Race relations. I. Title. F2121.B73 972.9'8303 79-72081 ISBN 0 52122428 4 hardback ISBN 0 52152313 3 paperback

For my father, Patric\ Cruttwell

Contents

Acknowledgements

page viii

Glossary

ix

1

Introduction

i

2

The environment

12

3

The white elite

34

4

Education and mobility

64

5

The rise of a coloured and black middle class

86

6

The urban labouring population

no

7

The black rural masses

130

8

The souls of black folk

152

9

The Indians

176

10 Racism and race relations: the divided society

193

Abbreviations

213

Notes

214

Bibliography

238

Index

245

Vll

Acknowledgements

The research for this book was conducted almost entirely in the following institutions: Registrar-General's Department, Government of Trinidad and Tobago; Trinidad Public Library, Port of Spain; The Library of the University of the West Indies, St Augustine; the Public Record Office, London; and the Royal Commonwealth Society Library, London. I am grateful to the staff of these institutions for their help. My primary debt is to colleagues at the University of the West Indies. James Millette and Neville Hall were the co-supervisors of the Ph.D. thesis out of which this book emerged, and I owe a great deal to their criticism and advice. Gordon Rohlehr and Brinsley Samaroo read an earlier draft and made useful comments. Carl Campbell has provided advice and encouragement. I am grateful to the members of the regular staff/post-graduate seminars conducted by the Department of History, University of the West Indies, St Augustine; my attendance at these seminars since 1969 has greatly extended my grasp of the historical development of Trinidad. In the same way, I owe a debt to those undergraduates who have taken the final-year course on the history of Trinidad and Tobago since 1783 at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine; they have often sharpened my awareness and clarified my thoughts. June Prempeh has typed two drafts of this book with exemplary speed, efficiency, and cheerfulness. My husband, father, and sons have at all times encouraged and sustained me. Bridget Brereton

via

Glossary

ajoupa: a hut with a thatched roof. alguazil: the Spanish office of policeman. Bacra man: i.e. Buckra, white man. badjohn: (slang) a notoriously rough type, always in trouble with the law, and proud of it. baji: stewed spinach and coconut oil or pork fat. balata: a species of hardwood. Bande de l'Est: the east coast of Trinidad. bandola: a stringed musical instrument similar to the cuatro (q.v.). bangee: a corruption of banjo. bongo: an African-derived dance accompanied by drumming. Canboulay: a torchlight procession, one of the events of Carnival. The word is a corruption of Fr. ' Cannes bailees', and the procession was originally held on i August by ex-slaves to celebrate emancipation. It recalled the days when the slaves on each estate had to turn out to fight cane fires. Capitulant: an individual living in Trinidad in 1797 when the British captured the island, central factory: a large factory for processing canes, designed to take in the canes of several estates and small farmers, centrifugal process: a method for separating sugar crystals from the adhering molasses by rapid rotation in a revolving container, chac-chac: a maracas, i.e., a pair of gourds filled with seeds, equipped with a handle to make a rattling noise when shaken, chantwelle: the principal singer and composer of a band, corial: a canoe of the type used by the Amerindians, couche-couche: a root vegetable similar to the yam. cuatro (quatro): a small four-stringed guitar. drogher: a flat barge for the transportation of sugar by sea or river, in crop, out of crop: 'in crop' means during harvest (January to May); 'out of crop' describes the slack or dead season (June to December) when the main agricultural tasks are planting and weeding, jamet, jamette: a lower-class person whose life centres around fighting, singing, dancing, drumming and Carnival. The word is derived from the Fr. 'diametre' or underworld type. Mas: a corruption of Masque, i.e., Carnival, muscovado: brown, moist, raw sugar, produced by the 'common process' in which the juice from the crushed canes is boiled and then drained to produce a sticky brown substance, the lowest grade of sugar exported, negre-jardin: 'field negro' - a popular mask costume at Carnival. ix

x

Glossary

obeah: African-derived religious or magical practices which invoked supernatural aid for healing and conjuring. palm trash: dead leaves of the palm tree used for thatching huts. peon: in local Trinidadian usage, an immigrant from Venezuela of mixed Spanish, Amerindian and African descent, Spanish-speaking. Quarter: administrative district, established by Governor Chacon in 1787 and replaced by the wards (q.v.) in 1849 by Governor Lord Harris. ramie fibre: a tropical plant native to eastern Asia, which produces a fibre used to make twine, thread, nets etc. ratoon: after harvest, the cane shoot is allowed to grow again for reaping at the following harvest, instead of planting a new cane plant. This process can be allowed to continue for several years, with progressively declining yields. Stipendiary magistrate: full-time salaried magistrate in charge of a district, often but not invariably a barrister. tambour: a kind of drum. tapia: wattle and daub, used for making huts. vacuum-pan process: a method for evaporating the sugar in a vacuum-sealed vessel, heated usually by steam. It produces a superior quality of sugar crystals known as Demerara crystals. ward, Ward Union: in 1849 Governor Lord Harris divided Trinidad into forty-one wards or administrative districts; in 1855 the wards were grouped together in ten Ward Unions under wardens who were full-time salaried civil servants. whe-whe: a popular Trinidadian gambling game, of Chinese origin.

N O T E ON CURRENCY In nineteenth-century Trinidad, sums of money were cited both in British pounds and in the local Trinidad dollar. In general the pound was used for all large sums and the dollar for smaller amounts. One dollar was worth 4s. 2d., or conversely ^1 equalled $4.80. Thus twenty-five cents equalled approximately one shilling; fifty cents equalled 2s. id.; sixty-five cents equalled 2s. 8^d., and so on.

I Introduction

The purpose of this study is to examine the nature of society and race relations in Trinidad in the last three decades of the nineteenth century, with special reference to the white, coloured, and black groups. These thirty years saw few striking or momentous events. They were not obviously formative years, as were the three decades after 1838, when the ex-slaves entered the society as free men, and when new ethnic groups were coming in to make the population even more heterogeneous. No major political changes took place, although there were important shifts in the economy, with a marked expansion of the cocoa industry, the development of cane-farming, and considerable diversification. By 1870, Trinidad had become nearly as cosmopolitan as it was a century later: no new national or ethnic group came in after that date, with the exception of the Syrio-Lebanese. Yet these last years of the century, peaceful and uneventful as they seem, were important for the evolution of the society. Trinidad was a Crown Colony; the white elite was a powerful influence on policymaking and administration; it controlled much of the economy; but gradually a non-white middle class was emerging, augmented from below. This development will be a crucial theme of this study, for it was the coloured and black middle class which began to articulate a * national' ideology, and which held the key to the political and social future of Trinidad. Our study focuses on Creole society in Trinidad in the later nineteenth century. Contemporary Trinidadians understood Creole society to include people of European and African descent, and all those of mixed descent, but to exclude the Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants. This is also the interpretation of modern social scientists. M. G. Smith defines Creole society in the West Indies as consisting of ' native West Indians of European, African, or mixed descent. The Creole society and culture derive from Europe and Africa. . .Expressed in terms of colour, Creoles form a trinity of black, white and brown.' 1 Edward Brathwaite, writing of Jamaica, believes that people from Britain and West Africa * contributed to the formation of a society which developed its own distinctive character or culture which, in so far as it was neither purely British nor West African, 1

2

Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

is called "creole" \ 2 Creole society in the West Indies, therefore, involved two cultural traditions, the African and the European. It presupposed a colonial situation, a multi-racial society, and cultural pluralism to a greater or lesser degree. Because the European segment was the dominant one, the forms of institutional life were based on European models, however much they may have diverged from those models, and African traditions were given low prestige in comparison with those derived from Europe. In Trinidad, however, the large-scale immigration of Indians after 1845 significantly changed the composition of the island's population; by 1870 Indians comprised about a quarter of the total population. Yet it is true to say that, until the twentieth century, the Indians remained marginal to Creole society. For many decades after their initial arrival, they were viewed as a group of migrant labourers, birds of passage, who would not remain to form a permanent part of the population. Even when, after the 1870s, it became clear that substantial numbers had chosen to settle permanently, the Indians remained largely outside the Creole society. They showed no desire to play a wider part in the island society, and mostly abstained from Creole activities, apparently satisfied with the traditional values of their own culture. The process of creolisation had hardly begun to affect large numbers of Indians before the turn of the century; Indians were difficult to locate in the Creole colour hierarchy, being neither black nor white. 8 In considering the nature of race relations in late nineteenth-century Trinidad, therefore, we will be primarily concerned with the interaction between whites, coloureds, and blacks, people of European, African and mixed descent: Creole society, in fact. Yet the size of the Indian population, and its crucial importance for the economic and social development of Trinidad, make it essential to investigate the position of the Indians in the last decades of the century, and to consider, however briefly, their interaction with the other segments of the island society.4 It is essential to define clearly some terms which will be used constantly in this study. The word 'coloured' will be used to describe an individual of mixed European and African descent, probably light-complexioned. A 'black' is understood to be a person of unmixed African descent, or predominantly African descent, whose complexion is dark. 'African' is used only to describe persons born in Africa. 'Creole' is a word which has accumulated many meanings. In the later nineteenth century, it meant a person born in Trinidad of European and/or African descent. This would be the most usual interpretation when the word was used without any qualifying adjective. A 'white Creole' was a person born in the island of European descent; a 'Creole Indian' was born in Trinidad of East Indian descent; a 'Creole Spaniard' was an

Introduction

3

individual of Spanish (and often African and Amerindian) descent born in the island. The phrase * foreign Creole* was often applied to coloured and black persons born in one of the other West Indian islands and settled in Trinidad. And 'Afro-Creole' is used to describe cultural practices which fused African and European elements, and were kept up by black Creoles in Trinidad. 'French Creole' is used in the sense in which it was understood in the nineteenth century. A 'French Creole' was a person of European descent, usually French, but also Spanish, Irish, English, Corsican and even German, who was born in the island and who considered himself, and was considered by others, to be a member of the French Creole group. He might possibly have ancestors of African descent, but in order to be accepted as a member of this group, he would have to be regarded as of 'pure white' descent. Sometimes people not actually born in Trinidad, but possessing the other necessary criteria, were 'adopted' as French Creoles. The term 'English Creole' means a person born in Trinidad of English descent, with no acknowledged non-white ancestors. The problems historians encounter, in defining terms like these, point to the difficulties in analysing the interaction of races and classes in a complex West Indian society of a century ago. By about 1870 a pattern of race relations and attitudes had become established, which would not be significantly changed until, perhaps, the 1930s. An investigation of race relations in our period, therefore, provides the historical foundations essential for the study of contemporary Trinidad society. Yet the difficulties are formidable. It is always easier for the historian to find evidence of acts of racial discrimination, or what was considered to be such, than to trace the ideas and prejudices which lay behind the actions. One can establish the grievances of particular groups, and note the reports of race ' incidents' which were dramatic enough to be publicised. But the nuances of manner and behaviour are not recorded, and these were always of great importance to the group which felt itself to be discriminated against. Yet we have to proceed on the assumption that it is possible to ascertain however inadequately - the attitudes and beliefs of people now dead, and especially their attitudes towards race, colour, class, and other groups in the society. They can be ascertained through written expressions in books and articles, in the press, in private letters, in official documents, and through activities which were a practical manifestation of such attitudes. This is far more difficult, of course, in the case of people who have left few or no written records of their own. Yet some picture of the world of the masses can be obtained: from accounts of their activities and beliefs by people of another class (here we must allow, when necessary, for ignorance, misunderstanding, or hostility); from non-literary records now transcribed, such as folklore; from official records which deal with the

4

Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

activities of working-class Creoles, especially records of the law courts and the police, dealing with (for instance) obeah, band rivalry, Afro-Creole music and dance; and from the rare written accounts left by members, or ex-members, of the group. What the historian must not do is to attribute to the black masses of Trinidad in the 1870s the beliefs, prejudices and attitudes of their descendants a century later, and this is just as true of the other groups in the society. Nor is it possible, from another viewpoint, to assume that white, coloured and black people in 1870 had a set of values and attitudes identical to those held during the period of slavery, although the prejudices built up during that time would prove extremely durable. During the generations after emancipation, Trinidad was clearly a segmented society, made up of different sectors or segments, divided primarily by national origin and race, but also by education and economic position. The members of these segments interacted on some levels and in some areas of economic and social life, but they thought of themselves as belonging primarily to a separate and self-contained group. The segments formed a hierarchy, with one clearly dominant, the others clearly subordinate (ranked roughly in descending order). One segment, the whites, controlled the machinery of law and law enforcement, politics and administration. Colour played a prominent part in determining the status of the different segments, a characteristic of multi-racial societies, and cultural pluralism was also a distinctive feature of Trinidad society. Institutional differences which indicated this cultural pluralism related to marriage and family life, education, attitudes to property and money, economic institutions, religion, language, music, dance and song, and folklore. There were considerable differences in most of these areas between the dominant whites, the coloured and black middle class, and the black masses, who together constituted Creole society; the cultural differences between each of the 'Creole' segments and the East Indians were even greater. Further, as in most culturally plural societies, the dominant segment attempted to impose its cultural system, or selected aspects of it, on the other groups. 5 It has therefore been found useful, in this study, to accept the idea of a dominant culture coexisting with a subordinate sub-culture which belonged to the Creole masses. For the lines dividing the sectors of society were not only lines of race, colour, or wealth; just as important was the ability to command the dominant culture, which was European culture. But the society was still more complex; the white elite in Trinidad consisted of two leading groups, the French Creoles, and the English Creoles in alliance with British residents, and the two did not necessarily share the same cultural complex. The English Creoles and the British residents mostly represented middle-class, urban, mid-Victorian culture. There was

Introduction

5

a set of fairly rigid values: for example, the virtue of industry and thrift, the sanctity of class lines and property, the belief in science and progress, the importance of legal and Christian marriage, the subordinate position of women, the conviction that Britain was the most enlightened and successful nation the world had ever seen, and others. The French Creoles, however, while sharing some aspects of this complex of values, tended to cherish others which belonged to Europe before the great revolutions. France, not Britain, was their point of reference; but not 'modern' France as much as France of the Ancien Regime, for the leading French Creoles always remembered their ancestors' attachment to the royalist cause, and they prided themselves, not always justifiably, on their descent from the old nobility. Catholic in religion, aristocratic in outlook, the French Creoles were a landed class whose economic base was the ownership of plantations. As slave-owners they had generally established closer, more paternalistic relations with their slaves than the English planters, and their influence over the Creole masses in the nineteenth century was certainly stronger. The traditional life-style of the French Creole planters, in which lavish hospitality and entertainments were a mark of status, was another difference. The dominant culture of nineteenth-century Trinidad, therefore, was European and Christian; but it included both British and French elements, and it represented values which were middle-class and urban as well as landed and aristocratic. It seems clear that by the later nineteenth century these elements had, to a considerable extent, fused together as the French Creoles became less * French' and more 'British'. In any case, the dominant culture was the 'property' of the whites. They were of British or French descent; they grew up familiar with the English (and French) language and with European literary culture; they could pay for the kind of education which disseminated it. For the group which we call the coloured and black middle class, command of European culture was the essential qualification for membership, rather than wealth or lightness of complexion. Few members of this group were even moderately prosperous; quite a few were black, not coloured. But they all aspired to European culture. In fact it was their boast that they were more 'cultured' than the whites, whom they dismissed as being for the most part crassly materialistic and commercially minded. Hence the pride when a member of this group was recognised in Britain for his scholarly or literary attainments. The cultural gap between this group and the ordinary Creole peasant or labourer was very wide. Yet it would not be true to say that the black and coloured middle class uniformly rejected its African heritage and sought only to identify with the whites and their culture. The members of this class, in Trinidad around 1870, were proud on the one hand of their command of the dominant culture; on the other hand many of them stressed race consciousness, often with the idea that

6

Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

their cultural attainments 'disproved' the theory of the innate mental inferiority of the African race. How far did the Creole masses command this culture? Most were illiterate. Many spoke only patois or Spanish; in general the language of the Creole masses was patois. Most of the values of Victorian middle-class culture were alien to them, especially the notions about marriage and the position of women. Probably they were closer to the French Creoles, with whom they shared the patois, Creole folklore and folksongs, and Frenchderived dances, costumes and cuisine. But the harsh physical conditions of their lives, their precarious economic position, the isolation of many rural settlements, precluded them from familiarity with domestic comforts or amenities, books, pictures, or newspapers. Their experience of seasonal employment and unemployment, low wages and arbitrary employers, hardly made them receptive to the cherished Victorian idea that the supreme virtues in the lower class were industry and thrift. The Creole masses created, and belonged to, an Afro-Creole subordinate culture. African elements were reinforced by liberated Africans who arrived in Trinidad as late as 1861. Some African groups managed to carry on many of their accustomed cultural activities. Creole blacks as a whole found their deepest expression in cultural forms which were wholly or partly of African origin: the dance, drumming and other types of music, wakes and stick-fighting. In religion most were Roman Catholics, but African-derived cults were influential, and Afro-Christian sects of the 'Shouter' type had appeared by 1870. The world of the black peasant and labourer, and the world of the educated person of whatever colour, were different enough to enable us to speak of a dominant minority culture and a subordinate mass culture. Yet we must, obviously, recognise the many and complex ways in which the two worlds met. Some of the black working class were literate, many must have spoken 'good' English, gone regularly to orthodox churches and paid their church dues, belonged to Friendly Societies, looked up to legal marriage as the ideal even if they could not afford it, and scrimped and saved to give their children an education. And the Creole upper and middle classes, white and coloured - especially the French Creoles absorbed much of the subordinate culture through their intimate contacts since infancy with black domestics and labourers. Respectable, even wealthy persons were said to visit the obeahmen; upper-class men violated the Victorian sexual code by taking black or coloured mistresses and fathering illegitimate families. The white French Creoles shared with the rural masses a whole world of folklore and folk beliefs. The dichotomy of a dominant elite culture and a subordinate mass culture was never rigid, yet it provides a useful framework for a study of this nature. In order to organise the material, the division of Creole society into

Introduction

J

three broad sectors, a white upper class, a coloured and black middle class, and the Creole masses, has been accepted. Not all whites in 1870 were wealthy or educated, nor did they all follow the same activities or share the same values. Yet it is surely possible to think of the whites as a dominant class, whose characteristic economic activities were planting, commerce, and the professions, who were on the whole prosperous in comparison with the other sectors, who were familiar with European culture, who dominated the political life of the colony as well as its economic and social life. Despite the divisions of national origin and religion, the white Creoles and British residents formed a ruling class. A few of the coloured and black middle class were wealthier than most whites, and were descended from free coloured planters and slave-owners who settled in Trinidad in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; these were coloured rather than black. Other members were relatively penniless, the descendants of ex-slaves or liberated Africans, often ill-paid school teachers or civil servants who had entered the middle class largely through education. They formed a distinct group, distinguished from the whites by their African descent, and from the Creole masses by their education and their 'white-collar* jobs. The black masses were very far from being a homogeneous group. They included people of very different origins, Creole Trinidadians, British West Indian immigrants, natives of Africa, Spanish-speaking immigrants from Venezuela. It is difficult to argue that they shared a common Creole culture, although many elements of that culture were absorbed gradually by the immigrants from the eastern Caribbean, Africa, and Venezuela. We know that there were substantial cultural differences between the Creole blacks and the Barbadians in Trinidad, and that many of the African immigrants remained largely outside the life of Creole society, as was true of the more isolated descendants of the Venezuelan immigrants. Only in the most general sense can we accept the black masses as a single sector of the population: they were in a precarious economic condition, they were near the bottom of the ethnic and social scale, they were excluded from political and civic life, many of their cherished values and cultural forms were despised by the upper groups. Further, the Creole culture of the nuclear group, the descendants of the Trinidad ex-slaves, gradually spread in varying degrees to the newcomers. For all the difficulties, the division of Creole society into three broad sectors, like the concept of the dominant culture and the subordinate culture, is a useful organisational framework for this study. The modern history of Trinidad began in the 1780s, when the Spanish Government opened the island to settlement by French planters and their slaves. In the nearly three centuries following its discovery, Trinidad was a remote, isolated, and undeveloped outpost of Spain's vast American

8

Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

empire. Its population was never more than a few hundred Spaniards and blacks, and a few thousand indigenous Indians. The society was formed in the decades after the Cedula of Population (1783) which encouraged the settlement of French planters. At first French planters (both white and coloured) left the French islands and British Grenada, because Trinidad offered unparalleled opportunities for the acquisition of fresh land. After 1789, French planters and free people of colour fled the Revolution in the French islands; they included people of diverse political sympathies forced to leave their homes as the fortunes of war and revolution fluctuated. By the time of the British conquest in 1797, the majority of Trinidad's free population was French-speaking and of French origin, and Trinidad possessed an unusually large free coloured class, considerably outnumbering the whites. In 1802, there were about 55275 free coloureds in comparison with 2,261 whites.6 A second element in the society consisted of immigrants from Venezuela. Some of them left the mainland for political reasons, finding Trinidad a convenient refuge from the revolutionary warfare which raged from 1810. The refugees spoke French as well as Spanish, for some Frenchmen had fled the West Indies for the Main, only to re-emigrate to Trinidad. A much larger immigration was of ' peons' - labourers and backwoodsmen of mixed Spanish-Amerindian-African descent - who came all through the century in search of jobs and land. The peons, and the more prosperous Venezuelan immigrants, formed a considerable Spanish-speaking community in many parts of the island, reinforcing the dwindling numbers of indigenous Hispanised Amerindians. With the formal cession to Britain in 1802, a small but highly influential group of people from the British Isles settled in Trinidad. British or Creole planters from the older colonies flocked to the still underdeveloped island, eager to exploit its virgin lands. With them came their slaves, mainly English-speaking. British merchants settled after 1802 to establish the island's leading commercial houses. Scots, Irishmen, and Englishmen came as overseers and managers of estates, or as clerks in the business houses, or to posts in the civil service and professional practices. At the time of emancipation in 1838, about 20,656 apprentices were set free.7 Most of these spoke patois and were nominally Roman Catholics. A smaller group, who had come with their owners from the British Caribbean, were English-speaking and nominally Protestant. The majority of the Trinidad slaves were West Indian born by 1834, but a minority were natives of Africa, and at least one tribal group, the Mandingoes, managed to retain a sense of religious and tribal solidarity in the 1830s. The free coloureds and free blacks were unusually numerous in Trini-

Introduction

9

dad, consisting of roughly 12,000 people in 1838. 8 The size and economic importance of this group were to be significant in forming the island's social structure. They ranged from prosperous and educated planters, slave-owners, and professionals to illiterate peons and free black artisans or hucksters. A group of demobilised black soldiers of the West India Regiment had been settled after 1815 in villages at Manzanilla on the east coast and in other settlements nearby. At about the same time, former members of the Corps of Colonial Marines, who were escaped slaves in the United States who had fought for Britain in the 1812-14 w a r > w e r e settled in seven 'company villages' in southern Trinidad. These were the 'Americans'. There were also manumitted slaves, as well as many more prosperous planters, smallholders and shopkeepers, whose families had been free for one or more generations. The elite group among the large free coloured community consisted of the French free coloured planters and professionals. This was the society at the time of emancipation. In the thirty years or so after 1838, two things happened. First, the former slaves and their former owners adjusted in various ways to the new state of freedom. Secondly, entirely new ethnic and national groups entered the society, so that 'a population already rich and diverse in its composition, became even more so in the short space of fifteen years (1845-60) during which it took on its present intricate racial structure'. 9 The ex-slaves, for the most part, continued to give at least part-time labour to the sugar estates. But large numbers of them ceased to reside on the estates. In the 1840s they founded new villages along the lines of the main roads and in areas adjacent to existing estates. Thus there grew up the ribbon development along the eastern main road between Port of Spain and Arima, and the new suburbs of Port of Spain and San Fernando. Little is known about the organisation of the Creole ex-slaves in these new villages. Perhaps tribal links, or the sharing of a common African language, or past association as slaves on the same estate, contributed to the establishment of the villages. Many of the ex-slaves, and most of the peons, settled as squatters and small cultivators in the interior, especially in the valleys of the Northern Range and in the Montserrat hills. Empty land was there for the taking, and squatting was not effectively dealt with until the late 1860s. The squatters, it was felt, had opted out of civilisation by going to live in areas unreached by the law, the schools, and the churches. The planters were convinced, by 1840, of the necessity, if the sugar estates were to survive, of bringing in new types of people and of anchoring them on the estates by some system of coercion. The years after 1840, therefore, saw many different types of immigration into the island. Trinidad's black population was supplemented from two sources. There

io

Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

was a large, spontaneous, and steady influx of immigrants from the eastern Caribbean, nearly all of African descent, attracted by high wages, and the relative availability of land and jobs. And there was an important immigration of freed Africans between 1841 and 1861. These were Africans found in foreign slaveships which had been seized by the British Navy, liberated, and sent to Sierra Leone or to St Helena, from which places they opted to emigrate to Trinidad. Most of them had just been rescued from the slaveships, or had been liberated only a short time before they emigrated. They spoke no English; they were 'pagans retaining the full vigour of their tribal customs. . .they were for the West Indies a throwback to those who had been transported to the British islands before. . .1807'. Between 1841 and 1861, when African immigration to Trinidad ended, a total of 3,383 had emigrated from Sierra Leone and 3,198 from St Helena. 10 With their tribal marks and their un-Western clothes, they were quite unlike the Creoles, and they tended to congregate in tribal groups after they left the estates, forming tribal-based villages and keeping up their languages and customs. The white population was augmented after 1840 by two main streams. There was a continuing influx of Britons coming to civil service posts, professional jobs, or managerial positions on the sugar estates. And between 1846 and 1847 a bout 1,298 Portuguese Madeirans settled in Trinidad, both Catholics and Presbyterians. Though the Madeirans proved a failure as plantation labourers, they soon became highly successful market gardeners and shopkeepers. By far the most important immigration into Trinidad after 1840 was that of East Indians as indentured labourers for the sugar estates. Indentured immigration to Trinidad began in 1845 and continued until 1848, when the financial crisis of that year temporarily ended it. In 1851 it was reopened, and from then until 1917, Indians arrived each year under the indenture system. Approximately 134,183 immigrants came to Trinidad during the whole period. By 1871 Indians formed over twenty-five per cent of the population. Because of their numbers alone, the Indians were the most significant addition to the population in the period after 1845. Their significance also lies in the fact that they came from a highly developed society, with ancient religious and cultural traditions, traditions essentially alien to those of Trinidad, where a European minority dominated an African majority. They were an entirely new and immensely complex element in the society. A century after the Cedula of Population, the intricate society of Trinidad had been firmly established. Its nucleus consisted of white, coloured, and black Creoles. To this core had been added, after emancipation, immigrants from Africa, Madeira, Europe, including Britain, Venezuela, the eastern Caribbean, China, and India. It was almost inevitably a

Introduction

11

segmented society, divided, as one contemporary put it, into 'several hostile camps'. 11 But before we attempt to analyse the nature of this society, we need to examine the environment - demographic, economic, and political - in which nineteenth-century Trinidadians lived.

The environment

The population of Trinidad increased fairly rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century, from 84,438 in 1861 to 200,028 in 1891. Much of this increase was the result of immigration, particularly from the British West Indies, India, and Venezuela. Nineteenth-century Trinidad was, very clearly, an immigrant society. In 1861 about forty-four per cent of the population (37,502) was not born in Trinidad, and the proportion was about the same in 1891. Of the immigrants, natives of India numbered 13,488 in 1861 and 45,028 in 1891; natives of the British West Indies numbered 11,716 in 1861 and 3 3 , i 8 o i n i 8 9 i . A smaller group consisted of natives of 'foreign countries', mainly Venezuela and the French and Spanish West Indies. Natives of Africa decreased in numbers between 1861 and 1891, for liberated Africans ceased to arrive after 1861. Numbering 6,035 m 1861, they were only 2,055 by 1891. In 1871, for the first time, Creoles of East Indian parentage were categorised separately, numbering 4,545; by 1881 the figure was 12,800. But the censuses did not classify racial groups, only place of birth. In 1891 a religious census was included, which showed Roman Catholics leading with 73,733 adherents, followed by 'Coolie and Chinese' (i.e. Hindu, Moslem, Confucian, Buddhist) with 64,413, Anglicans with 46,920, Wesleyans with 6,312. 1 The capital city, Port of Spain, grew steadily in population between 1861 and 1891; a high proportion of the colony's population was concentrated in the borough and its suburbs. In 1861 its population was 18,980; by 1881 the census recorded 31,858 in the city proper and another 2,706 in Laventille. In 1891 the population within borough limits was 33,782, but the figure for 'Greater Port of Spain' was estimated at about 50,000, or one quarter of the total population. The growth of the population of San Fernando, the second town, was much more modest. Estimated at 5,006 in 1871, it was 6,335 m X 88i and only 6,633 in 1891, which seems a small increase for a town which was usually described as 'bustling'. 2 Most Trinidadians lived outside Port of Spain and San Fernando, however, and the country was still underdeveloped in the 1870s. Much of 12

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14

Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

Trinidad was unpopulated and unsurveyed, and things were made worse by a road system of acknowledged inefficiency. Nearly every writer has a hair-raising story of his efforts to get from one part of the island to another. In the 1870s it took twelve days to get from Moruga to Port of Spain by land during the wet season.3 In 1868 every road out of San Fernando ended in mud after five miles or less during the rains. 4 Blanchisseuse was 'the remotest, loneliest and unhealthiest spot in Her Majesty's tropical dominions'. 5 The three-and-a-half mile drive from the capital to Maraval was frequently impossible because there were two fords en route, and when the rivers were in flood nothing could get across them. To get from Port of Spain to Toco in 1870 was an odyssey which often took four days, never less than three. Captain Baker, Chief of Police from 1877, once took ten days to go from Arouca to Blanchisseuse to Toco to Arima, via the north coast. Between Arima and Valencia in the 1870s three unbridged rivers crossed the eastern main road; when they were in flood both men and animals risked their lives in crossing.6 It was a feat to get to Mayaro in the 1860s; from Valencia there was only a bridle path through high woods to the Manzanilla beach, and from then on the beach was the only road, with several rivers to cross and only one ferry, the Ortoire. As Donald Wood writes, because travel was so difficult and much of the island was unpopulated and unknown, travellers wrote about their journeys to the east coast, some fifty miles from Port of Spain, as if they had been to Lake Victoria or the source of the Niger. 7

It is not surprising that 'Bande de l'Est' was virtually a foreign country, as an editor put it in 1872, 8 or that Governor Gordon met an ancient Creole at Mayaro who said he had lived for twenty years in Trinidad and for fifty years in * Bande de l'Est'. 9 In the words of a modern writer: The road system seemed more like an enemy fortification than friendly communication. In the last quarter of the 19th century, it was unsafe to travel alone because of the difficult terrain. 10

In such a situation, the rural villages remained isolated and self-contained, and peasants in the remoter settlements often had to watch their produce perish for want of all-year access to the markets. One of the first concerns of Arthur Gordon, Governor from 1866 to 1870, was to improve roads; he found in 1867 that only the eastern main road to Arima was in an adequate condition, and that only one new road had been built between 1857 and 1867. His first undertaking was to extend the eastern main road to Manzanilla. This was completed by the end of 1870 and by 1872 the path had been extended to Mayaro. No longer was it hazardous to get to the east coast. The impetus he gave to road maintenance and construction lasted for many years.11 Railway building began, decades after it was first proposed, in the early

The environment

15

1870s; and the Arima line was opened in 1876, the San Fernando line in 1882, and the Princes Town extension in 1884. All these lines served the sugar estates primarily, most of which already enjoyed relatively cheap transport by droghers. Not until the end of the century did the railways reach the new cocoa areas, with the completion of the line to Sangre Grande in 1897 and the Cunupia-Tabaquite line a year later.12 In 1870 railways were non-existent and roads were miserable. But the pattern of settlement which had already been established was not fundamentally altered in the next hundred years. In 1870, as now, the population was heavily concentrated along the west coast in a belt, stretching from Port of Spain to South Naparima, about ten miles wide; and eastward from the capital to Arima. Sugar estates in outlying areas, such as Cedros, Moruga, Toco, and Diego Martin, had already gone out of operation or would do so in the 1880s. Sugar was concentrated in the area between Port of Spain and San Fernando, in the Naparimas, and in the St Joseph-Arima district. Arima marked the eastern limit of sugar. Cocoa was advancing up the foothills of the Montserrat range, east from Arima to the coast, and up the valleys of the Northern Range. Coconuts were established along the Manzanilla-Mayaro stretch. This pattern was to remain fairly stable. After 1870, the most important new development was probably the establishment of new settlements around railway stations - Cunupia, Couva, Tabaquite, Chaguanas, Carapichaima - and the foundation of more Indian villages as immigrants increasingly settled on the land after indenture.13 Older settlements acquired new importance, especially Arima, which became the natural centre of the cocoa country. In the 1890s the population, both Creole and Indian, followed the cocoa pioneers; it was a move away from the estates and the contiguous villages, to the newly cleared forest and savannah lands, to grow both cocoa and rice. For example, there was an increase of only seven persons between 1891 and 1901 in the long settled Ward Union of Tacarigua, but an increase of thirty-nine per cent in the fast growing Ward Union of Sangre Grande, which was being rapidly opened up for cocoa and other cultivation.14 In 1870, large areas of Trinidad were unsettled and uncultivated. Some 874,557 acres were still untouched Crown lands; only 248,323 acres had been alienated and of this well over half was uncultivated.15 The disposal of the Crown lands was to be an important feature of Trinidad's economic development. It was Governor Gordon who reorganised the system by which these lands were alienated, by making it possible for small purchasers to buy lots of five acres or more at a moderate price and with a minimum of delay and red tape. Simultaneously he moved to eliminate squatting by persuading long-established squatters to purchase legal titles. By 1872 squatting

16

Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

had been contained. Although the trend to easy disposal of the Crown lands was reversed by Gordon's successors between 1870 and 1897, the Crown lands were steadily alienated in these years, the majority of the purchasers being smallholders buying lots of between ten and twenty acres. Cultivation spread gradually but inexorably until, by 1890, the forest on the central plains had disappeared, leaving only the three hill ranges covered by the high woods.16 The question of the disposal of the Crown lands was part of the wider issues affecting the direction of Trinidad's economy. The interests and objectives of the planters and the smallholders were conflicting. The small cultivator wanted easy and cheap access to the Crown lands: low prices, a small minimum lot, and a good system of roads serving the newly alienated lands. But free access to the Crown lands and the opening up of the interior of the island would deplete the reserve of plantation labour, and would tend to draw away from the estates resident and outside labour, Indian and Creole. Both the Colonial Office and the local government tended to be biased towards the sugar interest and the plantation system, and the Crown lands policy reflected this bias. The Creole and the free Indian were regarded by the planters primarily as wage labourers for the estates. Various restrictive regulations for the sale of Crown lands, imposed in the years after 1870, were designed to prevent as far as possible the rapid alienation of these lands to smallholders. Peasant farmers did buy extensively in the last thirty years of the century, but the regulations introduced in these years certainly made the process slower. Furthermore, this policy was persisted in even when the plantation system showed signs of collapse. In the years of crisis after 1884, there was ample evidence that the plantations could no longer absorb the available rural labour. Yet there was no new policy to give easier access to the Crown lands. After Gordon's departure, peasants acquired land only in the face of considerable official disapproval and bureaucratic obstruction. Like all tropical, non-white colonies in the nineteenth century, Trinidad's economy was overwhelmingly agricultural. The * phenomenal fertility of the soil' was almost an article of faith. Writers described a scene of natural luxuriance and abundance. Charles Kingsley thought that no peasant in Trinidad need suffer want, because the land gave forth with very little labour, and some crop was always ripe for harvest. Another observer wrote of 'abundant fertility' of the soil, which was 'capable of yielding to profusion of fruits and vegetables. . .it is amazing to the European how fast the vegetation grows'. 17 Of course, insects, pests and weeds flourished as much as useful plants, and for much of the island the only satisfactory vegetation was the natural forest. Nevertheless, the notion of superabundant natural fertility was for long kept alive by repetition. The strategies for developing tropical Crown Colonies inhabited mainly

The environment

17

by non-European races were well understood. A local paper approvingly quoted an article from the London Standard: This is no colony for British settlers. . .The British labourer cannot work under a tropical sun, nor would it be worth anyone's time to employ him. . .All labour performed by the hands under the sun must be left to men of the coloured races. But there is still room for European enterprise and intelligence in the higher walks of industry. The island offers a splendid field to the capitalist in the cultivation of sugar, cocoa and coffee.

Or as Sir Charles Bruce succinctly put it, It is evident.. .that the development of our crown colonies on the lines of modern civilisation can only be effected under the administration of our own people, by races capable of enduring the fatigues of tropical labour.18

Sugar, the traditional staple, retained its predominance in terms of exports in the last decades of the century. There were important developments in Trinidad's sugar industry in this period, notably changes in the pattern of ownership and great improvements in the manufacturing process. White Creoles, and especially French Creoles, lost ground to British companies or individual British proprietors in the ownership of the sugar industry. By 1897 British firms held a majority of the most productive estates. French Creoles were no longer owners of substantial sugar estates, while resident Englishmen or English Creoles continued to hold a number of plantations, including some large ones.19 Important changes in the manufacturing process were made in this period. In Trinidad, the flow of capital into sugar did not dry up with the 1884 crisis; rather it accelerated in the effort to lower production costs. By 1897, about .£2,500,000 had been invested, mostly on modern manufacturing plants. The large British firms, like the Colonial Company, Turnbull, Stewart and Co., W. F. Burnley and Co., Tennant and Co., and others, had access to considerable sources of capital in the metropolis.20 One of the most important developments was the extension of vacuumpan manufacturing. The production of muscovado became unprofitable when, in 1874, the preferential duties in favour of muscovado entering Britain (as compared with the higher-grade sugars manufactured by the vacuum-pan and centrifugal processes) were abolished. The tendency was for estates to be amalgamated and for the old muscovado factories to be scrapped. In the crisis of 1884-5 several small muscovado estates went under, especially those situated in outlying areas. Norman Lamont, a large British owner, concentrated on the Naparima district, buying up small estates, scrapping their factories, and tacking them on to his existing adjacent holdings. By 1897 most muscovado factories had been scrapped, and in 1895, over three-quarters of Trinidad's sugar was manufactured by the vacuum-pan process.21

18

Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

Large manufactories were erected, on the vacuum-pan or centrifugal process, which took in the canes of considerable acreages. The Usine Ste Madeleine, built in 1872-3 by the Colonial Company, was the largest of these new factories. The Governor reported in 1872 that: The Company proposes to manufacture in this establishment pure sugar, by the vacuum pan process, similar to that made in Demerara and in the Usines of Martinique.

The total cost was over ^180,000, and it was the largest central factory in any British colony, surpassed only by one in Guadeloupe. It took in the canes of the Colonial Company's holdings of over 4,000 acres, and between 1884 and 1894 it reduced production costs by over fifty per cent. 22 The development of central factories called for new methods of transportation. Sea droghers were still used, but increasingly the larger firms built their own light railways to transport canes to the factories. By the end of the century, Trinidad's sugar industry was, on the manufacturing side, efficient. The 1897 R°y a l Commission found it could not make any recommendations for improvements. Cultivation was another story. Two Baptist missionaries who were in Trinidad in the 1860s reported that the island's sugar planters used out of date methods.23 The editor of the Chronicle complained in 1878 that in his thirty-seven years in the island, he had observed no change whatever in the tools of agricultural labourers. The hoe remained the chief tool; spades or pick-axes were rarely to be seen, rakes never, and only a few ploughs were used. The most primitive tools were handed down unchanged from father to son.24 The canes were over-ratooned; manuring was unscientific and inadequate; steam tillage was not used, although it seems that the wet, heavy soils of Trinidad made the use of the plough difficult.25 The hoe and the cutlass were virtually the only implements used throughout the last quarter of the century. The cane itself seemed to be suffering from the backward methods of cultivation. By the end of the century the Otaheite or Bourbon cane was deteriorating, and it was attacked by cane diseases in Trinidad in 1891. It was gradually replaced by other varieties.26 The last decades of the century were years of crisis for the cane sugar industry. By about 1876 the threat from 'bounty-fed' European beet sugar entering Britain had become serious. In 1884 Germany doubled bounties on exports, and France greatly increased her exports of beet. Cheap sugar flooded the British market, on which over one-half of British West Indian sugar was sold. In 1884 the price for muscovado was 13s. per hundredweight, often less than the cost of production. 27 Although the Trinidad planters were far better situated to survive this crisis than their counterparts elsewhere, because the vacuum-pan process had been extensively

The environment

19

introduced, they reacted with anguished cries for help. In 1884 the Legislative Council stated that the sugar industry was severely depressed because of the bounties given by European governments on the export to Britain of beet sugar, which practically shut out West Indian sugar from the market. Claiming that the existence of the colony was threatened, they asked for authorisation to make reciprocal tariff arrangements with the United States. Similar pleas came from the Agricultural Society, while a petition from the planters complained of imminent ruin and called on the British Government to impose countervailing duties on bounty-fed imports.28 The Colonial Office rejected this last request, but the Secretary of State undertook to attempt to negotiate arrangements with the United States to secure advantageous terms for British West Indian sugar entering that country.29 The crisis deepened in the 1890s, when both France and Germany doubled bounties on beet exports, while the United States - despite the British Government's efforts - imposed heavy duties on British West Indian sugar. A petition from the Agricultural Society in 1895 stated that sugar was the most important industry in Trinidad and that the welfare of the whole population depended on it. The present prices were ruinous, far below the 'natural' cost of production. Bounties on European exports prevented the investment of British capital in West Indian sugar. The petitioners asked for countervailing duties and a reciprocal agreement with the United States.30 The Governor, F. N . Broome, supported these requests. In his view, if sugar collapsed in Trinidad, 'it will bring down with it both the Government and the community'. Investments would soon stop if sugar prices continued at their low levels, and inevitably the finances of the colony would suffer.81 The 1897 Royal Commission, sent to investigate the condition of the West Indian sugar industry, noted that even the best estates could make a profit of only six shillings per hundredweight while others produced at a loss. The Commission estimated that a rise in the price of thirty to thirty-five shillings was enough to make production in Trinidad profitable. Some relief came in 1898 when the United States imposed a countervailing duty on bounty-fed imports to the full value of the bounty. This virtually shut out European beet from the American market. In 1900 Canada offered a general preference to British West Indian sugar; and in 1902 the Brussels Convention suppressed bounties on beet exports.32 These developments enabled the sugar industry to recover a modest prosperity at the beginning of the twentieth century. But it was the cocoa industry which made remarkable progress in the later nineteenth century, to become Trinidad's leading export industry by the turn of the century. The great boom came in the 1870s. Exports rose from 8,000,000 lb per annum in 1870-9, to 56,000,000 in 1910-

20

Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

1919.33 Cocoa was dominated by the French Creoles; it was the backbone of their prosperity in the 1880s and 1890s. A few large-scale French Creole planters made fortunes from cocoa, and the crop provided a relatively comfortable livelihood to many others, as well as thousands of peon and Creole peasant cultivators. Unlike sugar, cocoa was almost entirely locally owned. It was the tremendous expansion of cocoa cultivation which, more than any other factor, made Trinidad relatively prosperous in the later nineteenth century. 34 In this period, agriculture meant sugar and cocoa. Other crops were grown, of course, but it is difficult to find data on these; presumably a reflection of the relative unimportance of the * minor industries', despite the constant lip service to the idea of diversification. The local government's policy on economic matters generally reflected its bias towards the plantation, still thought of as a civilising agency. Before the crisis in sugar of 1884-5, no serious effort to diversify the economy was made. Individual Governors sometimes expressed their approval of diversification; Longden wrote in 1871 that he had urged on the planters the desirability of cultivating cocoa, coffee, rice, tobacco, and other food crops, and of raising livestock, in order to reduce the colony's heavy dependence on Venezuela and the eastern Caribbean for meat and vegetables.35 But no real thrust was made until the crisis of 1884-5, when the viability of the plantations was brought into question. Governor Sir William Robinson (1885-91) made a serious effort to diversify in response to the depression in sugar. In 1886 he established District Agricultural Boards in the wards, with the special function of stimulating and promoting 'minor industries' and instructing peasant cultivators in better farming methods. To coordinate their work a Central Agricultural Board was set up, which produced a journal, The Agricultural Record, and made recommendations on matters like agricultural credit, agricultural training, the fruit trade, farm shows, ants, and similar subjects.36 He granted fifty acres, on easy terms, for the experimental cultivation of the ramie fibre, and he promised to extend similar concessions to any individual or company making a bona fide attempt to introduce new crops.37 He started the experimental cultivation of new crops at the government farm at Chaguanas, and set up a tobacco plantation at Siparia. Robinson was particularly anxious to stimulate an export trade in citrus and bananas. These fruits were already grown by smallholders in many parts of the island, and Robinson thought that an export trade to the United States could be established, if transportation was made available to the growers. In 1889 he was authorised to grant a subsidy of ^5,000 for a regular steamship service around the island, to Tobago, and thence to New York, with steamers especially fitted out for a cargo of fruit. Robinson thought that this service would allow the small growers to bring their

The environment

21

produce to market, while obviating the necessity for constructing expensive roads through sparsely populated districts. It would encourage settlers along the coastline to grow new crops for the American market. In 1890 Robinson claimed that the fruit trade was increasing rapidly; one steamer had shipped at Erin 1,253 crates of magnificent limes, and at Las Cuevas a quantity of excellent bananas. The steamships had also enabled coastal farmers to sell their cocoa, coconuts and provisions, much of which had previously perished for lack of transportation. 38 One need not question Robinson's sincerity, nor his energy, in the cause of diversification.39 But he had little success. The export trade in fruit never flourished, and the subsidy to the steamship service was withdrawn after two years. Tobacco cultivation failed. Other 'minor industries' remained extremely minor. One reason for these failures was a shortage of capital and inadequate credit facilities for small cultivators. Government lending to farmers was considered out of the question, and the Colonial Bank did not lend money on the security of land and crops. High rates of interest imposed by city merchants and money-lenders made the cultivator prefer to grow crops, such as cocoa, which were sure to yield a high profit margin to enable him to absorb the interest rates, rather than untried and possibly unprofitable products. The very profitability of cocoa reduced a farmer's incentive to grow other crops. The only really successful alternative crops developed in this period were coconuts and rice, and neither was the result of efforts by the Government. In the 1890s coconuts became a fairly significant export crop, with thirty-eight coconut estates listed in the Annual Register for 1895, mostly owned by French Creoles. Rice became an important peasant crop. Indians began the cultivation of wet (padi) rice in irrigated fields in the 1860s, on the Caroni and Oropouche lagoon lands. The 'free' Indians living in the new villages being formed after 1870 took enthusiastically to the cultivation of wet rice, and during the 1870s rice fields were established from the Caroni swamp to the edges of the Oropouche lagoon. 40 By 1896 6,000 acres were in wet rice, providing one-sixth of local consumption. Planters disliked this development, because they found that rice tended to attract and retain Indian labourers. 41 By 1903 the production of rice was about 45,000 bags annually, in Caroni, Oropouche, Cedros and Mayaro. Although methods of cultivation were primitive and costly in labour, the yield was fairly high. One writer at the turn of the century thought that with more capital and adequate roads in the rice-growing districts, the industry could greatly increase its production and cheapen the staple diet of the Indian population.42 But the point to be made here is that government participation in the development of cocoa, coconuts and rice had been minimal. There was considerable hostility even to the small advances towards

22

Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

diversification achieved by Robinson. The West India Committee was the mouthpiece for this hostility. In a revealing exchange of correspondence between the Committee, Robinson, and the Secretary of State in 1890, 43 the Committee criticised Robinson's 'policy of the last few years'. He had encouraged minor industries 'at the expense o f sugar, now more than ever 'the most important factor in the future of Trinidad'. His policy had as its object the dispersal of the already sparse population away from the settled area by opening the Crown lands to small purchasers. Existing industries were thus deprived of labour, and the forests destroyed. The population should rather be kept in the settled areas by every legislative means possible, and then increased by stepping up immigration. Robinson defended his policy in a vigorous despatch. The extension of minor industries, he said, had begun at least forty years before, and the opening of the Crown lands dated to A. H . Gordon's time, while the great expansion in cocoa came in the 1870s. If it had not been for these developments, which he had in no sense initiated, the colony could hardly have weathered the 1884-5 sugar depression. Yet Trinidad was still dependent on imported vegetables and other foods which could easily have been grown at home. Minor industries would reduce this dependence, and would create a prosperous and stable class of peasant proprietors. The Committee wished, in effect, to force down the wages of free labour by hemming the people within a relatively small area, the sugar belt. The Secretary of State, acting as a kind of referee, judged that Robinson had 'clearly and amply justified the policy adopted by [his] predecessors, and vigorously pursued by [him]self, of encouraging minor industries'. The lack of adequate credit facilities was certainly an important factor in the failure of diversification, as well as a serious deficiency in the colony's economy. There were remarkably few economic institutions in this period. The Colonial Bank was the only commercial bank; all efforts to establish a rival since it opened in 1837 n a d failed. Its subscribed capital was £2 million in 1886, and its dividend in 1883-6 was ten per cent. 44 Its monopoly on commercial banking was in fact injurious to the smaller planter or businessman. An editor pointed out that the Colonial Bank's high profits freed it from any necessity of seeking smaller clients, and its express policy was to avoid all 'speculative' ventures, including any advances on the security of growing crops.45 The Government Savings Banks were useful in encouraging regular savings by smallholders and labourers, but, of course, they could not advance money. Branch banks were established in the 1880s and in 1889 there were 12,549 depositors with total deposits of ^255,928. 46 The absence of credit and banking facilities for all but the established planter and businessman led to the growth of informal cooperative movements of various kinds. The susu was a device by which people regularly contri-

The environment

23

buted small sums to a common pool; each contributor in turn took the total sum collected, at stated intervals. African in origin, it was practised everywhere in the rural districts. A very similar tradition of cooperative borrowing, known as the chaiteyi and brought from north-east India, was practised by Indians in Trinidad. Friendly Societies flourished. An Ordinance in 1889 required their incorporation by registration. The * Heart and Hand' society, for instance, had 917 members and funds of about ^232. They existed for funeral and sickness benefits, and their membership was almost exclusively coloured and black, from the ' respectable' labouring class and from the lower-middle class of teachers, policemen, clerks and skilled artisans. 47 The Lodges fulfilled similar functions. There were always the money-lenders, lending at very high rates of interest; no government-run pawnbrokers existed, as in the French islands. There was a crying need, thought the Port of Spain Gazette, for an institution to advance credit on a small scale, combining pawnbroking with loans, as well as a Savings Bank or a Penny Bank in the rural districts. This would rescue the working class from the clutches of the usurer. 48 An attempt to form such an institution was made by the radical Chief Justice Sir John Gorrie in 1889-92. He tried to establish a * People's Bank', with the object of giving advances at low rates to cultivators on the security of growing crops. As Chairman of a Provisional Committee, Gorrie won considerable public support for the proposed bank, and in 1891 the Secretary of State sanctioned the establishment of the bank by a public Ordinance, which was duly passed.49 But the bank never went into operation. Gorrie left Trinidad in May 1892 and died two months later, and with his departure, the impetus was lost. The Colonial Office required certain amendments to be made to the Ordinance which the promoters were unwilling to accept; they decided not to set up the bank, and shareholders had their payments returned. 50 A majority of the planting and business community had opposed the project, though a few prominent businessmen were members of the Provisional Committee. To conclude, there were no economic institutions which advanced loans to the small cultivator, craftsman or entrepreneur; they were dependent on informal institutions such as Friendly Societies or the susu, or the money-lenders. The revenues of the colony depended on indirect taxes. Between 1862 and 1872 there was an income tax levied on the profits and incomes of planters, merchants, professionals, and all those earning incomes of over ^200 per annum. It was low enough, but the merchants, planters, clerks and shop assistants organised an agitation against it; and in 1872 Longden abolished it in response to this pressure, with the inadequate explanation that the tax required 'minute enquiries into the business and profits of merchants, planters and traders which are always felt as distasteful, and which are especially objectionable in small communities'. 51 It was never

24

Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

reimposed. There was an export duty on all exports, sugar, rum and molasses, cocoa, coconuts, asphalt, and bitters, calculated each year, which went towards meeting the cost of immigration. (Two-thirds of this was met by the planters through the export duty and indenture fees; one-third was charged to the general revenues.) There was a land tax, which in 1879 was fixed at one shilling per acre on all land, cultivated or not, regardless of the amount owned.52 Again, there was a house tax of seven-and-a-half per cent of value on all buildings worth more than ^ 5 per annum, and a tax of four shillings per room or cottage on buildings worth less than that. All buildings used in the manufacture of sugar or its by-products, however, were exempt from this tax. The bulk of the revenues came from indirect taxes: import duties on nearly every class of imports into the colony, including basic foodstuffs such as flour, rice, bread, oil, salt fish and salted meat; and including too, such necessities as kerosene, clothes, and agricultural tools {except machinery and equipment imported for the sugar industry). From time to time the tariff schedules were changed. The Trade and Taxes Commission of 1886-7 recommended radical reduction of duties on some imports and complete abolition on all foodstuffs, but nothing came of it. At the turn of the century imports, including food, were still heavily taxed. Perhaps no other single aspect of government policy had such a harmful effect on the masses. 'Business' in nineteenth-century Trinidad meant, in effect, importexport agencies and the larger dry goods stores; this sector was dominated by the French Creoles and the Scots, and to a lesser degree by Germans and English Creoles.53 There was a certain amount of light manufacturing industry at the turn of the century: several rum distilleries; the wellknown Angostura Bitters factory owned by the Siegert family; two coconut oil and fibre factories; factories manufacturing ice, chocolate, matches, carriages, soap, leather goods, beer and stout, cigarettes and cigars; and various iron and brass foundries and machine shops.54 Most of this manufacturing industry was located in Port of Spain. Clearly, then, white Creoles and Europeans controlled the local economy: the two major export staples, sugar and cocoa, commerce and industry, and financial institutions. The planter-merchant community used their command of the economy to influence the policies of the local government in their interests. Indeed, the central fact about politics in Trinidad in the later nineteenth century is that the planter-merchant community was able to exercise a very considerable influence on policy making, despite the formally autocratic Crown Colony constitution. For Trinidad was a 'pure' Crown Colony between 1831 and 1924, governed by an entirely official Executive Council and a Legislative Council composed of officials and nominated Unofficials. The authorised

The environment

25

justification for Crown Colony government, first formulated early in the century, remained in constant use towards its end: the Crown was the guardian and representative of the masses, the protector of popular interests against the oppression of the landowners. 55 Such a theory was, of course, based on the conviction that the coloured races were unfit for selfgovernment, and it came under increasingly severe attacks from liberals in the colonies. A perceptive editorial in Public Opinion attacked the heart of the official apology for Crown Colony government: Instituted for the protection of the people by the Crown, against the cruel and grasping oppression of the rich and powerful, the gradual encroachments of the holders of the soil on the prerogatives of the sovereign brought about a state of things diametrically opposite to the original purpose of the institution. 56

It was the great myth of Crown Colony government that Governors and officials were impartial administrators and, at the same time, the special protectors of the poor. The Crown was the representative of the unrepresented masses; hence the need to keep power and responsibility in the hands of the Governor. But the written constitution of a Crown Colony was one thing, reality another: 'the theory of the constitution asserted autocracy. The practice of politics assumed an oligarchy.' 57 It was too much to expect that British officials would have operated as truly impartial arbiters between the contending socio-economic groups. For these English gentlemen by and large shared the planters' general political and social views. There was no need for the Governor to assert his 'autocratic' powers, except in very exceptional cases. For the planter-merchant community, the Governors, and the British officials were agreed, on the whole, on what should be the general lines of policy. Furthermore, the poor had no access to the policy-makers, while the propertied interests, through the Unofficial members of the Legislative Council, could lobby effectively. The practice of appointing Unofficials to represent the large property interests of the community made it inevitable that they would influence the decisions of the administrators. Throughout the nineteenth century, Unofficials were nominated to represent the leading economic sectors of the island, sugar, cocoa, and commerce. The theory was that only men with a large economic stake in the island would truly have its interests at heart, and it fitted in well with the idea that only ' men of substance' could play a positive role in political life. The use of such criteria gave the dominant position to the planting interest, for there were few independent merchants or professionals who could have fulfilled the requirement of considerable wealth. Commerce was intimately linked with both sugar and cocoa, for most of the leading firms were suppliers and exporters to the estates, and many prominent businessmen were also plantation owners. The Unofficials, therefore, represented sugar, cocoa, and commerce, and they were appointed because

7.6

Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

of the large property interests they represented. Announcing the appointment of J. Bell Smythe in 1871, the Governor noted that he was a partner of 'one of the first mercantile houses' in Trinidad, a firm which owned considerable estates of its own, and was the agent for Messrs Tennant, the owners of some of the finest properties in the island.58 Further, the interests of the absentee capitalists were an important consideration; there was a tacit agreement that the Colonial Company should always have a 'representative' in the Council. The Governor explained his appointment of J. F. Bourne in 1871 by stating that he had 'been led to select Mr. Bourne chiefly on account of the great interest in the Colony which he represents'; he was agent of the Colonial Company in Trinidad. 59 Subsequently, Frederick Warner and G. T. Fenwick, respectively legal counsel and planting attorney to the Company, served as Unofficials for many years in the last decades of the century. There was a distinct bias to sugar, the only industry in which British capitalists had significant interests. In 1870 out of eight Unofficials, five were sugar planters, one was a doctor with interests in sugar and cocoa, and two were barristers, one of them legal counsel to the Colonial Company. 60 Members were appointed to 'represent' cocoa, when that crop became as important as sugar, but often they also had interests in sugar. In 1889 five Unofficials were owners of both sugar and cocoa estates,61 and the merchant members were closely linked to both interests. By 1897, out of nine Unofficials, six were planters, two were merchants closely connected with the planting community, and one was an independent barrister. Between 1862 and 1898 there was an Unofficial majority in the Council. This had been conceded on the condition that if the Unofficials consistently combined to oppose the government, extra officials would be nominated, and it was maintained until 1898, despite the misgivings of senior officials in the Colonial Office.62 But the Unofficials rarely combined to vote against the government; there were few issues on which they strongly disagreed with official policy, and unanimity was hindered by religious and national divisions. Governor H . T. Irving stated in 1878 that the Unofficial members had never combined against the Governor. In his view, the Trinidad Council was 'a more efficient legislative machine, affording more support to the Government, and commanding more public consideration, than was the case in the other Crown Colonies' where he had worked.63 Probably the Unofficial majority was not as important in its effects as the informal relationship between the Unofficials and the Governor, and between them and the Colonial Office. Preponderant social and economic influence underpinned the planters' political position, making it improbable that any but the strongest-willed Governor would oppose them. The relationship between the Governor and the planters decided the local influence of the plantocracy. In the period between

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A. H . Gordon's departure in 1870 and Sir William Robinson's arrival in 1885, this relationship was close. Robinson (1885-91) certainly annoyed the planters with many of his policies, but his successors in the last years of the century went very far to cooperate with them. As for the Colonial Office, the officials tended to show considerable deference to the wishes of the Unofficial members, especially on matters involving taxes and expenditure. 64 On the whole, they regarded the Unofficial as representing the bulk of the tax-payers of the Colony, the 'wealth' of the community. On occasion, the Office recognised that this notion did not square with the facts; in 1886 the Secretary of State noted that he could not regard 'the Unofficial Members of the Council as the representatives of any but a limited class of taxpayers'. 65 But in general, the Office was reluctant to override the views of the Unofficial on financial issues. Even on immigration, and economic policy in general, the Office was very responsive to the Unofficial' wishes. With Governors usually cooperative, and the Colonial Office sensitive to the Unofficial' views, the two possible checks on their power to influence policy had been neutralised. The Unofficial were able to exercise some control over the senior local officials. In most cases, the local officials shared the general ideas of the planting community, and so there was the less need to keep them in line. Many officials, both Creole and British, were themselves planters. Creoles like H . A. Fitt, Receiver-General, and M. M. Philip, Solicitor-General, owned and managed large sugar estates. Some British officials, including judges, also owned property. Chief Justice Needham (1870-85) owned and managed the 433-acre San Antonio cocoa estate, said to be the finest in the island. Needham was said to act in the Council like a resident Santa Cruz proprietor.66 Another British judge owned shares in local companies; this caused embarrassment when a defendant objected to his hearing a case in which the other party was a company in which the judge held shares.67 Despite a general understanding that officers in the Colonial Service should not own land for commercial purposes, nor shares in commercial undertakings, many officials in Trinidad were directly connected with the planter-merchant community. 68 Furthermore, the Unofficial members did not hesitate to indicate their dissatisfaction with officials who were thought to be unfavourably disposed to the planters. Both Henry Mitchell and Charles Mitchell, Protectors of Immigrants in this period, were criticised in Council by the Unofficial for actions or statements 'unfriendly' to the planting interest. Again, the Unofficial could reward, or punish, Governors by voting increases or reductions in their salaries. H . T. Irving was the beneficiary of an increase voted for by six out of seven Unofficial in 1877, while in 1884 the Secretary of State agreed to sanction a reduction in the Governor's

28

Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

salary because a majority of the Unofficials had voted for it, even though the motion had been lost on a tied vote.69 On another occasion, the Unofficials, in an unusual show of unanimity, voted to reduce the pension of the retired Director of Works, who had been extremely unpopular with the planters because of the extravagant spending and incompetence of his department, and the reduction was sanctioned.70 The whole episode of the Judicial Enquiry Commission illustrates the power of the Unofficials to make life uncomfortable for recalcitrant officials, in this case, Chief Justice Sir John Gorrie and Justice Cook. From 1885, when Gorrie arrived, to 1892, when the Commission began its investigation into the administration of justice, the Unofficials conducted a persistent campaign against Gorrie. It was a group of Unofficials led by A. P. Marry at and Louis de Verteuil whose representations led the Secretary of State to appoint the Commission, and they formed an * Unofficial Committee' which acted like a prosecuting counsel during the enquiry, retaining legal help to cross-examine Gorrie, Cook, and their witnesses. In the event, Cook was dismissed for unfitness for duty caused by his drinking habits; the Commission found Gorrie guilty of questionable judicial procedures, though it thought his intentions honourable, and he was suspended from office pending the Secretary of State's decision; he died on his way to London to put his case. Gorrie's unforgivable sin, in the eyes of the planter-merchant community, was to administer justice impartially and to reform judicial proceedings in order to open up the courts to working-class suitors. Gorrie was substantially right when he said of the Unofficials who had supported the Commission of Enquiry: They are subject to every local bias and prejudice, men who have no sympathy with an impartial administration of Justice, men who would not and do not hesitate to use their public position to make charges and demand enquiries with a view to getting control of the Judiciary.71

The Colonial Office felt that the Unofficials, as representing the wealth of the community, should have considerable influence on all taxation decisions. It was because of the pressure of the planters and merchants, whom the Unofficials represented, that income tax was abolished in 1872.72 Again, in 1883, three recently introduced taxation bills were attacked in a petition from ' Planters, Merchants, Proprietors, Shopkeepers, and other Inhabitants', signed by the representatives of all the absentee sugar firms and by over eight hundred resident planters and merchants. The Governor announced to the Council that: In view of the strong adverse opinions therein expressed, by so many whose opinions are of great weight and which it is the Governor's duty to respect, without entering into the arguments adduced, he had decided to withdraw the bills in question.73

On taxation matters, Governors were extremely reluctant to oppose the

The environment

29

planters and merchants, and their spokesmen in the Council. The fate of the Trade and Taxes Commission illustrates this. This Commission was set up in 1886 to make recommendations for changing the taxation system. It recommended, inter alia, a reduction of import duties on foodstuffs, and the abolition of export duties to pay for immigration. This was well received by the Colonial Office. But the Unofficials, the planters, and the Chamber of Commerce were hostile. A petition from 'Merchants, Traders, Proprietors and Planters' protested against these recommendations, and so did the Chamber of Commerce.74 Robinson, who had appointed the Commission, was reluctant to override the planter-merchant community; in addition, his bad relations with Gorrie, the Commission's Chairman, led him to postpone implementing its suggested reforms indefinitely. He asked the Commissioners whether, in view of the opposition of the planters and merchants, they would adhere to their recommendations. In the absence of Gorrie on leave, a majority resolved that it was not 'opportune' to carry out their original recommendations. Robinson would have shelved the whole matter if the Secretary of State had not positively instructed him to abolish duties on flour and rice; but all the other tariff reforms proposed by the Commission were indefinitely postponed in view of the opposition of the Unofficials.75 The taxation structure illustrates the deference shown by London to the advice of the Unofficials: few property taxes and no income tax, heavy duties on articles of mass consumption, and exemption of buildings used for the manufacture of sugar from the house tax. The Unofficials exercised even greater control over finances with the establishment of the Finance Committee in 1886. This Committee, consisting of all the Unofficials with three official members, considered and reported on the annual estimates before they were presented to the Council. Although the senior officials in London had misgivings, they agreed to it 'to pacify the Unofficial Members' and to 'stave off the inconvenient demand for Home Rule', that is, for elected members in the Council. 76 The Governor stated that the Secretary of State 'had practically handed over the control of the finances to the Unofficial Members'. 77 This was an exaggeration, since he could reject a decision unanimously voted for by the Finance Committee; but this rarely happened. In time the Committee usurped some of the functions of the Executive, and it made a habit of attacking civil servants by voting cuts in their salaries or pensions. The practice was established informally (without London's approval) that any item rejected in the Committee would not be included when the estimates were presented in the full Council. In effect they could reverse the policy of the Executive by a simple majority in the Committee, and thus they exercised a powerful, if negative, control over expenditure. 78 There were other standing committees of the Council through which

30

Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

the Unofficials could influence policy, especially the Immigration Committee, consisting of all the Unofficials and the Protector; this Committee decided the annual quota of immigrants and other related matters. Officials showed considerable reluctance to override the opinions and requests of this body, and in normal circumstances its recommendations were followed even when the government disapproved of them. When the Committee rejected a scheme of Robinson's to subsidise the immigration of Portuguese labourers from the Azores, the acting Governor commented bitterly: It seems merely necessary for me to add that the same Committee would agitate for the Government paying the whole cost of the importation of Coolies, if they thought the question would be entertained. . .The planters, in preferring the East Indian immigrants, consider only their own interests.79

But the scheme was quietly shelved, and the Unofficials got their way. One of the best examples of the Unofficials' ability to influence policymaking is provided by an episode in 1894-5. Responding to pressure from the Unofficials, Governor F. N . Broome agreed to appoint a Select Committee, consisting of three officials and all the Unofficials, to recommend ways and means to remove or reduce taxes which burdened the island's agricultural industries. This Committee, taking evidence only from sugar planters - and five out of the seven giving evidence were the agents of the leading British firms - produced a blatantly self-interested report. It advocated that two-thirds of the cost of immigration should be paid by the general revenues for three years, and that the house and land taxes should be reduced by one-half for three years. To make good the loss of revenue, the Committee recommended increased import duties on a wide range of articles of mass consumption, as well as a tax on cocoa dealers. In other words, the Committee suggested very substantial financial relief to the sugar industry at the expense of the general tax-payers and cocoa dealers.80 A special meeting of the Council was held immediately after the release of the report; it was adopted with only one dissentient. In a most extraordinary procedure, three bills to give effect to the report were each read three times and passed in all their stages at this same meeting. 81 Broome sanctioned these proceedings even though he believed the proposed relief to sugar was unsound in principle because it was a special bounty to a private industry; he did so because 'the interests concerned. . . are very large and strong, in London as well as in Trinidad'. He merely raised the question of whether the poorer classes should pay more for their staple foods in order to aid their employers.82 This incident made the Colonial Office see that the Trinidad Unofficials were a selfish oligarchy. The senior officials' minutes were severely critical of the Committee's report and of Broome's action in pushing its recommendations through the Council.88 And the Secretary of State's reply was caustic. He castigated the report as 'superficial and perfunctory', and he

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31

regretted 'the precipitancy with which this report. . .was disposed of in the Legislative Council and effect given to some of its recommendations'. He agreed, however, to a reduction of the export duty on sugar, rum and molasses by two-thirds for 1895 only, as a measure of relief to the sugar industry. He vetoed the proposed reduction in the house and land taxes, and the tax on cocoa dealers. 'The precipitate revision of the tariff and the increase of duties on food' he thought' very regrettable', and he requested that the changes be repealed.84 Despite the severity of Ripon's despatch, G. T. Fenwick moved that the whole of the export duty should be remitted in 1895 instead of the twothirds reduction sanctioned, as a concession, by the Secretary of State. When Broome ruled this out of order, the Unofficial wrote to Ripon with the same plea.85 But by then Joseph Chamberlain, not noted for sympathy for West Indian planters, had taken office, and he replied curtly that he saw 'no adequate reason' for relieving the planters from the reduced tax.86 The selfish irresponsibility of the Unofficial, and the Governor's weakness in capitulating to them, clearly made the permanent officials recognise that the Unofficial were a powerful and self-interested body of men.87 Nevertheless, they agreed to a substantial measure of relief to sugar, and this concession went against the traditional reluctance of the Colonial Office to aid private industries. It was an index of the deference shown to the Unofficials. It seems clear, then, that the planter-merchant community was able to exercise considerable influence over the making of domestic policy through the Unofficials. They were able to do so through their social contacts with the Governor and the officials, through their ability to 'punish' or 'reward' officials, and through their control of committees of the Council such as the Finance and Immigration Committees or ad hoc Select Committees. Even more significant was the fact that the Governors and the Colonial Office attached great importance to the Unofficials' views on all local matters, especially those related to taxes and expenditure, and overrode those views only with great reluctance and only in exceptional cases. It was this deference to the Unofficials which enabled them to exercise so much influence over the local government, especially in economic affairs; an influence which they exercised in the narrow interests of the plantermerchant community. Trinidadians were well aware of that fact, and those of them who opposed the domination of the sugar interest often criticised the Unofficials for promoting their own sectional interests to the neglect of the whole community. In fact, an attack on the planter-dominated Council was the main theme in the more general attack on Crown Colony government. Generally, the idea that Unofficials should represent economic interests

32

Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

was accepted, and the argument was simply that other sections besides sugar should have a fair representation.88 New Era, the liberal organ of the black and coloured middle class, attacked the * class legislation' of the planter-Unofficials.89 Men who are selected for the business of Government from a particular class, will naturally be prone to give undue prominence to their exclusive interests.. .It is only in the natural order of things that our Legislature should be used as a machinery for the furtherance of the particular interests of the class whose supporters so largely preponderate in its composition.

The paper concluded: We are entitled to denounce a system which renders it possible that the interests of a single class should enjoy such an undue preponderance as has been claimed for the sugar interest of late.90

Public Opinion, a leading liberal paper, argued that only the rich were represented in the Council; no one spoke for the thousands of small cocoa cultivators, or the labourers. The Council had become a powerful instrument of oppression in the hands of the planters. 91 The action of the Unofficials in attempting to secure aid for sugar in 1894-5 provoked a spate of criticism. Letters and editorials complained that the legislators were so blinded by self-interest that they increased the cost of living of the very class least able to afford it, the labourers. It was hardly surprising if the public inferred that the Unofficials were indifferent to everyone in the community except themselves and their fellow planters. They persisted in sacrificing 'all future possibilities for the colony in order to protect their interests'. In short, the episode had made people wonder 'whether the constitution sufficiently represents and safeguards all interests in the community'. 92 The more flagrant examples of the planter domination of the Council, that is to say, made Trinidadians question the constitutional structure of Crown Colony government itself. In the 1880s and 1890s, there was a movement for the reform of that constitution, with the aim of gaining some elected representatives in the Council. 93 Perhaps the central theme of this movement was an attack on the nominated Unofficials as the representatives of a narrow interest. The reformers argued that the political domination of sugar, especially the absentee sugar owners, would continue unless and until the nomination system was partly replaced by election. The reform movement was, in large part, a reaction to the power of the sugar interest entrenched on the Unofficial side of the Council. This movement failed to secure elected representatives. Knutsford in 1889, and Chamberlain in 1895, rejected the reformers' arguments and refused to modify the wholly nominated Legislature. The power of the Unofficials to influence policy in the interests of the planter-merchant

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community was not significantly weakened in this period. It was this planter and business elite, composed almost exclusively of white Creoles and Europeans, which dominated political life in Crown Colony Trinidad, just as they controlled all the significant sectors of the economy. Despite the divisions of religion and national origin, they formed a single power bloc, a true ruling class. It is necessary to examine the economic, social, and cultural activities of this powerful white elite if we are to understand the society over which they ruled.

The white elite

Victorian Trinidad was a rigidly hierarchical society, in which few questioned the position of the white upper class as the political, economic, and social elite. Not all whites belonged to this elite. The Portuguese immigrants from Madeira, who of course were white, were never a part of it in this period. Nor were many persons of mainly Spanish descent who had come from Venezuela in the nineteenth century. Some of the wealthier Venezuelan immigrants, who had assimilated into Trinidad society, would certainly be considered members of the white elite. Many were well-educated and well-off; the settled immigrants were buying land and going into cocoa. There was, too, a group of 'middle-class' whites who could not be considered as members of the elite. They were the young men, both European and Creole, but most often English or Scottish, who were overseers on the estates, shop assistants, teachers, NCOs in the police, journalists and printers. They were on the margin of the elite, but there was always the possibility that they could move up into it: through promotion (a young store clerk might be admitted as partner to the owner; an estate overseer might be made manager), or through marriage into ' good' Creole or expatriate families. The undoubted white elite consisted of two main groups: first, the British officials in the more important posts and the English and Scottish merchants, planters, and professionals resident in Trinidad, and second, the white Creoles, born in the island, descended from French, Spanish, Irish and English nationals - the 'old families' of the society. The group of British officials were regarded by the society as 'birds of passage', men who stayed a few years, earned large salaries, and then moved on. J. J. Thomas said that these types were Froude's 'Anglo-West Indians', who believed that, being Anglo-Saxon, they had a divine right to dominate any country in which they found themselves. The Colonial Office brought them out, and it was their delight to lord it over the people who paid their salaries.1 In the same vein an editorial commented that Englishmen with capital went to Australia, with brains to India, with neither to the West Indies; the Colonial Office List showed 'how they swarm and how they thrive'. 2 But Thomas conceded that there were 34

The white elite

35

Europeans of another type in the West Indies, neither officials, nor remnants of the slave-holding class with its Bourbon mentality. These depended on their resources of capital, brains and energy to make a living; they were shrewd, upright and active. They created homes in Trinidad, and they identified with the Creoles as opposed to the birds of passage. Thomas is here referring to those Europeans who came to Trinidad and opened businesses, or acted as agents for the British sugar firms, or went into cocoa, or practised as barristers or doctors. Many of them lived in the island for most of their lives and became Creoles by adoption, like L. M. Fraser and Robert Guppy, inter-marrying with the white Creoles. C. S. Salmon, a liberal English author, agreed that the Englishmen settled in the West Indies were different from the old slave-owner types; many were enterprising and active. But some members of the 'old' families were of the old type, men who regretted the end of slavery.3 These were the white Creoles, who formed the second group in the white elite. A sociologist has commented that scholars have neglected to study white Creoles as a part of Caribbean society; not merely as Europeans in the tropics, but as integral elements in the segmented society, 'natives' just as much as the non-white population. Thus the great majority of Trinidad whites might have had the physical characteristics of the ' white race', but in sociological terms they were marginal, not to their own society, but to the metropolitan society. They had a double frame of reference: one for external use, applied to contacts with outside whites, one for internal use, applied to relations with non-whites of their own society. The first was identical to that of the metropolitan white, egalitarian and 'modern' when not concerned with race; the second was framed by historical factors: slavery, plantation society, the patriarchal milieu. 4 The French Creoles dominated the white Creole elite. These were mainly whites of French descent, but the term was generally understood to include people of English, Irish, Spanish, Corsican, and even German descent, born in the island, and almost invariably Roman Catholic. People born in Europe, but resident in Trinidad for many years, and linked by marriage to this group, were also by courtesy considered to be French Creoles. Two prominent examples in this period are L. M. Fraser, English born, Catholic, and married to a woman from a Corsican family resident in Trinidad since before the British conquest; and Sylvester Devenish, Irish born, whose children were all born in Trinidad and married French Creoles. One could belong to this group, in other words, by birth, by marriage, or by ascription. The French Creoles (the expression being used throughout in the broad sense already described) formed a closely united elite, racially exclusive, and imbued with aristocratic traditions. The historian L. M. Fraser described the origin of this group: they were

36

Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

families belonging to the old noblesse, tempted by St. Laurent's glowing description of Trinidad, who had left the other French colonies in the hope of redeeming fortunes squandered in the salons of Paris and Versailles, and these formed the nucleus of that refined society for which the island has always been celebrated, and which constitutes one of its most distinctive features.5

The descendants of the noble immigrants were the 'old families', the 'good Creole stock'. There were clear criteria for membership in the French Creole elite, which all made for a sense of group solidarity. There was, first of all, kinship. A high value was placed on family connections, on the 'respected' names. Kinship, of course, was achieved either by birth or by marriage. But before marriage into the group could take place, the aspirant had himself to be acceptable. Secondly, there were personal attributes, notably race and religion. A member of the elite had to be 'pure white' - with no known black ancestors - and Roman Catholic. And the last criterion was property: it was a plantation-owning class, and so ownership of land was a significant measure of status. But the essential points were racial purity and aristocratic tradition; marriage outside the group meant automatic loss of membership. Some of the leading French Creoles were descended from French aristocrats who fled the French Revolution and its aftermath in St Domingue, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and St Lucia. P. G. Borde, a French Creole who wrote a history of Trinidad under the Spanish, published in 1881, stated that most of the French immigrants after 1783 were 'nobles' or 'gentilshommes', quoting as his authority 'traditions de famille'. 'Les blancs, en general', he wrote, 'etaient nobles, car on sait que ce furent des gentilshommes qui peuplerent en grande partie les etablissements des Francais en Amerique.' 6 He listed the titled French colonists who settled in Trinidad before, or soon after, the British conquest. His list includes many of the ' respected' French Creole families: de Gannes de la Chancellerie, de la Bastide, de la Sauvagere, le Gendre, de Gourville, de la Peyrouse, de Coudree, de Boissiere, de Loppinot, de Montalambert, de Verteuil, de Montrichard. 7 Many other families were certainly not descended from French noblemen, but adopted aristocratic traditions nevertheless, or boasted of their family's long residence in the island. Some French Creoles had ancestors who had been officers in the Spanish Empire. The Llanos family descended from Don Jose Damian de Cuenca, Lieu tenant-Governor of Trinidad and Guyana 1783-6. The Guiseppis, Corsican by origin, descended from Don Jose Mayan and Don Pablo Guiseppi, who both served as Teniente de Justicia Mayor of St Joseph in Spanish times. L. M. Fraser's son married a direct descendant of Don Valentin de Basanta, a Spanish officer appointed by Chacon in 1792 as Commissary of Population.8 The Farfans, of Spanish descent, had been

The white elite

37

settled in St Joseph since the seventeenth century and had intermarried with many leading French Creole families. 9 These French Creole families cherished a tradition of loyalty to the House of Bourbon; they were royalist in politics, bitterly hostile to the revolutionary and republican movements. The Chevalier de Verteuil, who came to the island in 1797 with the British forces to found its most influential French Creole family, had campaigned actively against the Revolution. His father and brother were killed in the counter-revolutionary Revolt of the Vendee. The Chevalier himself enlisted in the Dutch Army in order to fight the republicans, then went to England and took part in an emigre raid on Brittany in 1795. Enlisted in a British regiment, he took part in the West Indian campaign of 1796-7, and decided to settle as a planter in Trinidad shortly after its capture. 10 The Ganteaumes descended from an ardent royalist planter who fled Martinique in the early 1790s when that island was temporarily in republican control. The persistence of the royalist tradition is indicated, towards the end of the nineteenth century, by the enthusiastic welcome extended to a Bourbon prince who visited the island by the 'old' French Creole families 'who had originally been forced into exile through devotion to the House of Bourbon and the Roman Catholic religion'. 11 It was to France of the Ancien Regime that the French Creoles gave their loyalties. The de Verteuils were certainly the 'first family' of the French Creole sector, and one of the Chevalier's sons, Louis A. A. de Verteuil (born in 1807), became the spokesman and leader of his class for much of the nineteenth century. He was imbued with French culture, royalist politics, devotion to the Catholic faith, and, above all, family pride. The Chevalier sent all his children to France for their education. Louis was educated at the College of Juilly, near Paris, run by Oratorian Fathers, and at the University of Paris, where he qualified in medicine. He practised medicine in Port of Spain for over fifty years, but he was also, in the family tradition, interested in both sugar and cocoa plantations. His descendant and biographer, who clearly admires Louis to the point of ancestor-worship, admits that, If he had any fault it was excessive pride in his family and his aristocratic background. . .He was a great gentleman with something of that grand manner about him that perished for the most part on the guillotine.. .On one famous occasion, shortly after the Queen had conferred the knighthood on him, it is related that Governor Broome addressed him as 'Sir Louis'. Louis answered 'Do not call me Sir. Call me Count. The British Government made me a knight, but I was born a Count.'12

The French Creoles were sure that their aristocratic background and traditions had elevated the tone of Trinidad society. Borde said of the French immigrants, 'comme toutes les populations franco-americaines de

38

Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

l'epoque, celle de la Trinidad se distinguait par des manieres ouvertes, aisees et polies; elle avait le respect d'autrui et de soi-meme'. They formed 'une veritable aristocratie de peau qui ne le cedait ni en urbanite ni en distinction a celle du sang', and thanks to them 'le ton de la societe etait eleve'.13 Borde was writing of the 1780s and 1790s, but French Creoles thought that their class still exercised an elevating influence on island society, imparting a 'high tone' to social life and making Trinidad society 'the most polished of the English West Indies'. 'There is no doubt', a French Creole editor wrote in 1 { that the greater refinement which is observed among all classes in Trinidad, as compared with some other colonies, is due to the presence of families like De Gannes, de Verteuil, le Cadre, Farfan etc. By their influence the cruder types who flow into Trinidad are smoothed down, and become in one or two generations as polished as the best.14

French Creoles were also proud that their ancestors had been the pioneers of cultivation and settlement. Borde devotes much of the second volume of his history to an account of the French role in the development and colonisation of Trinidad between 1783 and 1797, and calls on 'les enfants du pays' to acknowledge the achievements of the pioneers of colonisation.15 On the death of Toussaint Rostant, born in Trinidad in 1794 and therefore a capitulant, an editor wrote: French blood and English energy created that mixture of kindheartedness and stern resolve, which distinguished most of the old planters who opened up our virgin forests and pushed civilisation into the heart of the island.

According to this editor, 'the quarter of Couva was almost his creation'. 16 Pioneers of colonisation and civilisation, patriarchal slave owners, aristocratic 'habitants de la carnpagne': such was the image of themselves that the French Creoles cherished. An exaggerated deference to birth and breeding was characteristic of this group. A de Verteuil wrote as late as 1932: 'I am a respecter of the old blood. . .1 still have that which they cannot buy.' It is not surprising, then, that we find the French Creoles practising the most rigid endogamy and extensive intermarriage. There were so few families who were acceptable: who were free from any taint of 'Negro blood', who were Catholics, who were aristocratic enough to meet the requirements, so everyone was related to everyone else - everyone who mattered, that is. Frederick de Verteuil wrote of the time when he was born (1887), 'about a dozen families were intimate, the others just did not exist'. 17 These would all be of French descent, and aristocratic in tradition. For this sector, intermarriage and inbreeding, social and familial incest, were both a virtue and a necessity.

Th e wh ite elite

39

The children of the Chevalier married into impeccably aristocratic French or French Creole families: the Ganteaumes, le Cadres, d'Abadies, Scheuits, de Goularts, de Gannes de la Chancellerie. Louis de Verteuil, the sixth child, married Franchise Joffre, from a Martiniquan family which migrated to Trinidad during the Revolution. Their surviving four children (three died as infants in the cholera epidemic of 1854) married into the Gionetti, de Lapeyrouse and Lange families.18 The Chevalier's second son, Louis Julien de Verteuil, married Elsa le Cadre and had twelve children (large families were characteristic). They married into the Sorzano, Labarnet, Quesnel, Andre, Lange and de Gannes families.19 On Louis de Verteuil's eightieth birthday, there was a great gathering of families connected by birth or marriage to the old patriarch, and these included Ache, Ganteaume, Lange, le Cadre, de Gannes, d'Abadie, Andre, Seheult, de Lapeyrouse, Gomez, Giraud, Labastide, Pantin and Sorzano.20 Intermarriage meant that most of the leading families were linked by a complex network of relationships, and marriages between close relatives were obviously common. 21 When children of the leading families married, the newspaper reports made comments like: 'a wedding in the high life of true Trinidad society', ' the elite of Creole society were there', ' the young people belong to two of the oldest and worthiest French families, the pioneers of colonisation and cultivation of Trinidad', or 'the union links two of the oldest families in Trinidad, and it is to be hoped that the happy pair never forget they are Creole born and Creole bred'. 22 The lists of guests at these affairs were nearly always identical on each occasion, and would invariably include many of these names: de Verteuil, Cipriani, Maingot, Pampellone, Scott, Pollonais, de Boissiere, Coryat, Garcia, Ganteaume, Centeno, Farfan, Ambard, Borde, O'Connor, Devenish, Lange, Sellier, Agostini, Guiseppi, Seheult, Gionanetti, de Lapeyrouse, Bernard, Leotaud, de Gannes, d'Abadie, Rostant, Sorzano, Damian, Labastide, Andre, Fitt, Hart, Laughlin, Llanos, Giraud. 23 A newspaper article of 1894 actually listed 'the elite of French Creoldom'. The list included nearly all those just named, and added others: Blanc, Gransaull, Anduze, de Montbrun, Pantin, Wehekind, Zurcher, Stollmeyer, Siegert, Rousseau, Vessigny, and Blanchard. The inclusion of the Irish and German names indicates how broad the term 'French Creole' was. 24 Perhaps, in all, there were about fifty families who counted, who could risk marrying each other. The French Creoles were extremely sensitive on all points of family honour and aristocratic pride. Borde wrote that they were hot-tempered and excessively concerned with their honour; the slightest offence, or insult, or 'un regard equivoque', could lead to encounters and sometimes duels.25 On several occasions newspaper editors who had insulted leading French Creole families in their papers were attacked and publicly

40

Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

assaulted; this happened four times to W. R. Gawthorne of the Star of the West, and at least once to T. R. N . Laughlin of the Port of Spain Gazette. Above all, they had an extremely strong sense of racial purity. More than the resident Europeans, they were open to the suspicion of having 'Negro blood'. Legal marriage to anyone known or reputed to have coloured ancestors would have been impossible for a member of the French Creole elite, and would have meant automatic loss of membership.26 'Outside' liaisons with black or coloured women were a wellestablished convention. Needless to say, the offspring of such connections could not move in French Creole society, even though they often bore the 'respected' names. The Chevalier de Verteuil, after the death of his wife, founded a second family in Arima by a Miss Audibert, who was apparently partly of Amerindian ancestry. One of their sons, Ludovic de Verteuil, caused great annoyance to the legitimate branch by obstinately using the 'de'. The family head, Louis de Verteuil, declared that the old Chevalier had expressly ordered his illegitimate children not to adopt the 'de', which was a distinction to which only the legitimate children of the noblesse were entitled, and threatened to 'take steps' if Ludovic persisted in his 'pretensions'. 27 This family quarrel became public; no doubt it reflected a widespread phenomenon. There was much gossip about wellknown families having non-white ancestry. Early in the twentieth century, a visitor was told by his hostess that the Garcias, a very well known family of Spanish descent, were ' very nice people, but they are said to be "touched" - with Negro blood, you know. It may not be so. It is fashionable here to blacken people's skins as well as their reputations.' 28 Generally speaking, as far as relations privees were concerned, the line between the French Creoles and other groups in the society was caste-like. French Creoles might marry a Catholic European long resident in the colony, but that was as far outside the fold as they would venture. In public contacts, the position was less rigid. Certainly coloured and black persons would not be invited to private gatherings at upper-class homes. But French Creoles would mix with educated people of colour at official functions, in certain church and charitable activities, and on some occasions in politics, in business and in the professions. Apart from these limited contacts, French Creoles dealt with non-whites only in stereotyped class relationships: employer and servant, planter and labourer, JP and offender. Especially significant was the intimate relationship which so often existed between black women domestics and the children of the elite. Such contacts gave white Creoles confidence in dealing with lower-class blacks whose status was defined as purely menial, a confidence which Europeans coming to the West Indies lacked. Many of the French Creole planters preserved the traditional patriarchal attitudes towards 'their people'. The French Creole elite cherished the

The white elite

41

notion that their slave-holding ancestors had been model masters, paternal and benevolent, and that slavery as practised by them in Trinidad was mild and humane, the slaves being regarded as members of the planter's family. This is the view argued skilfully in Borde's book. The slaves of the French planters, he writes, were 'comme des grands enfants qui auraient ete confies a la tutelle de leurs maitres; et cette comparaison est loin d'etre tout a fait imaginaire, car ils faisaient en quelque sorte partie de leurs families'. Slavery in Trinidad, thanks to the French, was 'veritablementpaterneP. 29 Louis de Verteuil's biographer paints a similarly attractive picture of slavery on the patriarchal French Creole estates, faithfully echoing the outlook of his subject.30 While it is quite clear that slavery in Trinidad was probably no 'milder' than elsewhere in the West Indies, especially after 1797 when the island opened up rapidly, it seems that a paternalist attitude towards the slaves was more characteristic of the French and French Creole planters in Trinidad than of the British. More French planters were resident than the British, and they tended to own smaller estates, cocoa as well as sugar. They shared a common faith and language with their slaves (for all French Creoles were fluent in patois), and to a considerable extent, a common Creole culture. These paternalist attitudes survived after emancipation among the French Creoles, and it seems clear that after 1838 the French and Spanish Creoles exercised more influence over the black population than the British planters. Arthur Gordon, Governor 1866-70, wrote of the French Creoles that * their influence with the lower classes is considerable, and in the country almost paramount, the English proprietors never having acquired or indeed attempted to acquire it to the same degree'. 31 Another fairly neutral observer, Robert Guppy, stated that after 1838, when most planters experienced labour difficulties, the French planters 'retained the services of most of their old slaves, whom they treated with good temper and honesty; they were economical, and firm without tyranny'. 32 On the death of Philip Maingot, a large cocoa proprietor in the Santa Cruz valley, an obituary commented: It was amusing to see with what pleasure he was received, by Creoles and Coolies alike, when he visited his estates. . .Like his father before him, he seemed invested with a sort of patriarchal character in the quarter; and it was pleasant to see with what readiness and confidence the poor people submitted their differences to his decision. . .As a J.P., he was able to settle most of their little matters and to prevent them being submitted to the sterner tribunals in town.

Of Monro Pasea it was said: In private life, as a planter, his career has always been marked by that firmness and justice, tempered with tact and kindness, which characterise our extensive resident estate holders; and it would perhaps be difficult to meet with any other planter who is a greater favourite with his work people.33

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Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

The paternalist attitudes extended to the indentured labourers as well as the black workers, the descendants of the slaves. A Governor wrote that Louis le Roy, the owner of three sugar estates, was 'eminently successful' in his relations with his Indian labourers: 'no body of labourers was ever more contented than those who worked on his estates.. .Both Creole and Coolie labourers will remember him as a just and benevolent master.'34 The French Creoles were the leading sector within the white Creole elite, but the English Creoles, if less numerous, were also an influential group. These were people of English descent born in the island, and usually of the Anglican Church. Perhaps religion, rather than national descent, was the main dividing line between the French Creoles (including people of English descent) and the English Creoles. The Warners were the 'first family' of the English Creoles, just as the de Verteuils were of the French Creoles. Charles Warner, the son of a wealthy English planter who settled in Trinidad early in the nineteenth century, was AttorneyGeneral between 1842 and 1870, the most powerful influence behind the policy of anglicisation carried out in the 1840s and 1850s. By common consent, Warner was regarded as the 'real ruler' of Trinidad during these years, the bete noire of the 'foreign' Creoles and the Catholics. 35 His cousin, Frederick Warner, was a prominent barrister who was appointed an Unofficial member of the Council in 1861 and was for many years its senior Unofficial. Many other members of this large and influential West Indian family occupied important posts in Trinidad in the second half of the century. Another prominent English Creole was J. Scott Bushe, Colonial Secretary 1861-87, brother-in-law of Lord Harris. John Cumming, head of the firm A. Cumming and Co., was the largest resident sugar proprietor in Trinidad and one of the few Creoles still owning important sugar plantations in the 1890s.86 H . A. Fitt, and his son George Fitt, who both died in 1891, were also English Creoles who owned large sugar and cocoa estates and were engaged in commerce, and both served as Unofficial members of the Council.37 So far as private life was concerned, French and English Creoles formed two quite separate entities. In 1893, when the daughter of the Principal of Queen's Royal College married an English Creole, a newspaper reported that the guests represented 'the elite of Trinidad society'; yet there was not a single foreign, that is French Creole, name among them.38 The guests were all either British, or English Creoles. Similarly, in 1897, as part of the celebrations for the centenary of British rule, dinners were organised for the poor by upper-class ladies. One was run by ladies with French, Corsican or Irish names; a rival one by ladies with English or Scottish names. There were many conflicts of interest and outlook within the white

The white elite

43

upper class. The chief division was that between Creoles and expatriates. 'Creoles' might be used in a broad sense, as the whole respectable part of the community born in the island, whether white or coloured, but excluding expatriates, Venezuelans, Portuguese, and Asiatics. Often it was used to mean white people born in the island. There was a feeling of resentment on the part of the old families, who were nearly all 'foreign' in origin, against the upstart Englishman. Many editorials express this grievance. Most of Trinidad's Creole families, said one such, were of French descent, and many of them remembered the time when there were very few Englishmen in the island. The first English immigrants had been real gentlemen who had had cordial relations with Creoles. But later with the steady stream of British immigration, and with Englishmen coming to hold most top public offices, they began to look down on Creoles as inferiors. A feeling of estrangement gradually prevailed. One English magistrate had snubbed a young gentleman 'for no other crime that we know of but that his grandfather was a Frenchman, calling out in a sneering tone, "Let us finish with the French case" \ 3 9 Great indignation was felt when an English Director of Works was alleged to have told a prospective landlord that he would look after the house decently, 'as he was not a Creole'. 40 Trinidadians, declared another paper, were famous for their hospitality to strangers. But they would not put up with the impertinent affectation of a section of those who arrive here, whether as simple residents, as Government officials, or as employees of some of the large sugar estates or of the private establishments of the Colony, and the members of which never lose an opportunity of parading their contempt for everything colonial.. .What Creoles do not like is to see men no better than many who could be found here to fill the same posts, sneering at the land from which they draw their salaries, which gives them a position they would never have been able to attain in their own country, running down and snubbing those whom they have supplanted, and above all claiming for themselves a mental, moral, and social superiority over all who have not, like themselves, been born on the other side of the Atlantic. 41

The indignation felt against expatriate officials by the Creole elite was a mixture of envy and snobbery. Consider this curious article in a local paper: We have often wondered how it is that those aristocratic officials before whose Jove-like nod we poor colonists have to prostrate ourselves in the dust, are such uncommonly small fry in their own country. During the London season, one never meets officials in society. This is, perhaps not to be wondered at, for of the noble band here, with the exception of Captain Baker, there is not a single one that any man with the slightest pretension to respectability would care to introduce to his family or his club. . .Taken all together the official is a poor, sneaking, pitiful creature; his self contempt being tempered by a kind of idea of maintaining his dignity and his rank. 42

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Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

The same kind of resentment was expressed in an editorial attacking Lady Broome, wife of Governor F. N . Broome, for her cold and insulting treatment of the 'best of Creole society'. There were too many instances, thought this editor, of newly arrived British officials, and especially their wives, sneering at 'mere Creoles', though the Creole ladies were as well educated, infinitely more graceful, and nearly always 'better born' than themselves.43 It was easy, and harmless fun, to sneer at the expatriate officials. But the truth was, of course, that these officials during their residence in the colony identified with the land-owning class and moved in white Creole social circles. Many officials, as we saw, were landowners themselves. Such men had an economic stake in the colony and an identity of interest with the Creole planters. It was no doubt inevitable that the officials would move in white Creole society, with the wealthy planters, merchants, and professionals. Men in Creole society had attended either a British public school, or Queen's Royal College, or St Mary's, and held similar values to those of the officials. Intermarriage was not infrequent. Thus Charles Warner's son Aucher married the daughter of Governor Sir William Robinson in 1886; and the daughter of the English Principal of the College married an English Creole.44 Inside the Creole elite there were many tensions, between the 'French' and the 'English' sectors, or between Catholic and Protestant. For instance, when a young French Creole publicly horsewhipped an English Creole for some insult, the case became a 'national' one. The most remarkable part of this affair is the evident division, into partisanships, of English and French Creoles, and consequently the bitter feeling which such a spirit is calculated to engender between important sections of the community. . .It is not easy to define the opposite factions - now it is talked of as French against English, and now a matter of colour; again, it seems to narrow itself to a matter of pique on the part of some young French Creoles opposed to a party of young English Creoles with whom are joined some from the old country.

Such national feelings would have to stop if the colony was ever to move forward. Religion played an important part. If it were not for the religious, we should rather say the priestly element of influence, we should urge intermarriage as the local cure, but our French sections in the upper ranks, being generally royalist in politics and ultramontane in sect, it is not to be recommended, for the aggressiveness of Romanism soon raises demands. . .intolerable to Protestant feeling.. .notwithstanding the politesse and savoir faire of the old folks, now fast dying out, and all the amiability, elegance and delicate style of beauty of the young Creoles of the gentler sex.45

Donald Wood thinks that by around 1870 the worst conflicts between the 'French' and 'English' parties within the white elite were over.46 Probably this is true; but there is considerable evidence that the division

The white elite

45

was still there, though tensions rarely became as acute as in the pre-Gordon era. L. M. Fraser, writing in 1890, thought that the elements of discord were always in existence, nor have they even yet entirely disappeared. The lines of demarcation between what have always been termed, though incorrectly, the French and the English sections of the community are certainly not so clearly and rigidly drawn as they were fifty or even five and twenty years ago, but they still exist, and this fact should not be lost sight of by anyone called to fill any important office in the colony.47

An editorial written in 1870 pointed out that in a Colony like this, wherein the great majority of the inhabitants are of foreign descent, it is ridiculous to suppose that there will not be, for many years yet, a strong foreign element in the political sentiments of the population. 48

The reaction to the Franco-Prussian War confirmed these opinions. As the organ of the English community pointed out at the time, Trinidad is to a large extent French in feeling, in manners, nay even in language. .. A large portion of our fellow-colonists are of French descent and while making good and honourable British citizens, they are still Enfants de la Patrie.

Some French Creoles had money invested in France; some Creole youths were actually serving in the French Army. When a subscription list was opened to aid wounded French soldiers, apart from a few ' token' presents from prominent officials, the donors were nearly all French Creoles. Andre Ambard gave the large sum of $i,ooo. 49 French Creoles maintained ties with European governments. Several of the more prominent were awarded national honours by France. Hypolite Borde and F. J. Scott were Chevaliers de la Legion d'Honneur. 50 Dr Louis de Verteuil received in 1891 an honour which the Port of Spain Gazette said was of far greater historic importance and deeper meaning than the CMG recently awarded him by the Queen; he was made a Count of the Holy Roman Empire. This was a title bestowed by the Pope on prominent Catholic laymen in recognition of their services in defence of the Church. 51 Again, whenever European royalty, ex-royalty, or nobility visited Trinidad the French Creoles took the lead in entertaining them. French Creoles such as Dr de Montbrun, F. J. and F. E. Scott, Hypolite Borde, the d'Abadies, and the Ganteaumes vied with each other in their sumptuous fetes for the visiting Bourbon Prince and Princess. 52 From time to time doubts were raised about French Creoles' loyalty and attachment to the Crown. Public Opinion, then edited by the French Creole journalist Joseph de la Sauvagere, indignantly repudiated such ideas. Anyone who thought that the colonists of foreign, and especially of French, descent were less loyal than those of British descent, was deceived or was deceiving others. Who entertained the sons of the Prince of Wales when they visited the colony? The Bordes, the Guiseppis, and the

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Agostinis. When the Queen's Jubilee was celebrated, the French colonists subscribed large sums to the fund; the English abstained. There could be no distinction made between the French and English colonists in their attachment to the Crown. 53 An excellent example of how acute the tensions between the French and English parties could be as late as 1894 is provided by the so-called News Room incident.64 Early in that year a Russian fleet visited Port of Spain, and its officers were lavishly feted by prominent French Creoles. It was a time when Europe was divided into two camps, France and Russia against Germany and Austria, with Britain uneasily 'neutral'. Allegedly, during the Russian visit, a member of the Legislative Council, Eugene Cipriani, said in public that if Britain joined with Germany in any future war against France and Russia, 'I would give half my fortune, an arm or a leg, to see the English and the Germans get a good licking.' This remark was seized on by the Daily News, organ of the 'English' party, which accused Cipriani of disloyalty and perjury, in that he had sworn an oath of allegiance to the Crown on taking his seat. The News used the remark to launch an attack on the whole French Creole sector. For instance, it published with no editorial disclaimer a letter calling the French sector 'traitors to the British flag' and declaring that if France and Britain went to war, 'every British subject would be butchered at once by these traitors in the colony'. Cipriani went as far as to offer an explanation of his remark in the Council. It had been made several months before the Russian visit, and not in the News Room, but in the course of a private conversation. He said it in joke, to someone he was accustomed to tease, and in the hearing of a 'thorough' Englishman who had showed no resentment. This was regarded as perfectly satisfactory by the French party, as represented by the Observer and the San Fernando Gazette, but not by the English papers, which called for Cipriani's resignation. The Observer spoke darkly about a 'declaration of war. . .both unexpected and painful'. For peace had seemed established between the sections; the French were anglicising their children as far as was consistent with their sympathies; the two sides were freely mixing at social functions. But it seemed that the English party was brooding over its prejudices and merely awaiting a pretext to launch a full-scale attack. National feelings, long dormant prejudices, had been aroused. At this point an English fleet was expected in Trinidad, and a ' Reception Committee ' was formed by the English party, from which every single French Creole was omitted. Out of thirty-four members, all the names were English, only six were Creoles, and only three were Catholics. The French Creoles held a meeting in protest. 'Negotiations' were carried on between the two sides with Dr de Verteuil, Cipriani and two others meeting with two British judges who acted as mediators. The objectionable Committee

The white elite

47

was dissolved after making an unstinted apology in writing; the idea of a public reception for the Fleet was dropped. For over a month, all the local papers had been almost exclusively preoccupied with this affair, which, it should be stressed, involved solely the white Creole upper class. The incident certainly suggests that although, as Wood notes, the lowest ebb in the relations between the French Creoles and the English had been reached and passed in the 1860s, the tensions remained and might be suddenly exacerbated by an apparently trifling event. Yet, as the century drew to its close, the differences between the French and English Creole whites became blurred. Before 1870, the children of the French Creole elite received an essentially French education. At St Joseph's Convent, where most French Creole girls were educated if they were not sent to European schools, the nuns were French and French was the language of instruction. This was also true of St Mary's up to 1870. So the English, Irish or Spanish Catholics who sent their children to these schools were imbuing them with French culture, which had supplanted nearly completely Spanish culture and language in the upper-class 'old' families.55 But about 1870 this situation changed and both schools anglicised their teaching methods. The French Creoles, like the English, if they could afford it, sent their children to Britain for their education, mainly to Catholic public schools for the boys and convent schools for the girls. The older generation, like Louis de Verteuil, were educated in France and French was their first and chief language. But the younger French Creoles received their higher education in England. Louis' eldest surviving son, Rene de Verteuil, was educated at the Catholic public school Stonyhurst, and therefore, according to Louis' biographer, he did not share 'the grand manner, Parisian culture and wide interests of his father, so that with Louis was to die out in large measure the French aristocratic tradition of the family'. 56 By the end of the century English was the first language of many young French Creoles; some of them even affected not to speak or understand French; cricket and golf were their games. The French Creoles continued to have a sentimental feeling for France, but it became more and more sentiment, less and less actual contact; they hung on for dear life to their aristocratic traditions, their 'old blood'; but the fact was that French and English white Creoles formed a power bloc (along with the British officials and businessmen), exercising political, social and economic hegemony over the society, subject, of course, to the imperial power and its agents. Most white Creoles derived their incomes from planting and commerce. Sugar, the traditional staple, retained its predominance in terms of exports in the last decades of the century, though by 1900 cocoa had caught up. But white Creoles, and especially French Creoles, lost ground to British companies or individual British proprietors in the ownership of

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the Trinidad sugar industry. We can trace the changes in ownership from the data given in the Annual Registers on the 'principal' estates and their owners. In 1871, of 129 estates listed, forty-three were owned by British companies or individuals resident in Britain, forty-three by resident Britons or English Creoles, and about forty by French Creoles. This suggests an almost equal division between the three categories of owners. In 1880, out of 109 estates, forty were owned by expatriates, thirty-two by resident Englishmen, and thirty by French Creoles, reflecting a relative decline in resident ownership. By 1890, of ninety estates, thirty-eight were owned in Britain and only twenty-two were in French Creole hands. And in 1895, thirty-four out of fifty-nine estates were owned by British concerns, twenty by resident Englishmen, and a mere three by French Creoles. If we take only the most productive estates, those producing over 1,000 hogsheads a year, the British concerns are seen to be in a dominant position. In 1880 there were twelve such estates and seven of them were owned in Britain, two by resident Englishmen, and three by French Creoles. In 1890 out of twenty-one estates, thirteen belonged to British concerns, and four belonged to a single English Creole, John Cumming; his firm, A. Cumming and Co., produced 9,417 hogsheads in 1894. By 1895 n o e s t a t e listed as making over 1,000 hogsheads was in French Creole ownership.57 The situation was, then, that estates were becoming increasingly amalgamated, British concerns were consolidating their hold on a majority of the most productive estates, French Creoles were by 1895 no longer owners of substantial sugar estates, while resident Englishmen and English Creoles continued to hold a number of plantations, including some large ones. The ancestors of the French Creoles had pioneered the cultivation of sugar in Trinidad towards the end of the eighteenth century, and in the early years of the nineteenth. But they had steadily lost ground to British concerns, which tended to enjoy easier access to capital through their metropolitan connections. The prolonged crisis of the 1840s had forced many French Creole planters to abandon sugar cultivation, often selling out to larger and more heavily capitalised British planters. Of course there were many exceptions. French Creoles like L. A. le Roy and Paul Guiseppi continued to own large sugar plantations in the 1870s; Guiseppi owned the Valsayn and Caroni estates.58 But the smaller muscovado estates which French Creoles tended to own became increasingly unprofitable after 1874, the year in which preferential duties in favour of muscovado entering Britain (as compared with higher-grade sugar manufactured by the vacuum-pan or centrifugal processes) were abolished. From then on the tendency was for estates to be amalgamated and for the old muscovado factories to be scrapped. The severe depressions of

The white elite

49

1884-5 and 1894-7, caused by the influx of bounty-fed European beet sugar on the British market, greatly accelerated this process. In these crisis years many small muscovado estates went under, especially those less well situated or in the outlying areas. Many of these small estates were owned by French Creoles; they had probably been in their families since the early years of the century. It was especially in the crisis years of the 1840s and the 1880s that the French Creoles were squeezed out of sugar production. The economic basis for the recovery of the French Creoles after 1870 was cocoa. The Trinidad cocoa industry, established long before 1783, enjoyed a tremendous boom after the 1870s. It was due to a number of factors. Changes in manufacturing processes and a reduction in duties in the chief importing countries - Britain, the United States and Europe both greatly stimulated demand, and cocoa and chocolate became at this time a staple food of the masses in these nations. Within Trinidad, the elimination of squatting in the late 1860s and the opening of the Crown lands gave a great boost to cocoa cultivation. So did the extension of roads and railways. The depression in sugar in the 1880s and 1890s released land, labour, and capital for cocoa. Between 1871 and 1881 two-thirds of the new land opened to cultivation was planted with cocoa.59 The larger cocoa plantations were built up by peasant cultivators who cleared the forest and established cocoa trees. They were sometimes the owners of their plots of land, which they would sell to a cocoa planter for a fixed sum per bearing tree, plus the cost of the land. More often, they were 'contractors', who agreed to clear a plot of land (which was owned by the capitalist planter), and establish trees; after a specified time the owner took over the land again, paying for each bearing tree. Nearly all the large cocoa estates were built up in this way.60 The larger planters were overwhelmingly French Creoles, and so were most of the cocoa dealers, the merchants who bought the cocoa, exported it, and usually advanced money to the planters; often the dealers themselves owned estates. The data from the Annual Registers make this clear. In 1875, out of twenty-nine cocoa estates listed, twenty-two were owned by French Creoles; the figure was seventy-six out of ninety-nine in 1880 and eighty-two out of 111 in 1885. By 1890 the total number of estates listed had risen to 172, of which at least 146 were in French Creole hands. In 1895 no fewer than 375 cocoa estates were considered important enough to be listed, and this year for the first time they were listed before sugar estates. Out of the 375, at least 270 were owned by French Creoles, about seventy by resident Englishmen, and twelve by British concerns. 61 These figures show conclusively that cocoa was predominantly in French Creole hands. In 1887, of the fourteen largest cocoa estates in the Montserrat Ward Union, thirteen were owned by French Creoles, including

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Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

some of the best known families such as de Verteuil, Scott, d'Abadie, Devenish, Agostini, Labastide, O'Connor, Cipriani.62 Many French Creoles, as we have seen, were owners in the 1870s of small muscovado sugar estates, and with the depression of the 1880s and 1890s most of these weak estates had gone under. Their owners either sold out to amalgamating English companies, or changed cultivation. In the first case, they would often use the proceeds of the sale to buy up small adjacent plots of cocoa and gradually build up large cocoa estates. In the second case, they would begin to cultivate cocoa instead of sugar, if the soil and terrain permitted. By the 1880s cocoa was clearly profitable, and the capital required to buy Crown lands and pay off contractors was willingly extended by merchants (who were usually French Creoles themselves). So French Creoles, who often lacked capital, found it easy and profitable to go into cocoa production. Cocoa was the backbone of French Creole prosperity. The 1860s and 1870s saw their economic recovery; the 1880s and 1890s were decades of relative affluence for the * third generation' of French Creoles. Prices were consistently high between 1870 and 1918, about £2 18s. qd. per fanega ( n o lb). Cocoa was the favourite investment of Trinidadians in these years. Sales of small sugar estates, profits from other industries, individuals' savings, and proceeds from cocoa itself were all invested in cocoa mortgages, at between six and twelve per cent interest. Any planter could get a loan on the security of his trees. In 1892 an English capitalist lent ^10,000 to a prominent French Creole, Eugene Lange Jr, on the security of his Santa Cruz cocoa properties.63 Estates yielded between fifteen and twenty per cent profits. Planters extended cultivation to areas which could only be profitable with the maintenance of high prices, and mortgagors were willing to postpone the period of repayment, because of the high rates of interest and the general buoyancy of the industry. Many planters owned several estates, all heavily mortgaged, all liable to immediate foreclosure. While prices were high, therefore, conditions were favourable to rapid expansion. Exports rose from 8,000,000 lb per annum in 1870-9, to 56,000,000 per annum in 1910-19. The crash came, but not before the World War. 64 In the last decades of the nineteenth century, cocoa provided a relatively comfortable livelihood to many French Creoles, and made fortunes for a few large French Creole planters (who often also had interests in sugar and commerce). Adrien de Verteuil, Louis' second son, owned the Tortuga cocoa estate in Montserrat, and as a result of the high prices for cocoa, * Adrien could live the life of the French aristocrat to the full, with frequent visits to France and Paris, and all the pretensions of a Count.' 65 Carl de Verteuil, Louis' nephew, a surveyor by profession, was also a large cocoa planter, and the founder of the Cocoa Planters Association. His brother

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Ludovic was a cocoa proprietor in the Sangre Grande district. 66 Indeed, cocoa was the economic base of French Creole power, although their interests were diversified and extended also to sugar, coconuts, and commerce. French Creoles, English Creoles, and resident Europeans were involved in import-export agencies and retailing. The largest and most prominent commercial agency, between 1870 and 1886, was A. Ambard and Son, owned by French Creole families. It was founded by Andre Ambard, a Frenchman who came to Trinidad in 1820. On his death in 1870 it was carried on by his two sons-in-law, Leon Agostini and John Bell Smythe, both Unofficial members of the Council, and his son, Lucien Ambard. In 1875 another well-known French Creole, Charles Leotaud, was admitted as a partner. The firm reduced its interests in sugar around 1870 and greatly extended its cocoa trade; it was the leading buyer and seller of cocoa in Trinidad. It also conducted an import trade in lumber, provisions and stock, and manufactured goods in general, from North America and Europe. In 1878 the partners were able to buy a group of estates for over ^80,000 cash, which they raised in fourteen days. Their profits were mainly derived from their cocoa trade and their import business, as suppliers for several leading estates, and as agents for large British firms. They were in fact the 'recognised leaders of Trinidad's commercial world'; the partners were leading members of society and public figures.67 The consternation may be imagined when this firm went bankrupt in 1886. This was due, apparently, to the firm's inability or unwillingness to give the securities asked for further advances by the British financial agents. The firm decided to place the matter in the courts, and three of the partners were declared bankrupts. The business had so many ramifications in Trinidad, as importers, exporters, shippers, estate suppliers and dealers in cocoa, and as estate owners, that a large number of people and firms was affected by its collapse.68 French Creoles were prominent in many other import-export agencies, such as Agostini, Smith and Co., Charles Fabien and Co., F. E. Scott and Co., and F. J. Scott and Co. The first President of the Chamber of Commerce, founded in 1878, was Leon Agostini. The Scots, though relatively few in numbers, were an extremely influential commercial group, dominating the 'dry goods' business, the larger stores dealing in everything except food. Scottish merchants sent out young men to Trinidad to work as shop assistants or clerks, often in stores owned by relatives resident in Trinidad or by Scottish firms. If they were industrious they would, after a few years, set up businesses themselves, or be admitted as partners to established Scottish merchants. An example was Colin Dick, who came to Trinidad as a youth of seventeen to be overseer

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on an estate belonging to a relative. Two years later - aged nineteen - he became manager of the estate. He entered commerce, and started C. M. Dick and Co., in San Fernando, in i860. Later he became manager of Turnbull Ross and Co. in San Fernando, and agent to several important sugar firms including the Colonial Company. 69 This kind of career was open to the well-connected, hard-working Scottish youth. Another example is James Miller, who arrived from Glasgow in the late 1860s. In 1880 he opened Miller's Public Supply Stores, a pioneer in the field of stores catering for lower-income consumers. Later he opened branches in Princes Town, Arima and Tobago. 70 W. S. Robertson, born in Glasgow in 1849, came to Trinidad in 1869 to join the firm of his brother-in-law, Robert Gillies, in San Fernando. Later he took over the business, and by 1890 was considered the leading merchant of San Fernando, and, for volume of trade, one of the largest businessmen in the colony. He was the San Fernando agent for the Colonial Bank, and was appointed an Unofficial member of Council in 1894.71 Another Scottish merchant appointed an Unofficial (in 1889) was W. M. Murray, senior representative of Wilson and Co., the largest dry goods firm in Trinidad. He had other investments in Trinidad as well, and was in 1889 the Vice-President of the Chamber of Commerce.72 A prominent Scottish-owned firm was Gordon Grant and Co., formed in 1884 with two partners, William Gordon and George Grant. Gordon became an Unofficial in 1890. Grant was the son of the Rev. K. Grant, a Canadian missionary of Scottish descent, and he founded a Trinidad merchant dynasty, the Geddes Grants. Other prominent Scottish merchant families were the Spiers, Goodwilles, Alstons, and Todds. Out of twentyseven signatures to a Chamber of Commerce petition in 1883, representing the most influential businessmen in Port of Spain, at least ten are those of Scottish dry goods merchants. San Fernando had a flourishing community of Scottish businessmen, who dominated that town's mercantile establishment, led by Colin Dick, W. S. Robertson, James Drennan, James Arbuckle and Alexander Riddle. 73 The Scottish merchants and their families were nearly all Presbyterians; this denomination was well established in Port of Spain and San Fernando. Scottish officials moved in their circle during their stay in Trinidad. In 1880 a St Andrew's Society was formed as a social centre for Scots in Trinidad, and the Scottish community gave annual balls on St Andrew's Day. In San Fernando in the 1870s Burns' birthday was celebrated by Scottish residents, 'a commodity which from recent arrivals has become very plentiful', with Scottish reels and songs, haggis, herrings and Scotch.74 If these Scottish merchants settled permanently in the colony, they might be assimilated into the 'English Creoles'; their religion would prevent their intermarriage with French Creoles.

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There was a smaller German merchant community, mainly involved in firms which supplied the cocoa and suger estates with provisions, machinery, tools and general estate supplies. Leading figures were Hugo Hoffman, Adolf Wupperman, J. F. Urich, Fritz Ziircher, Carl Boos, Conrad Stollmeyer. Some of these Germans were Catholics, and assimilated into the French Creoles: the Boos, Stollmeyer and Ziircher families became part of the 'French Creole' elite. This brief survey of the activities of the white elite in planting and commerce indicates clearly that whites, both Creoles and Europeans, firmly controlled the 'commanding heights' of the colonial economy, with sugar increasingly dominated by British concerns. With few exceptions, non-whites did not own substantial businesses or plantations. Further, we must note the entrenchment of the white Creole elite in the local economy. The French Creoles, for all their pathetic dreams of preRevolutionary Europe and their aristocratic traditions, showed an impressive ability to adapt to changing circumstances, a cool-headed ; business-like efficiency in shifting positions and diversifying their interests. They shifted from sugar to cocoa; they entrenched themselves in commerce, moneylending, and light industry, backed up, as we shall see, by activity in the professions. The French Creoles were able to convert inbreeding and intermarriage into a strategy which ensured they would retain key areas of dominance; they established a tight economic network, a closed system of contacts and manipulation. In this way, a kind of reality was given to the aristocratic dreams. The racism and the social arrogance would, in the course of time, be toned down, and this class would come to understand the need to maintain a low profile; an affluent invisibility would become the outstanding feature of the French Creoles. The entrenched power would still be there, so would the closed network of kinship and contact; but it would become more difficult to grasp its ramifications than in the later nineteenth century, when the elite had no need to conceal its control of the economy. Most white Creoles derived their incomes from either planting or commerce. But others were career public servants, professionals, or journalists. There was a strong tradition of public service in the district where the family estates lay. For three generations the Ganteaume family dominated the Mayaro district. The founder came from Martinique in the 1790s. His son, who died in i860 leaving twenty children, was the first Catholic member of the Legislative Council in 1842 and later served as RegistrarGeneral and Receiver-General. And the eldest son in the third generation served as magistrate and Warden of Mayaro 1866-87. 75 Prominent planters automatically became JPs of their districts. Other white Creoles made a career in the public service. Henry Court, a Creole of Irish descent, was a barrister deeply learned in Spanish and

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French, as well as English, law, who became a Puisne Judge in 187c. 76 D. L. O'Connor, from a locally prominent 'French Creole' family of Irish descent, left commerce for the service and was for years Registrar in Bankruptcy.77 The Garcias were noted for their careers in law. 'Sprung from an ancient Spanish family whose members held high office in Trinidad before the Conquest', George Garcia served as Attorney-General from 1870 until 1873, when he was forced to retire after a stroke, and acted as Chief Justice. His son, G. L. Garcia, also a barrister, was made an Unofficial in 1882, and was responsible for codifying the colony's laws. He acted several times as Solicitor-General, was confirmed in his post in 1888, and became Attorney-General like his father in 1892. 78 John Scott Bushe, an English Creole, for many years held the highest post a Creole could aspire to, that of Colonial Secretary. He was the son of an English planter who had settled in Trinidad in the early years of the century. His great boost came when he married Lord Harris' sister-in-law. Harris made him his private secretary and from then on his rise was meteoric. In 1861 he became Colonial Secretary, a post he held at his death in 1887. Several times he administered the government. He was said to be experienced, zealous, tactful and 'popular', but a commentator remarked caustically, 'he provided comfortably in the Government service for such of his connections as needed it'. 79 White Creoles dominated the municipal governments in this period. Dr Louis de Verteuil was the first Mayor under the new Charter for Port of Spain in 1853, and from then until the abolition of the Borough Council in 1898 all the Mayors were white, with the four exceptions of M. M. Philip (1867-70), W. Herbert (1871-2), Vincent Brown (18891890), and H . A. Alcazar (1892-4, 1896-8). A particularly successful French Creole Mayor of Port of Spain was Emmanuel Cipriani who served for seven consecutive years. He was responsible for Columbus Square, the Cipriani Boulevard, named for him, and the lighting of the town by gas lamps. Politically he was said to uphold the rights of the municipality and to oppose the excesses of officialdom.80 Similarly, the Unofficial side of the Council was entirely white (except for a few months in 1869 when M. M. Philip acted as an Unofficial) until the entry of H . A. Alcazar in 1894. Both Creoles and resident Europeans were appointed. In 1864 two French Creoles had been nominated, and in the following decades several 'foreign' Creoles served as Unofficial, as well as English Creoles and resident Britons. White Creoles were the main leaders of the reform movement of the 1880s and 1890s, notably Louis de Verteuil, Philip Rostant and Robert Guppy. The professions, and especially the law, were another field which white Creoles favoured. Resident Englishmen also practised as barristers or solicitors, or received appointments as magistrates, or judges. Indeed, the

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legal profession in Trinidad was overcrowded. In a petition calling on the Governor to take steps to restrict the number of solicitors, the petitioners claimed that there were, in 1894, twenty-seven barristers, thirty-eight solicitors, and eighteen articled clerks.81 White Creoles also entered the medical profession. Two of the leading French Creoles in this period were doctors. Antoine Leotaud, who died in 1867, was the most prominent local physician of his time. Qualified in Paris, he specialised as an accoucheur, and delivered about 1,200 Creole babies. He was apparently distinguished in his field, for he won the Gold Medal of a Paris medical society for a paper on confinement. He was also a noted ornithologist who wrote the definitive work Les Oiseaux de la Trinidad and presented a fine collection of stuffed birds to the Government.82 Louis de Verteuil, eldest son of the Chevalier and spokesman for the French Creoles for much of the century, was also a physician who practised right up to the end of his long life. Another favoured profession was surveying, a skill urgently needed in the Trinidad of the 1870s, when so much of the land was unalienated. This profession was dominated almost entirely by French Creoles.83 They were a landowning group who had pioneered the opening up of Trinidad; perhaps this explains why they monopolised the profession. For a group bent on the steady acquisition of land, control of the surveying profession was a sound move, and it is further evidence of the French Creoles' capacity to entrench themselves in strategic areas. Since they also practised as lawyers, they would have been able to save, as a group, on all expenses related to conveyancing, surveying, and legal matters in general. Functioning as planters, solicitors and surveyors, the French Creoles further entrenched themselves in the business of exploiting the land. The English Creoles, perhaps, were less concerned with developing new lands, being more involved in the exploitation of existing sugar estates. The French Creoles were also prominent in local journalism. T. R. N. Laughlin owned and edited the Port of Spain Gazette from 1875 to 1900; he was a French Creole of Irish descent. In 1900 it was bought by another French Creole, Lucien Ambard, and it was edited by his son, A. P. T. Ambard. Philip Rostant, a well-known * radical', was involved at different times with a number of journals, including the Port of Spain Gazette, the San Fernando Gazette, Public Opinion, and Reform. Joseph de la Sauvagere edited Public Opinion in the 1890s, and started a number of small satirical journals which had a very short life-span. Towards the end of the century the French Creoles lost leadership in the radical movements of the day to coloured or black individuals like Alcazar, Edgar MaresseSmith, and C. P. David. Of course, members of this group, which was a powerful and privileged elite, were usually the guardians of the status quo rather than agitators for change. Rostant, however, stands out as the most

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radical political leader in the later years of the century, despite his French Creole, landowning family background. 84 He expressed and exaggerated the hostility of the French Creole 'old' families against the English, and he developed a kind of anti-colonialism which aligned all the respectable colonists, white, coloured and black, against British officialdom and expatriate capitalist firms. Most French Creole journalists confined themselves to futile, and perhaps not very seriously intended, attacks on expatriate officials. Many of the resident Europeans were businessmen or planters, and some were officials or professionals. Most of the British officials who served in Trinidad in the period were career colonial officers, who stayed in Trinidad only until promoted elsewhere. Salaries in the island were not high, and the West Indies could not compete with India, the Far East, or even Africa, for glamour or prestige. So most appointees were second-rate. Most officials of this type took little interest in Trinidad beyond what their duties formally required, and left no mark on the society. But a few British officials and professionals took an unusual interest in the country, and some stayed on permanently. One might cite a few examples from the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Sir John Gorrie, Chief Justice 1885-92, was a radical and humanist politician who got himself involved in many aspects of Trinidad politics and made himself the champion of the Creole peasant and the Indian indentured labourer. Robert Guppy, an English barrister, came to Trinidad as a young man in 1839 and stayed for the rest of a long life. In addition to serving as stipendiary magistrate and warden in southern Trinidad, Guppy was Mayor of San Fernando for thirteen consecutive years. Prominent in the reform movement, he also took up the cause of the indentured Indian, and splendidly denounced the immigration system to the Royal Franchise Commission of which he was a member. Late in his life he was made an Unofficial; he died in 1894 aged 86.85 J. H . Collens was an English teacher who was appointed Superintendent of the Normal and Model Schools at Woodbrook in 1878, rising to be Government Statist and later Inspector of Schools. He was deeply involved in the social and cultural activities of the Port of Spain upper and middle classes; he was the local leader of the Temperance Movement; he was very active in the Volunteer Forces, reaching the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel; he was an energetic member of the local operatic and theatrical group; he campaigned for a better museum and library; he compiled the official Trinidad Year Books from 1892 to 1915; and he wrote an informative Guide to Trinidad. The Revs. John Morton and Kenneth Grant were two Canadian missionaries who came to Trinidad in 1868-70 and devoted much of their lives to work with the Indian population; their careers and achievements are well known. 86 W. H . Gamble, an English Baptist

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minister, wrote an interesting book on Trinidad; so did J. N . Brierly, an Irish policeman who rose to the rank of Inspector in the Trinidad Force. 87 These are a few of the expatriate officials or professionals who adopted Trinidad as their home in this period and identified themselves with the white upper class. The upper class of the society controlled and determined cultural and social life. The dominant culture was essentially European, and many of the patterns of British upper-middle-class life were recreated in Trinidad by the white elite, though we have noted the French sentiments and aristocratic traditions of the French Creole elite. Port of Spain was the centre of this dominant culture. The white elite established and controlled various associations for its social activities. The Queen's Park Hotel was a favourite meeting place for the elite. The Union Club counted among its members 'nearly all the influential citizens', exclusively whites and predominantly British or English Creoles. The Savannah Club was equally select.88 St Andrew's Golf Club was founded in 1891 by a few enthusiastic Scots; it was said to be the finest golf club in the West Indies. By 1897 it had over one hundred members, all white, and a nine-hole course on the savannah outside Port of Spain.89 The Queen's Park Cricket Club controlled cricket in the colony. Its membership was not exclusively white, but included members of the coloured professional group. For instance, in 1883 the four Trustees of the Club included C. H . Philipps and Vincent Brown, who were both coloured. But most of the teams fielded by the Club in this period were all-white, and the cricketers were definitely * gentlemen players' from the 'respected' white families. In 1895, however, the All Trinidad team fielded to play a visiting English side had five non-white members; this apparently was unusual, for the English captain telegraphed Reuters that they had played 'AH Trinidad, whereof five were black'. One of the five was Lebrun Constantine, father of Learie. 90 Charitable societies, run by upper-class ladies and gentlemen, most of them with the pious object of rescuing the lower orders from sin and its consequences, were characteristic of Victorian society in Trinidad. Anglican ladies ran the Daily Meal Society, which provided free dinners for about sixty paupers every day, and roast beef and plum pudding at Christmas. The Anglican Bishop chaired the interdenominational Trinidad Purity Alliance. This body had the formidable object of fighting illegitimacy and illicit unions, and campaigning for individual and social 'purity'. The Temperance Movement was active. The first body to be established was the Independent Order of the Good Templars in 1873. In 1888 they petitioned the Council against the proposed extension of time for keeping open licensed shops. Other Temperance bodies were the Blue Ribbon Society, the Band of Hope, and the League of the Cross. 91 Freemasonry

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was a long-established activity, for the oldest lodge in Trinidad dated to 1795. There were several lodges and chapters at the end of the century, and prominent Catholics, as well as Protestants, belonged to them. 92 Upper-class ladies established in 1901 the Trinidad Home Industries Association, to assist home and cottage industries so as to enable gentlewomen in reduced circumstances to add to their income, and also to aid distressed working women. They ran a shop and a tea room, employing four 'real gentlewomen, of good education, courteous and pleasing manners'. 93 Such ladies also ran a creche for the care of the young children of respectable working-class women, established in 1890 on the initiative of Lady Robinson; this was involved in controversy when the ladies proposed excluding all illegitimate children. The St John Ambulance Association was established in Trinidad in 1889. Both ladies and gentlemen attended classes on child care, first aid, and nursing. 94 All these societies were confined almost exclusively to the white upper class of Port of Spain. Literary and intellectual life was certainly an aspect of the dominant culture. But these activities were by no means confined to the white upper class. The coloured and black intelligentsia prided itself on its literary and intellectual attainments and boasted of being more 'cultured' than the whites, who were accused of crass materialism. Often movements of a literary character were initiated by non-whites; for instance, the Athenaeum Club, or the Trinidad Monthly Magazine. But upper-class whites did take part in such intellectual activities as were carried on in Trinidad. Literary activity was often an integral part of the social round, and the whites were unquestionably the leaders of society. There were prominent white literary figures, such as Borde, Fraser, and Collens. Interest in science was confined almost exclusively to whites like R. L. Guppy, son of the Englishborn barrister and public figure, Robert Guppy, Sylvester Devenish, and Eugene Lange. Theatrical and musical events and groups were led by whites. Both of the two historians of Trinidad writing in the last thirty years of the century were white. Pierre Gustave Borde was a member of a wellknown French Creole family, and he chose to write in French. He published an important work on the history of Trinidad under the Spanish Government, and a lesser one on the geography of Trinidad. As a historian, Borde ranks high among nineteenth-century writers on the West Indies. He spent nineteen years in collecting his material, and viewed his sources without undue distortion through national and racial prejudices. He was certainly proud of the contribution of the French, and one of his stated reasons for writing was to focus attention on the grand fait of French settlement in Trinidad. But he identified himself as a Trinidadian rather than as a French Creole. He wanted to instruct Trinidad's youth in

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the history of their country, for patriotism could come only from a knowledge of the past. Borde was the first Trinidad historian to express * nationalist' sentiments as opposed to British or Empire loyalty. In this, of course, he demonstrated one of the differences between the French Creoles and the English white sector. But Borde's anxiety for the old 'national' divisions to disappear was limited to the white sector. He believed that Spaniards, Frenchmen, and Englishmen were all Trinidadians; but he had little to say about non-white Trinidadians. And in this, too, he reflected the limited outlook of the white upper class.95 L. M. Fraser, author of a two-volume History of Trinidad\ was an English-born Catholic, who had been in command of the Trinidad police, and later served as a magistrate and as Inspector of Prisons. Fraser was extremely sympathetic to the 'old colonists'; his perspective was that of an adopted French Creole. He was linked to this group by marriage, for he had married a Guiseppi. In his history, Fraser was hostile to the ultraBritish party and favoured the authority of a strong, benevolent Governor. He defended Creoles against the contempt of British officials, but he did not think them fit to take part in political life. Fraser's book was printed with government aid; the Council voted ^200 to cover costs, to be recovered by sales.96 Another, though less distinguished, literary figure was J. H . Collens, who has already been mentioned as the author of A Guide to Trinidad and as the compiler for many years of the official Annual Registers or Year Boof(s. The former book is unassuming but informative, and shows Collens to have been an acute and humorous observer. He voiced most of the current ideas about the 'Negro character' - laziness, drunkenness, superstition, dishonesty - but he was careful to point out that his remarks on 'the Negro' referred only to those of the lowest class, and the work as a whole is not unusually prejudiced. Upper-class social life revolved around private visits and parties. Gentlemen could go to the Union Club, considered the best in the West Indies, 97 or to the Ice House, where the latest iced drinks were available, especially the famed 'Trinidad cocktail', consisting of rum, syrup, and Angostura bitters well swizzled.98 But ladies had to stay indoors in the heat of the day, for the sun gave them unbecoming freckles, and there was always the danger of offensive remarks, or worse, from the 'lower orders'. The ladies of Trinidad, according to a chivalrous local author, were 'extremely courteous and lady-like, superb musicians and dancers, with well informed minds'. Though free from pretensions or airs, they maintained a necessary pride; 'instructed from their infancy to entertain a high opinion of their own consequence, they are cautious of doing an act which may lessen their consciousness of their proper dignity'. 99 Upper-class ladies did no housework, never marketed, and rarely

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cooked, though they did direct their private armies of domestics. The papers were full of the old, old lament about the difficulty of getting decent, clean, civil, cheap servants. In the old days, such prodigies were everywhere; servants stayed a lifetime with one family; they brought up 'Master Tom and Miss Mary' and then their children in turn; they were trusted retainers who enjoyed the complete confidence of their employers and often gave advice on family affairs. But latterly the only people available were 'a set of greedy and dishonest Barbadians, who did nothing right and demanded exorbitant wages', $8 to $>io a month, for example. 100 In 1884-5 there was a series of legal cases in which servants brought actions against their employers for assault. 'Insolence' by the servant 'provoked' the employer in such cases to strike him, or her. In most of these cases the plaintiffs were awarded damages, but great was the indignation felt among the elite, who felt, no doubt, that insolence, whether dumb or vocal, quite justified such a reaction. Actions brought by servants against their employers, it was felt, would lead to 'socialism and greater acts of violence on the part of a large class of Barbadians towards those in a superior position'. 101 As Wood puts it, writing of Trinidad in trie Victorian era, ' the temper of the age was decorous. No longer were there the lavish entertainments of slavery days.. .the unashamed whoring of the eighteenth century was now furtively hidden under the cloak of respectability.'102 Yet there were still liaisons between upper-class men and women of inferior social position. For instance, in 1887 a c a s e a r o s e m which Hypolite Borde, a wealthy and prominent French Creole, had ordered the payment of regular sums to one Leonie Remy, mother of his natural children. 103 Another angle on the situation is revealed by the Council debates on the 'Bastardy Ordinance' in 1888. This was an Ordinance to compel the fathers of illegitimate children to contribute to their support. It was widely supported in the press and elsewhere as a social necessity when so high a proportion of births were illegitimate and when lower-class men regarded paternity so casually. Yet the Unofficials voted solidly against it, and it was carried only by the Administrator's casting vote. Their reason was, as one of them put it, that 'members of the most respectable families will be dragged into court', presumably to make provision for their illegitimate children, and that any prostitute would be able to name any well-known man as the father of her child. The obvious conclusion was drawn by one letter to the press which asked whether honourable gentlemen feared they would be pulled up to show cause why they should not support prostitutes' children, and commented that their unreasoning opposition would surely convince the Home Government how necessary it was to have the law. The panic reaction must surely have stemmed from the habit of upper-class men of maintaining mistresses, and

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illegitimate children, and the fear that such arrangements would be exposed in court.104 The Unofficial failed to grasp that their fear that 'members of the most respectable families' would be brought to court questioned the very basis of colonial respectability. It revealed the double standard in morality which the upper class maintained, as blacks well knew. Reference was made to this situation by 'A Negro' in a letter to Public Opinion in 1893. Two white Unofficial had moved to strike off the estimates the ^150 allowed to maintain eight free pupils at the two Colleges, on the grounds that being poor the boys would be immoral and would contaminate the others. The letter asked Why are there so many coloured families here who bear the surnames of persons who are and have been members of our Honourable Council? Why is it that a vast number of coloured families bear similar names to the would-be leaders of society here?. . .It is because these aristocrats, their families, or some of their race, have been the fountainheads of immorality and bastardy.105

When it was decided that illegitimate children would not be admitted to the creche, some sharp criticisms were made in the press. One writer said that the high proportion of illegitimate births 'does not in toto spring from the lower class, but is to a great extent increased by members of a very different section, and who are recognised in society'. Another asked whether the persons who took the decision imagined that illegitimate scions of the honourable families of the land would seek refuge in the creche.106 But such activities were usually pushed out of sight. Social life was a monotonous round of visits, shopping, church, charitable activities. The siesta after breakfast, a huge meal at about 11, and the afternoon bath, were mandatory among the upper class. At 4 p.m. 'the world re-appeared' for tea, drives, and visits. Ladies often did not 'dress' at all until the afternoon. The elite of Port of Spain went for drives in their carriages in the cool of the evening and exchanged gossip.107 Red-letter days were the Races, the Governor's Balls, and the occasional musical or theatrical events. Or sometimes there was a particularly splendid private entertainment. Leon Agostini and his son-in-law, Leon Centeno, were famous for magnificent gatherings at their home, Coblenz, which were described in the local papers with gushing adulation; 108 such affairs, of course, would be rigidly 'whites only', unlike Government House parties, to which one or two blacks in high official posts might be invited. Once a fortnight the 'packet' came from Europe with mail, papers, and novels from 'home'. But diversions were few, and snobbery pervasive. It was the kind of milieu in which the foreign adventurer flourished. A 'Baron Rene de la Martiniere' turned out to be a swindler who victimised many prominent members of local society; he traded only too successfully on the well-known hospitality, or rather snobbery, of Trinidadians; he was actually a 'dirty

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German Jew'. 'We must confess', one editor remarked reproachfully, 'to a feeling of disappointment at seeing the principal inhabitants of an important colony prostrating themselves at the feet of a foreign imposter unprovided with credentials of any sort.' 109 In this society, 'people felt themselves surrounded by those with whom they could not mix'. 110 Real or imagined slights were all-important. Everyone who mattered was known to, and probably related to, everyone else; there was no escape into obscurity. This helps to explain the bitterly personal attacks which filled the papers of the time. It was impossible to disentangle public roles and private lives. Newspaper editors were publicly attacked for insulting prominent persons; W. R. Gawthorne, editor of the Star of the West, was horsewhipped in the street no fewer than four times. Insulting letters were freely exchanged in the press, or posters attacking individuals were put up in public places.111 Governors, even their ladies, were criticised in the smallest details of their personal lives. It was routine to cast slurs on an enemy's family, his morals, or the whiteness of his skin. Actions for libel were commonplace. Scandal, 'bacchanal' in Trinidad slang, was an essential part of aristocratic life, and gossip was an endemic feature of the narrow circle of upper-class social intercourse. It was a suffocatingly small and narrow society, in fact almost claustrophobic. It was, too, a society curiously isolated from what was going on in the wider island milieu. It seemed possible to ignore the existence of nonwhites, except as domestics or labourers. When upper-class Trinidadians spoke of 'our heterogeneous society', they were thinking of the national divisions in white society. An editorial in the Review asked, rhetorically, what was our mixed population? and answered, Englishmen, Germans, Spaniards, Portuguese, Frenchmen, men from different countries of Europe settled in an English colony.112 J. A. Froude described a dinner at Government House as 'a large representative party - English, French, Spanish, Italian, Corsican - ladies and gentlemen each speaking their own language'. 113 Donald Wood has summed it up: Much of the debate [on the crucial issues of nineteenth-century Trinidad] went on without the contestants bearing in mind that Trinidad was a multiracial country where potential sources of intellect and vigour lay waiting to be tapped among the people. It was as if it took place in some marsh land of Europe. And again: As with Boer and Briton in South Africa, so also in Trinidad did the relations between two sets of Europeans sometimes take precedence in their own minds over their relations with those of other races.114

The white elite could easily ignore the black and Indian masses, for they encountered them only in stereotyped class relationships. It was less possible to overlook the existence of the growing black and coloured

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middle class. Educated black and coloured men and women had a claim, through their command of British culture and their 'respectability', to consideration as equals. They therefore represented a greater threat to continued white control of the society, even though their numbers were relatively few; they held the key to the political and social future of Trinidad, and some far-seeing Trinidadians realised it. Let us turn, therefore, to examine the black and coloured middle class and its gradual growth in the last three decades of the nineteenth century. Education was the key factor in the emergence of this group, the principal channel for upward mobility.

Education and mobility

Since the emancipation of the slaves in 1838, a black and coloured middle class had been slowly emerging in Trinidad, as in the West Indies as a whole. Some of these people were descended from the 'free coloured' class of slavery days. Others were the descendants of ex-slaves, or immigrants from Africa and the eastern Caribbean. The later nineteenth century was an important period for the gradual growth of this middle class, for it was in these years that black and coloured men began to acquire secondary education to any extent, and to enter teaching, the professions, and the civil service. Most members of the non-white middle class were employed in white-collar jobs; they were teachers, minor civil servants, journalists and printers, pharmacists, doctors, solicitors, barristers, and clerks. Education was the key to all these occupations, the crucial factor in the gradual emergence of a coloured and black middle class. Although some coloured men had inherited middle-class status, being the descendants of prosperous free coloured families established before 1838, most were self-made men, or the sons of self-made men, who had achieved middle-class status mainly through the schools. It is essential, therefore, to examine the system of public education which existed in Trinidad in the later nineteenth century. We will need to know how efficient the schools were and what proportion of school-age children attended them. We must consider how far the system was open to lower-class children, especially at the secondary level, and how far it facilitated the upward mobility of black and coloured youth. It will be necessary to analyse both the structure of public education, and the existence of official and upper-class attitudes towards mass education which possibly operated to limit the mobility of non-white children. In 1851 Lord Harris established a system of free government primary schools in each ward, schools which were paid for by a local education rate levied on landowners in the wards, and which were entirely secular. After nearly twenty years of operation, the ward schools seemed to have failed. The quality of instruction was poor, and the attendance of the pupils inadequate.1 Above all, Catholics objected to the ward schools because they were secular; they wanted denominational schools assisted by state 64

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funds. It was pressure from the Catholic community, led by the Archbishop of Port of Spain, which impelled A. H . Gordon, one of Trinidad's most active nineteenth-century Governors, to overhaul the whole structure of public education in 1867-70. 2 Gordon suggested that a British Inspector of Schools should examine and report on the whole education question. The Secretary of State sent Patrick Keenan, Chief of Inspection of the Board of National Education, Ireland. Keenan's report (1869) was a serious indictment of the ward schools. He criticised the quality of teaching, and he attributed this inadequacy to defective teacher-training and to the lack of effective local supervision. To remedy this last defect, Keenan recommended that schools should be managed by a local resident in each district. He should be a clergyman if possible, or a layman"'of station and property', and the existing ward schools should be managed by the clergyman of the majority faith in the district. Keenan's other major suggestion, as far as the primary schools were concerned, was that church schools should be allowed state aid. This would be on condition that the schools were open to children of every faith, with a conscience clause to enable parents to withdraw their children from religious instruction if they wished.3 Gordon agreed with Keenan's suggestions for the primary schools.4 The Education Ordinance of 1870 allowed the grant of state aid to denominational primary schools under a number of stringent conditions. This Ordinance, though it seemed to have solved for the time being the denominational issue, was hardly successful in terms of educating the children. The great majority of church schools were unable to qualify for state aid under the 1870 Ordinance. The Anglican Bishop of Trinidad, noting that the Anglican schools were 'wretched affairs', explained that 'the terms upon which alone aid could be had from Government were quite impracticable, and our schools were crippled by poverty'. 5 The result was that four years after the Ordinance became law, only three private schools had qualified for state aid. The Catholic, Anglican and Nonconformist Churches ran just over thirty schools; the Canadian Presbyterian Mission kept seven schools for Indian children; and there were a number of schools maintained by planters for Indian children on their estates. None of these schools was state-aided. Primary education was still, in 1874, carried on chiefly by the thirty-seven ward schools, and by the five Borough Schools in Port of Spain and San Fernando which were run by the Borough Councils and assisted by the government. The Governor estimated that perhaps just under 8,000 children were enrolled at some kind of primary school at the end of 1873. The 1871 Census had shown a school-age population (ages five to fifteen) of about 17,000. It was clear, therefore, that elementary education was very far from universal. Further, only a proportion of the children who were enrolled attended

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regularly.6 It seemed that the 1870 Ordinance had failed to extend state aid (and government supervision) to the church schools, and, as a result, insufficient schools existed to meet the needs of the school-age population. Governor H . T. Irving estimated that not more than one-sixth of the school-age children regularly attended school, and not more than one-half were even enrolled.7 Irving's solution was to make it far easier for church schools to obtain state aid, so that more schools would be established and the burden of educating the children would be shifted from the state to the churches. In his view, it was hopeless to expect that the children of the labouring population would be educated unless the efforts of the government were aided by the clergy, and the church schools would not be developed without state aid. State aid to denominational schools was the cheapest and most effective mode of spreading primary education. He admitted that state-aided church schools would compete with the ward schools for pupils, but he thought that a little 'healthy competition' was all to the good; in any case, he was sure that there was room enough for many more schools.8 Ordinance 13 of 1875 relaxed the conditions for obtaining state aid. The only conditions for aid were that the average daily attendance be not fewer than twenty-five, and that the school be open to government inspection. The aid was to be granted on the basis of the results obtained by the pupils in the Inspector's annual examination. 9 The result was a considerable increase in the number of assisted schools. By the middle of 1876 eighteen church schools, with 2,179 enrolled, had qualified for state aid. In 1879 there were thirty-nine assisted and forty-eight government schools. And by 1885, the figures were fifty-five government and sixty-one assisted schools.10 Irving thought the 1875 Ordinance an unqualified success. The church schools had been brought under government inspection; their number had been increased and their efficiency greatly improved as a result. A simple plan of grants in aid based on results leaving the managers unfettered in the selection of their masters, of books and mode of instruction, has proved acceptable to all.

In fact the success of the Ordinance had 'far exceeded [his] most sanguine expectations'.11 The increase in assisted schools meant that children were able to attend a primary school in greater numbers, and the figures for enrolment and for average daily attendance rose steadily in the years after 1875. In 1882, for instance, there were 9,128 children enrolled in 104 government and assisted schools, with an average daily attendance of 5,977. The Inspector, R. L. Guppy, estimated the school-age population in 1881 at 19,000, a figure he admitted was too low. About 12,000 had attended a school in

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1881, so that at least 7,000 had no schooling whatever. Of the 12,000, nearly 4,000 had attended for less than fifty days in the year, so that only about 8,000 children had attended with anything like regularity. Guppy reported that he had met many children aged ten or twelve, who had never been to any school.12 By 1886, at least 5,000 were not enrolled at any school. Another 5,000 attended for only a few days each term, and the average daily attendance at government and assisted schools was only 8,282 out of a school-age population of about 22,500. 13 This unsatisfactory situation was reviewed by Governor Sir William Robinson in 1889-90. He conceded that education had not kept pace with the progress of the colony in the years after 1870. In his view, many more assisted schools were required to educate the school-age population effectively, for some 17,000 children out of a probable 36,000 were not receiving any regular schooling. On the other hand, if only one efficient school could be established in a district, it should be a government school, so that no one denomination could monopolise education in any area. 14 After considerable discussions between Robinson, the Secretary of State, and the religious authorities in Trinidad, the 1890 Education Ordinance was enacted. This Ordinance repealed the 1875 law, by which church schools were granted aid on the basis of annual examinations conducted by the Inspector. Instead, aid was to be granted on a uniform basis for each school, to cover three-quarters of the cost of buildings and furniture, and three-quarters of teachers' salaries. Attendance and results grants could also be made. This method of granting aid was much more liberal than the procedure under the 1875 Ordinance, so that it satisfied die complaints of the Catholic Church particularly that the system of grants based on the results of annual examinations was not sufficiently generous to the church schools. By the 1890 Ordinance, therefore, the grants in aid to the denominational schools were put on a uniform basis. The Board of Education, set up in 1870, was to have entire control over the system of primary schools, with a free hand in deciding what new schools should be established, and where, and whether to grant state aid to church schools which applied for it. The Inspector was to function as an officer under the direct supervision of the Board; the incumbent since 1869, R. L. Guppy, had functioned virtually independently of the Board, and he resigned in 1890 in protest against the Ordinance. Local managers would be appointed for all assisted schools, and all teachers in assisted schools would in future be required to hold certificates granted by the government. Robinson hoped that these changes would result in a further increase in the number of assisted schools, to extend education to a greater proportion of the school-age population. He hoped that sectional differences would be forgotten in 'an united effort to bring these poor and neglected children within the pale of civilising influences'. 15

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Under the 1890 Ordinance the assisted schools rapidly increased, reaching 147 by 1898, at the expense of the government schools. Governor F. N . Broome observed in 1894 that 'the education policy which has been adopted is slowly but surely closing the Government schools. Under the circumstances, I do not condemn it. I am not sure that it is not the best policy there is.' 16 Broome, like Irving, was concerned primarily with economising on the primary schools; and the assisted schools cost the government less per pupil than the government schools. This anxiety about costs ensured that free and compulsory education would not be enacted for some time to come. In 1895 a Commission was set up to report on the question. Most of the primary-school teachers who gave evidence were strongly in favour of free and compulsory education. The head teacher of Chacon Street Anglican School stated that the fees were a nuisance to collect, and prevented the poorer parents from sending their children to school. Attendance was very poor, even though in his school weather conditions or bad roads were not serious factors as they were in the rural schools. The secretary of the Teachers' Union thought that free and compulsory education was essential.17 The Commission's majority report recommended the abolition of fees in all primary schools, with the government compensating the managers of assisted schools. It also recommended that education should be compulsory for children between the ages of six and ten, and that defaulting parents should be subject to penalties, enforced by the Board of Education through local Attendance Committees and officers responsible to them. The Commission estimated that compulsory education would increase average attendance by 7,500 and the additional cost would be about .£16,500 p.a.18 But this report was not implemented. It was not that the policy was judged to be mistaken, but that the cost was felt to be excessive. As usual, economy was the crucial consideration. Broome wrote that, 'looking to the means and other obligations and expenses of the Government of Trinidad, I am decidedly of opinion that the existing proportion of educational expenditure cannot be increased with any prudence'. In his view, the existing education system was wasteful and extravagant, even without free and compulsory education; he thought that equal results were obtained in other colonies with considerably less outlay.19 The 1895 Report was shelved. It was not until 1901 that fees were abolished in all primary schools except for the Borough schools. By Ordinances in 1901 and 1902 the government agreed to pay the whole salaries of teachers in the assisted schools, while reducing grants to existing schools for buildings and furniture.20 Compulsory education was not enacted until 1921, and then only in the urban areas. The situation was, therefore, that the number of primary schools increased between 1870 and 1900, and so did the number of children

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attending primary schools. But the population was increasing rapidly, mainly through immigration from India, the eastern Caribbean, and Venezuela. The increase in school attendance barely kept pace with the increase in the school-age population. By around 1900 at least one-third of Trinidad's children were not receiving any education; a large proportion of these were Indian children. Most black children certainly attended primary school, though often not regularly. So on the one hand, many children remained outside the school system; on the other hand, the government and assisted schools did provide an elementary education for most of Trinidad's black and coloured children by the end of the century. It should be emphasised that the government and assisted schools in the rural districts were attended by the children of labourers, artisans and peasant farmers, who would be both black and coloured. Upper- and middle-class parents in the country would not send their children to these schools because they thought it undesirable for them to mix with lowerclass pupils. They would be sent to private schools in the towns. In Port of Spain and San Fernando, the Borough Schools, run by the Borough Councils and assisted by the government, did attract middle-class children, and they were expected to be superior to the rural schools. Upper-class white children would go to private, elitist schools in Port of Spain and San Fernando. There were two government primary schools which deserve special consideration. These were the Boys' and Girls' Model Schools at Woodbrook, Port of Spain, set up in 1851 as practising schools for the Normal (teacher-training) College. They offered a wider range of instruction than the ordinary primary schools and were usually run by British teachers. For this reason, the Model Schools attracted many middle-class children, and a few upper-class white boys attended. The Model Schools were one of the few institutions where white, coloured and black children could be found together. They were, for that reason, an area of social tension. Indeed, soon after they were established, the Attorney-General felt it necessary to state that the government had no intention of using the Model Schools as a vehicle for social mobility. Some white boys were shifted from the Model School to the Queen's Collegiate School in 1859, probably to escape association with lower-class children. 21 Despite the Attorney-General, the Model Schools were one of the few avenues of upward mobility offered by the school system, and working-class children were able to obtain a superior primary education in them, which would give the boys a better chance to win a free place to one of the secondary schools. In addition, both male and female pupils might enter the Normal School as teacher trainees, qualifying them for posts in the government schools. The Chronicle claimed that some of the island's planters and merchants

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had gone to the Model School, as well as several civil servants and professionals. Among the cx-pupils it listed were L. A. Alexis, second master at the Normal School; Thomas Tench > owner of the Review, J. N . Rat, the Town Clerk, who was white; E. and A. Cipriani; and G. L. Garcia. The last three names are especially interesting, as the Ciprianis and Garcias were well-known white French and Spanish Creole families.22 But certainly working-class children attended too. The same paper reported that when fees of five shillings a month were imposed by the 1875 Ordinance, one old dark crone swore that she * would eat dirt before she would keep her girl from the school; the Governor should not prevent her child from going to the Model School'; and not a few rather rough specimens are still to be seen on the lower forms. No doubt the superintendents prefer a scheme which v/eeds out the ruder elements, and gives them a better brought-up class of children to deal with. 23

Governor Irving thought that the Model Schools were 'very large and useful institutions used by people of the class of small tradesmen and mechanics, and is [sic] to a considerable extent self-supporting'. 24 In 1892, the Roman Catholic members of the Board of Education and the Legislative Council called for the abolition of the Model Schools. Their reason for doing so was that teachers were trained in them for the government schools, while no means were provided at public expense for training teachers for Catholic schools; Catholics did not feel that their teachers could safely be trained in the 'godless' Normal and Model Schools. Louis de Verteuil moved in the Council that the annual grant which financed the Model Schools should be withdrawn after 1892, and in the Board of Education a similar motion was carried by a vote on strictly denominational lines.25 In the event, on the advice of the Governor, the Secretary of State allowed the schools to continue and authorised the Council to vote a sum for the training of Catholic teachers at St Joseph's Convent and at St Mary's College.26 But while the issue was still in doubt, the schools were vigorously defended as an important element in the colony's education system. The Governor, F. N. Broome, thought that they were attended by children of a better social standing than those who went to the ordinary primary schools, and that they supplied a real need. The Headmistress of the Girls' Model School insisted that without it, girls of the respectable middle classes would have no means of being properly educated - their parents could not allow them to mix with the roughest of the population who go to the common schools at 26. a week, neither could they afford to pay the fees charged in good private schools.

J. H . Collens, Headmaster of the boys' school, stated that many pupils of his school had become prominent merchants and professionals, while at least half of the certificated teachers in Trinidad had been trained in the Model School since 1878. 27

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One newspaper thought that far from being abolished, the Model Schools should be endowed with a large number of scholarships. We have no patience with men who would tamper with and limit the education of the masses on the small, bigoted, narrow-minded grounds of religious differences.

De Verteuil himself admitted that they are schools with good standing; that to a large class of people they afford the means of giving their children a higher education; that a gap in our social scales was, as it were, filled by these schools; that they are middle-class schools to all intents and purposes.28

If the Model Schools were 'middle-class.. .to all intents and purposes', secondary education was largely the preserve of the upper class. With very few exceptions, the boys and girls who attended the Queen's Royal College, St Mary's College, and St Joseph's Convent in this period were from upper-class families, both Creole and European; most of them were white, though these schools were not racially exclusive. The main factor in this situation, of course, was that colour lines coincided so neatly with income levels, and the fees at the three schools were high enough to exclude all but the prosperous. The two boys' secondary colleges in 1869 were Queen's Collegiate School, a government-run and financed secular school, and the College of the Immaculate Conception (St Mary's), a private college run by French Fathers of the Order of the Holy Ghost, offering a strictly denominational education. Both charged high fees, ^15 a year, which Keenan thought very high even for the prosperous. The Collegiate School, founded in 1859, offered a classical curriculum based on that of English public schools, and no religious instruction was given in it, nor were boarders taken. The intention was always to limit the Collegiate School to boys of the upper, and upper middle, class; it was expected that white boys would be in the majority, though the sons of prosperous coloured families were acceptable, since apartheid in a formal sense did not exist in Trinidad. According to Charles Warner, who was largely responsible for the school's establishment, it was for no one whose parents worked with their hands. On the other hand, the son of a black school teacher was eliminated because of the high fees. Warner stated clearly 'it is of course not desired, nor intended, that the school should receive those whose position in after life will be below the standard of the education which is offered'. 29 The founders of the Collegiate School intended it for the education of upperclass, white boys whose parents could not afford (or chose not) to send them to British public schools. Because it was secular, Catholic parents felt they could not send their boys there. In addition, since it had no boarders, it was difficult for rural planters to take advantage of the school. Leading French Creoles were

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able to persuade the Order of the Holy Ghost, based in France, to set up St Mary's College in 1863. This college took boarders, charged high fees, was staffed by French Fathers, and used French as the language of instruction. Because it was strictly denominational, non-Catholic boys did not attend it; its pupils were predominantly French Creoles. This was the situation when A. H . Gordon undertook his reorganisation of the education system in 1867-70. Gordon was faced with pressure from the Catholic leadership to withdraw the grant to the Collegiate School. He conceded that the Collegiate School was regarded with 'aversion and distrust' by the Catholic community. Funded by the government to give educational opportunity to the whole island, it had become little more than 'a day school for the children of the wealthier Protestant families in Port of Spain'. Although public servants were exempted from paying fees for their sons, there were very few sons of Catholic civil servants at the college. The Colonial Office, taking Gordon at his word, pronounced the Collegiate School 'a failure', and directed him to end its grant. 30 This decision dismayed Gordon; it had 'never crossed his mind' that the Secretary of State would decide to abolish the school. Gordon was sure that the Catholic leadership neither expected, nor even wanted, such an outcome; the Catholics really wanted state aid for St Mary's. In fact, he believed the Collegiate School had been a success academically, but a partial failure socially, in the sense that it had not brought together boys of English-Protestant, and French-Catholic, backgrounds. There was clearly a lack of confidence in the school on the part of the Catholic community, and this only reflected the deep division between Catholics and Protestants, a division which ' no longer possesses all the strength it had, whilst the rancour with which it was accompanied is, I trust, a thing of the past'. To abolish the Collegiate School would immediately revive religious and national discord. Gordon's solution was a central college imparting exclusively secular instruction by teachers paid by the state, and affiliated schools granted state aid in proportion to the number of pupils successfully examined. His objective was to combine sound secular education at the central level with ' as much or as little religious or other teaching super-added at the licensed schools. . .as the managers of those schools may choose to give, whilst the advantage of bringing together daily in friendly relation boys of different race and creed would not be lost'. 31 Gordon was concerned, in other words, that the young men of the upper class were being segregated on denominational lines in their formative years, thus perpetuating divisions of religion and nationality. His friend, Charles Kingsley, who was in Trinidad in 1869-70, probably expressed his own view when he wrote:

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Justice seemed to demand that if State aid were given, it should be given to all creeds alike, and prudence certainly demanded that the respectable young men of Trinidad should not be arrayed in two separate camps, in which differences of creed were intensified by those of race, and - in one camp at least - by a sense of something very like injustice on the part of a Protestant.. .and originally conquering Government.32

By 1870 the ruling class was beginning to see that its rigid stratification based on religion and nationality was counter-productive. It was time to make an effort to settle the differences between the two religious or national sectors. In 1870, therefore, after negotiations with the Catholic leadership, the Colonial Office authorised Gordon to set up machinery for granting state aid to the Catholic college. There was to be a Royal College, staffed by teachers paid by the Government, to which private secondary schools could be affiliated once they had reached a defined standard. St Mary's was affiliated in 1870. Its pupils were examined annually, and for each boy who passed, in the different classes, a grant of ^ 1 0 was made, up to ^1,000 a year. The Principal of St Mary's was paid by the state, and pupils competed with those of Queen's Royal College, as the Collegiate School was now known, for the four annual scholarships to British universities.33 Gordon had intended that the pupils of the two schools should combine for all secular classes, but this did not happen. A special clause in the 1870 Ordinance authorised separate classes, an arrangement made necessary by the inflexible position of the Catholic authorities; language was also a practical difficulty, since instruction was usually in French at St Mary's, though soon after 1870 the college generally adopted English.34 The Catholic college continued to be run on strictly denominational lines, and the Royal College became merely a device for granting state aid to private secondary schools once they had reached the required standard. The boys who went to the two colleges were nearly all from upper-class families. The fees at QRC were reduced in 1871 from ^15 to £9 7s. 6d. per annum, in order to extend its benefits to the sons of civil servants, merchants and estate managers who could not send them to Britain. 35 The reduced fee was still impossibly high for working-class or lower middle-class boys, but it probably enabled the smaller planters and merchants and the less wealthy professionals to send their sons. In 1869, a large proportion of the boys at the Collegiate School were sons of civil servants, followed by sons of merchants, planters, and professionals. At St Mary's the largest group consisted of the sons of planters and merchants.36 Certainly there were no boys from anything approaching a lower-class background. Keenan also reported that there were thirty-seven 'coloured' boys,

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twenty-four at St Mary's and thirteen at the Collegiate School, as compared with 142 white boys. Most of the boys who went to St Mary's were from white French Creole families. They would all be Catholics. Most of the well-known French Creole names figure among the signatures to a petition from ex-pupils of the College in 1891. 37 The pupils became merchants, planters, and professionals, like their fathers. One old boy estimated that since the foundation of the college in 1863, up to 1882, it had given Trinidad sixty civil servants, including doctors, engineers and surveyors, three priests, eleven lawyers, nine doctors in private practice, and n o merchants and planters. 38 As for the Royal College, most of the boys were Anglicans or Nonconformists, and a majority were from the leading English Creole families, or were the sons of British residents in the island. Pupils from both colleges competed for the four scholarships offered on the basis of competitive examinations to British universities, the pinnacle of the whole system. The upper and middle classes took a very keen interest in the results, and there was much rivalry between the two colleges. The great majority of the scholarship winners chose to study law or medicine, the professions which offered social prestige and sure financial returns. Up to 1886, all the boys winning scholarships, without exception, had chosen one of these professions. In a futile effort to change this situation, an Ordinance enacted in 1886 permitted winners to attend a recognised scientific or engineering institution instead of a university. 39 In 1892 the Colonial Office agreed that two of the four scholarships should be given for agricultural or engineering studies, and that a commercial course should be introduced into both colleges, allowing the boys who had no intertion of entering 'a learned profession' to learn Spanish, bookkeeping and short-hand instead of Latin and Greek. 40 The great majority of scholarship winners, both white and coloured, continued to opt for the professions which offered secure social and financial rewards. The secondary education of girls, even more than that of boys, remained closed to all but the upper and upper middle class. The oldest girls' secondary school, St Joseph's Convent, was established in Port of Spain in 1836. It was run by French nuns of the Order of St Joseph and was strictly denominational. Most of its pupils were white French Creoles, with a few girls from elite coloured families. The majority of upper-class French Creole girls were educated at St Joseph's, sometimes finishing their education at a French or English Catholic school. 41 In 1882 an affiliated school was set up by the nuns in San Fernando. 42 Girls from upper-class Protestant families, or girls whose parents could not afford the fees for St Joseph's, were educated at various private, profit-making schools. A school 'for the education of young ladies', opened in 1875, was welcomed as fulfilling

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a sorely felt want; as the scruples of parents had no choice between the costliness and, what some think, the ecclesiasticism of the convent, and the overcrowding, with all its attendant perils, of the Female Model School.43

Another ladies' school, opened in 1892 in Port of Spain, offered a sound English education, with French, German, and music 'on the Continental system'; boarders could be accommodated. 44 No doubt most of these private schools were in practice confined to white girls. The San Fernando Gazette criticised a school run by a Miss Bunde because it was confined 'to the children of a select few'. Those excluded were not merely the immoral or the ill-bred, but children 'who in social status and respectability would pass muster in the best educational establishments of Europe'. In other words, coloured girls of elite families were excluded because of their race.45 It was extremely difficult for black and coloured boys from workingand lower middle-class backgrounds to obtain a secondary education; for girls, it was impossible, since no state-aided secondary school for girls existed during this period. For the boys, there were four, later eight, free places at the two colleges, awarded every year to pupils of the government and assisted primary schools on the basis of annual examinations. These free places represented, in fact, one of the chances for upward mobility open to the coloured and black working or lower middle classes. The theory was, according to the Inspector of Schools, that higher education was open to the poorest boy. Through the free places, and the Island Scholarships, it may indeed be said that the highest positions in the British Empire to which mental acquirements are a passport, are opened to the poorest boy in Trinidad. 46

The reality, of course, was another matter. Guppy himself admitted that one difficulty with the free places was that few rural parents of the class which sent their children to the public schools could take advantage of a free place, because they lacked the means to support a boy in the city. New Era agreed, and pointed out that some of the 'free boys' were too poor to appear decently dressed each day, or were without the kind of parental care necessary for mental and physical health. 47 Both Guppy and New Era suggested a maintenance grant for the free pupils, and a sum of ^150 for this purpose was in fact subsequently voted each year. Another problem was that the quality of instruction in the primary schools, with the exception of the Model Schools, was so low that it was very difficult for boys to pass the examination on the basis of which the exhibitions were granted. A very high proportion of the 'free boys' were from the Model School, and boys from the ordinary primary schools, especially the rural ones, were at a disadvantage from the outset. The free

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places were never all filled. In 1889, ^ o r instance, only nine free pupils were attending the colleges out of a possible twenty-four. But the free places did represent a chance, however limited, for a small number of black and coloured boys of humble origin to obtain a secondary education. The boys who succeeded were usually urban, living in Port of Spain, San Fernando, or Arima, and attending either the Model School, or the urban primary schools, especially the Borough Schools of Port of Spain and San Fernando. They tended to be the sons of skilled artisans, or small independent businessmen, or minor clerks, civil servants and teachers. In other words, they usually came from the ambitious, 'respectable' upper working class which formed a potential middle class; from families who spoke English rather than patois (many were of Barbadian origin), and were active members of the different churches and of Lodges and Friendly Societies. The sons of rural labourers and peasants who attended the rural primary schools were most unlikely to win the exhibitions. It was from the urban lower middle or upper working class that most of the 'free boys' came. For instance, in 1890 Arthur McShine won a free place to QRC from the Eastern Government School, Port of Spain. He won an Island Scholarship and proceeded to Edinburgh University to study medicine; he qualified as a specialist ophthalmist. 48 In the next century the McShines were to be a prominent family of black doctors and lawyers. Other black or coloured boys who won free places to the colleges in this period were A. E. Hendrickson, a lawyer; C. P. David, the black barrister and politician; Stephen Laurence, a doctor and later an Unofficial like David; and E. P. Masson. There were, perhaps, three outstanding deficiencies in the education system of Trinidad in the later nineteenth century. First, a very large proportion in the school-age population received no education whatever, and those who did attend a school often did so very irregularly. Secondly, the quality of instruction in the primary schools was poor, and the buildings and equipment inadequate. Lastly, secondary education was almost exclusively confined to upper-class children, with the important exception of the small number of 'free boys'. This state of affairs was possible because of the existence of certain official and upper-class attitudes towards mass education in Trinidad. It is important, therefore, to examine these attitudes and to show how they operated to limit educational opportunities. The official policy for education was always economy and retrenchment. Trinidad civil servants, like the upper class in general, felt that education was unnecessary for the children of working-class blacks and Indians, and so they were always reluctant to make the necessary expenditure. Education was financed from current revenue, and was not regarded as a remunerative investment. So when resources were limited, govern-

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ments often preferred to spend on remunerative facilities such as railways or roads. R. L. Guppy complained in 1880 that: it is the fashion here to depreciate elementary education and to oppose and obstruct it whenever possible. Hence is due I believe.. .the parsimony exhibited in dealing with educational matters compared with the liberality shown to other departments. 49

In 1893, Governor Broome told the Secretary of State that his main concern was to cut the excessive costs of primary education. The education grant in that year (1893) stood at £37,760, and he believed that it should not exceed ^32,000, the actual expenditure in 1892. Indeed, the grant should not be increased by one cent for any reason whatever. Broome thought that the proportionate expenditure on education was already far in excess of the expenditure of other comparable governments; and there were many other urgent needs, such as communications and water. 50 The drive for economy was especially strong in the years after 1885, when the sugar crisis affected revenues. Education was judged to be the least important head of expenditure, and this affected both the efficiency of the existing schools, and the provision of others. 51 This kind of negative education policy was only a reflection, of course, of general ideas about mass education current at the time. The local government and the privileged classes were at best lukewarm, at worst positively hostile, to the education of the children of labourers. In Britain education for the working classes was only slowly being provided. In the West Indies the masses were black or Indian. As Donald Wood points out, in Trinidad the public debate at least was not openly racist. It was a question of the economic and social expediency of educating children who were destined to be unskilled manual workers, not a question of whether blacks were in fact educable. Nothing was publicly said or written that would not have been platitudinous in England or Ireland. But it is difficult not to suspect that there were those who believed in their inmost hearts, or confided only to their friends, that the Negro had been endowed with inferior or childish traits which society could repress but never remove by education.52

A retired Inspector of Schools lamented in 1898: How often have sugar planters and others said to me, 'what do you want to educate little niggers for? put hoes in their hands and send them into the canepieces'. 53

The essential element in the hostility to mass education found in Trinidad in the late nineteenth century was fear that the lower orders, educated or semi-educated, would refuse to perform their allotted class role of manual labourers. Education in Trinidad was inextricably bound up with class. A sound elementary education was one which inculcated the virtues of honest labour. An unsound one was a system which made children

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despise agricultural labour. This was a theme repeated endlessly, in the press and in speeches. A letter in the Chronicle could find nothing good to say about the primary schools. You will find boys there, aye, and some engaged as teachers, children of our labouring poor, the bone and sinew of the country, becoming rapidly ruined by so-called education, puffed up with vanity and conceit, destitute of all filial affection, nay, ashamed of their parentage.

These children emerged from school utterly unfit for ordinary labour and convinced that the world owed them a living. 54 Governor Robinson made the same point when he told the orphans at the Belmont Orphanage that a sound education would teach them self-respect and reverence for their superiors. It would be very dangerous for them to feel they were above manual labour. The Orphanage must teach its inmates to be, not ladies and gentlemen, but 'honest, industrious, self-respectful, and God-fearing gardeners, carpenters, servants, cooks, or housekeepers'. 55 Many upper-class persons thought that primary education should be 'industrial', in order to make working-class children better manual labourers. 'Industrial education' was understood to mean that children would be taught, besides the 'three Rs', simple agricultural skills, and perhaps mechanical techniques in the urban schools. The more sophisticated academic subjects, like history, algebra, geography, or geometry, should be omitted. This thought was expressed by the editor of the Chronicle when he wrote that educational reform should be directed not to transforming 'peasants' into something else, but to making them more intelligent and prosperous in their vocation, through simple agricultural training in the ward schools.56 Robert Guppy wrote in 1868 that 'nothing useful in an industrial way' was taught in the primary schools. He claimed that immigrants from the other islands were displacing natives from jobs because of the latter's useless education. 'Mere history and geography' would never raise the Trinidad Creoles to prosperity.57 Even a relatively liberal paper like New Era thought that the primary schools were a failure because they were not 'industrial'. Where a free education was given, it should be clerical and mechanical in the towns, agricultural and mechanical in the country. The dignity of labour should be inculcated and the children should be taught how to use tools. New Era thought that 99 out of 100 pupils of the ward schools despised agricultural labour, and many became 'positively useless' members of society. They were too proud to be labourers, yet they lacked even the necessary skills and literacy to be a mechanic, far less a clerk or a teacher. The Port of Spain Gazette quoted this editorial approvingly, and suggested free education not only in the three Rs, but also in trades, for all classes.58 For

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all education should be practical. A labourer might succeed even without the three Rs, commented the same paper, but he could never succeed without knowing how to use his tools; the hands as well as the mind had to be trained. It was essential to introduce some industrial education in the primary schools, for the system as it was failed to impress the pupil either with the necessity for, or the noble dignity of, honest manual labour, although in nine cases out of ten such labour was the only probable means of his gaining his daily bread.59

It is clear that the establishment advocated industrial education in the primary schools because people were concerned that working-class children might leave their class role of agricultural labourers. Industrial education, it was hoped, would make them more efficient manual workers instead of aspiring clerks or school teachers. It would keep them on the land, instead of encouraging a drift to the already overcrowded towns, where ambitious blacks naturally gravitated. This was the objective behind several proposals for agricultural education in the rural primary schools. A Committee on agricultural education which reported in 1892 called for the training of primary school teachers in agriculture so that they could teach it in the rural schools, which were attended by the children of the working classes. Anticipating resistance from the teachers, the Committee recommended that agriculture should be a compulsory subject for the teachers' certificate, and that teachers should receive a results fee for each pupil who passed an examination in the subject.60 A correspondent to the Agricultural Record thought that only practical agricultural education could make lower-class boys of 'material use' to the community, or check the overcrowding and unemployment in the towns and villages. The journal's editor deplored the 'false pride and superficial education' which led Trinidadians to despise agriculture. The prosperous, self-made cocoa planter sends his son to school; the 'golden youth' shuns agriculture and seeks a 'genteel occupation'; he therefore helps to swell the ranks of those who complain that times are hard and employment difficult to obtain.. .Everyone wants to be a gentleman and no one to cultivate the soil.61

The rural labouring population had to be kept on the soil. As the Chronicle put it, we would not confine the mass of the population, one and all, to the sphere in which they were born, but even less should we like to see whole classes, by a sort of forcing process, screwed into a different, though not perhaps a higher class.

It would be fatal 'to educate the peasantry out of existence'. 62 Yet there was an essential contradiction here. If it was fatal to educate the peasantry out of existence, it was equally dangerous, to the ruling classes, to create a truly independent smallholding class. Neither would serve the needs of

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the plantation. The upper class wanted the schools to produce amenable and responsive field and factory labourers, but not independent-minded peasants and artisans. If the schools inculcated a contempt for agricultural labour, this would change only when the peasant became independent and prosperous, so that manual labour on the land was no longer associated with dependence and poverty. But this was precisely what the ruling class did not want. The Port of Spain Gazette, noting that teachers would be offended if called on to teach any industrial subjects, thought that it was a legacy of slavery that people wanted education not for itself, but for what it might bring in social advancement. The desire to better oneself was laudable, 'but it must be a reasonable ambition kept within due bounds'. 63 In other words, working-class parents should not expect education to improve the socio-economic prospects of their children; instead, they should value schooling 'for itself. But, as Carl Campbell points out, the severe limitations on the mobility of working-class blacks lessened their interest in education. Those who had some reason to hope for mobility for their children through education would be most likely to support the schools; those who had no such reason (the great majority in the country) would be apathetic. If the purpose of the primary schools was stated to be, not to lead to social or economic improvement, but to make the labourers more industrious and contented in their existing situations, why should they have bought the whole package ? It is unreasonable to expect strong support by the lower classes for schools which did not clearly lead to some material advantage. People, especially lower-class people, will not support schools for love of learning.64

Educated blacks often attacked these illiberal notions about mass education. A correspondent to New Era wrote that the primary schools could not make the children despise agricultural labour if such labour was properly appreciated and rewarded by employers. Schooling might make black children object to being 'huddled together with half-savage heathens' (the Indian estate labourers) or aspire to be an artisan earning one dollar a day instead of the field labourer's twenty-five cents, and this was as it should be.65 The San Fernando Gazette was a strong supporter of mass education, and an outspoken opponent of denominational control of schools. It opposed the 1870 Ordinance which gave state aid to church schools as 'a retrograde course', conflicting with the clear tendency of legislation in the civilised world.66 It attacked the indifference to the standard of instruction in the public primary schools: It would almost seem that, because these schools belong to the * nigger classes' of the community, these gentry [the Board of Education] think that they need no thought or attention. . .The impression that this is a part of a plot or design to injure

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the future of these classes is strengthened by their contemptuous disregard for the educational claims of the masses.67

This paper was very hostile to the Catholic Church and its schools. Its editor was sure that the teachers, and the instruction, in the government schools were far superior to the Catholic assisted schools. He believed that the Church was more interested in exercising a 'domineering authority' over its flock than in effectively educating the children. The government schools should be safeguarded against unfair competition from the church schools; Catholic priests often exerted severe pressure to get parents to withdraw their children from the government schools. The authorities should resist 'priestly interference5 with education.68 A correspondent to the San Fernando Gazette accused the churches of trying to keep blacks in ignorance: three clergymen had testified to the 1895 Commission against free and compulsory education. 'It was evident that the unspoken word was "Don't let education spread among the blacks more widely than you can help".' The clergy wanted to save souls; but blacks wanted their minds and bodies attended to as well: 'hold back no word of knowledge from us that human hearts should know'. 69 Another commented: it is much to be regretted that at the close of this, the nineteenth century, persons should be found in Trinidad ready to stifle the minds of the rising generation by refusing educational facilities.. .Avowed enemies of education have been appointed to seats on the board, while others figure as managers of schools.70

Of course, not all members of the upper classes were hostile to mass education. R. L. Guppy was a forceful advocate of free and compulsory education, and strongly anti-clerical. Louis de Verteuil supported free, compulsory education at the primary level. He thought that when only a few lower-class children received any education, they might be led to despise agricultural labour. But when education was universal, 'in lieu of the unintelligent and unskilful hands we are constrained to employ at present. . .we shall then have to deal with intelligent and skilful agents'. 71 There were others with the same mildly liberal views; but the evidence seems to show that most of the 'respectable' classes, and notably the employers of agricultural labour, regarded the education of the working class as at best a necessary evil, at worst positively harmful to themselves and to the society. This kind of hostility towards mass education operated in various practical ways to limit educational opportunities for lower-class children. The establishment could not close the secondary schools entirely to nonwhite boys. But it could, and did, set up devices to restrict their entry. For instance, for most of this period illegitimate children were apparently excluded from both colleges. Since the great mass of lower-class blacks

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were illegitimate, as well as virtually all Indian children, this effectively closed the secondary schools to most lower-class boys. Liberals in Trinidad saw this quite clearly. J. D. Alcazar thought that the ban on illegitimates was a device to exclude black and coloured boys, and he felt that an exception would have to be made in the case of the 'free boys' at least. 72 The Observer thought that it was fair to speak of ' a disposition to exclude coloured boys', as the ban affected chiefly these children; the success of non-whites at both colleges had put the authorities on the defensive.73 A petition in 1894 protested against any increased grant to St Mary's, because the ban on illegitimate boys was an injustice to the largest section of the population; illegitimate births accounted for sixty-one per cent of the births in the non-Indian population in 1892. 74 The free boys in the secondary schools, who were nearly all coloured or black, were in a somewhat invidious position. New Era claimed in 1877 that free boys at the Queen's Royal College were discriminated against: they were refused books, and for days consecutively they were not examined in their lessons. Often they had no direct teaching at all. Nonwhite boys in general were discriminated against by the Principal, William Miles, by not being put into his own class, the only one from which boys could compete for the Island Scholarships. The result was a decrease in the number of these boys winning them. 75 The coloured barrister E. Scipio-Pollard alleged that a boy had been expelled from St Mary's for a trivial offence because he was coloured: the authorities were determined to 'exclude coloured boys'. 76 Nothing illustrates the hostility of the upper class to mass education better than the issue of the free places to the colleges. They were subjected to frequent criticism. Such a respected figure as the Principal of the Royal College wrote in 1892: They have always been viewed with dislike by a portion of the community. It is urged that the presence of so large a number, accumulating to between 20 and 30, of boys of a low social class is injurious to the moral tone of the school, and that many respectable people therefore refrain from sending their sons to the college, preferring the less efficient teaching of a private school to the risk of such association. This feeling is, I believe, widely prevalent, and deserves the consideration of the Government.

He went on to assert that most of the free boys were either dim, or idle, or both, and that the very poor could not maintain their children so as to support continued mental effort. He thought two, instead of eight, places would suffice, and the Port of Spain Gazette commented that they could be dropped entirely, for the feeling of the 'intelligent public' was to allow secondary education to ' take its natural course, according to the means of parents'.'77 Miles' letter was strongly criticised by Emilie Maresse-Paul, a coloured

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intellectual with strongly anti-clerical views. She stated that intellectual worth was found in all walks of life. Miles' objection was colour prejudice pure and simple: a 'question of epidermis'. If any 'blancomaniac parents' removed their sons from the College to avoid contact with the 'free boys', then they would lose out in the competition of life. The free boys were often the moral and intellectual superiors of the aristocratic youth. 78 In 1893 there was a major debate on the issue. An Unofficial, Eugene Lange, moved in the Council that the sum of ^150 voted to maintain the eight free boys should be struck off the estimates. Lange stated his case quite explicitly: these children who paid nothing for entry into the college, and who were brought up without morals, being brought into contact were liable to contaminate the children of those who paid for their admission.

They were surrounded by bad habits, bad language, and vice, and these were bound to spread. He was supported by two other Unofficials. Louis de Verteuil, whose views were mildly liberal for his class, opposed the motion. It was, he thought, the duty of the government to bring from the bottom such elements as could be improved. The motion was defeated by ten votes to three.79 Several letters to the press during the Council debate upheld the free places. Edgar Maresse-Smith claimed that most of the free boys were not from the poorest class, but from the lower middle; no doubt this was the case. Their parents were ambitious for their children and gave them every support; they were brought up more 'morally' than most upper-class children. E. H. Senhouse thought that in matters of education in the West Indies, and particularly where the Negro is concerned, there is always to be found some representative of a fossilised age to stand in the way.

The race showed so much intelligence in Trinidad that Lange and his fellow reactionaries felt it was time to block its progress. It was, in fact, a gross libel to say that the free boys contaminated the others; many lessons in good manners had been taught by them to their 'superiors'. J. D. Alcazar wanted the number of free places increased to three per 100,000 of the population. Every facility should be given to candidates; rural boys should have travelling and boarding expenses.80 Many other letters and editorials, and a petition, expressed a feeling of deep indignation on the part of the educated black and coloured community at the attempt to end what was the only chance for lower-class boys to obtain a secondary education. Another way in which official and upper-class hostility to mass education had a practical result was the imposition of fees in the government primary schools. Before 1875, the government schools were free, while

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the assisted schools were fee-paying. In order to encourage assisted church schools, Irving authorised the government schools to charge fees of not less than threepence per week for each child. The education rate in the wards was abolished, and the expenses of the government schools were to be met by the ordinary ward taxes, plus the fees.81 This retrograde step was justified by the Governor on three grounds. First, it would relieve taxpayers, especially estate owners and smallholders, from the special education rate. Secondly, fees would give parents a 'practical stake' in the operation of the schools, for free education in his judgement tended to depreciate its value in the eyes of the people. And lastly, it would enable church schools to compete on equal terms with the government schools.82 From 1875 to 1901, all public primary schools in Trinidad were feepaying. The Inspector of Schools reported that in 1875-6, following the imposition of fees, there was a drop in the attendance at the ward schools. Irving thought this was acceptable. He based this judgement solely on economy: each child in a government school cost the colony ten times as much as one in an assisted school, so the channelling of children from government to assisted schools would be a positive advantage. He looked forward to the government being able to withdraw its schools from districts adequately served by church schools.83 The reaction to the imposition of fees was mixed. A correspondent to New Era thought the fee was 'ruinous' and 'far above' the labourers' means. 'What does the Governor mean', he asked, 'if his intent is not to drive all the children of the peasantry from the schools of the island?' 84 The Chronicle was sure that attendance at the ward schools would drop drastically as a result. Teachers had been privately told not to send away children who came without the fee, but the sum remained as a debt and discouraged many parents from sending their children. The change would result 'in something very like a sheer collapse in popular primary education'. 85 The San Fernando Gazette thought Irving's action had caused severe hardship to poor parents, in a colony where the people were just emerging from the ignorance of slavery; yet the Colonial Office, in its paternal concern for the people, sanctioned his policy and even rewarded Irving with a knighthood.86 C. C. Smith, head teacher of the Chacon Street school, thought that the fees were the greatest single cause of poor attendance. Many parents could not pay, and others would not. Smith often paid fees himself when he knew the parents were destitute. Many parents had told him that they kept their children away because of the fees.87 The Port of Spain Gazette, on the other hand, agreed with the imposition of fees. In Trinidad the value of education was judged by the amount paid for it; working-class parents would not appreciate free education and

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would lose all interest in it. The lower orders were in great need, thought the editor, of lessons in personal and family responsibility; the abolition of fees would pauperise them, and would encourage them to look to the state in a matter which by the laws of God and man rested on the individual.88 These opinions were probably held by most members of the official and upper classes. The only concession made in this period was that the Ordinance of 1890 remitted fees for the children of certified paupers and indentured Indians.89 The hostility to mass education shown by so many of the powerful groups in the community made it easy for the government to justify its policy of economy, its shifting the burden of educating the children of the poor on to the churches, whose concern was more with proselytising and ecclesiastical control than with efficient schools. Inevitably, therefore, the system of public education in Trinidad in the later nineteenth century was deficient in many ways. Secondary education was unavailable to the great mass of black and coloured children, and a considerable number of them received no regular primary education. Nevertheless, there was a system of government and assisted primary schools, and there were the free places to the boys' colleges. Limited though they were, the schools represented the main chance of mobility for the sons of the black and coloured lower class and lower middle class. The very able, or the very lucky, could hope to win free places to the colleges, and secondary education made possible careers in teaching or the civil service. The luckiest of all, a mere handful, might win one of the Island Scholarships and proceed to Britain to study for one of the professions. Education was, in fact, the crucial factor in the gradual emergence of a coloured and black middle class. As Lloyd Best has put it, black people's investment was in education, our business was the school. The tycoons of industry in this country have been the Primary Headteachers.. .the men who held that precious ladder which let our fathers out the hatch - first through the College Exhibition, then next through the House Scholarship, and finally the Island Scholarship supreme.90

5 The rise of a coloured and black middle class

It was the system of public education which offered the main chance for mobility to coloured and black families of humble origin. But not all members of the non-white middle class in this period can be called ' selfmade', in the sense of rising to middle-class status through education or exceptional ability. For the coloured and black middle class consisted of two distinct groups. There was a small group of families of mixed African and European descent who were the descendants of the French free people of colour settled in Trinidad since the 1780s. Secondly, there were the people, both black and coloured, who can be described as 'self-made'. They were the descendants of the Trinidad ex-slaves, or of * liberated' African immigrants, or of immigrants from the eastern Caribbean. And they had acquired their middle-class status mainly through their command of British culture and their white-collar jobs. The group of French free coloured origin, small in number, formed a quite distinct and self-contained sector. They were concentrated in the Naparima district, and in San Fernando, for it had been here that the majority of the free coloured immigrants had established their plantations after 1783. Like the white French Creoles, they cherished the past. Some of the free coloured settlers had been men of wealth and position; many had been planters and slave-owners. There was the same nostalgic feeling for aristocratic traditions and the same respect for birth and breeding. P. G. L. Borde, the French Creole historian, stated that the customs and manners of the white French Creoles were shared by the free coloureds of French origin who settled in Trinidad. Since white society was exclusive, the free coloureds 'formaient une seconde societe parallele a la premiere, et non moins distinguee qu'elle'. Citing family tradition, Borde claimed that relations between the two sectors before the British conquest were cordial; ill-feeling crept in under the British regime. 1 Certainly members of this group, like the white French Creoles, tended to inter-marry and to cherish family tradition and connections. The Romains and Philips were leading families in the group of French 86

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free coloured origin. Jean-Baptiste and St Luce Philip, two brothers who were both doctors, were well-known figures in the first half of the century. Jean-Baptiste was the author 0/ A Free Mulatto, published anonymously in London in 1824, a statement of the grievances of the free coloured elite during the governorship of Sir Ralph Woodford. St Luce was a successful planter in the Naparimas and became the first coloured Unofficial member of the Legislative Council.2 Their sister Marie married Louis Romain, first Mayor of San Fernando. When Marie Romain died in 1894, she was said to belong to 'one of the oldest and most aristocratic coloured families in the island.. .she was polite to her inferiors, but never familiar. . .Even in her old age her aristocratic training clung to her in the highest degree.' When her husband was alive, 'it was then considered a privilege to those who had the entree as guests of the Romains'.8 Related to the Philips was Michel Maxwell Philip, Solicitor-General 1869-88. Born in 1829, Philip was apparently the illegitimate son of a white planter and a coloured woman of the Philip family, related to JeanBaptiste and St Luce Philip. Educated in Scotland, Philip read law at the Middle Temple and was called to the Bar in 1854. He soon made a name for himself as an exceptionally able advocate and also became involved in local politics, participating in the movement for political reform in the 1850s, and in the struggles of the Roman Catholics against the anglicising and anti-Catholic policies of the local government in the 1850s and early 1860s. At the end of 1867 Philip was elected Mayor of Port of Spain, the first non-white to hold the office; perhaps this marks the emergence of the coloured man as a political force in Trinidad. But the turning-point of Philip's career was the administration of A. H. Gordon (1866-70). He appointed Philip an acting Unofficial member of Council, and soon after, acting Solicitor-General. He was the first coloured man to hold an official seat in the Council. Philip was confirmed as Solicitor-General early in 1871, and held the post until his death in 1888, receiving no further promotion, though he acted as Attorney-General on several occasions.4 Another prominent family in this sector were the Saturnins. Dr Saturnin, who died in 1873, was the doyen of the coloured doctors and a highly respected figure in the community. Belonging to 'a fine old coloured Creole family', he was said to be a universal favourite with his friends and patients. Like Louis de Verteuil, Saturnin qualified at the University of Paris, and began his practice in Trinidad in 1838. He specialised in tropical fevers. For many years he held the post of Superintendent of the Leper Asylum. When Arthur Gordon became Governor, he was shocked at the neglect and the lack of order which a visit to the Asylum revealed. After a careful enquiry, he became convinced that Saturnin was guilty of gross negligence and indifference, and dismissed him in 1867. Because of Saturnin's popularity within the coloured middle class, this was made a

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'question of colour5; but it seems clear that the dismissal was justified, and the agitation soon died down. 5 Saturnin's mother was descended from a wealthy coloured planter from Martinique who settled in Trinidad in 1791 and acquired lands at Petit Morne in the Naparimas. His father owned several estates in different parts of the island. Two of his sisters married into the Angeron and Montrichard families, also well-known names among the French coloured sector.6 Another such was the Maresse family. Mrs Prosper Maresse, who died in 1893, was the grand-daughter of M. Narcisse St Tour of Martinique who settled in Trinidad in 1782. One of her daughters was Emilie Maresse-Paul, a 'talented blue-stocking', who wrote several letters and articles in the local press on religious and educational matters. She wrote at least two pamphlets, The Clericals and the Education Question, published in San Fernando in 1888, and La Necessite des enterrements civils, et Vimpertinence du clerge Dominicain. Her letters to the press, both in French and in English, dealt mainly with education, and showed that she was strongly anti-clerical, defending secular education and bitterly attacking the Catholic clergy for their interference and obstruction in popular education.7 There must have been an anti-clerical tradition in the Maresse family, for one of Emilie's nieces married Joseph Langton, a coloured solicitor, in one of the first civil weddings held in Trinidad. Edgar MaresseSmith, the barrister and radical politician, was a nephew of Emilie Maresse-Paul. The Beaubruns were 'one of the oldest and most respected families of Naparima'. Henry Regis, who died in 1875, was the son of a gentleman who had been a close friend and supporter of Jean-Baptiste Philip. Charles Bicais was the respected representative of ' a very ancient and distinguished family of South Naparima'. At his estate, La Ressource, he carried on the traditional planter hospitality (traditional for both the white French Creoles and the French free coloureds). His father, Louis Bicais, had established La Ressource in 1810-12. The family did not succumb to the difficulties suffered by the sugar industry after 1838, and Charles carried on the family estate, sustaining the hospitality proverbial to the coloured planters of South Naparima. He was 'the most admired planter of the district'.8 Many of the French coloured planters who had established fairly small sugar estates in southern Trinidad in the late eighteenth century, or early in the nineteenth, were squeezed out of sugar production in the crisis years of the 1840s and again in the 1880s; this also happened, as we have noted, to many white French Creole planters. This group, of course, was coloured rather than black, the descendants of men who were already fairly well established when they emigrated to Trinidad from the French West Indian islands. In the judgement of whites, and in their own estimation, coloureds stood on a different footing

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from the blacks. They were the least unacceptable of all non-whites. Charles Kingsley thought that they could claim kinship with whites, while blacks could claim only common humanity. They had a just claim to be equals. Arthur Gordon expressed a conventional judgement of the coloureds when he wrote 'impulsive, fickle, and profoundly treacherous in all social relations, it is impossible to trust them'. But Kingsley put this down to class insecurity.9 The second, and larger, group within the black and coloured middle class consisted of people who were not descended from established free coloured planters and who had achieved their status mainly through education and ability. Both coloured and black, they might be descended from Creole ex-slaves, African immigrants, blacks from the other islands, or Venezuelan immigrants of Spanish-African-Amerindian descent. For the Trinidad ex-slaves, emancipation, by removing the legal basis of their servitude, opened up the possibility of upward mobility. What is clear is that numbers of ex-slaves and their children became petty traders and artisans after 1838. 10 Few of them could have been prosperous, but they were better off than the estate labourers, they were more mobile, and they were more ambitious for their children to go to school. They formed a 'respectable', ambitious, potentially mobile working class, and their children might well achieve the climb to middle-class status. Another significant result of the ex-slaves' entry into petty trade and skilled work was that they settled in towns, for these were activities which were carried on mainly in Port of Spain and the other towns and larger villages. By 1870 well over one-quarter of the total population was urban, a high ratio for a nineteenth-century tropical colony. It was naturally in Port of Spain and the towns that schools and other social and religious amenities were most available. The pronounced urban orientation of many of the more ambitious and mobile ex-slaves and their children was an important factor in the emergence of a black and coloured middle class after 1838. Most of these men were professionals, teachers, civil servants or clerks; a few were planters: even fewer were in business. Joseph Brown, a coloured immigrant from St Vincent, was a merchant. His three sons were all professional men: Vincent was a successful barrister who rose to be Attorney-General; Leopold was a surveyor; and Lionel was also a barrister.11 H . B. Phillips, a coloured native of Barbados, was a partner in a Port of Spain merchant firm with a good position in the city's commercial world. He served as Mayor of Port of Spain and was a leader of the campaign for constitutional reform in 1892-5. 12 But these two successful coloured merchants were untypical figures. It is clear that few members of the black and coloured middle class were involved in business. The island's commercial firms were almost exclusively owned by whites, and

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even the 'clerks' or store assistants employed in these businesses tended to be young white Creoles or Britons. It would have been very difficult for a coloured man who had not inherited wealth to accumulate the capital necessary to establish a business of his own, granted the economic structure. Some owned small businesses: W. B. Laurence, brother of Stephen, owned a bookshop in Port of Spain; L. O. Innis owned a pharmacy; Joseph Lewis, William Herbert and Samuel Carter all owned printing establishments and ran newspapers. One Joshua Smyth, a coloured American who settled in Trinidad in 1852, carried on a successful plumbing business. But, with some exceptions like these, the established commercial world, dominated by a few white families, offered few prospects to educated and socially mobile black or coloured men. The same problem of access to capital prevented many from buying land and becoming planters, unless they had inherited estates from their families. Some coloured families descended from free coloured planters did own estates, but they were relatively few, and, as we noted, many once-landed coloured families had lost their estates in the 1840s or 1880s to larger planters or companies in the process of amalgamating small estates to consolidate their holdings and increase production. One successful coloured planter was Nicholas Brunton, who owned several sugar and cocoa estates in Diego Martin. He was a self-made man of considerable wealth. Brunton was accused of the murder of Abbe Jouin in a sensational case in 1870, but was acquitted.13 Sometimes coloured professional men bought estates out of their income - M. M. Philip bought the Phillipines sugar estate - but they did not derive their livelihood from agriculture. On the whole, middle-class blacks and coloureds did not own plantations, though there were many exceptions to this generalisation. One such was Joseph Brooks, the son of one of the black soldiers of the West India Regiment who had been disbanded and settled in Trinidad. He was entirely self-made, and died the owner of several prosperous cocoa estates in the Arima and Guanapo district.14 Most middle-class blacks and coloureds, then, were employed in whitecollar jobs; the majority were involved neither in agriculture nor in commerce. They were teachers, journalists and editors, lawyers, doctors, civil servants and clerks. In many ways, primary-school teachers in Trinidad in this period were the nucleus of the coloured and black middle class. Teaching was one of the few 'respectable' white-collar jobs available to young men from humble backgrounds who had no chance of a university education and so could not enter the more favoured professions of law and medicine. The large plantations and business houses rarely offered employment to educated non-whites. The civil service was possible, but the young man without a profession and without powerful friends could rarely rise above the

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lowest ranks. The school teacher, moreover, was a prestigious figure, especially in the small rural towns and villages, where he became the natural leader and advisor of the whole community. A significant number of the emerging middle class were teachers themselves, or the sons and daughters of teachers. Most of the island's primary-school teachers in the second half of the century were educated in the government or assisted primary schools and trained in the Normal School at Woodbrook. They were nearly all coloured or black. Writing in 1869, the Chronicle thought that their ability ' would have been deemed incredible, and - if admitted possible dangerous in the "good old days" before emancipation'. They were men 'whose acquisitions put to shame the efforts of many young men of the more fortunate and more favoured races'. 15 Another paper called them ' the great pioneers of Education.. .Under circumstances the most adverse . . .with a stipend barely adequate to preserve them from starvation, they toiled on. . .and through their efforts, popular education assumes a position today which it never before obtained'. 16 The outstanding black teacher in this period was J. J. Thomas (18401889). The son of ex-slaves, Thomas was of unmixed African descent. He received his early education at a ward school, going to the Normal School in 1858, graduating in i860. He taught for a number of years in country primary schools at Savonetta and Couva, and was a successful teacher. But school teaching, at a miserable stipend, in isolated rural outposts, was hardly congenial to a young man who was developing scholarly and literary interests. In 1867 Thomas topped the list in the first competitive examinations for entry to the civil service, and came to Port of Spain to fill a minor post. In the city he had leisure, access to books, and the company of a few educated men. In 1869 he completed Creole Grammar', a scholarly work on the Creole patois spoken by the majority of Trinidadians in the nineteenth century. Thomas was to master, besides patois, French, Spanish, Latin and Greek, entirely on his own, and to become an expert in philology. In 1870 Thomas was appointed Secretary to the Board of Education and the College Council (which governed the two boys' secondary schools). This post put him at the centre of the new system of education which combined government schools with denominational assisted ones. But he did not escape controversy as a public servant, and there were several occasions on which the authorities tried to frustrate this all too conspicuous black. Illness in 1879 forced him to retire from the civil service, and he did not resume active life until 1883, when he was appointed headmaster of the San Fernando Borough School. Unfortunately this was not a happy experience, though his abilities and interests should have made him a superb headmaster; but he got involved in a protracted quarrel with the

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Borough Council and resigned in 1885. Thomas' final achievement was his book Froudacity, a brilliant reply to J. A. Froude's The English in the West Indies. Months after he completed Froudacity, Thomas died in London at the age of 49. 17 Thomas was certainly the outstanding example of the self-made black who found in teaching a chance for mobility. Another was H . A. Nurse, a black teacher in Arouca in eastern Trinidad, the son of a Barbadian exslave who had come to Trinidad like so many of his countrymen. Nurse was a successful teacher whose pupils won several prizes, and he was especially interested in agricultural education. He was drafted into the civil service, and by 1914 was Senior Agricultural Instructor in the Education Department, an unusual post for a black man to hold then. Nurse was the father of Malcolm Nurse, better known as George Padmore.18 Henry Sylvester Williams, born in 1869, was also the son of a Barbadian immigrant and grew up in Arouca, where he attended the government primary school. By the age of seventeen he had obtained a Class in teacher's certificate and was posted to the San Fernando government school, then to San Juan, not far from Port of Spain. But school teaching, and the company of a few young 'radical' black and coloured teachers and lawyers in the city, were not enough for Williams, and he left Trinidad in 1891, going to Canada, the United States, and Britain. In London Williams founded the Pan-African Association and organised the first Pan-African Conference in 1900.19 It is interesting that Williams and Padmore, both founders of the Pan-African movement, should be the descendants of black Barbadian immigrants who settled (as so many did) in the eastern corridor between Port of Spain and Arima. Medicine was a favoured profession for those black and coloured men able to go to a British university, because of the secure social status and financial rewards it offered. Stephen Laurence won a free place to the Royal College, and from there proceeded to Edinburgh University on an Island Scholarship, qualifying in medicine in 1888.20 Early in the next century he would be a prominent Unofficial member of Council and a spokesman for the coloured middle class. For those who were unable to get to a British university, there was the possibility of entering an American university, working one's way through college, and graduating in medicine; but it was then necessary to pass special examinations to allow one to practise in the British Empire. Increasingly, America came to be seen as a land of opportunity for young blacks, because it was far easier to support themselves while at a university there than in Britain, and because it was easier to enter an American university. Law was perhaps even more popular than medicine, and for the same reasons. John Joseph and Jean Pierre, said to be 'of pure African descent', were among the first three men to qualify as solicitors under a new

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Ordinance permitting solicitors to qualify in Trinidad instead of having to go to Britain.21 This was an important chance of upward mobility for young men with no financial means. Among the coloured or black barristers we have noted M. M. Philip, Solicitor-General 1869-88, Vincent Brown, and Henry Alcazar. Both Brown and Alcazar were prominent in political life. Brown served as Secretary to the Royal Franchise Commission in 1888, as Mayor of Port of Spain (1889-90), and he was a leader of the campaign for constitutional reform in 1892-5. 22 Appointed Solicitor-General and then Attorney-General, he was increasingly drawn into the orbit of the colonial government. Alcazar served as Mayor for four terms (1892-4, 1896-8) and was in office when the Port of Spain Borough Council was abolished. He was the main leader of the reform campaign in 1892-5, and was appointed an Unofficial member of Council to put forward the case for constitutional reform in 1894-5. He was an opponent of Indian immigration and a strong critic of Crown Colony government. C. P. David, who was black, was Secretary to the Reform Committee in 1892-5, became a prominent radical politician, and was appointed an Unofficial member of Council in 1904. 23 Edgar MaresseSmith, the radical lawyer, organised celebrations for the jubilee of emancipation in 1888, helped form a branch of the Pan-African Association in Trinidad in 1901, and was a leader of the agitation which led to the Water Riots in 1903. C. H. Phillips, a coloured barrister, was appointed Registrar-General and Registrar of the Supreme Court in 1887. He was presented with an address, a wig, and a gown by a group of coloured lawyers to mark the appointment.24 In the same way, M. M. Philip received several addresses to mark his various promotions. For every black or coloured man who achieved professional success contributed to the slow growth of selfconfidence in the non-white middle class. James Hobson, a coloured magistrate who died in 1871, was said to have been 'thoroughly respected by all classes in the Colony. A coloured man, his success in life was a source of considerable gratification to people of his class.' 25 One or two became clergymen. P. H . Douglin was ordained in 1887. He was a graduate of Codrington in Barbados and had served for years in various West African missions. He published a reading-book in Soso, the result of his work with the Pongas Mission. Douglin was of pure African descent, and obviously race-conscious, for he took a prominent part in the celebrations of the jubilee of emancipation in 1888. In Trinidad he served as Rector of St Clements Anglican Church. 26 But the Anglican Church was very cautious about ordaining blacks, 'because of the known weakness of stability of the lower race'. The congregations preferred white priests, and a parish considered itself 'under something of an indignity' if it had a coloured priest. Still, the historian of the Anglican Church in the West

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Indies hoped that 'when a generation shall have passed in which men of colour, and Negroes too, have acquired experience.. .they, or at least their sons, will offer a growing source from which native clergy will more and more be drawn'.27 Education, we have seen, was the crucial factor in the emergence and growth of a coloured and black middle class in Trinidad. Probably because education was so important in their rise in status, the members of this group attached great weight to cultural and intellectual life. They boasted of their command of British culture, their ability to speak and write 'good' English, their interest in things of the mind. It was literacy, familiarity with books, the possession of 'culture' which mattered, as well as an occupation which involved no manual labour. These things were more essential criteria for membership of the middle class than wealth or lightness of skin. Most of the people in this sector were not wealthy, or even moderately well-off; many were teachers existing on very small salaries. In one sense they formed an intelligentsia, in that they took pride in being the most cultured sector of the community, although they were not part of the ruling class. They attached so much importance to culture because they had no other valuable and valued possession to hold on to. They were not wealthy. They owned few businesses and no large ones. With some exceptions, they were not landowners or planters. Except for the descendants of the 'French free coloureds', they had no aristocratic past to cherish, no family connections, birth or breeding to boast of. They lacked the 'colonial passport' of a white skin; some of them were dark-complexioned, and so down-graded by the values of the society. They had no vote, no voice in the government, no political influence. They were not, for the most part, employers of labour. They did not control the economy. But they possessed one attribute which the mass of the population did not have, and which the society, as a whole, valued: and that was cultural and intellectual skills. They elevated 'culture' into a supreme value because, in the circumstances of nineteenth-century Trinidad, this was the only field in which they appeared at an advantage in the society. It is not surprising, therefore, that members of the coloured and black middle class often took the lead in literary or intellectual activities. J. J. Thomas was certainly the foremost literary Trinidadian of his day. We have noted him as the author of Creole Grammar and Froudacity. Thomas also completed an English translation of Borde's Histoire de la Trinidad^ and wrote an introduction to a reprint of J. B. Philip's Free Mulatto, In the 1870s, Thomas formed a literary and debating society, the Trinidad Athenaeum, the members of which were nearly all black or coloured. He also edited a short-lived periodical, the Trinidad Monthly. These efforts were important to the coloured and black middle class, for they seemed

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to show that this group was more cultured than the dominant whites, who were dismissed as being crassly materialistic. Thomas' literary activities indicated that non-whites were the cultural leaders. For instance, on the appearance of the first issue of the Trinidad Monthly', a newspaper commented 'it is certain that the largest group in the community [ non-whites] are in advance of some others in the matter of intellectual culture and literary endeavour'. Another reviewer pointed out that the articles were nearly all by 'self made men - to whom the inner walls of colleges and universities were unknown and who have had to battle inch by inch and step by step against difficulties and discouragements'. So the journal indicated that 'in the humbler walks of life there are men who without the advantages of European education.. .are able to hold their own against the best of them. These men would be Carlyle's heroes if only they belonged to a different race.' 28 Thomas edited another short-lived periodical, the weekly Review, in 1883-4, writing many of its articles himself. He also contributed many letters to the local press, and frequently lectured on literary and educational matters. A friend wrote, 'there was no subject of which he was ignorant, and nothing that he touched that he did not adorn,. . .adding to the reputation of letters in Trinidad'. 29 To the educated blacks and coloureds, Thomas was an important symbol of what the educated black man could achieve. His abilities and successes were a source of great pride to them, and they helped the slow growth of self-confidence among members of this group. They were especially proud when Thomas and his works were favourably received in the metropolis. Creole Grammar was well thought of, and Charles Kingsley, who visited Trinidad in 1869-70, was among those impressed. In 1873 Thomas went to London. He read a paper to the London Philological Society on 'Some Peculiarities of the Creole Language' and was elected a member of the Society, the most eminent learned body in this field in the English-speaking world. In Britain he created some interest in the London world of letters; it was a time when to be black and literary was to be a novelty. A local paper enthused: The friends of native ability, self help, and persistent study under difficulties will be glad to learn that the author of Creole Grammar has met with a most appreciative audience in London. He has been invited to assemblies public and private, is to be enrolled a Member of the Philological Society, has been pleasantly noticed in the Metropolitan Press, and has had to do the amiable at exhibitions and at the table to the fair dames and daughters of scientific husbands and papas. It is not every day they catch a real African lion in London, and of course they make much of him when they do.30

There were other similar reports in the Trinidad press; obviously Thomas' flattering reception in London was a source of pride to the non-

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white middle class. Froudacity generated a considerable amount of interest in Britain, and it was reviewed in several English papers, the reviews being reprinted in New Era; they were generally favourable. Black and coloured men were involved in the local press to a considerable extent. New Era was established by Samuel Carter and Joseph Lewis, both coloured, in 1869; Lewis conducted it alone from 1874 to 1891, when it closed down after his death. It was the self-acknowledged spokesman for the coloured middle class, whose interests it consistently upheld. 'We are not ashamed', wrote the editors, 'of the imputation [ that] New Era is the organ of the coloured section of the community.' 31 Its special concern was to vindicate and defend the African race against its enemies at home and abroad, and to form an ideology with which educated blacks and coloureds could confront ideological and institutional racism. New Era was characterised by a heavy, even ponderous editorial style, and by outspoken articles on questions of race and colour; J. J. Thomas was a frequent contributor. When Carter left New Era in 1874, he bought the San Fernando Gazette from its previous owner, and it remained under his control until his death in 1895. Carter, who had come to Trinidad from Tobago in 1856, was a member of the San Fernando Borough Council for many years; he was also prominent in the Masonic movement, which provided important leadership opportunities for middle-class blacks and coloureds.82 Although the San Fernando Gazette was especially concerned with the development of San Fernando and southern Trinidad, under Carter its range of interests was much wider than the title might suggest, and it was the most consistently liberal paper in the later nineteenth century. Carter defined its political stand in 1894. ^ s t o °d f° r constitutional reform, the ending of state-aided Indian immigration, free and compulsory education, the opening up of the Crown lands, cheap administration of justice, reform of taxation to reach absentee landowners and to relieve the masses, and the abolition of bounties and privileges to private industries. 83 Carter thought that the press was the only guardian of popular interests in Trinidad: A Crown Colony is a despotism tempered by the Press.. .In Trinidad, more than in any of the other Colonies, has the existence of the independent Press been an absolute necessity; in none has it done more good.34

William Herbert was a prominent coloured journalist who owned and edited in turn the Trinidad Press, the Trinidad Colonist, and the Telegraph. Born in Barbados, he lived in Trinidad until his early death in 1873, and served as Mayor of Port of Spain in 1871-2. His political views were considered radical, and his uninhibited editorials incurred the wrath of several Governors.35 Herbert, like Carter and Lewis, used his papers

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to defend the African race, and the educated black and coloured middle class regarded him as their champion, as 'a great coloured patriot'. When he died, Lewis described him as ' the chief educator of public opinion' in Trinidad, an uncompromising enemy to West Indian conservatism, and a defender of the rights of the oppressed. 36 Through papers managed by these editors and printers, therefore, educated blacks and coloureds had an outlet for the expression of their grievances and aspirations. The members of the black and coloured middle class faced many obstacles and frustrations in late nineteenth-century Trinidad. The society was based on certain premises: whites formed a social, political, and economic ruling class; non-whites, to a greater or lesser degree, were regarded as a permanent labouring class. When non-whites began to acquire education and to claim white-collar jobs, many whites reacted defensively to what might be regarded as a threat to their position. One does not find, in the local press or elsewhere, an open expression of the idea that non-whites should be prevented from advancing their status through education. But it is hard not to suspect that such an idea was held by many members of the white elite. Discrimination against blacks and coloureds was rampant, in the colleges, in the churches, in social gatherings and at public meetings. Perhaps this situation can best be understood as a defensive reaction on the part of the white upper class. In social life, the non-white middle class had much to complain of. A correspondent to the Telegraph wrote that no amount of wealth or education enabled a man in Trinidad to enjoy social prestige, if he lacked 'the correct tinge'. Planters of wealth, merit, and character were 'tabooed', being without the ' colonial passport. . .more potent than education, habits, principles, behaviour, wealth, talent, or even genius itself. People outside the West Indies had no idea of the actual position of the educated man ' of the incorrect tinge'. 37 It was especially galling when coloured men of 'good' family were subjected to discrimination. For instance, the manager of a San Fernando hotel told a coloured man, 'whose ancestors held a fair name in the history of Trinidad', to get up, because 'a negro had no right to sit at the same table with a white man'. The reporter of this incident commented that even during slavery, coloured men 'of a certain standing' were freely admitted to all public places 'within the scope of their social position'. 38 The social dilemma of the middle-class coloured man was summed up in the obituary of a wealthy coloured merchant: Rich, educated, strictly moral, yet he felt he had no place in society, because of those social distinctions with which the country is cursed. And he was not without that manly pride which enabled him to be satisfied with a very small number of chosen companions rather than to court those whom he felt to be his inferiors morally and intellectually, and whose only claim to consideration consisted.. .in the purity of

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their Caucasian blood.. .He felt keenly the disabilities under which certain races, notably that to which he himself belonged, were subjected.39

Of course, social discrimination was practised not only by the whites. In 1876 a ball was organised by M. M. Philip and others with the object of promoting social intercourse between white Creoles and the coloured elite. According to one correspondent, dark-skinned people were deliberately excluded, even though it was organised by and for coloured persons. The canon of respectability was defined as not being black. The editor commented that the incident afforded * proof of the existence in our community of a suicidal silliness, which would be only amusing and contemptible, were it not so fruitful of evil among a section of the community whose interests should be identical'. 40 At other times, however, educated coloureds and blacks would take a united stand against what they considered unfair treatment. An interesting case occurred in 1879. A public meeting was organised to draw up an address of condolence to the Queen on the death of a daughter, and the speakers were all white. A letter from 'Several Coloured People' objected: Surely [the coloured people's] importance, advancement and loyalty are sufficiently conspicuous to entitle them to have their feelings expressed on the occasion by someone who is one of their unmistakable representatives.

It nominated M. M. Philip, J. J. Thomas, Vincent Brown, A. Fitzjames, and L. P. Pierre. 41 This letter suggests that educated coloureds and blacks had a strong sense of being a sector among all the other sectors, and an important part of the whole community. The principal Christian denominations in the island, the Catholic and the Anglican Churches, both had a reputation for colour discrimination. The Rev. K. J. Grant of the Canadian Presbyterian Mission reported that he knew 'the white minister of a largely black and coloured congregation of whom it was said that he boasted how he never shook hands with a black man, and his apparent failure to win and elevate would seem to confirm this strange report'. 42 We have noted the attitude of the Anglican Church to the ordination of blacks. Samuel Proctor, a black headmaster, put his case against the churches forcibly. Arguing against church services to mark the jubilee of emancipation, he wrote: 'We are indebted to the Church for less than nothing so far as freedom is concerned. The Church has always snubbed us. When a boy I was always kept at the western door. It is true I have got a little higher now, thanks to disendowment.' He did not attend the thanksgiving services, for 'no man who has seen slavery and how the negro was treated by the Church could do so. The Church taught that freedom never was ordained for the negro. . .1 look upon the thanksgiving service as a farce. Certainly the way the Church treated the negro, she may well blush, if blush she can, for shame! *43

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Proctor's view was not shared by other educated blacks. J. J. Thomas was not a critic of the operations of the Christian churches in the Caribbean. He generously praised them, especially the Catholics and the Nonconformists, 'who have done so much for the temporal and spiritual advancement of the Negro*. He went as far as to claim that the behaviour of the freed slaves 'bore glorious testimony to the humanising effects which the religion of charity, clutched at and grasped in fragments, and understood with child-like incompleteness, had produced within these suffering bosoms'. 44 For Thomas Christianity was simply the true religion, and he bitterly attacked Froude's argument that it was unsuited to the 'negro mind'. Samuel Carter of the San Fernando Gazette declared 'in spite of those who advance the contrary, we assert that the Negro races in these colonies owe to the Church almost all that today they need to be proud of'.45 Proctor was referring to the Anglican Church. But the Catholic Church also came under fire. In 1875 there was a cause celebre. At the opening of the new St Mary's College Chapel, a black but respectable lady who had a ticket was allegedly turned away; other blacks without tickets were also rejected, while whites without tickets were allowed in. This became something of a scandal, and a great deal of ink was expended in criticising, justifying, or explaining the Fathers' actions. It seems that the main grievance was not so much that blacks were turned away, but that respectable blacks were. As one letter put it, the Church made no distinction 'between the educated and refined Negro, and his illiterate and vulgar brother'; the point was, they were both black. 46 Educated coloureds would have expected that working-class blacks would be excluded from such an occasion. But when they themselves met with discrimination, it was an intolerable insult. Probably a majority of educated black and coloured men in this period were civil servants. With commerce virtually closed to them, teaching, the professions, and the service offered the only viable alternatives, except for the relatively small number of coloured planters. Only a small minority could hope to obtain the university education essential for law or medicine. This left employment in the service, including teaching in the government schools, as the only source of acceptable white-collar jobs. This is why discrimination in the civil service against non-whites was such a burning grievance to the educated black and coloured community. In this period, it was the belief of the Colonial Office and of local officials that Creoles in general should not be appointed to certain strategic posts, and that coloured Creoles were especially objectionable as candidates for these 'positions. Their appointment to judicial and magisterial appointments was felt to be particularly unwise. For instance, a Governor

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requested in 1871 that a British barrister be appointed Police Magistrate for Port of Spain: I hope to secure for the office both the deference which would at once be paid to the judicial decisions of an English barrister, and the entire freedom from all those habits of thought, which, in opposite directions, control the minds of almost all the natives of the West Indies, white or coloured.47

Edward Wingfield of the Colonial Office thought that 'the appointment of local men to the Bench in small communities is much to be deprecated'; 48 and neither M. M. Philip nor Vincent Brown was appointed a judge, despite their clear claims to a judicial seat. A British Chief Justice asked for the appointment (as Registrar of the Supreme Court) of 'a gentleman who is unconnected with the Colony either by birth or relationship'.49 H . T. Irving, who instituted a purge of dishonest or incompetent civil servants during his regime (1874-80), thought it essential that 'there should be a periodical infusion of new blood' by appointing Europeans rather than Creoles to vacant posts.50 He wrote of J. O'Brien, whom he recommended for promotion: 'he is a coloured man, and it is often difficult to find appointments for men of his class'; but 'the fact that he is annually chosen as Secretary of the Race Meeting shows the sort of consideration in which he is held by the community generally'; 51 in other words, he was acceptable to the whites. Probably the general view of British officials in Trinidad and at the Colonial Office was expressed by a Director of Public Works in an impassioned letter to a clerk in the Office: ' I implore you for some years to come to select the strongest men you can find for any posts here. . .take them from the outside - and at no price whatever take coloured natives for the higher posts.' 52 Numerous articles and editorials complained of discrimination against coloured civil servants. They were 'always being traduced as being unfit for the chief offices. As subordinates, they serve long, honestly, and well: very often under incompetent, idiotic, and impossible heads of office; and yet, when a vacancy occurs, official Flunkeyism says, it is not the man who should have the place who is to have it.' 53 Not only was Trinidad flooded with Colonial Office nominees, but even the lesser posts to which Creoles were appointed were ' snapped up as the almost exclusive right of one race in the community at the expense of all others'. This confirmed the rumour that a Secretary of State had privately told West Indian Governors 'that on no account whatever was the "subject race" to be employed in any office. . .of trust and responsibility'.54 In an outspoken editorial, William Herbert criticised favouritism shown over and over again to white civil servants at the expense of coloured officers. One class is protected blindly, without regard even to decency and propriety; and other classes degraded with a similar disregard to prudence, common sense and even

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safety.. .The authorities show a lamentable want of discretion and judgement by irritating so often, so determinedly, and so unnecessarily, a sensitive race.. .The dominant race enjoys to the top of its bent everything it can desire - power, place, emoluments, social position. It lives, it luxuriates, on the fat of the land. Why does it not enjoy itself quietly? and not every now and then insult the Children of the Sun by acts of gross injustice.. . 55

Numerous cases of discrimination against particular coloured or black officials were reported in the press. Two conspicuous civil servants were M. M. Philip and J. J. Thomas. Philip, confirmed as Solicitor-General in 1871, was passed over several times for appointment as Attorney-General. Governor Longden wrote confidentially that 'neither Mr. Philip's position at the Bar, nor his abilities. . .would justify me in nominating him to act as Attorney-General', and when he was confirmed in the SolicitorGeneralship, it was on the express understanding that he had absolutely no claim to succession to the higher office.56 And he received no further promotion. A coloured man could get so far, but no farther, however able a servant of government he was; and Philip was certainly an able SolicitorGeneral and supporter of the government in the Council. He acted as Attorney-General for long periods in 1873 and again in 1885, and on each occasion he was passed over for the permanent appointment, to the disappointment of the educated non-white community. In 1887 he was passed over again, this time for promotion to the Bench, though there were two vacancies. Philip apparently expected a judgeship, and remarked to a friend that he looked forward to the lighter work and calmer atmosphere of the Bench.57 His friend Lewis of New Era wrote after his death that this final disappointment broke his will; and C. L. R. James agrees that this last blow was a severe one, the climax to ' the disappointment of a life time'. 58 After his death a newspaper commented 'the treatment the late Hon. M. M. Philip received from the Home Government should never be forgotten by Trinidad'. 59 Nor did Thomas escape controversy as a public servant. Because he was both black and conspicuously able, he was regarded with a kind of uneasy condescension by the ruling class. His civil service career was chequered. In 1871-2 he was 'promoted' to the Clerkship of the Peace in remote Cedros, a move which, as he said himself, meant 'isolation and probable suffering', since it meant the disruption of most of his literary activities. 60 'Promotions' to isolated spots like Cedros were a favourite device for dealing with civil servants whose political views or independence of mind made them a nuisance. This was not the only occasion on which the authorities tried to frustrate his career. He was passed over more than once when it was necessary to appoint an acting Inspector of Schools, though he was clearly the best-qualified candidate. 61 Thomas and Philip were outstanding men, but the many editorials and articles in the press

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make it clear that less prominent coloured and black officials were treated in much the same way. In 1894 there was a notable scandal concerning colour discrimination in the service. An English Registrar of the Supreme Court, Ralph MonierWilliams, wrote a letter to the Governor requesting him to appoint to a vacant clerkship a person with as little coloured blood as possible and if practicable with no coloured blood at all, as these have given considerable trouble in the department within the last two years.

This letter somehow became public knowledge before it reached the Governor. A petition from the 'coloured inhabitants' was sent to the Secretary of State, demanding Monier-Williams' dismissal, and claiming that his letter was a wanton insult to the coloured population, and especially those of them in the service. Feelings ran very high. One letter hinted that Monier-Williams would be tarred and feathered; posters were put up in the city asking 'What shall we do with Monier-Williams?'; and a detective was assigned to protect him. The Governor, presumably deliberately, appointed a man of unmixed African descent to the clerkship in question, and this was interpreted as a 'lesson'. However, the Secretary of State refused to dismiss him, on the grounds that the letter was not intended to be official, and that he withdrew it before it actually reached the Governor. Most commentators thought that Monier-Williams had been the dupe of prejudiced men within his department, who had tried to use him to further their own peculiar notions about race.62 There were very few cases in this period of non-whites being appointed department heads in the service. Two coloured officials who did achieve this distinction ended their careers in disgrace. James O'Brien, appointed Postmaster-General in 1879, was suspended in 1882 on suspicion of having embezzled a large sum of money. He was tried and acquitted, although in the view of both the prosecuting and the defence counsel he was clearly guilty, because of his popularity in the community, and because the Chief Justice mishandled the case. 63 Even though he was acquitted, the general feeling was that by being criminally prosecuted, O'Brien was being treated far more severely than a white official would have been in similar circumstances, because he was 'a coloured man without powerful friends'.64 Another example was C. H . Phillips, the Registrar of the Supreme Court, who came under suspicion of defalcations in his department. A Commission of Enquiry was set up to investigate the administration and accounts of the Supreme Court, and Phillips committed suicide during its enquiries.6" It was the view of Chief Justice Sir John Gorrie, the radical

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judge highly unpopular with the local authorities, that Phillips was treated severely because he was a friend of Gorrie, and because 'he is a coloured man occupying a position which has hitherto been only filled by a white'. 66 A newspaper article hinted that he had been 'hounded to death' because the government disliked seeing coloured men in high official positions. The San Fernando Gazette implied that Phillips had been relentlessly persecuted 'for the sole aim of crushing the "nigger" ', hounded to suicide for irregularities due to overwork and inadequate staff, while far greater offenders were investigated secretly or not at all. 67 It is difficult to be sure whether Phillips or O'Brien were treated more severely than a white official might have been in the same circumstances. What is significant is that educated non-whites thought so, and expressed that thought in the papers. It indicates how acutely they resented discrimination in the civil service. It has often been said that the coloured and black middle class in West Indian society occupies an intermediate position, that its members are 'marginal men'. In the nineteenth century, the accepted judgement was that educated coloureds were treacherous, fickle, and unstable, clever, but lacking in moral worth. If there was any truth in this, such traits might well stem from a basic class insecurity. There was ambivalence in the attitudes of the educated coloureds and blacks towards the ruling whites on the one hand and towards the black working class on the other. The evidence is clear that the educated coloureds in this period resented their exclusion from white society. This is why Philip organised his ball to bring together the leading representatives of white and coloured society. They equally resented the contemptuous attitude towards nonwhites so often held by Europeans. New Era indignantly observed that many Europeans arriving in the West Indies believed that the 'natives' were savages and cannibals.68 Educated non-whites had a strong sense of their moral and intellectual worthiness to move in the 'best' circles. They thought that society in Trinidad was divided into those who justly deem themselves entitled to a social position in the island consistent with their means and general behaviour, and those who believe that they have a prescriptive right to dictate who shall, or shall not, be received into the ranks of the Colonial aristocracy.69

An ambivalent attitude towards blacks went along with the aspiration to move in white society. In C. L. R. James' vivid language: There are the nearly whites hanging on tooth and nail to the fringes of white society, and these.. .hate contact with the darker skin far more than some of the broader minded whites. Then there are the browns, intermediates, who cannot by any stretch of the imagination pass as white, but who will not go one inch towards mixing with people darker than themselves.70

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Educated blacks and coloureds were often anxious to disassociate themselves from the black working class. For instance, an editorial called on the government to act stringently against immoral drum dances by lowerclass blacks, for the sake of the respectable coloured sector, which, being coloured, was sometimes classed with the scum who took part in the dances.71 Such an attitude was partly simple snobbery. But there was also a feeling of hostility directed against blacks on the part of the mainly coloured middle class. An interesting example is the calypsonian Hannibal, active in the second half of the century. He was coloured, and he made blacks the butt for most of his ridicule. One of his verses went: I ain't black, I ain't white, If it comes to blows or fight, I'll kill the black to save the white.

Another calypso began: Dan is the devil, the devil is Dan, Brown nigger more bad than Bacra man, But black is the baddest, The baddest in the land.

This same calypso ended: God you is a white man, I want to know the truth, Who but the devil Could mek these nigger brutes.72

The calypsonian, of course, was unsophisticated in the expression of his views on race. But many educated coloureds might have agreed with him inwardly. There was a tendency, in fact, for them to adopt the stereotyped ideas about blacks held by the white Creoles. This was one side of the picture. The other side was the sense of racial pride and identity, often expressed by educated Trinidad blacks and coloureds in the later nineteenth century. The evidence for the existence of this racial pride among the coloured and black middle class is impressive, and it makes it impossible to state that this group made a whole-hearted effort to downgrade its black heritage. J. J. Thomas was one of those who expressed strong race pride. He was only too conscious of the extent of self-contempt and self-hatred among his fellow blacks in the West Indies. He saw how the values of white superiority had been internalised, with disastrous results. One factor in this process, in his view, was the education of young West Indians by white teachers. He thought their influence was 'to a very great degree, subversive of the national sentiment', by which he meant racial consciousness.

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As the chief and by no means exceptional consequence of the miscegenetic training now in vogue, we may note the rlunkeyism it induces, which, in our case, gives more plausibility than all supposed physical evidence to the anti-human doctrines of certain anthropologists.

An example of this 'flunkeyism' in Trinidad was the guilty reticence with which, year after year, we sneak through the 24 hours of the First of August, which should have been the great commemorative day. 73

Thomas always believed that the anniversary of emancipation should be fittingly celebrated by West Indians. He was vividly aware that black and coloured West Indians were as guilty as whites of perpetuating colour and race prejudice. In a newspaper correspondence on the failure to celebrate Emancipation Day, Thomas wrote that they should stop harping on their grievances at the hands of the whites. For it was notorious 'that the most fatal instances of skin prejudice have not their source among the whites'. Colour prejudice was rarely discussed honestly. It was normal to think of two classes: 'oppressing and suffering being White and Ethiopic respectively'. This was hypocrisy, for in the West Indies, 'colour prejudice is a ladder with almost numberless rounds. It is a system of social aggression and retaliation.' West Indians of every shade were in some way the ministers as well as the victims of this pernicious idolatry.. .For the sake of our cuticle, we stand aloof, in mistrust or contempt, from our fellow-citizens. . .The earnest work of popular life remains undone, because we cannot, even for our common good, compromise the dignity of our epidermis.

Indeed, this 'pre-occupation of the skin' had proved to be 'a fearful incubus on our social existence'.74 In a plea repeated in all his writings, Thomas urged West Indians of all shades to unite, for union was strength; they would never be respected when they were 'too frivolous to maintain their own identity, and too spiritless to make it respected'. Instead of 'longing. . .after the fleshpots of our white fellow-citizens', they should prepare for the task of, creating their own united society. Colour prejudice was the result of a certain historic experience, and could be thrown off; it was not innate in the human condition. Above all, educated and enlightened blacks had special duties and obligations to their race.75 Elsewhere he wrote decisively, no sympathy should be wasted on the negro sufferer from mortification at not being able to change his skin. The Ethiopian of whatever shade of colour who is not satisfied with being such was never intended to be more than a mere living figure.76

Thomas was remarkable for his concept of 'Afro-America' and his recognition of the links binding blacks in the New World with those in Africa. Influenced by the writings of his contemporary, Edward Blyden,

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the founder of African nationalism and Negritude, Thomas appealed for race pride and for unity among all of African descent. Throughout Froudacity he showed his intense concern for the progress of blacks in the Caribbean and in the United States. He went to the heart of the matter in an impressive passage, in which he directs attention to the interests of the Blacks, as a large and (out of Africa) no longer despicable section of the human race, in the great world-problems which are so visibly preparing... The intra-African Negro is clearly powerless to struggle successfully against personal enslavement, annexation, or volunteer forcible protection' of his territory. What, we ask, will be in the coming ages the opinion and attitude of the extra-African millions - ten millions in the Western Hemisphere - dispersed so widely over the surface of the globe, apt apprentices in every conceivable department of civilised culture? Will these men remain for ever too poor, too isolated from one another for grand racial combinations ? Or will the naturally opulent cradle of their people... become at length the sacred watchword of a generation willing and able to conquer or perish under its inspiration? 77

Thomas grasped with absolute clarity the need to go back to Africa, its history, culture, and genius, in order to create a future for the 'extraAfrican' blacks. He asked rhetorically, What is it in the nature of things that will oust the African race from the right to participate, in times to come, in the high destinies that have been assigned in times past to so many races that have not been in any wise superior to us in the qualities, physical, moral, and intellectual, that mark out a race for prominence among other races?78

Thomas summed up by declaring that it was time for New World blacks to occupy themselves with matters of racial importance. There were individually brilliant blacks. But there had to be 'some potential agency to collect and adjust them into the vast engine essential for executing the true purposes of the civilised African Race'. In other words, unity of action was essential to carry out the upliftment of the race. Already, especially since the late Emancipation Jubilee [1888], are signs manifest of a desire for intercommunion and intercourse amongst the more distinguished of our people. With intercourse and unity of purpose will be secured the means to carry out the obvious duties which are sure to devolve upon us, especially with reference to the cradle of our Race.. , 79

The 1888 jubilee, which Thomas referred to, provides an excellent example of race pride among middle-class blacks and coloureds in Trinidad. The celebrations were surrounded by a great deal of controversy, and the whole incident reflects the society's ideas about slavery and the African race. From the start, influential men advised against any 'fuss'. For this could only remind people about slavery and so perpetuate the unfortunate divisions of the past. But a group of young radicals, led by Maresse-Smith, promoted a more conspicuous celebration, with a banquet, speeches, fire-

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works, and illumination of the city. Maresse-Smith thought it was a plain duty for all blacks and coloureds to remember slavery and celebrate its end. He disassociated himself from the coloureds who tried to sever all ties with their black ancestors and relatives. Let us then not be ashamed of our race, and understand for good that the servitude of our ancestors was a misfortune to them for the which we need not blush.. .Let us throw aside once and for all that weakness which causes us to be so cruel the one to the other, and so ridiculous to the world at large.80

Another correspondent agreed. Blacks should rejoice that they were free and progressive. The shame of slavery belonged not to the blacks, but to those who carried it out. Slavery was merely the abuse of superior power. 81 Another supporter of the radicals urged blacks to 'cease hostilities for the time and unite to engage in the common cause, in the interests of thousands of Africa's race'. Some of them argued that they were never slaves, but without emancipation, what would all West Indians have been ? They should all unite to organise a fitting celebration. 82 Carter of the San Fernando Gazette, at first unenthusiastic about celebrating the jubilee, came round to support Maresse-Smith. So long as the celebrations were general in character, embracing both blacks and whites, they would be valuable in arousing 'racial feeling', which he thought was weak in Trinidad because of the heterogeneity of the population. Something, he concluded, should be done by the race, and it was Maresse-Smith and his group who had undertaken it.83 A group of conservative coloured men, and a few whites, alarmed at Maresse-Smith's 'radicalism', and at the prospect of divisions of class and colour, set up a rival banquet for the night of 1 August. Philip Rostant and Joseph Lewis, editor of New Era, were both in this group. The speeches at their banquet were bland and non-committal. Maresse-Smith's group, at their dinner, stressed in their speeches racial pride and the horrors of slavery, as well as the intellectual and moral progress of blacks and coloureds since 1838. The Governor patronised the conservative banquet, which Maresse-Smith derisively called the 'official affair'. Gorrie, the radical Chief Justice, astutely managed to attend both and speak at both. The whole affair84 illustrates the ambivalent feelings of the educated nonwhites about slavery and the African race. The younger radicals, who were both coloureds and blacks, wanted to glorify the race and revive memories of past wrongs. The older and more conservative, the 'respectable coloured portion of the community', thought that it was dangerous to revive dormant prejudices and grievances. It would set class against class and race against race. Better to forget the jubilee, or at the most, attend church services of thanksgiving. The San Fernando Gazette thought that the celebrations of the jubilee in Trinidad testified that the race had not lost all its self-respect:

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It demonstrated that there was yet a spark of manly independence left alive in the downtrodden race, and that with the advance of education.. .they may yet reach that crowning point of civilisation which is marked by an absence of that servile shame which acknowledges no race, no country, no ambition. 85

That was the view of many members of Trinidad's black and coloured middle class at the end of the century. A number of letters and editorials in the press spoke of pride in the race and in the African heritage. One correspondent, ironically calling himself 'Old Quashie', thought that Trinidad had several men who stood up boldly for the 'despised sons of Ethiopia'. Many of Trinidad's most successful men descended from 'the poor, degraded and despised slave women.. .sold in bondage to the fathers of our more favoured brethren'. This writer added that he hoped 'none of the genuine sons of Africa will be ashamed to own a common maternity'. 86 There were many calls for unity. One such exhorted: Unless unity be our motto, matters will go from bad to worse. Let us be set aside - a general separation of the two classes of society - White and Coloured.. .and let us support our class. No wolves in sheep clothing; all who have African blood in his veins cleave to his countrymen and leave all new blood alone. 87

There were, it is clear, very many black and coloured Trinidadians in the later nineteenth century who expressed pride in their racial heritage. This development culminated in the establishment in 1901 of the PanAfrican Association in Trinidad. H. S. Williams, the former primaryschool teacher, had founded the Association in London in 1897, and he visited his homeland in 1901. He was enthusiastically received, and branches were formed in Port of Spain, San Fernando, Princes Town, Arouca, and Chaguanas, as well as in smaller rural settlements. Williams addressed many meetings, oudining his concern for racial pride and his sense of the unity between Africans everywhere. The Pan-African Association found its supporters mainly from the black and coloured middle class, whose members had begun to evolve a distinct ideology with which they could confront racism and develop self-esteem.88 After 1901, of course, the black middle class became increasingly involved in the development of black nationalism. The First World War, the work of Marcus Garvey, the invasion of Ethiopia, all stimulated the growth of race consciousness. All this lay in the future. But we must conclude that this class did not, in the later part of the nineteenth century, wholeheartedly reject its racial heritage, its negritude, as historians have tended to think. By the beginning of this century, the search for a black self-image, an identity, was well under way. In the last thirty years of the nineteenth century, this coloured and black middle class was being slowly augmented from below. Many selfmade members of this group, like J. J. Thomas, were of working-class

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origin. Exceptionally able or lucky children of the black masses could, through the schools, escape into the ranks of educated blacks. It is time to examine the black Creole masses: their economic activities, their life-style, and their cultural world.

The urban labouring population

The black and coloured labouring population in the nineteenth century was very far from being a homogeneous group. In 1870 it included Trinidad ex-slaves and their descendants, mostly Roman Catholic and patois-speaking; immigrants from the eastern Caribbean who came in large numbers all through the century, mainly English-speaking and Protestant; liberated Africans of many different tribes and regions of West Africa who had been freed from foreign slave ships by the British Navy and sent to Trinidad from Sierra Leone and St Helena; black ex-soldiers of the West India Regiment disbanded in 1815 and settled in various parts of the island; ex-slaves from America who had fought for Britain in the War of 1812 and had also been settled in Trinidad; the descendants of free coloured and free black peasants and labourers; and peons of SpanishAfrican-Amerindian descent who came from Venezuela all through the century. It would be difficult to establish that all these groups shared a common Creole culture, for there were wide cultural, linguistic, and religious differences between them. All one can safely state is that they were rigorously excluded from political or civic life, their most characteristic cultural forms tended to be despised by the upper and middle classes, and they were in a low economic position: they were plantation labourers, smallholders, squatters, hunters, lumbermen, fishermen, artisans, longshoremen, domestic servants, vagrants, unemployed, and criminals. In the last thirty years of the century, the black and coloured masses were being increased year by year by an influx of immigrants from the eastern Caribbean and especially from Barbados. This immigration was so extensive that some commentators even thought the Trinidad Creoles were being 'swamped' by British West Indians, the 'foreign Creoles'. The net immigration from the eastern Caribbean to Trinidad between 1871 and 1911 was, at a conservative estimate, 65,000, or an average of 1,625 each year.1 Barbadians, seeking to escape low wages, scarcity of land, and planter oppression in their own island, formed the majority of immigrants. Barbadian emigration halted between 1846 and 1861, but after 1864 a considerable movement developed, to Trinidad, British Guiana and elsewhere. An 1873 Barbadian Act made limited provision for assisting no

1 Government House 2 Brunswick Square 3 Anglican Cathedral 4 Roman Catholic Cathedral

Town Plan of Port of Spain, c. 1898

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Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

certain categories of people to emigrate. A steady, spontaneous flow to Trinidad continued throughout the 1870s, attracted by the relatively buoyant economy of that colony, and by the jobs created by an expanding public works programme. This flow declined after 1885. The depression in sugar caused unemployment, and planters preferred to rely on indentured Indian immigration. Barbadian immigrants were no longer regarded as advantageous to Trinidad's development, and after 1890 they tended to go to foreign territories instead of British colonies.2 The peak period for British West Indian immigration to Trinidad, then, was the 1870s and early 1880s. In 1897 there w e r e a n estimated 14,000 natives of Barbados living in Trinidad. 3 The great majority of these immigrants were working-class blacks, and they came to Trinidad because wages were higher, and jobs and land were more easily available, than in their own islands. It was a part of a wider movement of labour and capital from the older West Indian sugar colonies to the newer, 'unsaturated' territories, which went on all through the nineteenth century. In Trinidad, the immigrants took up various occupations. On the whole, they tended not to work as wage labourers on the sugar estates, or at least not for very long. The planters, with few exceptions, had a low opinion of British West Indian, and especially Barbadian, labourers. When a Barbados Emigration Commission went to Trinidad in 1895 to investigate the prospects for Barbadian settlement there, the planters' response was negative. G. T. Fen wick spoke for most of his colleagues when he insisted that Barbadians could never replace Indian labourers on the sugar estates. They refused to enter into contracts; they would not perform certain kinds of work, including weeding, hoeing, forking or fork-ploughing - tasks which were crucial to plantation operations. Barbadians were not permanent or stable labourers; they drifted away from the estates.4 The Barbadian labourer in Trinidad was famous for his independence, which the planters called impudence. According to the Port of Spain Gazette: A few months of steady labour here makes him comparatively rich, preposterously independent and not infrequently exceedingly impudent. He does not cease to be a good labourer, a strong labourer, but he ceases to be a reliable labourer. Attempt to give him an imperative order, and he will turn round, proudly strike his fist on his chest, and let you know that he has got no master; that he is neither crab nor Creole but true Barbadian born, and with a self importance that would be highly amusing were it not so annoying, march off and leave your work to take care of itself.5

Many West Indians found work on public works projects. In the 1870s and early 1880s there was an active programme of road and railway construction, and this was a magnet for immigrants, especially as wages in public works were higher than on the estates. In 1873 the Governor estimated that over 3,000 West Indian immigrants, mostly males without

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their families, had arrived in the island in the space of eight months. He reported that 'a large number of immigrants have been attracted to Trinidad from the surrounding islands by the public and private works which have been, and which are now being carried on'. These included masons, brick-layers, carpenters, and other skilled workers. Over one thousand immigrants were already employed on public works projects by the end of 1873, and their labour would be more than adequate for the construction of the island's first railway, then about to commence.6 The Protector of Immigrants observed in 1879 that it was the annual influx of West Indian labour which had permitted 'the great extension of the Public Works Department, especially in the direction of roads and railways'. 7 The railways alone were said to employ about 400 islanders in 1881, and in 1895 ^ Princes Town line was employing an exclusively Barbadian labour force.8 A large number of West Indians became domestic servants, especially in Port of Spain, where half the servants in 1895 were said to be Barbadians. Charles Mitchell said in 1888, 'thirty years ago the town was full of Trinidad Creoles, and all our servants were Trinidad Creoles. . .but now almost every servant in town is a Barbadian'. 9 Others took up jobs in the public institutions; for instance, they were said to make the best wardens and nurses in the government hospitals, jails, and asylums. 10 The ranks of the Trinidad Police Force were almost entirely filled with West Indians, with unfortunate results, as we shall see. Relatively few West Indian immigrants took up lands or became fulltime agriculturists. This was the opinion of one of the Barbados Emigration Commissioners, who stated that Barbadians as a rule did not engage in agricultural pursuits in Trinidad. 11 One reason for this was that they objected to living on estates or peasant freeholds which were distant from the chief centres of population. Nevertheless some Barbadians did engage in independent agricultural activities. In the Arima Ward Union, where so many settled, they grew cocoa, and they were among the earliest canefarmers.12 Most West Indian immigrants, it seems, settled either in Port of Spain, or in the other towns, and worked as artisans of various types. Many Barbadians settled in San Fernando as carters, porters, and tradesmen. 18 Large numbers settled in the 'long and almost continuous village' between St Joseph and Arima; here were hundreds of steady, prosperous Barbadians, who were raising large families, and were artisans, mechanics, tradesmen, shoemakers, and tailors.14 One newspaper thought that the Barbadians were, on the whole, 'able, peaceful, and hard working. . .they have wrested most of the small industries from the more easy-going Creoles'.15 Charles Mitchell agreed: the Barbadians were more energetic than the Creoles, perhaps because they had been obliged to work harder

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Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

and use their wits more in the harsher circumstances of their own island. He thought that 'the foreign Creoles have driven the old Creoles back.. . the town has become peopled with Barbadians, and the others I presume have gone back and taken up lands'. 16 The West Indian immigrants all spoke English (while most working-class Creoles were more comfortable with patois), and many of them, the Barbadians especially, were literate. This command of English made it easier for them to move into strategic jobs, as skilled workers, mechanics, craftsmen, policemen, teachers, minor civil servants; and they often formed a potentially mobile upper working class, ambitious for their sons, who would sometimes rise to middle-class status through the schools. Malcolm Nurse (George Padmore) and H . S. Williams were both the sons or grandsons of Barbadian immigrants settled in the Arouca district. On the other hand, numbers of West Indian immigrants were considered to be undesirable additions to the population. The accusation was endlessly repeated that many Barbadian immigrants were either criminals or paupers, who 'had left their country for their country's good'. Social evils as varied as prostitution, child-beating, and 'cutting and wounding' were ascribed to Barbadian influence. In fact, statistics do suggest that West Indian immigrants contributed an abnormally high proportion of convicts and hospital patients. In 1889, for instance, the Colonial Hospital in Port of Spain recorded 5,714 admissions. Natives of India accounted for 1,542; Trinidad Creoles for 1,680; natives of Barbados alone numbered 1,023; and natives of other islands contributed 744. 17 Governor Sir William Robinson complained in 1890 that Trinidad was a magnet for paupers from the poorer British colonies. They came prepared to work, but they had to face competition from native labour and employers' reluctance to take on a 'stranger'. Often they failed to obtain a job, with the result that they soon became charges to the Colony as paupers or as destitute sick. This happened even to well-disposed immigrants, but Trinidad also received the idle and dishonest, the dregs of the population of the smaller West Indian islands.18 Robinson recognised that the major factor behind the high proportion of destitute and ill West Indian immigrants was unemployment, and this was especially the case after 1884-5, when depression in the sugar industry sharply decreased employment in the towns and in the countryside. Barbadians found it especially difficult to obtain jobs with certain employers, with their reputation for 'impudence' and instability. But, more often, the conclusion was that West Indian immigrants were inherently idle or wicked. A Select Committee of the Legislative Council considered the question of pauper and criminal immigration in 1893. ^ produced figures to show that while the proportion of natives of Trinidad to West Indians living in the island was 100:30 in 1891, the proportion in

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jail during 1888-92 was 100:109, and the proportion in hospitals and asylums was 100:94. It concluded that the immigration from the West Indies ' embraces a most abnormal proportion of the worthless and vicious classes, of which these communities are ridding themselves at the expense of Trinidad'. 19 A Police Inspector thought that Trinidad was 'swarming' with criminals, paupers, and prostitutes from the other islands. The police had no power to deal with them until they actually committed a crime, though they might do a great deal of mischief before then. He suggested that all immigrants should bring a certificate of good character from the police of their country of origin, and failing this, they should automatically be placed under police surveillance, as was the case with suspected alien criminals.20 Official opinion in general was markedly hostile to West Indians in Trinidad. In 1885 the Receiver-General stated: 'the Trinidad people are a very tractable population, but the mixed Creoles from Barbados and other places are more inclined to be turbulent. This mixed population is very floating. . . ' And the Colonial Secretary thought 'the rough Creole element here is chiefly Barbadian, and is considered a dangerous one. They are a rough, lazy lot, and always ripe for mischief.'21 Charles Mitchell agreed that the Barbadians gave trouble; when bad, they were very bad indeed.22 Much evidence taken by the Royal Franchise Commission in 1888 suggests that officials and upper-class whites in general believed that Barbadians were liable to 'mislead' or 'corrupt' the simple-minded Creole peasants and labourers. Barbadians were seen as politicians. A wealthy San Fernando businessman stated categorically that 'the Barbadian is always a politician'. Barbados-born James Lynch of Arima, asked sarcastically by the chairman whether he was a politician, replied defiantly, 'Yes, certainly; we builds on that.' 23 Barbados had an elected Assembly, and so Barbadians were familiar with electoral politics. The evidence does suggest that working-class and lower middle-class Barbadians provided active support to the campaigns for constitutional reform in 1887-8 and 1892-5. Probably this was the result of their command of English and their literacy, which gave them the confidence to engage in political discussion, a confidence which many patois-speaking and illiterate Creoles lacked. But the majority of West Indians who came to Trinidad were interested primarily in improving their economic position. Because of their knowledge of English and their literacy, as we have noted, they often 'got ahead' more conspicuously than Creole blacks. But in other ways their habits and values were similar to those of the natives, and they were soon absorbed into the Creole masses. L. M. Fraser said that second-generation Barbadians in Trinidad were 'disgusted' at being called Barbadians; nothing annoyed them more; they were essentially Creoles.24

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The urban working class of Port of Spain increased very rapidly in the last decades of the nineteenth century. 25 This rapid growth was due partly to internal immigration from the rural areas, partly to immigration from the other islands; a large number of these people went to Port of Spain. The Registrar-General reported in 1887 that Port of Spain served as a reservoir for the flow of immigrants from the islands. The increased population had led to a considerable extension of the city, and localities which a few years before had been waste lands were being rapidly built up. 26 Lower-class blacks lived in the heart of the city, especially the area around Prince Street and St Vincent Street. And they lived in the lowerclass suburbs of Belmont, Laventille, and East Dry River, which had been settled in the years after 1838 by ex-slaves and their children, by African immigrants, and by British West Indians. Urban blacks held a variety of jobs. Many were domestics, especially the women, who also figured in large numbers as washerwomen and as seamstresses. Others were petty traders, shopkeepers, and hucksters. Many were porters, carters, and cab-drivers. A significant element comprised the dock-workers, and the shops and stores employed a few as porters, janitors, and messengers. A small but growing number was employed in the light industries in Port of Spain, such as the breweries and the bakeries. Probably a majority of all Port of Spain male workers were 'artisans', a term which denoted skilled craftsmen such as carpenters, masons, construction workers, mechanics, tailors, shoemakers, and printers. And a very large number of lower-class blacks of the city, of both sexes, appear to have been habitually unemployed, part of the floating population of petty criminals and 'vagrants'. The Chronicle noted in 1885 that jobs were scarce in the town. 'Lots of men coming here from the Colonies around in search of employment, find it difficult at first in Port of Spain' to obtain jobs, and they had to hang on as best they could between jobs, often for weeks on end.27 Out-of-work labourers were always to be seen hanging around the wharves and the stores on the look-out for work. 28 Unemployment increased in the years after 1884 because of the depression in sugar. The great majority of the urban working class lived in the notorious barrack ranges. They were situated behind the frontage of each city street, with its respectable stores and houses, and hidden from the passer-by. The barrack range consisted of a long shed built against a back wall, facing a strip of yard, often with a similar shed on the other side. The shed was divided into six, eight, ten, or more rooms of ten or twelve feet square. The divisions were wooden partitions which usually did not reach the roof. Each room had one door, which was closed by a wooden shutter. There was one water tap for each range, and the closet accommodation consisted of one cess-pit surmounted by a wooden hut divided into two

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compartments. Usually this hut was dilapidated and the doors were often useless. The only provision for bathing was the single public tap. Washing of clothes was carried on in the yard, with the water and soapsuds sinking into the already water-logged soil.29 Dr John Chittenden, an English physician who took an unusual interest in the welfare of the lower classes, wrote in 1887 that the poor of Port of Spain were far more deserving of protection than the rural poor, penned up in wretched lean-to sheds in the back yards in town. These dwellings are mostly covered with galvanised sheeting.. .and shut in by high walls so that not the faintest breath of air can reach them. I do not exaggerate when I say that this salamander roof is often not more than three feet from their noses as they lie. 30

Sometimes six or seven persons were crowded into unventilated rooms of as little as eight or ten feet square. They were shut up there for seven or eight hours every night. 31 'Only those who have penetrated into the yards of the barracks or ranges wherein the labouring class are huddled together', wrote one editor, 'can imagine the fetid stenches which are continually assailing them.' Another paper informed its readers 'there are yards reeking with filth of every conceivable description'. 82 The rent for these terrible hovels ranged from ten to fifteen shillings a month, though one barrack owner claimed that many tenants paid nothing and moved very often.33 The fact was that owning a barrack range was always highly profitable, so that, as the Observer pointed out, no sacrifice would be involved in constructing decent buildings with suitable sanitary provisions and ventilation.34 The overcrowding in the barracks was worsened by the Building Ordinance of 1868, which prohibited the erection of new wooden buildings in the Borough proper. It had been hoped that this measure, besides being a means of preventing fires, would send the labourer into the suburbs, leaving the Borough for 'elegant town residences'. Instead the older wooden huts and ranges fell into decay and their tenants crowded into the few remaining good ones. 'So it has come about that while our population is increasing, our house room is gradually growing less.'35 The Ordinance had created, in a few years, a crying need for new low-income housing: it is provoking to see the numerous dilapidated tenements in some lots, and the gaping spaces in others all over the town, when we feel the pinch of heavy rents and know how difficult it is for those seeking it, to find house or rooms to shelter them.38

The population of Port of Spain increased rapidly in the 1870s and 1880s, while little new housing for low-income people was built. The result was intense overcrowding. By about 1885 overcrowding and unemployment in the city were attracting attention from the authorities. The Board of Health resolved early in 1885 'that measures be adopted

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for the regulation of lodging houses and the prevention of the overcrowding of dwelling houses'.37 An investigation by the Surgeon-General revealed that small barrack rooms were being tenanted by whole families of up to six persons. Some rooms on Prince Street and elsewhere were occupied by up to twenty adults; this was especially the case in lodginghouses occupied casually by Indians and Chinese at six cents per night.38 Such overcrowding inevitably bred tensions, violence, and anti-social behaviour, which found an outlet in the urban unrest of the 1880s. The effects on the family life and morality of the tenants were obvious. H . J. Clark recognised that it was quite impossible to preserve even the most ordinary decencies of life under the circumstances surrounding these barrack dwellings, and their disastrous effects on the morals of children are too well known to need any mention. 39

Even the Port of Spain Gazette, not noted for its social conscience, declared, the fact is, the barracks system is a legacy of slavery, being nothing more than a modified form of the old slave barracoon and ought long ago to have been swept away as a social and moral plague spot. 40

Not surprisingly, the yard-dwellers, living in such insanitary conditions, were the victims of endemic diseases, especially malaria, yellow fever, and dysentery. Of course, the true cause of malaria and yellow fever was not then known, and tropical fevers were thought to be caused by foul gases, the so-called 'miasma', emanating from the ground. It was thought to be especially dangerous to allow the washing of clothes in the yards, because the dirty water and soapsuds sank into the soil, which became waterlogged and putrid. A serious outbreak of typhoid in 1867 was ascribed by the doctors to 'the filthy condition of the streets and gutters and especially to the constant escape of soap-suds into the gutters from the yards of private houses'. 41 As a result of this mistaken medical belief, women in the barracks were often prosecuted by the Sanitary Inspector of the city for washing in the yards, thus breaking the law. New Era complained that upper-class householders were exempted from house visits and fines, while poor women 'more fit to be the recipients of charity than the subjects of fines', were harassed by prosecutions. The state of the latrines in the yards was a far more serious source of disease than the 'reeking subsoil'; but the Sanitary Inspector had no power to compel the owner of the barracks to enlarge latrine accommodation in proportion to the number who used it.42 The result was epidemics, deaths, and a mass of human misery. It is in epidemic times that people become suddenly aware of the unpleasant fact, that crowded away in the heart of large cities are hordes of destitute and suffering creatures, more or less ill fed, their diseases unattended to and their abodes the scene of squalor and every unwholesomeness.48

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It is almost unnecessary to state that the official provision of poor relief was quite inadequate for the needs of the city's destitute and sick. In 1867 the Governor admitted that 'numerous' deaths had occurred in Port of Spain because destitute ill persons wandering into the city from the country could not be admitted into the Colonial Hospital nor the Borough Asylum (which in any case was very small) unless they had resided in the city for six weeks before.44 His solution was a government-maintained House of Refuge for the relief of destitutes from the countryside. The city's poor had access only to the Borough Asylum and a Catholic institution, both quite inadequate, and to minimal outdoor relief provided by the Borough Council and the churches.45 The number of destitute people, often aged or ill, increased in 1884-5 as a result of unemployment in the countryside; those out of work often drifted into Port of Spain in search of jobs or, at worst, a berth in the Colonial Hospital or the House of Refuge.46 The sketchy poor-relief system was quite incapable of coping with this increase. The Surgeon-General complained that chronic overcrowding in both Colonial Hospitals (Port of Spain and San Fernando) was caused by the lack of suitable provision for relief in both Boroughs and in the country. His suggestion was a scheme for outdoor relief in the country districts, with District Hospitals for the sick poor to relieve the burden on the two major institutions.47 This plan was eventually adopted, but on a limited scale. Officials were concerned that the provision of outdoor relief, however minimal, would 'pauperise' the people and encourage fecklessness and irresponsibility. In theory, free medical care was available in Port of Spain at the city Health Office, and Medical Officers were supposed to visit gratis certified paupers too ill to attend at the office. But few paupers knew of this, and there was a very large class who were not destitute enough to be certified as paupers, or whose pride would not allow them to take this step, but who could not possibly pay a private doctor's fee for house visits. As a result, most of the city's poor were deprived of medical attention, and endured their frequent illnesses in the most adverse surroundings. The city's Medical Officer said during an epidemic: those only who visit the houses of the poor know how devoid of comfort they are. A bare plank does not form a comfortable bed for a sick man, and when to that is added the want of food suitable for the proper treatment of disease, their condition is miserable.48

These harsh conditions inevitably affected the family organisation and patterns of life of the city's working classes. For the island as a whole, high infant mortality and low marriage rates were two outstanding features of the demographic pattern. In 1886 and 1887 the deaths of children under five years represented over one-third of the total mortality. The Port of Spain Gazette thought this situation was due to a great extent

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to 'heartless neglect', especially by fathers of illegitimate children. Too often the mother could scarcely support herself, let alone children, yet had to bear the burden unaided; the infants, after a short and precarious existence, succumbed to disease brought on by neglect and malnutrition. This was especially the case in Port of Spain and the other towns. 49 The Registrar-General believed that high infant mortality was the result of 'neglect and inattention on the part of Creole parents - partly wilful or thoughtless, and partly unavoidable owing to the long absence of many parents in the pursuit of their daily duties'. 50 No doubt poverty and insanitary, overcrowded housing were mainly responsible for infant deaths, rather than neglect by parents. Yet infant mortality among upper- and middle-class families was also extremely high in this period. The newspapers contain innumerable obituaries for infants and children from well-to-do families; the medical science of the time was helpless in the face of most serious diseases, which attacked children of all classes and races. In 1890 17 per cent of all children under one year died, and in 1891 the figure was 18.4 per cent; the total mortality in that year of children aged five years and under was 44.62 per cent of all deaths. 51 The marriage rate (excluding Indians, for customary Hindu and Moslem marriages were not considered legal unless registered, and very few were registered in this period) in 1870 was 4.56 per 1,000; it was 9.6 in 1893; in 1890 it was 13.2, the highest recorded since the cholera year of 1854 when the terrified people married in droves to avoid dying in a state of sin.52 The Gazette thought these rates scandalously low, and declared that unbridled sexual immorality existed all over the island. The Marriage Ordinance should be relaxed in order to facilitate marriages as far as was consistent with the legal requirements. 53 The RegistrarGeneral believed the situation to be improving by 1891; but in his view moral and social progress was impossible until 'that dark stain of a former state of things be wiped out, and the home life of our people become what it should be, and must be'. 54 The legacy of slavery no doubt played its part in discouraging marriage among lower-class blacks, and so did the sturdy independence of black women, who often preferred a common-law relationship to legal marriage, as well as the anxiety of many men to preserve their sexual freedom. In addition, social expectations made marriage burdensome for the working-class blacks. As a Governor noted, 'the lavish expenditure they think it necessary to make on wedding festivities renders marriage a luxury in which only the provident can indulge'. 55 The low marriage rates, of course, meant a correspondingly high proportion of illegitimate births. Excluding the Indian population (nearly all children born to Indian parents were technically illegitimate since their parents' marriages were not legal because unregistered), sixty-one per cent

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of births were illegitimate in 1890.66 Many argued that the high illegitimacy rate contributed directly to infant and child mortality, because fathers failed to provide for their children. This was the view of the San Fernando Gazette, for instance, and also of Sir William Robinson, who supported a 'Bastardy Ordinance' compelling fathers to support their illegitimate children.57 One of Robinson's predecessors, however, believed that such an ordinance was unnecessary, because there was a generally acknowledged moral obligation to illegitimate children, who were maintained by their parents. He thought that a very large class of persons living in 'concubinage' did so in an orderly and decent manner. In his view, the working-class woman in Trinidad was better situated than her counterpart in Europe; she could earn wages almost as high as a man, while the expense of feeding and clothing children was virtually 'nominal'. The protection of marriage was not sufficient to induce her to forgo her independence; she preferred a less formal arrangement.58 No doubt most common-law unions were stable and the children of such unions reasonably well provided for; but innumerable illegitimate children resulted from more casual relationships, and certainly many lower-class men took the responsibilities of paternity very lightly. The indifference of fathers, combined with general poverty, made the fate of these children miserable enough. The harsh physical conditions of life inevitably brutalised the men and women who had to endure them. This could be seen, among other things, in the treatment of their children. Numerous letters and articles in the press called attention to the physical abuse of young children by workingclass mothers. Public Opinion thought that a considerable number of them were 'permanently injured either physically or mentally at an early age through the unreasoning brutality of their parents or guardians. . . Incessant brutality, especially with a nervous, excitable child, may affect the intellect to the extent of turning a bright manageable little one into a sullen, deceitful semi-idiot.'59 The law could interfere only when serious bodily harm was inflicted, and even then many cases escaped the law. Large numbers of illegitimate children were abandoned by both their parents and grew up as best they could, on the streets. New Era felt that stringent laws were needed to make it a criminal offence to beat and torture children. 'The most brutal instances of ill treatment of children are to be found among the scum of Barbados with which this town is infested.'60 Lower-class parents who abused their children were often working off their accumulated frustrations on small, defenceless, and easily available victims. Perhaps child-beating was also an unconscious process of initiating the child into a harsh world, of teaching him survival techniques; he had to learn to suppress his individuality and his aggression in a society where he needed to 'know his place'. Child-beating in the yards often took on

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the character of a public performance or ritual, in which the beater proved to his neighbours that he was inculcating the necessary training in the child.61 Juvenile vagrancy and petty crime were widespread in Port of Spain. One correspondent described the 'hundreds' of children thrown on to the streets at a very early age, who lived on errands, casual jobs, and petty crimes. They were ragged and filthy. The girls were only too often pregnant, and their babies usually died in infancy through negligence and ignorance on the part of their child-mothers. L. M. Fraser, the Inspector of Prisons, reported that girls took to prostitution ' at an age so early as to be almost impossible'. 62 The Telegraph described 'the number of bands of boys and girls, the members of which vary from 6 to 18 years of age, who, without any apparent means of supporting themselves, perambulate our streets, indulging in various street games - to say nothing of more questionable proceedings'. 63 Juvenile vagrancy clearly increased in the 1880s, as the sugar depression caused rural and urban unemployment, sending destitute people into the city; while the population continued to increase rapidly as a result of Indian and British West Indian immigration. The remedy universally suggested was to establish reformatories and industrial schools. Despite many proposals and plans, reformatories were not established until 1889, when the Anglican and Catholic authorities each established a reformatory with government subsidies and under the inspection of the Superintendent of Prisons. Destitute children without means of support, as well as juveniles convicted of offences, were sent to these institutions. 64 The 'respectable part of the community' was especially shocked by the behaviour of lower-class women in Port of Spain. L. M. Fraser believed that 'female depravity is a sure test of general decadence in any state'; and in Trinidad, immorality and crime among females were widespread. Prison held no terrors for women of this type, and he instanced the number of second, third, and fourth offenders. In his reports as Inspector of Prisons, Fraser conducted a spirited campaign against female depravity. 'There is no sense of shame whatever in the female criminals or quasicriminals of this Colony', he stated; this was clear from the 'gross indecency of their gestures. . .and the foul obscenity of their language, and this too not at night and in the semi-privacy of a brothel but in broad daylight and in the open street. . .The profligacy of these women and the almost childish age at which they become castaways' were unbelievable. 65 What could be expected from the children of such women, 'who from birth breathe an atmosphere of vice and crime, hearing nothing but obscene and profane language from morning to night, and eye-witnesses, as they notoriously are, of all that takes place in the yards and rooms in which these women live ?' Nothing, obviously, except that they would

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grow up as thieves, prostitutes, and vagabonds. Fraser was convinced that gross obscenity and rowdyism, an 'utter disregard for the commonest decencies of life', were characteristic of the whole urban working class.66 Like many officials and upper-class whites in general, Fraser thought that the urban black proletariat was inherently corrupt and vicious; the rural blacks, on the other hand, the simple-minded, docile peasants, were far more tolerable. Prostitution, or 'the social evil', to use the popular euphemism, was much in evidence in Port of Spain. One paper thought that no other West Indian town had a greater number, or a viler set, of prostitutes. They should be treated like lepers, relegated to some particular area of the town, and stringently prohibited from living in respectable localities.67 The common belief was that the majority of prostitutes were natives of Barbados and the other islands, not Trinidad Creoles. But in 1874, out of ninety women registered in Port of Spain as common prostitutes under the Contagious Diseases Ordinance of 1869, sixty were natives of Trinidad and only twenty-eight were from the islands; in San Fernando, thirty-one out of thirty-eight registered prostitutes were Creoles.68 Of course, the women registered with the police were only a fraction of the total number of prostitutes in the city. The Port of Spain Gazette complained in 1881: 'no one living in Port of Spain can have failed to remark the rapid spread of the social evil among us'. In San Fernando, the lower classes had the reputation of being more orderly than in the capital, but by 1878 the local paper thought that 'the public nuisance' was almost as bad as in Port of Spain. Further, the police openly encouraged it by 'holding public dalliance' with notorious women on the streets.69 Nothing alarmed respectable people so much as the extent of ' vagrancy' among the Port of Spain lower classes. The Victorian belief in the virtue of honest labour for the working class was outraged by the spectacle of able-bodied men and women lounging around the streets with no apparent means of supporting themselves. 'The greatest evil with which we have at present to contend', stated Fraser in 1876, 'is the vicious idleness in the lower classes of our towns. It is a painful sight to see the troops of idlers male and female, who infest our streets, and who, although their whole lives from day to day and from year to year are one continuous offence against the laws of God and man, should still contrive for the most part to avoid making themselves liable for any specific offence.' These vagabonds, 'in the full enjoyment of the most exuberant health', neither begged, nor worked, nor starved.70 In the view of Fraser and many others, the remedy was thought to be a vagrancy law of the type found in the French colonies, which compelled every able-bodied adult to account to a policeman for his means of subsistence; but the Colonial Office did not sanction any such law in the nineteenth century.

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As with many undesirable social phenomena, the extent of vagrancy was attributed to West Indian immigrants settling in Port of Spain, which absorbed most of the 'idle and criminal types' from the other islands. They demoralised the native population and induced them to commit crimes, which otherwise would never have entered their heads. The city was full of men, women and children with no jobs, barefooted and in filthy rags, some diseased, some healthy, but all of them degraded, vicious, and usually unemployable.71 San Fernando had its fair share of vagabondage and vice, which the police did nothing to check.72 Vagrancy became an especially serious problem in the later 1880s and 1890s, the result of increasing unemployment and reduction of wages. Some of the 'vagrants' were probably between jobs; others had given up trying to find work, and lived by casual errands, occasional small jobs, gambling, pimping, prostitution, and petty crime. All through the 1870s and early 1880s lawlessness among the vagrants of Port of Spain was the burning topic. This is reflected in endless letters, editorials, and articles in the press. To cite one example, Fair Play described the 'loose men and women' of the city as a disgrace to the community. They attended drum dances and riotous parties, they fought in the streets and sang obscene songs; they had the run of the city. Their special haunt was Marine (now Independence) Square: knots of vagabonds infested the corners and respectable people could not walk past without being obstructed and molested by brutal and filthy roughs. The suburbs were almost as bad. The disorder and obscenity of Carnival were only the culmination of year-round misbehaviour by the vagabonds. 73 This class of unemployed men and women was organised into 'bands', loose associations formed for drinking, gambling, and fighting. These were the bands which took over Carnival in the 1860s and 1870s. The Attorney-General described the bands in 1879 as consisting of 'persons without any settled occupation subsisting by theft or by the favour of prostitutes, whose wages they share. They have no charitable, political or other definite object, but are called into operation only for the purpose of fighting with other bands.' 74 The semi-criminal activities of these associations brought them into daily collision with the police, and made them the theme of outraged letters and editorials in the press. The Echo called the bands 'notorious conservers of crime and violence'. Their members 'parade their disorderly designs with an effrontery unimaginable to strangers. They wear a distinctive dress and carry remarkable cudgels as the badge of their order.' Their only objective was to hold riotous dances, and, at Carnival, to 'do battle against each other with stones, long sticks, glass bottles, and other missiles to the danger and the terror of peaceful people'.75 A letter to the Palladium in 1877 complained:

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The town just now presents a sad aspect of riot caused by those bands of Bakers and Peau de Canelle. In George Street on Tuesday afternoon there was a muster of about 150 of these people, making that particular street their stronghold, impeding the passage of respectable inhabitants who at any moment might have had their heads broken by the sticks or stones of these ruffians.

The editor commented that bands were on the increase. The insolence and wanton cruelty of these canaille are well known.. .The life of crime and idleness which they lead have [sic] a charm for these people, and the usual incarceration with hard labour is no disgrace for them. 76

According to the police, the object of the bands was either to fight the police, or to carry on drum dances in order to raise funds to pay fines imposed on members, and to give ' pic-nics' when members were released from jail. Certainly there were continual skirmishes with the police. Attacks by 'lawless bands' in Belmont on policemen were said to be a 'daily occurrence' in 1884. Bands came up from downtown to Belmont with the sole mission of attacking detached patrols of one or two men with sticks and broken bottles.77 Between 1880 and 1884 Captain Baker, the Chief of Police, succeeded in breaking up the more notorious bands in the course of his campaign to purge and discipline Carnival. The law was amended in 1884 to allow members of bands convicted of any offence to be brought under the Habitual Criminals Act, which provided for police surveillance of such persons. The Superintendent of Prisons reported in 1888 that there had been a diminution of crime between 1883 and 1888. 'I think that the population is more orderly now than hitherto. There having been no serious riots for the last three years is owing, I believe, to the "Bands" having been broken up by the Police.'78 Even so, in 1891, to cite one case, there was a serious affray between two rival bands at the corner of Upper Prince Street and Charlotte Street. They fought for half an hour with sticks, stones, and bottles; it was a prearranged fight. Thirty-nine people were arrested.79 But it seems that after about 1884 the bands which survived were forced to be more circumspect in carrying on their activities. An inescapable part of urban lower-class life was crime and its punishment. The conditions of urban working-class life bred tensions, quarrels and disputes which might become violent. A. H. Gordon reported in 1867 that Port of Spain's population included a large criminal class 'embracing all that is vilest in the population of the Colony itself, the offscourings of the neighbouring islands and of Venezuela'. The eastern suburb of the city, a working-class district, was inhabited by 'a lawless and reckless population, a sort of sanctuary for escaped convicts, runaway sailors and criminals of every class'. The police hardly ventured into this district.80 In the centre of Marine Square, the heart of the city's business area, there was 'a yard called the Spanish Yard infested by some of the

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greatest blackguards of the Town and from which easy access can be obtained to the back premises of the stores surrounding it'. There were 'criminal haunts' in nearly every city street.81 Much of the violent crime which took place in the city was not committed by hardened criminals who lived mainly by illegal acts, but by people caught up in personal quarrels so common in the yards, where privacy or 'minding one's own business' were impossible. New Era thought that the 'violent disposition of the canaille about town seems to gather strength almost every day'. 'Cutting and wounding' was said to be a common crime. As usual, Barbadians were blamed: they were said to have introduced the use of the razor to working-class Creoles. Kitchen or hunting knives were also used as weapons. The Chronicle agreed that the lower classes were increasingly given to violent quarrels. 82 It is clear that the 1870s and the early 1880s did see an increase in lawlessness and unrest in Port of Spain, the result of overcrowding and unemployment. Gambling, especially whe-whe, was another source of crime. People stole money in order to put up stakes for the game. 83 The magistrates' courts, which dealt with most of the petty crime committed by the working class, generally operated on the principle that every lower-class black (or Indian) was guilty unless he could prove himself honest.84 This was the case in both the towns and the country districts. Some magistrates deliberately insulted and intimidated poor, illiterate witnesses, litigants or accused persons, 'whose only crime is poverty or an apparent want of social position'. 'In the country districts,' stated New Era, 'it is so easy to have a fellow locked up, either in spite, or in the mean and petty squabbles between labour and capital, which take so many strange shapes in the Agricultural districts.' 85 The Chronicle agreed that the administration of justice in the magistrates' courts left much to be desired. 'There is, unfortunately, a certain amount of favouritism and prejudice against the humbler and labouring classes.' It cited a recent case in which the Port of Spain magistrate sentenced a teenaged boy, who existed on what scraps he could find, to three years' hard labour and twenty-five lashes for stealing a chicken. It was too common for a Trinidad magistrate to hold that supercilious view of the descendants of the African race, which would lead him to think that no sentence could be too severe to be inflicted on those who, it is taken for granted, are either obtuse in natural mind, or most incorrigibly wicked and vile.

Six months for a first offence, floggings for petty larceny, were cases in point. Often simple people lost their cases through ignorance and timidity, when not aided by a considerate magistrate. 86 Corporal punishment could be sentenced, at the discretion of the magistrate, for those convicted of praedial larceny and the practice of

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obeah, under Ordinance 6 of 1868. Needless to say, those flogged were invariably lower-class blacks, or, less often, Indians. The magistrates often abused their power. For instance, in 1882 a Couva magistrate sentenced a black to four floggings (for four separate offences) of thirty-six lashes each, or a total of 144 strokes. The Governor remitted three of the floggings.87 Flogging for praedial larceny, a far more common offence than obeah, was justified as a necessary protection for honest, struggling peasant farmers from the depredations of idle layabouts, and the press generally accepted this argument. But in 1883 the whole issue of corporal punishment was debated when the Rev. J. Horsford organised a petition for the abolition of flogging. It deplored 'the partial return to the great and disgusting vice of slavery in the brutal practice of flogging to blood the labouring population for petty larceny and other crimes'. The practice demoralised the community, and magistrates had scandalously abused their discretionary powers.88 The Governor dismissed the petition as 'neither numerously nor influentially signed', and stated that the law sufficiently checked abuses by magistrates; the Governor always reviewed sentences of flogging.89 L. M. Fraser defended corporal punishment of those convicted of praedial larceny in the interests of society and of hard-working gardeners and farmers, and produced figures to show that the convicts who underwent flogging had all had several previous convictions.90 These arguments were accepted by the Port of Spain Gazette and by Fair Play.91 But the liberal Recorder thought that it was barbarous and unjust for men who had merely stolen a chicken to be flogged. Flogging degraded and brutalised the victim and turned him into a hardened criminal. This was also the view of the Palladium. Magistrates administered floggings for trivial offences, while fraud and wrong committed by 'respectable' criminals went unpunished. This paper stated plainly that flogging was countenanced only because it was inflicted exclusively on black men. 'No man would dare to inflict torture on any race but the black race in the shameful and disgraceful manner in which it is done here.' 92 This viewpoint, however, was ineffectual. Indeed, an 1893 ordinance extended corporal punishment by making it mandatory for a second offence of praedial larceny, subject to the approval of the Governor. 93 A constant factor in working-class life was the police. All through the century the general attitude to the police force was one of strong hostility. One of the main factors behind this situation was the fact that the ranks were predominantly Barbadian. In 1892, for instance, out of a total of 506 men, 292 were from Barbados and 137 from other islands. Only forty-seven were natives of Trinidad. 94 Both 'respectable' Trinidadians and lower-class blacks mistrusted and resented the policemen. J. J. Thomas expressed the popular view when he described them as 'Barbadian rowdies

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. . .whose bitter hatred of the older residents had been. . .often brutally exemplified'. Thomas claimed that many Barbadians were admitted into the force even though they had a criminal past, and 'on this account they were shunned by the decent inhabitants, a course which they repaid with crushing animosity. Perjuries the most atrocious and crushing, especially to the respectable poor, became the order of the day.' 95 The San Fernando Gazette and New Era, representing the educated black and coloured group, were both strongly hostile to the police, who were 'an ignorant squad who, taken from the lowest of the people who leave their country for their country's good. . .are transformed into officers of the Police'. Policemen were seen daily in intimate conversation with prostitutes and gamblers; they accepted bribes whenever offered; they harassed respectable persons as well as the lower orders. 96 The hostility between the lawmen and lower-class Trinidadians was of long standing. Barbadians began to join the force from the 1840s, and in these years the ex-slaves found it easy to identify them with the ruling class and the ex-slave-owners.97 L. M. Fraser, then Inspector-Commandant, spoke of 'the extraordinary dislike of the people of this island to the Police', and noted their sympathy with the criminals and their extreme reluctance to give evidence against each other. 98 The bad feeling persisted all through the century. Lower-class Creoles used their knowledge of patois, which most Barbadians did not understand, as a kind of offensive and defensive weapon against the police. As one paper reported, 'it has frequently happened that the stranger Constable has come in for a good share of abuse to his own face without being able to understand one word of what is said'. 99 The deep resentment against the police came to a head in 1880-4, when Baker broke up the bands and purged Carnival of Canboulay and the band fights. It was hardly surprising that the Hamilton Report on the Carnival riots of 1881 reported a 'very strong prejudice' on the part of Trinidadians of all classes, but especially lower-class blacks, against the police.100 A riot in Arouca in 1891 illustrated the deep hatred of the working-class Creoles for the police. A group of 'rogues' attacked policemen for interfering with their drum dance. One, Joseph Carrington, threatened to kill any policeman who tried to arrest him; he wounded an Irish sergeant seriously with a cutlass and was said to have shouted 'come, we take out his eyes'. Arthur Augustin wanted to 'drink the blood' of the wounded officer as he lay unconscious on the ground. A group of men paraded in front of the Arouca police station, defying the men to come out, taunting them in impromptu songs, and beating drums. 101 The hostility persisted to the end of the century, and in 1895 the San Fernando Gazette was still complaining that 'the Police Force contains some of the greatest scoundrels, vagabonds and cut-throats, that can be found anywhere'. 102

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For many lower-class blacks, a stay in prison was a frequent experience. The 'vagabonds and rogues', the members of the bands, were in and out of jail constantly, often making a regular visit every year for offences related to Carnival. More respectable working-class people might also occasionally fall foul of the law, whether fairly or not. L. M. Fraser complained each year in his interesting annual reports that the lower-class convict, male or female, felt neither dread nor shame at being sent to jail. He admitted that, for the ordinary labourer, the physical conditions in jail were usually better than what he experienced outside; he was deprived only of tobacco, rum, and sex - the 'grosser sensual pleasures' - and this was an insufficient deterrent. 103 The hardened criminals, the habitual minor offenders, enjoyed a decided advantage when in jail over hundreds of honest men compelled to work for low wages and in bad conditions to support their families. Fraser thought that 'negroes and all who have the African element in any predominant degree in their constitutions' were incapable of deriving 'any lasting moral impression' from a jail sentence unaccompanied by the severest penal discipline. Asiatics he dismissed as 'fatalists'; nothing seemed to affect them. Only the few Europeans or educated people sent to jail really suffered shame or remorse. 104 The conditions of urban working-class life in the last decades of the nineteenth century were harsh, and they deteriorated markedly in the 1880s as a result of large-scale immigration from the West Indies and India, internal migration into Port of Spain from the country, and unemployment caused by the depression in the sugar industry after 1884. The result was urban unrest, lawlessness, and crime, which culminated in the conflicts associated with Carnival in 1880-4. Nevertheless, it remained true that it was in Port of Spain, San Fernando, and one or two smaller towns that schools, churches and social amenities were most easily available, and that jobs other than manual labour were most readily obtained. This is why ambitious, potentially mobile working-class blacks tended to be settled in Port of Spain or the other larger towns, and why, as we have noted, their sons were more likely to climb to middle-class status than the sons of rural labourers or peasants. The towns offered more chances for mobility than the countryside. Perhaps a quarter of the island's population lived in Port of Spain and San Fernando towards the end of the century. The majority of the people lived in the larger villages, or in small settlements and isolated homesteads in the newly opened areas. Most of them were engaged in agriculture, whether as wage labourers or peasant cultivators, or as craftsmen employed by the estates. Our next chapter will investigate the conditions of the rural working classes.

The black rural masses

The majority of the black masses were countrymen, living in the rural villages, or in small settlements and isolated homesteads in the newly opened districts in the interior. Most of them were in agriculture, as wage labourers, or peasant cultivators, or cocoa contractors; others were craftsmen employed in the villages or on the estates; some were hunters, lumbermen and fishermen. They were the descendants of Trinidad slaves, of West Indian settlers, of Venezuelan immigrants, or of liberated Africans. We have already investigated the British West Indian immigrants, and we noted that they mostly settled in Port of Spain, San Fernando, and the larger villages; for the most part, they did not engage in plantation labour or peasant agriculture. This was not the case with the Venezuelan immigrants or with the liberated Africans, who formed important elements in the rural population. One other racial group was swiftly passing away: the Amerindians, the aboriginal inhabitants of Trinidad. By 1870 only a few pure-blooded Amerindians survived. The Spanish authorities had gathered the indigenes together in missions, at Cumana, Siparia, Savannah Grande, Arima, and elsewhere. In each mission, the Indians were ruled by a Corregidor nominated by the Governor; lands were held in common, and the Catholic priest exercised paternal powers of discipline and control. 1 Their numbers declined very fast as Trinidad entered die mainstream of plantation development after the 1780s. On the north coast, for instance, the surviving Amerindian families were brought together in the mission at Cumana (Toco); but they disappeared inexorably, and the cholera epidemic of 1854 apparently exterminated nearly all the north coast Indians. By 1885 there were only perhaps a dozen half-caste Amerindian families on the north coast.2 In Arima the story was the same. In 1840 there were only about three hundred Indians of pure descent in the old mission, mostly aged. Occasionally surviving members of a group of Chayma Indians used to come down from the heights beyond Arima to the Farfan estate, to barter wild meats for small household goods. But after 1854 they were seen no more: cholera had extinguished the Chaymas. Indeed, by 1850 there 130

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were said to be no more than four hundred Indians of pure descent in the whole island; by 1875 only a handful survived, and of the people of mixed Amerindian-Spanish-African descent, very few knew anything of Indian languages or ways. They all spoke Spanish.3 The 'half-caste' Amerindians, living mostly in the valleys of the Northern Range behind Arima, were simple peasants and hunters, living in ajoupas, often preserving Amerindian arts of basket-weaving. The blacks bought back-packs and cassava strainers from them. 4 In Siparia the population, in 1883, was still mainly Spanish-Amerindian, Catholic and Spanish-speaking. An old native, a descendant of the aboriginal inhabitants, told a traveller that at the end of the eighteenth century a large Amerindian population lived in Siparia, cultivating cassava and couche-couche extensively, under the disciplinary government of the local padre. But they were told that, with the cession of Trinidad to Britain in 1802, they would be mistreated; when the British arrived in the district, the natives took to the woods to the south of Siparia and set off in corials or canoes to the Orinoco Delta, where they still lived in 1883. Those who remained in Siparia dwindled into idleness and apathy.5 Once a year, Indians living on the banks of the Orinoco travelled in canoes to the south-east coast of Trinidad, landing at Moruga, and making their way to San Fernando along ancient Indian tracks. These were the Guarahoons (spelt in many different ways);6 some of them were the descendants of Indians who had earlier left Trinidad for the mainland, like the Siparia aboriginals. * Silent, modest, defeated', they vanished into the high wood, using unknown tracks; they sold their parrots, hunting dogs and hammocks in exchange for small household goods; and then paddled silently back to the Delta. Some of these visitors were virtually untouched by European ways, and caused the townsfolk of San Fernando some disquiet because of their semi-nudity. But a party of ' Warahoons' in 1875 were 'far more accustomed to town life and manners than their fellows of by-gone times were wont to be. There is a marked improvement in their dress, and their intercourse in trading has lost a great deal of that timidity and suspicion which acted as a barrier to their bartering with our people.'7 But the Amerindians gave way to newer and sturdier people. Their day was nearly done, and they had no role to play in the development of Trinidad by the later nineteenth century. 8 There was, however, a group of partly Amerindian descent which made an important contribution to the opening up of the island to cultivation and settlement. These were the peons, the word being used loosely to describe the people of mixed Spanish-Amerindian-African descent who had emigrated from Venezuela from the early years of the century. The peons were essentially pioneers and backwoodsmen, the true frontiersmen of Trinidad. 'The greatest gift that the peons brought with them from

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the Spanish Main', notes Donald Wood, 'was an empirical knowledge of the soils on which cocoa would flourish, and the patient skill needed to bring a tree to maturity.' 9 They moved to the northern foothills and took up small-scale cultivation, either on their own account, or as cocoa contractors for Spanish or French Creole planters. They were all Catholics, and Spanish-speaking. In the 1860s they moved to the district east of Arima, and south to the Montserrat hills, where the soil was excellently suited to cocoa. By 1867 they were the 'most industrious class' among the hundreds of squatters in Montserrat, some possessing large cocoa estates.10 After 1868 they nearly all acquired legal titles to their land. The quarter of Montserrat and Gran Couva was first settled and cultivated by Mariano Garcia, the leader of a number of Venezuelan immigrants who settled in the district in the 1860s. The news of their success in establishing cocoa estates soon attracted a regular flow of 'honest, active, God-fearing, law-abiding, and hard-working agricultural labourers from Venezuela'. They traced out mule tracks along the hill ridges. In this way Montserrat and Gran Couva were settled and cultivated.11 The Chronicle thought that, by 1875, the peons could be counted as Creoles. They were a peaceful people, the original clearers of the forest. Before 1868 they were cacagueros or squatters; now they were the legal owners of what had been Crown lands.12 Public Opinion paid tribute to the peons, a sturdy race of immigrants from the Spanish Main who, plunging into the depths of our forests.. .laid the foundations for those valuable cocoa plantations. When Mariano Garcia and his brother Felix Marchan, Juan Bruno, Bartolo Subero, Juan Albornos and numerous others bought their first cutlasses from Jose Drage.. .they were doing more for the future development of the Colony.. .than if they had applied their thews and sinews to the weeding of canes.

Dr Chittenden thought that they were 'the most valuable of all pioneers'. He drew attention to widespread dispossession of peon cultivators from their plots of land by town merchants who held mortgages on them. 'In Arima alone there are hundreds of these people who have been dispossessed of their little estates principally through the agency of the late Natividad Alfonso.'13 The Royal Franchise Commission was told that cocoa contractors were mainly 'Spaniards'. The older ones spoke nothing but Spanish, while the younger ones spoke English, Spanish, and patois. Some were from the Main, others were 'Creole Spaniard', born in Trinidad. There were 'Spaniards' in Toco, and in Caroni there was a large Spanish-speaking population born in Trinidad. In the Caura and Maracas valleys Spanish was the main language, though most of the people had been born in Trinidad. They were of mixed descent, mostly SpanishAfrican, and they were nearly all peasant proprietors. 14 An interesting autobiographical account gives a vivid first-hand

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description of the life-style of this peon class.15 Eusebio Valerio, born around 1880 in Tortuga, a small village in Montserrat, was the son of a light-skinned Spanish-Amerindian father and a dark-skinned AfricanCarib mother. He therefore combined the blood of three races in his veins. His parents were both born in Trinidad, but their parents had emigrated from Venezuela some time in the early nineteenth century. Tortuga was at that time in a newly settled area, and food and jobs were scarce. Valerio grew up in a small, one-room wooden hut, thatched with palm leaves. About three-quarters of the interior was converted into a sleeping-area, by hanging carat palm leaves loosely from cross pieces of wood. A piece cut out of the leaves at the back was a window; an opening in front with a sacking 'curtain' was the door. The furniture consisted of a primitive homemade couch on which the whole family slept, an old Carib basket to hold clothes, and a soap box to hold 'salt provisions'. Their diet was mainly plantains, cassava, and saltfish, cooked at the front of the hut, and served in calabashes, with the father sitting on a bench, and the children on the bare earth. The chief occupation of Valerio's mother was preparing cassava bread, the traditional diet of the Amerindians, a complex and laborious process which necessitated her getting up at 4 a.m. to start the work. Valerio's father, who was illiterate and spoke only Spanish, was a cocoa contractor. He died about 1895, and the family was left in destitution. Valerio's mother took a job at $1.80 a week as a carrier in a sand pit, to tide them over. Later they moved far into the bush in Savannah Grande, to a holding of six acres of forest which his father had bought before his death. The bush was cleared, cocoa was planted, and a new hut built. The first year was exceptionally hard, for the food crops planted among the cocoa trees were not yet bearing, and the family existed mainly on rice and baji. Later, provisions were plentiful and they were able to sell some. Valerio, aged about fifteen, attended primary school at Hard Bargain, two miles from home; but on two days a week he had to stay at home to help make cassava bread, which they exchanged at the local market for pork, rice, and saltfish. All this left Valerio with an iron resolve to escape from Trinidad. The wretched condition in which my parents lived, the grinding toil and poverty, the hardships and sufferings of my childhood, had aroused in me the strongest sort of determination to better my condition.. .1 must acquire an education, and, if possible, a profession, a physician for choice, because of the terrible suffering, due largely to ignorance, which I had seen and experienced among the class of people into which I was born.16

After many vicissitudes, Valerio qualified as a doctor in the United States. His book is a valuable first-hand account of life among the peon class in the newly settled areas of Trinidad in the 1880s and 1890s.

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The liberated Africans and their descendants formed an important section of the black masses. Between 1841 and 1861 just over 8,000 Africans arrived in Trinidad from Sierra Leone and St Helena. They were slaves seized by the British Navy from foreign slave ships bound for Cuba and Brazil, sent to Sierra Leone or to St Helena, and encouraged to emigrate under Government sponsorship to the British West Indies.17 In the 1851 Census 8,010 natives of Africa were recorded. But no more Africans came to Trinidad after 1861, so that as the years passed, and the immigrants died, the numbers decreased. From 6,035 stives of Africa in 1861 - seven per cent of the total population - the number dwindled to 2,055 m 1891, of whom over half were sixty years old or more. On arrival most of the Africans were indentured to various plantations, and after their indentureship, they settled in villages based on tribal and linguistic affinities.18 It is clear that Africans of the same tribe congregated together in nineteenth-century Trinidad. A tribal group might dominate a whole village, or two or more might form separate communities in the same village. Many African settlements were close to the estates where the immigrants had been indentured, and where they often continued to give seasonal labour. There were also more isolated settlements at Manzanilla and elsewhere. The African immigrants rarely resided on the estates as full-time labourers after their indentureship. Some were skilled craftsmen; women worked as domestics, vendors, hucksters; Africans gave wage labour to the cocoa estates. But possession of a plot of land, and economic independence, were crucial to the Africans. Probably a majority became smallholders. A typical pattern was for the Africans 10 establish gardens at some distance from their homes: in Belmont and Tunapuna they lived in the valley and planted on the hills surrounding it. Africans also hunted, and collected charcoal; by tradition, the men sold meat (not vegetables) in the markets. Traditional skills in cloth weaving and pottery fell into disuse, since nineteenth-century Trinidad was geared to importing cloth and household goods.19 J. J. Thomas wrote in 1889 m a t n e w a s 'familiar since early childhood with members of almost every tribe of Africans. . .who were brought to the West Indies'. He listed the principal tribal groups sent to Trinidad as the 'Mandingoes, Foulahs, Houssas, Calvers, Gallahs, Karamenties, Yorubas, Aradas, Cangas, Kroos, Timnehs, Veis, Eboes, Mokoes, Bibis, Congoes'. Thomas denied, from his intimate knowledge of these people, Froude's assertion that most of the liberated Africans were slaves in their own communities.20 The Mandingoes, whom Thomas mentioned at the head of his list, were Moslems from that part of West Africa between the Senegal and the Gambia; it was not strictly a tribal name. During the last years of slavery,

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the Mandingoes had retained their cohesion and their corporate sense, centred on Islam, and they formed a distinct, closed society.21 In the 1830s they included * several wealthy and respectable individuals' in Port of Spain, the owners of houses and properties acquired through successful huckstering. They cooperated to buy the freedom of their enslaved countrymen, who were then compelled to labour for the 'society' until their purchase money had been paid back. By 1834, ** w a s &c Mandingoes' boast that they had freed all their compatriots from slavery. They had 'regularly appointed priests'. 22 Jonas Mohammed Bath, who died in 1838, was the patriarch and leader of the Port of Spain Mandingoes: he had unsuccessfully petitioned for the repatriation of his people to Africa by the British Government.23 Of course the Mandingoes were exceptional in their corporate sense. To some extent, the African immigrants were beginning, in the later nineteenth century, to merge with the rest of the black population. One Governor thought that by 1871 the Africans 'had been merged among the general population as natives of Trinidad'. 24 But he certainly overstated the case. The Africans formed a distinct and separate group at least until the end of the century, though many lived in close relationships with Creole blacks. This was particularly true of the Yorubas. Every contemporary observer noted that the Yorubas were the dominant African tribal group in Trinidad. Robert Mitchell, describing the African cultivators in the Montserrat district in 1867, wrote that the 'Yarribas' lived in substantial wooden houses, with well-stocked and carefully cultivated gardens. 'Many of them subscribe', he noted, 'towards a fund on which they draw in case of illness or unseen misfortune.' They were excitable, and 'highly impatient of control'. 25 De Verteuil commented that of all the liberated Africans, the Yorubas were outstanding for their industry, intelligence, pride, honesty, and traditions of self-help. 'The whole Yoruba race of the colony may be said to form a sort of social league for mutual support and protection.' W. H . Gamble thought that they appeared to value Christianity and 'civilisation', that is, a Euro-Creole life-style. They tended to live together, they kept clean and neat-looking houses, and they rarely appeared in the courts.26 Some of them settled east of the Dry River in Port of Spain, for Dry River was also called 'Yarriba Village' or 'Yaraba Town'. 27 The tribal name, in several different spellings, was adopted as a surname by many Africans in Trinidad. A court case in 1888 involved Harriet Charles, a native of Africa. She had lived with Charles Baptist, also called Charles Yaraba, and she had an uncle, Tom Yaraba, who had also come from Africa; she had also lived with George African.28 Maureen Warner states that the Yorubas were the dominant African group in Trinidad, the basis of a unified African tradition which gave

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cohesion and cultural dynamism to the whole African population. The Yoruba tradition made a distinct imprint on the Creole culture of Trinidad in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Its influence is clear in Shango and other Afro-Christian cults, in calypso, and in traditional selfhelp financial organisations like the susu. The Yorubas greatly influenced the quality of religion and religious ritual and insignia in Trinidad. Less tangibly, Warner sees the Yoruba influence on the Trinidadian personality in its characteristic panache, flamboyance, love of display, and fascination with style and ceremony.29 The Congoes were another important tribal group in Trinidad, but comments on them were unfavourable. Gamble thought that they were people with bad characters and little initiative. They seldom bought land or became anything more than low-paid labourers.30 Robert Mitchell observed that the Congoes * occupy the lowest position in the scale of civilisation; they lead for the most part a semi-barbarous life, dwelling in miserable huts, and subsiding on the produce of an acre or two of badly cultivated land, eked out with the hire of an occasional day's labour on one or other of the adjoining estates'. 31 Thomas wrote that the Congoes * always appeared to us an inferior tribe to all the others'. 32 Many Congoes settled in Montserrat as squatters; in the late 1860s an area near Spring Vale in this ward was known as Congo Wood.33 There was a case in 1891 in which a 'poor old Congo man' named Jacob William was assaulted. The assailant was alleged to have said, 'You damned Congo, I am going to kick you.'34 Like Yaraba, Congo was a common surname. Among defaulters in ward rates in 1875 were Dandoo and William Congo in Mayaro and Lass Congo in La Brea. In 1873 Wales Congo from Savonetta, blind and destitute, entered the House of Refuge; and the police were looking for Samuel Congo, a native of Africa, in 1884. 35 An equally common surname was 'African', presumably adopted by African immigrants. In 1884 the police were searching for Isaac African, wanted for larceny, distinguished by his 'African marks' or tribal scars, on his face and back.36 Most of the Africans in nineteenth-century Trinidad were illiterate, but some of the Moslems could read the Quran and taught their children to do so. A few of the immigrants might have been to mission schools in Sierra Leone and have picked up in this way some English and a rudimentary education. In Trinidad, as we have noted, rural primary schools were few and often inaccessible in the nineteenth century. Some African parents preferred to keep their children at home to help in their gardens. But others recognised the value of education and made sure that their children attended school. This was especially the case with immigrants who had lived for some time in Sierra Leone, who spoke English and were Creolised; but it was also true of many illiterate African parents

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with no formal education. Like Creole and West Indian blacks, they recognised that the road to advancement in Trinidad was through the schools. Islam was the religion of the Mandingoes, Hausa, Fulani, and some Yorubas. The Africans who came in after 1841 reinforced the small Islamic communities already established in Trinidad, especially at Manzanilla; Islam gave to its adherents an awareness of group solidarity and a sense of distinctiveness. But, cut off from Islamic traditions, isolated in an officially Christian colony, most Moslem Africans eventually accepted some variant of the Christian faith, even if only nominally. There is no evidence of any contact between African and Indian Moslem communities in the nineteenth century.87 The descendants of disbanded black soldiers formed a special group within the black rural masses. The demobilised men of the Third West India Regiment, disbanded after 1815, were given plots of land at Manzanilla on the east coast, and smaller settlements were established along the bridle path from Arima to the coast, at La Seiva, Tourure, and Cuare. The settlers were to keep this path clear of bush and to grow provisions.38 They faced great difficulties because of the isolation and inaccessibility of their villages. In 1837 a writer noted that the settlements had not progressed as had been hoped, but that the settlers were beginning to show greater industry, and were producing enough provisions to sell considerable quantities outside their own villages. But they were much in need of a clergyman and a teacher.39 Indeed, Christianity lapsed in these isolated outposts. Many, probably most, of the ex-soldiers were natives of Africa, and after 1841 African immigrants joined their settlements. Mandingo ex-sergeants kept up the Islamic faith and converted nonMoslem settlers. The language spoken was 'Manzanillan', a mixture of military English, Spanish, and African languages.40 In 1870 the Governor reported that the settlements at La Seiva, Cuare, and Tourure were apparently abandoned, and at Manzanilla, only seven of the original ex-soldiers survived. Many of them, and their descendants, had long since left to settle in other parts of the island. There was considerable confusion surrounding the titles to the ex-soldiers' lands.41 The SubIntendant of Crown Lands described their descendants in 1872 as 'an idle and inactive race, living from hand to mouth, whose few wants are more than satisfied by the yield of an acre or two of rice and ground provisions \ 4 2 Many of the ex-soldiers and their descendants settled elsewhere in the colony, and a few were successful. Joseph Brooks, who died in 1887 on his estate 'Jouvence' in Guanapo, was the son of one of the ex-soldiers, who had been a native of Africa. He had attained 'a comfortable and respectable position', and had just returned from a trip to Britain.43 In 1877 died Sgt Samuel Harrison, the oldest survivor of the Regiment disbanded in 1815. He claimed to be about 118 years of age. By birth he

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was 'a Foulah, a half-civilised race inhabiting a wide tract of country at the back of the Coast lands between Sierra Leone and Gambia, and originally a Mussulman, but having been converted to Christianity has for some years been a member of the congregation meeting in Mr. Dickson's church at Arouca'. He had been settled on lands on the Piarco Savannah, where he died so many years later.44 Another group of rural blacks consisted of the descendants of freed American slaves who had fought for Britain in the 1812 War, and who had been settled after 1815 in seven villages in Savannah Grande, named after their military companies.45 They were known as 'Americans'. The Rev. John Morton employed an 'American' maid, a coloured girl descended from the ex-slave soldiers, who was very proud of her ancestry.46 As happened in the case of the ex-soldiers at Manzanilla, many of the 'Americans' were converted to Islam by three Mandingo ex-slave priests; but they later became Baptists when a United States Baptist Mission started to work in the area. Around i860 an American black was said to have introduced some of the practices common in camp meetings of the Southern States: 'shouter' songs, chanted refrains, and rhythmic motion. When Edward Underhill, the English Baptist leader, preached in the Montserrat chapel, the 'Americans' in the congregation swayed from side to side as he spoke. W. H. Gamble, also a Baptist clergyman, noted this behaviour with concern.47 The Royal Franchise Commission of 1888 held a one-day meeting at Fifth Company Village, Indian Walk, which was still inhabited mainly by the descendants of the 'old Americans'. Robert Andrews gave evidence to the Commission, among several others. He was the son of one of the 'old Americans', who had arrived in Trinidad in 1816; he had been born in 1824. His parents were both former slaves from the southern United States. Andrews was literate, and clearly a leader in the village, which he called his 'dominion'; he had signed the petition for constitutional change on behalf of many illiterate people of the district. 43 The peons, the African immigrants, and the black ex-soldiers, and their descendants, were important groups in the island's peasantry in the nineteenth century. But the peasantry in Trinidad originated with the withdrawal of ex-slaves from the sugar plantations after 1838. Perhaps around 7,000 ex-slaves left the estates to become stallholders. Of these, about five-sixths became owners of between one and ten acres of land, growing chiefly provisions and cocoa, and often giving casual labour to the estates during crop. William Sewell wrote in 1858, 'If any one doubts that a very large - a very astonishing number of the emancipated labourers have become independent proprietors, let him look at the score of villages built up since abolition.'49 Until 1869 it was impossible for smallholders to purchase small plots of

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Crown lands, and squatting by black cultivators was widespread. Under Governor A. H. Gordon, the system was radically changed by Ordinance 8 of 1869. The upset price was reduced to ^ 1 per acre and the minimum lot to five acres. Fees were also cut, and surveying was to be performed by government officers at a moderate and uniform fee (previously the applicant had to make his own arrangements with a private surveyor) and within a reasonable time. The entire transaction was to be carried out locally at the different Wardens' offices, so that the applicant need never come to the capital.50 The result of this law was to make sales far easier and quicker; in some cases grants could be made within days of the sale. For the first time, it was possible for the small cultivator to buy a few acres of Crown lands. Gordon and his able Commissioner of Crown Lands, Robert Mitchell, vigorously tackled the squatting problem between 1867 and 1872, and succeeded in virtually eliminating the illegal occupation of Crown lands. Under Gordon's successors, the trend to the easy dispersal of the Crown lands was reversed. A number of changes were made which made it less easy for the peasant to buy land. 51 Nevertheless, Gordon's essential achievement - making Crown lands available for purchase in small plots at a low price - was not undone. Despite all the obstacles and discouragements, the Crown lands were steadily alienated after 1870. The majority of purchasers were small cultivators, buying lots of between five and twenty acres, mainly for cocoa. Between 1875 and 1884 3,350 grants were made, with a total acreage of 54,193; the average size of the grants was about sixteen acres. Between 1890 and 1900 the average annual alienation of Crown lands was 6,800 acres.52 Cultivation spread slowly, but by 1890 the forest on the central plains had disappeared, leaving only the three hill ranges covered by the 'high woods'. The clearing of the bush was carried out in different ways. A more substantial planter might buy a large area of uncleared Crown lands and employ wage labourers to fell the bush. Squatters, before 1870, were largely responsible for clearing the forest. Much of the bush was felled by cocoa contractors working for larger cocoa planters. Finally, smallholders who bought small plots of Crown lands would clear the bush themselves, or with the help of one or two labourers. The work of cutting down the forest and advancing cultivation was done almost entirely by labourers and peasants, peons, Africans, British West Indians, Creoles, and, from the 18 70s, East Indians. In many areas of the country in the last decades of the century, the majority of the inhabitants were peasant proprietors. In Blanchisseuse, this was said to be the case in 1888, and also in Manzanilla. 53 In 1897 there were reported to be as many as 24,000 smallholders of all races with under twenty acres, mostly in cocoa, though other crops were grown too. 54

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An acting Governor defended the black Trinidadian peasantry against accusations of laziness: * When I have seen them engaged in the cultivation of their own land and working for their own profit, they have always appeared to me industrious and well conducted, and it is a very rare thing indeed to find a piece of land owned by a black or coloured person allowed to go to waste.' Land ownership, he wrote, was always the best stimulus to industry.55 Cocoa was largely a peasant crop, and, as we have seen, most of the large cocoa estates were built up by amalgamating small peasant plots already planted in cocoa, or by the contract system. A peasant cultivator would buy a plot of uncleared Crown land, clear it, and plant cocoa. After the trees began to bear the peasant would sell his plot to a cocoa planter; he would get from 8s. /\&. to 10s. per bearing tree, plus the value of the land. With the proceeds he would select areas of fine virgin soil in new districts, often deep into the forest, and repeat the whole process. The peasant was the real pioneer of cultivation and the large planter simply followed him, buying up small plots when they were already producing cocoa, and thus forming large estates.58 Under the contract system, the capitalist bought a large block of Crown land, cleared it, and entered into an agreement with contractors who agreed to plant cocoa trees, each being allotted one quarree of land (3.2 acres). When the trees were bearing, or within a specified period, the owner took over the land, paying the contractor for each tree according to its age. The contractor was free to plant and consume food crops and he often also gave labour to nearby estates. The contractor could normally make a reasonable sum, while the capitalist incurred relatively low expenses - the cost of the land and of labour to clear the bush - and few risks, while the growing trees were securitv on which he could raise loans to pay the contractor. The Edinborough estate, Chaguanas, advertised in 1872 for contractors to take up four hundred acres: They may make use of the said land in growing provisions for their own use and benefit for six years - but during the said period they shall plant cocoa trees.. .and at the end of that period [the subscriber] will resume the said land, paying them for the said cocoa trees at the rate of 36 cents for every five year old tree and so in proportion.57

Nearly all the large Trinidad cocoa estates were built up in one of these ways, through the labour of black and peon peasants and contractors. As Dr Chittenden wrote, 'the magnificent cocoa estates which now enrich the Colony have been almost invariably formed by the union of small properties'. While peons were the true pioneers of cocoa, many Creole blacks and Africans were cocoa cultivators. The north coast and the Moruga districts were almost entirely planted in cocoa by blacks.58 In the 1880s, when many French Creole planters shifted from sugar to

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cocoa and when the cocoa industry became crucial to French Creole prosperity, the position of the black and peon peasants deteriorated. In order to build up large plantations at a time when cocoa prices were high, French Creole planters and merchants dispossessed hundreds of small freeholders growing cocoa and food crops. It was an important policy to extend credit to the smallholder on very onerous terms, and then to foreclose whenever possible; the sugar depression in 1884-5 accentuated this tendency because it accelerated the French Creoles' shift from sugar to cocoa. Since the cocoa dealers in Port of Spain who usually held mortgages on the peasants' estates were themselves French Creoles, related to the large cocoa planters - they often owned several plantations themselves the process was fairly easy; the government did nothing to stop it.59 Dr Chittenden, as we noted, observed with concern the dispossession of peon smallholders by town merchants in the 1880s. He protested too against the dispossession of black peasants in Arima Ward Union, and in Montserrat, by city dealers.60 In 1892 he wrote that instead of the flourishing peasantry which the colony should have possessed, large plantations were inexorably absorbing the smallholdings 'like a sponge', with the dispossessed small cultivators going back into the forest, only to be bought out again in a few years, or to be reduced to mere wage labourers. 61 The sugar industry, by contrast, offered a new opportunity to peasant cultivators after about 1884-5: to become cane-farmers. Far-sighted and liberal observers had often advocated the complete separation of the cultivation and manufacturing of sugar, with large central factories processing canes grown by many medium or small farmers. In an interesting despatch, Lieutenant-Governor Rennie advocated the development of canefarming in 1872. He thought that the 'thriving class of peasantry' which was developing in Trinidad would welcome the opportunity to cultivate sugar for the new central factories recently established by the Colonial Company and by Tennant and Co. The former company had expressed interest in the system, and Rennie looked forward to black peasants increasingly owning the cane land and cultivating the crop, while British capitalists limited themselves to manufacturing the produce and marketing it.62 Chittenden, twenty years later, also recommended cane-farming to the sugar companies, as useful to both factory owners and to farmers. Canefarming, he thought, would elevate the labouring population from pauperism caused by low wages and uncertain, seasonal employment. 63 Although cane-farming began in Trinidad, on a small scale, in the late 18 70s, it was the 1884 sugar crisis and the ensuing depression in the colony's sugar industry which accelerated the pace at which cane-farming was adopted. More central factories were erected, more land became available for farmers, and a pool of unemployed labourers willing to try the system was created. Factory-owners were forced to economise on

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production costs; by encouraging farmers to produce a proportion of the canes, they reduced the costs and spread the risks of cultivation in a period of depression. By 1890 the system was firmly established in the Naparimas, and in the 1890s it spread to other parts of the sugar belt. By the end of the century cane-farming was crucial to the operation of the Trinidad sugar industry. The earliest participants were Creole artisans thrown out of work by the sugar depression, and many other categories of rural labourers suffering unemployment or underemployment; British West Indian immigrants, reluctant to work on the estates for wages, participated enthusiastically. So did peasants of all races engaged in cocoa or food-crop production. Later, East Indians who had served their indenture became cane-farmers in increasing numbers. In the 1880s and 1890s, however, black cane-farmers predominated; not until 1906 did Indians come to form a majority of Trinidad cane-farmers. Although the early canefarmers faced many difficulties, the adoption of the system did mean a widening of employment opportunities for Creole and Indian labourers in the country, and it provided a fairly profitable crop for peasant cultivators to grow. By 1905, farmers were supplying one-third of the canes ground at the colony's factories.64 Peasants also engaged in growing minor export crops, such as coconuts and fruit. Governor Sir William Robinson established a subsidised steam service round Trinidad, to Tobago, and thence to New York, in order to encourage an export trade in bananas and fruit to the United States. He hoped to awaken a spirit of enterprise among small fruit and vegetable cultivators along the coast.65 But a fruit trade did not develop, and after two years the subsidy was withdrawn. Coconuts became a fairly significant peasant crop, but without government help. Indian peasants pioneered the cultivation of wet (padi) rice, which became important to the peasant economy.66 And everywhere small cultivators of all races cultivated provisions and vegetables for their own use and for sale locally; yet Trinidad imported many of its vegetables from the eastern Caribbean, and nearly all its meat from Venezuela. Nevertheless, because of the expansion of cocoa, the adoption of cane-farming, and the development of rice cultivation, the last years of the century did see some increase in employment opportunities for the peasantry. Most peasants lived in small huts made of tapia, and thatched with palm trash. In Blanchisseuse in 1885, there were only three or four 'houses', made of wood; everyone else lived in tapia huts. In the whole Arima Ward Union, which was heavily populated, only about three hundred persons owned houses rated at over ^ 5 per annum. A house rated at ^ 5 would be made of wood, with two or three rooms, and a galvanised iron roof, costing some $300 to build.67 Most peasants lived in a one-room hut, wooden or tapia. 'What an ordinary peasant calls his

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home is rarely anything more than a wooden shanty some 8 feet by 10 feet. In this his food is cooked, and he lives, eats, and sleeps with the rest of his family.'68 Kingsley described the average peasant's house in Trinidad as a small wooden hut on stilts, the front quite open, the back half boarded off to form a single room for sleeping. Cooking was carried out in the yard, washing at the nearest stream. Everyone slept together in the back room, which often had a single rough bed as its only furniture. In the villages, Kingsley saw better houses belonging to artisans, wooden, with two or three rooms, jalousies, and painted walls.69 Besides the peasants and the contractors, there was a fairly large number of blacks whose main livelihood was derived from wage labour on the estates. In 1878, there were 3,154 resident Creole labourers on the sugar estates, and 4,472 non-resident but full-time Creole workers. In 1880 there were said to be 7,852 black labourers on the sugar plantations, resident and non-resident.70 Peasants also gave part-time labour to the estates during crop.71 These figures indicate that, although Indian labour was the backbone of the Trinidad sugar industry by the 1870s, Creole and British West Indian labourers still played a significant role as wage labourers on the sugar estates. Planters recognised this, and opposed any developments which might further erode their pool of black labour. The development of public works projects alarmed them because it was Creoles particularly who were attracted to these jobs, and who were preferred over Indians because of their generally superior physical strength. When the Arima railway was projected, the Legislative Council insisted that the contractor should import into the island two-thirds of the labourers he needed, in order to safeguard the planters' supply of Creole, and nonindentured Indian, labour.72 Again, in 1879, the Colonial Company complained that estate labour was being drawn away by the public works then in progress. Governor H . T. Irving commented that the great majority of public works labourers were not Indian, but Creole and British West Indian, and 'so far from the labour market having been injured or disturbed by Government competition it has in my opinion largely benefited by the influx of population [from the British West Indies] which the Public Works of the Colony have attracted to the country'. 73 Yet the planters continued to object to any schemes which drew away their Creole labour, despite continuing Indian immigration at a high level. The sugar crisis seriously affected the black rural labour force, most of which worked on the sugar estates. Early in 1885 the Chronicle reported considerable unemployment in the country. 'Men abound in the Rural Districts who either work at very low wages, or hire where they can get lands from those who have to rent them.' There was considerable unemployment of Creole labour on many estates, including skilled workers. The Chronicle thought that unless these workers were employed during

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the approaching harvest, they would go to Venezuela. 74 A petition was circulated by Chittenden and others calling for Crown lands to be allotted to honest labourers in view of rural unemployment, but the Secretary of State turned this down on the grounds that there was no need for such 'unusual' measures.75 The Creole labourers were in a weak position so long as indentured labour was available, and so long as the planters were retrenching because of low prices for sugar.76 The San Fernando Gazette stated that, in 1885, Creole labourers were not given work. On most estates only indentured Indians got a full week's work, and the free Indians and Creoles were invariably sacrificed when the planter wanted to cut down on labour. What the planter wanted was that 'the free labourer, be he Coolie or Creole, must shape his actions to the whims and fancies of the planter; he must work during day and night when matters press, for the convenience of the plantation, and he must be content. . .to live on air whenever it suits the policy of the attorney to retrench expenses, an occasion which comes round with every wet season'.77 There was considerable distress in the sugar belt in 1885-6, and this affected not only Creole field labourers, but also artisans, especially coopers, boilermen, and machinists, whose chief source of employment was the sugar industry. Their job opportunities were severely limited by the crisis, and the result was widespread hardship in the Naparimas. 78 Their situation was worsened by systematic reduction of wages by the sugar planters. At a meeting in August 1884, sugar planters agreed to reduce the wages of non-resident field labourers and of all categories of artisans employed on the estates.79 The evidence given to the 1897 West India Royal Commission suggests that the wages of artisans and factory workers were reduced by twenty or twenty-five per cent. Field labourers' wages were also reduced, or their tasks lengthened, which, of course, had precisely the same effect. The second wave of the protracted sugar crisis, in 1895-8, led to a further round of reductions and a decline in the amount of work offered to non-indentured labourers.80 All through the nineteenth century outside observers, and many upperclass or official Trinidadians too, expressed the idea that the Trinidad working-class black was a well-fed, well-off, healthy individual who never felt a day's hunger or want. This idea was expressed by both Kingsley and Froude, and also in the local press, despite the amount of evidence to the contrary. The Port of Spain Gazette, for instance, declaimed in 1883: Life, to the uneducated classes, is so easy in a country like Trinidad, their physical wants are so limited and the attainment of these wants attended with such little exertions, that no natural stimulus exists, sufficiently strong to urge them to struggle for a superior mode of existence.81

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Indeed, one may say there was a kind of official conspiracy to present this view of the happy labourer and to conceal the actual situation. Thus the Warden of Mayaro wrote in his report for 1886: the people here have a most easy life, being all in possession of a freehold of some sort, many being well-off, and in some cases rich, if their wants, that are not many, are taken into consideration.. .Actual poverty, or want properly so-called, does not exist among our labouring or ruraJ population.

L. M. Fraser, who should have known better, gave his opinion to the Royal Franchise Commission: I do not think there is any existing discontent, or ground for discontent. I never knew a country where people could live more easily; people could not starve here. No lower class are better off than in Trinidad.. .1 am sure a Gloucestershire labourer would be glad to get the pay the people have here.82

Early in 1887 a delegation from the Chamber of Commerce met Governor Robinson to discuss taxation proposals, and a dialogue took place which reveals the official complacency about the condition of the labourers at a time of widespread unemployment and reduced wages. The Secretary of the Chamber said 'it is a very great mistake to suppose that the labouring classes here are badly off. They are the happiest people on the face of the earth.' The Governor replied: 'there is a very wide misapprehension abroad about the state of the labouring man in the West Indies. He does not want warm clothes or fire and has got his own land on which to grow provisions.' A Chamber member took this up: 'the provisions keep his family, and if he works for wages he puts away that money'. And the Governor happily summed up: 'he is much better off than the Dorsetshire labourer'. 83 'A bountiful nature', stated Robinson confidently, 'supplies them without individual exertion with threequarters of what is required for their bodily support, and a tropical climate and equable temperature renders clothing and coals to any great extent unnecessary.'84 The reality was very different. L. M. Fraser, the same man who had testified about the well-off labourer, was the Inspector of Prisons who, year after year, made the point in his annual reports that prison life held no terrors because it was better than the conditions under which the labourer lived. He wrote in his report for 1884 that 'the daily life of the convict can be compared favourably, so far as physical wants are concerned, with that of a free labourer'. And the present state of the sugar market has already lowered the wages of the labouring classes, and if things continue as they are, many thousands of poor families will be reduced to the verge of starvation and then the convict in the Gaol will be very much better off in every way than the honest labourer who will be often unable to provide a daily meal for himself and his children. 85

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He could not have stated the situation in starker terms. One can only wonder if Fraser, and others, saw the inconsistency between the idea of the happy black labourer and the reality which confronted them daily in their official duties. One of the most important factors in the low living-standard of the masses was the iniquitous taxation system. The necessities of life were taxed through import duties rather than property. Such essential items as rice, flour, bread, saltfish and salted meat, candles, cheese, butter, salt, sugar, lard, soap, and kerosene were all taxed; they were all staple items for the working classes. New Era thought that high import duties were responsible for much of the poverty in Trinidad, and that they retarded the material and social progress of the whole working class. By raising the cost of living, the duties made it difficult for the labourer and his family to survive.86 The consequence was widespread malnutrition. C. S. Salmon, a liberal Englishman with long experience of the West Indies, devoted several pamphlets and a longer work to refuting the notion that the West Indian could live comfortably with very little work and on low wages, that the struggle for existence did not operate in the Caribbean; a notion which, he wrote, was repeated by many who knew better. In fact, the West Indians could 'look to Nature' for their food no more than modern Englishmen. Their food was almost all imported, and subject to heavy taxes. Like every other race, the African could not labour hard on an inadequate diet. Malnutrition and 'loss of vitality' were increasing among West Indian blacks. The reason was that food was artificially expensive because of taxes. The people were pauperised as a result. Salmon indignantly refuted Froude's claim that the Trinidad black was sleek and well-fed: 'the prosperous and well-to-do show themselves, the poor and the miserable hide. This is especially a characteristic of the black man.' For the black labourer who owned no land, 'ultimate starvation is certain'. 87 Another Englishman made the same point in a book on the West Indies. It was not only that taxation deprived the 'impoverished labourer of a material proportion of his scanty earnings'. Worse still, revenues were expended for objectionable purposes: medical or charitable relief, and the law courts, the police, and the prisons to deal with the petty crime inevitable 'in a community of paupers'. Better wages and lower taxes would mean far fewer offences, especially praedial larceny, and would also improve the masses' health and keep them out of hospitals and poor-houses.88 Public Opinion stated the situation in unequivocal terms: We all see that under the present burden of taxation the people are pauperised.. .In their present miserable condition, living from hand to mouth, saving is out of the question, money at ruinous rates of interest; they cannot marry, they cannot keep

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their children in health and strength by good feeding. One hears every day of little innocents dying of 'crise ver', worm fits, the result of low diets of unwholesome food. A child died of starvation sometime ago.

Public Opinion concluded 'our Rulers have no idea of the poverty of the people'.89 They refused to see the mass of poverty, malnutrition and illhealth which existed in both town and country. Another venerable notion about the lower-class black, cherished by local whites and British officials alike, was the 'lazy nigger' concept. This idea, of course, was an ancient one, repeated with tedious regularity by nearly every writer on the West Indies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was closely connected with the idea just noted, that life was peculiarly easy for the West Indian labourer. W. A. Paton actually wrote that 'no-one need work' in the West Indies. The fruits were there to pick up in the forest and there was always something ripe. Clothes were unnecessary. Life could be sustained without daily toil.90 Another writer said that the Trinidad blacks were 'invincibly idle' and would never do 'a stroke more work than would provide them with a bare subsistence'. They had no motive to work; there was no need for clothes, they had no aesthetic tastes, a few palm trees were as good as a mansion, a plantain or a mango sufficed for food, there was coffee, rum and cocoa 'on hand'. 91 And the novelist Trollope wrote: the Negro will never work unless compelled to do so; that is the negro who can boast of pure unmixed African blood. He is as strong as a bull, as hardy as a mule, docile as a dog when conscious of a master.. .He can work without pain and without annoyance. But he will never work as long as he can sleep and eat without it.92

Such patently absurd statements may perhaps be dismissed as the superficial comments of casual tourists and visitors. But upper-class Trinidadians, especially officials and planters, said the same thing. In fact, the 'lazy nigger' idea was a traditional part of the planter's thinking. G. T. Fenwick told the 1897 Commission that the black population was 'not at all industrious'. Living was 'so very easy here, and the wages are comparatively so high, that with one or two days labour in the week a man is perfectly content'. The blacks were 'naturally indolent'; 'so little effort' was needed 'to keep body and soul together'. 93 Norman Lamont said that blacks were 'such irregular workers. If a Negro can live for a week on the wages he gets for two days work he would only work for those two days.'94 The 'proverbial indolence' of the black was, in fact, an integral element in Victorian attitudes to race. British ideas about the inefficiency of black labour often sprang not so much from the evidence on this point, as from deeply ingrained prejudices about the character of the race, which was held to be the same the world over - in Africa, in the United States,

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and in the West Indies. When Victorians considered the reluctance to work shown by some American and West Indian freedmen, they explained it usually by referring to the innate laziness of the black man, instead of the effects of slavery on attitudes to work.95 In the view of the planters and officials, the virtuous labourer was the one who worked hard and honestly for an employer. Working hard for oneself was much less creditable. The cardinal assumption was that the black labourer should not show a desire for independence from the plantation. The consistent effort of the blacks to liberate themselves from the plantation sector was ignored, discredited, or resisted. All the evidence which late nineteenth-century Trinidad afforded of black and peon labourers clearing the bush and planting cocoa, of black cocoa contractors and peasant farmers, was less weighty than the spectacle of blacks working only two days a week on the sugar estates. Victorians were preoccupied with the need for * steady industry', 'reliable labour', by the non-white races of the Empire - usually for a European employer. As the London Spectator said, steady industry was 'in English opinion, the single virtue, except reverence for white faces, to be demanded of black men'. 96 The 'lazy nigger' myth performed a useful role: it justified the exploitation of black labourers by the planters, and the neglect of independent peasant cultivators by the government. Partly, of course, the notion of the 'lazy nigger' had become a stereotype, endlessly repeated without any examination of the facts. Black labourers in Trinidad, during this period, reacted to the oppressive society they lived in by attempting to reduce their dependence on the plantation, by seeking to create an area of freedom for themselves, however limited. They tried to become peasants or artisans; if they failed, they drifted to the towns. In the towns, constant urban unrest reflected an awareness of oppression. The bands fought each other because they were unable to attack the real sources of their misery or powerlessness, not because they were unaware of them. Although uneducated blacks had few opportunities to articulate their resentments, the evidence we have suggests that many of them had a clear grasp of the oppressive nature of Trinidad society, and of their powerlessness within that society. Dr Chittenden noted that when peasants were asked what they thought about the government, they would reply bitterly 'nous pas tini voix': we have no say.97 In 1867, a group of working-class inhabitants of San Fernando, 'descendants of Africa', petitioned against excessive municipal taxes and general oppression by the Borough Council. Their petition was signed by 166 persons, 82 of whom were illiterate, and was drawn up at a public meeting. George Nurse, probably a Barbadian, said that he was sure ' that every approaching year brings on work more and more scarcer to be had,

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foodstuffs and other articles of consumption more expensive'. Thomas Richardson noted that there were hundreds of labouring people.. .looking for work throughout the year, and can't get any in consequence of the quantity of Coolies, Chinese and Creoles located on the estates; and yet the planters are ever crying to home government for more supply of immigrants from India; and in his simple opinion there is a superabundance of West Indian labourers in Trinidad, who can't meet with employment . . .Those employers of a clearer hue will prefer to have the coolie labourers, because they can beat them as they like, whereas they cannot beat the Creole labourers in that manner, therefore they are endeavouring expeditely to expel Creole labourers and to fill their place by having all coolies. Rose T u r n e r stated: I am living here in this bewildered part of the town and.. .ever since I was a child, I have never seen Trinidad so hard for the poor black people to get a living as now; I am not able to afford myself common food...

Clarister African, who was crippled and destitute, had owned 'a few feet' of land; but 'they took it away and sold it for taxes'. 98 These people articulated a deep-seated sense of powerlessness and oppression. Another petition over twenty-five years later complained of oppressive land taxes, and the practice of putting up for sale the properties of defaulters. The government ignored 'the interest of the people. . .and as a people we have no passive voice in our own welfare'. The Queen was asked to protect her subjects 'and prevent them from being shelterless'. This petition, signed by 734 persons, was got up by Andrew Alleyne, a public works labourer who owned a small house in Woodbrook, a suburb of Port of Spain, and by Vaughan, a carpenter and tax-payer. The petitioners complained that the roads in their part of town were very bad, and the water supply inadequate. They nearly all lived in Woodbrook, Escallier's Lands, and Rose Hill, suburbs of Port of Spain, and they were householders, tradesmen, artisans - not 'bad characters', as the police officer who investigated them conceded." These petitioners obviously belonged to the upper working class of urban artisans and tradesmen. One or two working-class blacks gave evidence to the 1888 Franchise Commission which suggests that they were aware of, and resented, white oppression. Alexander Wood, of Fifth Company Village, the son of American ex-slaves, stated: I have been travelling to other islands and I have seen the Black have a Council as well as the White, but here, in this part of the Vineyard, we partly stifle down, suffering. If one of the Europeans stand up and said 'That man is to go to prison', without any crime, no-one would bid against him: right away to prison.

The chairman asked: you don't really mean what you say, when you said that any European could stand

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up and send a dark man to prison?.. .They might not send them to prison one way, but punish them the other way, and may as well be in prison.

Wood concluded that if he was elected to the Council, 'if a man is white as a sheet, and put a case before me, and he don't agree with me, I would go against it'. 100 Philip Hill, also of Fifth Company Village, said that he signed the reform petition, to make a House of Council where the Black could sit as well as the White, and we could give our voice as well. If anything gone against us, we find it does not please us, we could go to our Council and have it rectified.. .If we have a House of Council we could be heard any time we make a complaint.. .Chairman: Then you wish to see a black Representation? — Yes, as well. As well as the white — Would you like one of your own class to go in? — I would have no objection to that, sir.. .When the time comes, sir, we will find a person. 101

One of the few British officials markedly sympathetic to the lower-class blacks was Sir John Gorrie, Chief Justice 1885-92. When he left the island, his supporters who saw him off apparently expressed strong antiwhite sentiments. According to the Port of Spain Gazette, the enthusiasm of the crowd took the form of howling the vilest epithets at the respectable classes, always concluding with the suggestion to lick them. One man in our hearing went so far as to say that he would be the first to begin killing the white people.

One of the thirty-six men 'of the lowest class' who pulled Gorrie's buggy allegedly said 'if we were in Barbados today, we'd fight the white man'. Others were said to have shouted 'A' we judge gone, but we is here, and we want to kill all you white men.' Gorrie's retinue was a howling, frenzied mob, composed of the chronic law-breaking element known as diametes; lewd and lawless women vulgarly gesticulating and dancing; insolent and besotted draymen.. , 102

The Police Chief reported that whites present at the dock side were verbally threatened and 'hustled'. 103 But both the Port of Spain Gazette and the Police Chief were hostile to Gorrie, with an interest in linking him to disorderly riotous scenes. A newspaper friendly to the Chief Justice reported that he continually urged good behaviour on his followers, and that the entire demonstration took place without any incident requiring a policeman's intervention. 104 It is reasonable to think that many blacks resented their position near the bottom of the social and economic scale, and were aware of the oppressive nature of colonial society. Certainly the more politicised and articulate among them did so, such as the blacks whose views have been cited. The less articulate, the more impoverished and hopeless among them, may well have accepted their harsh conditions of life as part of the eternal

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order of things. In the West Indies, whites had always been the oppressors, blacks the oppressed. The end of slavery had not changed that central fact. There were blacks like Alexander Wood and Philip Hill who clearly saw the inequalities and the oppression, spoke out against them, and suggested a way out: political power for black people. Donald Wood writes, of the Trinidad slaves just before emancipation, it is difficult to probe deeper, to discover what they were like at a deeper level of their being, for most of them, like the poor and oppressed of past generations, are enfolded in anonymity.105

It is just as true of the black masses in the last three decades of the nineteenth century. The world of the Creole masses encompassed many things of African derivation: obeah, Shango, Rada cults, wakes, drumming and music, dance and song. The urban bands and Carnival were focal points of this world. We must know something of the Creole black 'sub-culture' if we are to 'probe deeper' into the Creole masses of Trinidad and their cultural world in the later part of the century.

8 The souls of black folk

We have accepted, in this study, the concept of a dominant culture, coexisting with a 'sub-culture', a despised and partly submerged culture formed by, and belonging to, the Creole masses. The dominant culture was essentially British and Christian. The law, the orthodox churches, the schools, the English language, the government, British values and traditions, made up the dominant culture. Very few working-class Creoles could escape entirely the influence of these institutions; only, perhaps, those living in the deep forest. The black masses combined, in their cultural world and life-style, elements of the superstructure with their own values. Law and custom, the African drum and the fiddle, the country doctor and the bush healer, the Catholic liturgy and the cults of Yorubaland and Dahomey, school English and Patois, lived side by side.. .and a dual acculturation process took its course - creolisation, and accommodation to the institutions and standards of the super-structure.1

Many elements combined to form the cultural world of the black masses. The nuclear group consisted of the Creole ex-slaves and their descendants. They had lived in Trinidad during the longest period, and had developed a more or less common set of cultural characteristics, which combined to form the mainstream of the culture pattern of Trinidad. They were the majority group in the black folk.2 They were joined by immigrants from the eastern Caribbean, themselves ex-slaves, and their descendants, and by liberated Africans from many different West African tribes. The peons from Venezuela brought Spanish elements to reinforce those contributed by the original Spanish settlers and their descendants, and by the Hispanised Amerindians. French influence had been important ever since the beginning of French immigration in the 1780s. Creole French and Spanish were both folk languages in Trinidad, and the French influence could be seen, for instance, in dress, in music, and in the dance. The African element was, perhaps, the paramount one in the cultural world of the Creole masses. This was the case even though the overwhelming majority had no first-hand memories of Africa. In 1861 6,035, or seven per cent of the total population, were African born; in 1891 only 152

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2,055 o r j u s t o n e P e r c e n t - These people were the liberated Africans and a few of the surviving ex-soldiers settled early in the century. Yet, despite the dwindling proportion of natives of Africa, many elements of West African life, culture, and religion persisted in the Trinidad of the later nineteenth century. A wide cultural gap separated Afro-Creole elements from middle- and upper-class Trinidadian society. The white and coloured leaders of society considered European cultural patterns elevating, those derived from Africa or from slavery debasing. The members of the European culture group were far from thinking African-derived forms 'quaint' or 'colourful'. A patronising but tolerant approach was not taken by the dominant culture group. They felt that civilisation was fighting against barbarism, and that the victory of civilisation could be achieved only by controlling or eliminating debasing and primitive influences. Cultural conflict was intensified by race prejudice. The black masses were encouraged to embrace European cultural values and forms, but they were never promised social equality if they did so: racism made it difficult for the whites to see working-class blacks as anything but servile people. Both whites and educated coloureds deplored the existence of an independent Afro-Creole culture, and the escape of some ex-slaves and their descendants from European influences.3 One group of Africans in Trinidad succeeded in maintaining their religious rites almost intact: these were the Radas of Belmont. 4 The founder of this tribal and religious enclave was a Rada, a native of what is now Dahomey, who was born at Whydah around 1800. He was among the last groups of African immigrants to come to Trinidad, arriving about 1855, already a middle-aged man. In Trinidad he took the name of Robert, or Jean, Antoine, but he was popularly known as Papa Nannee or Mah Nannee. For a time he worked on an estate near Champ Fleurs. Around 1868 he took up residence on the Belmont Valley Road and founded the Rada compound. He was not a priest, but a seer and a diviner, credited with an extraordinary knowledge of the supernatural. He brought with him from Dahomey a trained priest and two male vodunsi, or people possessed by the gods. Antoine died around 1899 at a great age, and left a reputation as a selfless and successful medicine man among his own people. The Rada compound was dedicated to the worship of Dangbwe, the Serpent God of Dahomey, and was called Dangbwe Comme (House). It consisted at first of a chapel or vodun\we, a shed for dancing, and two shrines to Legba and Ogu, two Dahomean deities. The Rada compound was the centre of social life for the Africans settled in the Belmont area, Ibos, Congoes and Mandingoes as well as Radas. The Dahomean gods were closely connected with everyday life, and devotees consulted them in matters like sickness and other ordinary

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problems with a profound belief in their efficacy.5 The English editor of the Chronicle, T. W. Carr, was remarkably well-informed about the activities of the Belmont Radas. In one editorial he described in detail a Rada ceremony to prevent smallpox in the epidemic of 1871-2: The Radas, up Belmont Road, profess to know how to deal with it - on African principles - saying it is a common disease in their country. They accompany their treatment with sacrifice, singing and dancing; the first followed up in a decidedly practical manner by a feast off the good fowls and kids previously slain in propitiation. The sacrifice is made in the morning, the feast about midday or afternoon, then follow African songs and dancing down to night. At the feast, which is part of the religious ceremonial, they sit in a circle on the floor.. .a great bowl or basin in the centre, covered with a white cloth, holding the blood of animals sacrificed. Around the bowl are set a number of very large dishes, used only on those occasions, and containing the meats of the sacrifice and various common vegetables. Each in turn.. .takes a very small portion out of each dish, and makes a little heap of these near the bowl, repeating with each morsel some words in Rada. This is held to be a peace offering to Mumbo Jumbo, or whatever the name of their particular jumby or deity.. .At the holy dance they again sit in a circle, into which one gets up at a time, and goes through an amount of grave posturing to the sound of a tom-tom, and singing.. . 6

The Chronicle consistently reported Rada 'news' in the 1870s. In 1876 there was an item about Cocombre, who broke into the Rada bank at Belmont. The Radas saved money to use as a mutual sickness, confinement, and burial fund, built up by very small payments. After Cocombre robbed the bank, they buried the money, changing the place frequently; they were suspicious of the Savings Bank. The editor thought they were 'generally industrious men and women, but retain some barbarous customs and heathen rites. They retain also their language; and come from a country between Dahomey and Cape Coast Castle.'7 In 1877 o n e °f ^ e t o P P^sts of the cult died, a Rada from 'Dahome', called in Trinidad Hou Quervee. According to the Chronicle, he was a brother of Nannee or Antoine. Quervee had been convicted of obeah in 1871 and had been given twenty strokes for the offence; but he had persuaded some Belmont friends to swear to his innocence, and the conviction was quashed by the Appeal Court. He had been compensated at $10 for each lash.8 Quervee was also known as John Cooper, and he had petitioned the Secretary of State, in 1872, for a larger sum as compensation. Illiterate himself, and understanding English and French 'very imperfectly' (he had come to Trinidad from Africa in i860, one of the last African immigrants), Cooper had his petition drawn up by a solicitor, and he retained as his counsel in the Appeal Court Charles Warner, whose fees must have been high. Presumably the Rada bank provided the money. In any case, the Secretary of State, advised by the Governor, decided not to pay him any further compensation.9 Since his conviction and appeal, he

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had been 'semi-retired'. In 1878 the same paper reported that the local Catholic clergyman had made a raid among the Belmont Radas - peres Nanny, Charles and others - of the fetish persuasion, carrying off their clay popotes, and making them uncomfortable generally.. .The Obeah gentry are rather crestfallen at pere Francois's seizure of their gods, but clay is plenty, and they have a few posts left, with rudely carved heads, fitted with glass eyes, real wool, teeth etc. - in a close hut, locked against gentile intrusion, ready for the next great rite. 10

The Radas were practising the ancestral beliefs of their homeland. But to the authorities, there was no distinction between obeah practices for money, and the Rada ceremonies. Any 'African' worship was automatically classified as obeah; and the practice of obeah had been made an offence by the 1868 Ordinance, punishable by jail and flogging. This is why several members of the Rada compound were prosecuted and often convicted of obeah.11 In 1886 there was a notorious case involving Papa Nannee, or Antoine, die founder of the cult. He was charged with obeah on the information of a police agent provocateur. Two natives of Africa, Louis Munroe and Peter David, testified that they gave money to Nannee to keep in the chapel; they were given receipts, and drew it out when they needed it; many Africans did the same, for it was a 'country custom'. Obviously this was the Rada bank. One of them said that Nannee kept the chapel in his yard. They worshipped the little images as gods, and people who had troubles went to the chapel, gave candles and sweet oil, and Nannee prayed for them. They went especially in times of sickness. The defence counsel argued that this was a form of worship; Nannee was a kind of high priest, and the evidence showed no assumption of supernatural powers, which was the legal definition of obeah. Nevertheless, the magistrate convicted Nannee and sentenced him to the maximum penalty of six months and thirty-six lashes. This was particularly brutal in that Nannee was then about eighty-six, and very feeble.12 Nannee appealed against the decision. At the appeal he was defended by the coloured lawyer Vincent Brown. Brown insisted that Nannee was a priest of a genuine African religion. The 'hideous black images' in the chapel were not different in nature from images of the Virgin. Nannee made his livelihood from his garden; he was a trusted person who received money on deposit from others. He prayed for people in trouble. The chapel was a genuine temple of worship, and the cult was a real religion, however false or misguided. The Appeal Court quashed the conviction, on the grounds that the police had acted improperly in inducing a suspect to commit a crime, and that there was only one witness for the prosecution, the police agent.13 The decision of the Appeal Court was greeted with great excitement in Belmont. But among the respectable classes it

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was felt that the decision could only strengthen the people's belief in obeah in general, and in Nannee in particular.14 Obeah was legally defined in the Ordinance of 1868 as the assumption of supernatural powers for the purpose of making money. But as the word was used in the late nineteenth century, it included any religious or magical practices which were considered to be 'African', including healing, and conjuring of all types - securing success in love and family affairs, or favourable results in litigation, or injuring enemies. 'Obeahman' was an opprobrious term, which was not used by the devotees of African religions in Trinidad, such as the Radas and the Shangoists (whose cult was Yoruba in origin). The white and coloured members of the European culture group in Trinidad refused to accept African religious practices as genuine forms of worship, and treated the devotees of African religions as harshly as the law allowed. In the same way, they strongly disapproved of many of the festivals or customs of the lower-class blacks, and did what they could to suppress or restrict them. They had little sympathy, for instance, with Afro-Creole attitudes to death. As in West Africa, Trinidad blacks took death seriously. 'Among those of African descent, death reminded all of the indissoluble link between the living, the dead, and those members of the family yet to be born.' 15 'Having a dead', said Innis, was a serious affair, especially when there were no funeral agencies. Three or four ladies, dressed 'a la Martiniquaine', would go around the town or village to 'crier Pinternement', or announce the particulars of the funeral, nearly always in patois. 16 The wake was an essential part of a black funeral, and it was one of the things which most annoyed the upper classes. Wakes were always noisy affairs, and excessive noise was considered an indication of primitivism by the upper and middle classes. The English, particularly, were a quiet people; black Creoles were not.17 The liberal San Fernando Gazette complained: 'one of the lingering relics of a slavish and barbarous age. . .is the abominable and heathenish practices which attend the watchings over the dead among many of our lower classes'. All respectable people in the locality were disturbed and disgusted by ' the senseless, and barbarous, uproariousness' which broke out whenever a wake took place.18 An indignant correspondent described a country wake at Manzanilla in 1898. The body was exposed in a small room. Around seven in the evening hymns were sung and the choruses shouted out; cake and grog were served. Only friends and relatives were inside the house, but outside a crowd of up to a hundred people assembled. They beat drums, sang 'lewd' songs, and danced the bongo. 'When the spirit has taken possession of the circle, then you begin to know what a Bongo is.' The wake ended only when all the cake and grog were finished. This writer thought the

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whole business was 'inhuman and shocking'. 19 Wakes were said to be especially bad around Cambridge Street in the city, where a 'colony of Africans' was settled, for the 'rites of their native country' were extremely noisy. Wakes were 'orgies over the dead', which started with psalms and ended with obscene songs and dances. They were a blot on civilisation, and, in short, ought to be suppressed.20 Other similarly noisy festivities of lower-class blacks annoyed and disgusted members of the dominant cultural group. A Catholic missionary described a lively festival held at Carenage on 1 August to celebrate emancipation. After a Catholic Mass and procession, there were three days of dances and 'orgies sans nom, souvenirs de la vie africaine'. The local Cure had suppressed 'cette fete du diable' in the 1870s, but it was revived early in the next decade. In 1882, some old ex-slaves and their children celebrated the festival in the old way: they built a bamboo hut which they called the palace, and named one of them king. After Mass, the 'horrible tambour africaine' was heard, accompanying dances; and for three days and nights Carenage was given over to drumming, dancing, and general misbehaviour. Next year, in 1883, the Cure went to curse the 'palace': 'cette case du diable et toutes celles qui seraient encore, dans la suite, elevees a Satan au meme lieu'. When the news spread in the district, the festival was cancelled: another triumph over primitivism. 21 This festival, of course, combined Catholic and African elements. In the same way, All Saints' Night was taken up by working-class blacks as an opportunity for drumming, dancing, and general festivity, sometimes in the cemeteries. Fights between rival gangs often took place, and 'unbelievable immoralities' went on all night. 22 At Christmas, the urban black poor paraded on the streets, with drumming and dancing. Some of them were masked in the 'negre-jardin' costume. One newspaper asked: 'how is the moral advancement of mankind served by overgrown children parading in silly disguises and rendering day and night hideous by untuneful music?' 23 Nearly all of the black masses of Trinidad were, at least nominally, Christians, and the majority were Roman Catholics. The Catholic clergy were a powerful influence on the people. Writers like Kingsley and Froude thought that Catholicism was better suited to the lower-class black than any other denomination. Kingsley suggested that a Roman Catholic priest 'would have a right to a fair and respectful hearing' if he claimed that Catholicism was best for the 'unimaginative and illogical Negro', who could learn no religion save through his senses.24 W. H. Gamble, a Baptist minister, agreed despite himself: The genius of the Catholic religion is suited to the tastes of the people. The sensuous service, the robes of the priest, the intoned liturgy, the offering up of the host, the frequent processions, the many feast days.. .The confession is, to most illiterate

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minds, a means of relief to a burdened conscience, while extreme unction holds a very high place in the esteem of the people.25

But the masses combined elements of Catholicism (or Protestantism) with non-Christian religious practices: there was cultural fusion in most New World black religions. African gods and spirits were equated with Catholic saints in Haitian, Cuban, Brazilian, and Trinidadian rites. In Shango, the Yoruba-derived Afro-Creole cult found in Trinidad, Esu was identified with Satan, Ogun with St Michael. At least sixteen Yoruba deities were identified with saints. The Rada pantheon included Catholic saints as well as Dahomean gods. These gods/saints actively intervened in daily life, punishing and rewarding devotees, and possessing them at major festivals. The chapelle, or temple, of a Shango cult in Trinidad often contained a Catholic altar, statues and prints of saints, crucifixes, rosaries and candles, as well as equipment for specifically Yoruba rituals. Nearly all the objects on the altar and on the upper half of the walls of the chapelle were Catholic symbols. In the major Shango ceremonies, reinterpretations of African forms in Christian rituals were made, for instance in antiphonal responses, in seclusion and mourning rites, or in the belief that God, Jesus, the Holy Ghost, and the saints were actively concerned with the immediate fate of the worshippers. Examples of syncretism of African and European beliefs and practices were multiple rites for the dead, or ritual uses of water.26 Shango and the Rada belief-system were West African religions practised in Trinidad by Africans and by black Creoles, with reinterpretations and syncretism as a result of strong Christian, mainly Catholic, influences. There were also a number of Afro-Christian sects, more clearly Christian (Protestant) in beliefs and rituals, but strongly influenced by African religious practices. These unorthodox sects flourished among lower-class blacks at the end of the century, known variously as the Shouter, Shaker, or Spiritist Baptists. We saw that the 'Americans' in the Company villages in south Trinidad had been converted to the Baptist Church by missionaries from the southern United States, and they kept up a highly emotional kind of worship. Their services were apocalyptic and noisy; their great festival was the camp-meeting, which could last up to a week, and it featured thunderous preaching and singing, and rhythmic movements by the congregation. Gamble noted their behaviour with concern, and J. H. Collens observed that 'some of their semi-religious open air gatherings would strike the unaccustomed eye and ear as being rather peculiar'. 27 A French Catholic missionary, Father Cothonay, was more severe. In his view, the black 'American' Baptists were instructed by ministers as ignorant as they were: 'leur civilisation n'est guere plus avancee que celle de leurs sauvages ancetres'. They were known as 'jumpers' because they leapt about at their services. One of them would

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be seized by the Spirit and would 'prophesy' to the congregation. According to an eye-witness, on Holy Fridays they went up to the hills, giving themselves up to 'des desordres revoltants'. Cothonay thought that the black Baptists were even worse, morally and spiritually, than the pagan African.28 The reaction of the upper and middle classes to these Afro-Christian cults was almost invariably hostile. The liberal San Fernando Gazette complained about 'disgraceful and riotous meetings held. . .under the guise of Shoutings'. The worshippers were people of the lowest character and intellect who desecrated the Word of God. It was a 'senseless and depraved mock worship'. The more inspired devotees indulged in obscene behaviour, making 'wanton and unwomanly exposure of their bodies' in pretended religious rituals.29 Another paper was less indignant, but highly patronising, in reporting that at Tacarigua, a number of Barbadians 'who call themselves Spiritists, who have weekly meetings for quasi-religious exercise, imagine they receive revelations and wriggle themselves into convulsions'.30 The hymns of the Revivalist Churches were described as 'both profane and uncouth'. 31 In 1894 the 'champion Shouter of Princes Town', one Man-O'-War (alias Saunders), held shouting meetings at Ste Madeleine and Victoria. They lasted all night, and the women worked themselves into a state to attract spectators, falling to the ground in paroxysms and fainting fits. They claimed to have been converted, or 'smitten by the Gospel road' like Saul.32 The Shouters were often in trouble with the police. In the same year two Shouters were charged with causing an obstruction on Charlotte Street in Port of Spain. The magistrate, sentencing them to fourteen days' hard labour, denounced all Shaker meetings, and said he would do everything in his power to aid the police in putting them down.33 Upper- and middle-class reaction to these sects ranged from outright hostility to amused contempt. The membership of these Afro-Christian sects was exclusively lowerclass and black. Participation in them afforded emotional release from economic hardship, political impotence, and social humiliations. In the kingdom of God of these sects, the lowly were the saved. Religion provided a haven from rejection by the dominant classes, and an index of status and authority within the black lower class. A related benefit was the support and guidance available in life crises, and the friendship shared with fellow worshippers. The large ceremonies relieved the tedium of daily life. Since these cults were democratically organised, they offered leadership positions to working-class blacks, opportunities not usually available in the orthodox churches. They may have represented a democratic thrust, a desire for social equality, a protest against the Establishment and the European churches with their white priests or ministers.84

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Hostility and contempt were also the predominant upper- and middleclass attitudes towards artistic forms of African or of slave derivation. African musical forms were subject to legal restrictions all through the nineteenth century. The law was that between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. the playing of drums, gongs, tambours, bangees, and chac-chacs was illegal unless police permission had been obtained; the penalty was a fine of $48. Bongo or drum dances were illegal at any time without police permission.85 The drum was the essential West African instrument, and it was the 'African drum' which evoked most hostility. Educated blacks and coloureds were far from defending the ancestral drum. L. O. Innis thought that the anti-drumming legislation was ' necessary', and that as a result of the laws, 'the archaic instrument died a natural death, and quatros, bandolas, flutes, and claronettes reigned in its stead, to the great comfort of the decent inhabitants'. 36 New Era, edited by a coloured man, spoke of the 'barbaric' drum and the need to replace it by 'more civilised instruments'. 37 The Chronicle, claiming that the lower classes were taking up violin playing for dance music, hoped 'we may see the decay, perhaps the rapid disappearance in the vicinity of the towns, of the abominable African drum'. 38 The 'drum dances', dances like the Calenda, Belaire, and Bongo, performed to the accompaniment of drums, were viewed with special horror. According to one authority, African social dances such as the three just named, even when the sexual motif was central, did not permit bodily contact between the sexes. The Calenda and Bongo were danced only by men, the Belaire only by women. 39 But commentators in Trinidad at the end of the century stressed the immorality and obscenity of the drum dances. The Belaire was said to be a source of demoralisation and vice: 'many have cause to deplore the morbid curiosity that led them to scenes when the first step was taken on the high road to infamy'. 40 Kingsley described blacks being ' maddened' by the ' tom-tom' or drum at the nightly drum dances in Port of Spain.41 A long editorial in Fair Play on 1 March 1883 described the drum dances as unrelieved obscenity. The writer saw the origin of the drum dance of the Creole blacks in slave amusements; African natives in Trinidad used far more advanced instruments, and the gestures of their dances were imitative of warfare. But Creole blacks used a crude type of drum; the melodies were few and primitive, the dance movements immoral and debased. They were held in an open yard, there would be a single drummer and a few 'shoddy women' as a chorus; and a mixed crowd who danced independently of each other. The songs were childish and meaningless, and the dancing was ' the most disgusting obscenity pure and simple, being an imitation more or less vigorous and lustful by the male and

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female performers of the motions of the respective sexes whilst in the act of coition'. After the dances were over, the performers and spectators dispersed ' to go and put into practice the immoral lessons they have been greedily imbibing'. Young girls and men were corrupted. In 1883 the Government introduced a 'Music Bill'. This bill prohibited the playing of drums, tambours and chac-chacs from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. except with special police licence; after 10 p.m. they were absolutely prohibited. Violins, cellos, pianos, and other European instruments could be played freely between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., and by licence after 10 p.m. The bill was, apparently, brought up because officers at the St James Barracks were annoyed by drum-beating by Indians in Coolie Town, St James. This measure was too extreme even for the 'respectable part of the community'. There was an outcry in the press. The bill was clearly class legislation, because it struck at one class of the population only: those who played the drum and the other banned instruments. 42 The Chronicle objected because it would take away the little recreation open to the poor; music was both harmless and humanising. 43 G. L. Garcia, a white Unofficial, opposing the bill, said that drumbeating was the chief form of recreation for certain classes. It was much abused by vagabonds and prostitutes, but the past traditions of Trinidad knew the drum dance as the Bamboula, at which 'respectable peasants' enjoyed themselves after the day's toil. Garcia continued: Had this Ordinance been directed against those dens which are but too common in this city; had it been proposed to inflict a penalty on proprietors of buildings or yards, who should allow on their premises dances frequented by known thieves, prostitutes or felons, the measure would have had my support. But.. .when it may be made to interfere with the pure and legitimate amusements of the people, I cannot but vote against it as vexatious and unnecessary.44

The bill was withdrawn, and instead Ordinance 11 of 1883 was passed. It tried to put down 'immoral' drum dances by making every owner or occupier responsible for ' Rogues and Vagabonds' assembling in their yards or premises, and singing or dancing to the drum, chac-chac, or any other instrument. As these yard affairs were quite open, and took place in lowerclass slums, it was more than likely that persons who had been convicted of an offence under summary jurisdiction (the definition of Rogues and Vagabonds) would take part. The effect of the law, therefore, was to make yard owners very cautious of allowing drum dances on their premises.45 The people did not accept the repressive laws against their music without resistance. In 1891 serious rioting broke out at Arouca, when police tried to stop a drum dance. This had taken place all day contrary to the law, and a party of policemen seized the drums. The participants rushed at the police, beat them, and took away the drums. The next day they paraded the village, beating the drums and calling on the police to fight.

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Further fighting ensued in which an Irish sergeant was seriously injured. 46 The episode indicates the strength of the popular attachment to the drums and the drum dances. This reaction was expressed in a calypso composed in the 1880s: Can't beat me drum In my own, my native land. Can't have we Carnival In my own, my native land. Can't have we Bacchanal In my own, my native land, In my own, native land. In me own native land, Moen pasca dancer, comme moen viel.47

With the prohibition on the use of the 'African drum', musicians turned to 'tambour-bamboo' bands. These featured the use of lengths of bamboo which were struck on the ground, or struck together in the hands, or again struck with pieces of metal. A four-cornered bottle was also used, struck with a spoon. These improvised instruments flourished after the early 1880s as accompaniment for calypsoes and for Carnival music. The tambour-bamboo bands were never repressed by legislation. By 1910-20, however, tambour-bamboo bands gave way to European instruments for accompanying calypso - piano, violin, bass, and wind instruments. The modern steelband is, of course, the lineal descendant of the tambourbamboo bands.48 The calypso was probably African in origin, with French and Spanish elements. By the late nineteenth century singers were accompanied by the tambour-bamboo bands, and, increasingly, by the cuatro, guitar, and chac-chac; Latin or Venezuelan melodies were being used. The earliest calypsoes with extant lyrics are in patois, or in a mixture of patois and English. One calypso celebrated the famous Bakewell Affair, in which an English official was tarred and feathered in 1870 for insulting a coloured colleague: Bakeway, qui rive Qui moon qui fair ca Is two black men tar poppa Moen ca garde con you negre, Moen moen blanc mes enfants. Is two black men tar poppa.49

A calypso of the same period celebrated the death of Congo Barra, an exslave-driver and a jail warden notorious for cruelty. Prisoners levez, mettes lumieres bai Congo Barra Deux eslaves courri sortie Tunapuna Congo ba yo bois fair yi devine.50

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In 1898 or 1899 Norman le Blanc, who was apparently white, established the first organised calypso tent in Port of Spain. He also sang the first calypso wholly in English, in 1898-9, on the abolition of the city's Borough Council. One verse ran: Jerningham the Governor, Jerningham the Governor, I say is fastness in you To break the laws of Borough Council.51 At around the same time upper- and middle-class persons began to patronise calypso and visit the tents, which became better organised, and moved to better localities. These patrons were the ' jacketmen', the coat being the symbol of respectability. One calypsonian sang: Point for point I prefer the jacketman Jacketman don't beat me with a stick in the street.

One such patron was Ignacio Bodu, author of a book on Trinidad, and a Borough Councillor. He organised competitions for Carnival bands in the 1890s and was a recognised patron of calypso. Inventor, a calypsonian active in the early twentieth century, criticised a rival singer who failed to improvise an adequate song when Bodu visited the tent: You have demonstrated your inability You can't sing on Papa Bodi whom we all know The friend and patron of Caliso.52

Such extempore singing was common, and there was often 'picong' between rival calypsonians - an exchange of insulting witticisms in song. Many calypsoes sung around 1900 were critical of upper- and middle-class society, coloureds as well as whites; a means of retaliating for their contempt for calypso and lower-class black culture. 53 One calypso of the same period defiantly expressed the philosophy of the urban black, the bandmember: Ah eh working no way But knocking about in me serge and me flannel Ah eh working no way People want to know how ah living.54

The last three decades of the century were the time when calypso achieved partial acceptance, as a result of the change to English, the use of European instruments and melodies for accompaniment, and the organisation of better tents. In these years English was by no means a universal language in Trinidad. Though the evidence on the relative incidence of English, patois and Spanish is not totally clear, it seems that the language of the Creole masses

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was generally Creole, or patois, while the language of the peons was Spanish. W. H . Gamble said in 1866 that the language of the Creoles was patois. The lower orders scarcely used any other language among themselves, though most could understand, and even speak, English. Patois was what the African immigrant learned first.55 The Echo, pointing to the crying need for good Creole interpreters in the courts, thought in 1870 that hardly a case did not require such interpreters.56 P. G. L. Borde wrote in 1882 that patois was 'le langage populaire'; English was only one of many languages spoken in Trinidad. 57 The Port of Spain Gazette thought that the language of the Port of Spain lower orders was Creole.58 And Bishop Rawle commented in 1872, 'the language talked in the streets is the scouring of Babel, a negro commixture of French, Spanish and African, to which for Coolies is added mashed English'. 59 Much evidence on the widespread incidence of Creole was given to the Royal Franchise Commission of 1888. Patois was the language of Arima and Blanchisseuse. In Savannah Grande the cocoa planters spoke patois as a rule.60 Carenage, Santa Cruz, Maraval, Diego Martin, St Ann's, Caroni, and Arima were all said to be mainly patois-speaking areas. All the * older' people spoke patois and nothing else. Patois was 'general' in the Arima Ward Union.61 Emmanuel Lazare said that the country people generally spoke Creole. Most of them understood English; if a question was put to a 'countryman' in English, he would understand it, but he would answer in Creole. Creole was the language originally spoken here. Our Creole population prefers speaking Creole. It is only within the last 15 years you hear English spoken. 15 years ago every boy spoke Creole patois.62

R. L. Guppy thought that patois was a serious obstacle to the educational progress of the people, and that instruction in English was the first essential step in education. Teachers in patois-speaking districts were urged to 'tackle resolutely' the difficulties caused by its use.63 Patois was clearly the mother tongue of most lower-class blacks in the nineteenth century; the language of the 'rabble'. It was not understood by most policemen, magistrates, and officials, and so patois was, in a sense, a defensive and an offensive weapon. This is why calypso was mainly in patois until the very end of the century. Even when lower-class persons could understand, even speak, English, they would use it only when absolutely necessary, as Gamble and Lazare said. As the language of the 'canaille', it was regarded with contempt by the authorities. A Chief Justice in 1894 w a s indignant when an aged woman gave evidence in patois. He burst out: at her age she ought to be ashamed of herself that she cannot speak English. To be kept back in the world like this after all the money spent on education ought to make these people ashamed of themselves.64

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He entirely missed the point: if she was aged, she would not have been exposed to English-language education, or perhaps to any education at all. But his outburst was indicative of the official attitude to patois; it was something to be wiped out as soon as possible. Spanish was a folk language in some areas of Trinidad, especially in the valleys of the Northern Range where the peons were concentrated. As sugar expanded eastward from Port of Spain in the early nineteenth century, Hispanised Amerindians moved into these valleys, and all through the century Venezuelan immigration reinforced the Spanishspeakers. The peons nearly all spoke Spanish, though they often also spoke patois and English. Monolingual persons speaking only Spanish were able to maintain rural speech communities, especially in the more isolated villages. Communications were poor, and compulsory education was not implemented until the next century, so isolated pockets of Spanishspeakers could survive.65 Spanish-speakers were found in all the areas where the Capuchins, in Spanish times, had kept Indian missions: for instance, Caura, Cumana, Siparia, and Savannah Grande, still called La Mission by Spanish-speakers.66 Philip Rostant told the Franchise Commission that most of the 'old Spaniards' spoke no English, though their children did. It was the people over about thirty who could not speak English, though they might understand it. The Warden of Tacarigua Ward Union said that Spanish was the chief language in Caura and Maracas, where there was a combined population of about 2,500, speaking only Spanish.67 Despite the strength of both patois ard Spanish, the evidence is clear that as the century drew to its close, English was becoming more and more the language of the younger people. This was due to two factors: public primary education, with instruction in English, and the influx of English-speaking immigrants from the Eastern Caribbean. The Inspector of Schools reported in 1880 a remarkable decline in the use of the corrupt local jargon called 'Creole' among the Trinidad born portion of the population. 10 or 12 years ago no child belonging to the lower classes born in the island spoke English except in school, and it was a rare thing to hear English spoken in the streets. Now the use of English is the rule, and though the Creole patois is still too often heard, its days are evidently drawing to a close.68

Two years later, he wrote, we often now hear little children of Trinidadian parents running about the streets, nay even in the cocoa woods, chattering English as fluently as their predecessors 15 or 20 years ago did Creole.

This was due to the schools, and the parents' acknowledgement of the value of knowing English.69 The Franchise Commission was told that in the 1850s nearly all the Port of Spain lower classes spoke patois. Now in

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1888 English was spoken nearly everywhere except in some of the remoter valleys. Charles Mitchell thought that this was mainly due to immigration from the British West Indies. 70 The Principal of St Mary's said that the use of English was spreading everywhere. Nearly everyone under thirty spoke it, and as the old people died, the incidence of English would increase. It was the 'modern' thing to speak English, and in the near future he thought that the greater part of the population would speak it. The Warden of Naparima testified that English was by 1888 the favoured language of those of French extraction. Many of the * Spaniards' spoke English as well as Spanish, especially the younger ones educated in the public schools. By then there was hardly any patois spoken in the schools.71 At the end of the century, the majority of lower-class Creoles spoke Creole habitually among themselves and as their native tongue. Most peons spoke Spanish among themselves. A large number of blacks who had come from the other islands spoke English mainly, though many learned patois in order to communicate with Creoles. The older Creoles and peons, those over forty or fifty by 1900, usually spoke little or no English, though they often understood it. Their children under the age of about forty usually had been exposed to English-language elementary education, and so both spoke and understood English, though they might not use it in their homes. English was spreading fast; but patois remained the language of the Creole masses at the end of the century. In the slums of Port of Spain a kind of sub-culture emerged, based on the barrack yards. It was dominated by the 'jamets' or 'diametres', the singers, drummers, dancers, stickmen, prostitutes, pimps, and badjohns in general. This yard society was in constant interaction with the upper and middle classes, whose houses fronted the yards. The women were often domestics in their homes, and liaisons between middle-class men and jamette women were not uncommon. The jamets boasted their skill in fighting, their bravery, their wit and ability at 'picong', their talent in song and dance, their indifference to the law, their sexual prowess, even their contempt for the church. In short they reversed the canons of respectability, the norms of the superstructure. 72 As New Era put it, 'the immoral bands of men and women. . .base their right of existence on their power to outrage all that society holds most sacred, and all that religion imposes'. 73 The jamets of the towns were organised into bands for the purpose of dancing and fighting.74 These were territorial and semi-secret organisations: each sector of each region might have its gang. Such gangs may have derived from West African secret societies, and their existence in Trinidad was noted as early as 1808. L. M. Fraser described the 'Convois' and 'Regiments' formed by the slaves, with names like Convoi de Sans Peur, Convoi de St Georges, Regiment Danois. Each gang had its Roi,

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16j

Reine, Dauphin, Grand Judge, soldiers, and alguazils. The * avowed object' of these slave bands was to hold African dances.75 Membership in these bands was a test of manhood; initiation sometimes involved the shedding of blood in a street ritual.76 In San Fernando in the second half of the nineteenth century, at least four territorial bands existed: Jacketmen on Coffee Street; Danois on the Wharf; Rose of England in St Joseph Village; and Diamonds. Two other bands in San Fernando in 1875 were Hirondelles and Jockey Boys, who organised a picnic and a ritualised fight near the Cipero River in 1875. Crossing the boundaries of any band's territory was the signal for ritualised conflict, which was usually arranged for the Carnival days. Tunapuna at the same time boasted gangs called Sweet Evening Bells, Tiepins, Greyhounds, Island Builders. St Augustine Bridge was the 'bloody boundary' between Tunapuna and St Joseph gangs.77 In an editorial of 9 February 1877 the Chronicle described the bands of Port of Spain. There were then about twelve city bands, each representing the vagabonds of a particular locale. There were the Free-grammar from Corbeau Town, the Bois d'Inde from Upper Prince Street, the Bakers from east of the Market, the Danois (as in San Fernando) from the Dry River, the Peau de Canelle from the Royal Jail area, the Corail from Newtown, the s'Amandes from the Wharves, the Maribones from Belmont, and the Cerf-Volants from Duncan Street. The band itself seems to be merely the loose, idler, younger members of the floating portion of the populace (it would not always be correct to call them the wording class) in a district or a neighbourhood. In many cases the lads, as men, grow out of this brawling, idle vagabondage, but there cannot be a doubt it demoralises them.

Women were active band members; they would all be of the jamette class. In 1868 nineteen women were charged with affray on Canboulay morning. They belonged to the Dahlias; also on the streets that morning were the Mousselines, Magenta, Maribones, True-Blues, Black Balls, and Don't Care Damns. The Dahlias and Mousselines had a long-standing rivalry. M'selle Jannette, Queen of the Mousselines, and Eliza Simmons, Queen of the Dahlias, led their forces. The Dahlias had batons, stones and bottles. The names of the women charged are mostly English, with a few French names; this may suggest that a majority were British West Indian immigrants rather than Creoles, though two witnesses reported the participants shouting out in patois.78 One of the most important activities of the bands was stick-fighting, or kalinda. Each band had its champion fighters, its kalinda kings. Tournaments were held in yards, or in a public place on holidays; rival champions from different bands, neighbourhoods, or villages would meet in combat. There were famous women stick-fighters, although the kalinda

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was essentially for men; more usually women band members provided food, rum, and weapons, though, as we noted, they took part in fights themselves. The male stick-fighters were dressed in a silk shirt, long trousers with coloured buttons, a ribbon or sash at the waist, and red scarves round the wrists. To accompany the stick-fights, special kalinda songs were composed and sung by the band chantu/elles (folk artists who led the bands), songs which boasted of the band's achievements in past battles and challenged rival stickmen to fight. They were in minor key, usually in patois, with the chantu/elles singing the stanzas and the followers shouting out the refrain. At first, the songs were all accompanied by drums, and special drum codes were worked out to tell fighters when to give a certain kind of blow, or when to retreat. After the 1880s, the bands switched to tambour-bamboo instruments. The kalinda songs were the prototype of calypso. They were composed by the chantu/elles, and by the ordinary band members, dancing and spontaneously singing out refrains as they cheered on their champion stickmen. 79 The life-style of the band members is reflected in calypsoes sung in the later nineteenth century on notorious jamet characters. 80 Calypsonians in the late nineteenth century included Hannibal, who sang in English and patois, Zandoli, and Norman le Blanc, who sang mainly in English. The two most notorious female jamettes of the time were Petite Belle Lili and Bodicea. Hannibal sang Piti Belle Lili Piti Belle Lili Lorn Kamisol, Lorn sa kamisol, Tut mun kase bambiron.81 Hannibal died in jail in 1873, and his funeral was scandalous. His head was severed in a brawl and stolen. Bodicea claimed that Congo Jack, a notorious jamet and a police spy, had done it: Congo Jack vole tet-la Hannibal II vole la mo, gade bakanal.82 She started a riot in the cemetery and was arrested. Le Blanc sang in reproach Bodicea the Jamette who we all know Is a real disgrace to we Cariso, Is better she die or lock up in jail, She disgrace every woman in Port of Spain. She was dedicated to drinking, singing, and fighting; she died in wretched poverty after her English protector left Trinidad, and she haunted

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calypsonians like Zandoli. Her ghost was laid only when her great rival also died. Le Blanc sang: Bodicea first, and then Petite Belle, The devil waiting for them in hell.

Le Blanc left Trinidad around 1900, and Zandoli became a wayside Shouter Baptist preacher who converted many sinners and died a respected man. One need hardly say that this kind of life-style outraged respectable Trinidad. The San Fernando Gazette wrote: There is no gainsaying that year after year adds, in an alarming degree, to the number of these depraved and irresponsible wretches, who.. .band themselves together to the detriment of law, order and society.. .Hordes of men and women, youthful in years but matured in every vice that perverts and degrades humanity, dwell together in all the rude licentiousness of barbarian life: men without aim, without occupation and without any recognised mode of existence - women, wanton, perverse and depraved beyond expression.83

Ntw Era described 'certain yards' as 'very hotbeds of vice'. Their inhabitants would come out at night, especially at full moon, the ' nymphs' and their male parasites, and play guitars and concertinas on the street to accompany their 'lewd songs with which these vile wretches pollute the air'. The songs, the quarrelling, and the obscene language, went on until two or three in the morning. Bands of 'so-called musicians' went out at night to serenade prostitutes, and this again meant obscene songs and fights. Respectable persons were disturbed and molested.84 There could be little understanding between the upper and middle classes and the jamets. They represented opposite poles of the society. Carnival was perhaps the focus of the Afro-Creole sub-culture in Trinidad, an important means of expression for the black people who participated in it. In our period, the festival became an arena in which class antagonisms were worked out. The jamet Carnival was a reversal of all the judgements and values of respectable society.85 Before emancipation, Carnival had been an elegant social affair of the upper-class Creole whites. But after 1838 the ex-slaves and the lower orders generally participated increasingly, and the upper classes correspondingly withdrew. By the 1860s, Carnival came to have a distinct character; it was taken over almost entirely by the jamets of the urban slums, organised into bands which were especially active in the weeks before Carnival, but which existed the whole year round. In the preCarnival period, the yard or band chantwelle sought out and insulted rivals, while yard stickmen met opponents in single combat. The Carnival bands were a combination of several yard bands; Carnival was the great opportunity to challenge rivals and show off prowess in song, dance, and

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stick-fighting. In the early 1870s the number of bands in Port of Spain increased, no doubt a reflection of worsening overcrowding in the city's slums. They used the days of Carnival to pay off old grudges or to increase their prestige at the expense of other bands.86 Their aggressiveness was heightened by liquor, and the result was organised street fights between bands, which could reach considerable proportions. Bands would roam about seeking a rival to fight. The weapons were stones, bits of macadam, bottles, and especially staves. Firearms or knives were virtually never used, and serious injuries were rare; the intention was not to wound a rival seriously, but to establish prestige by the skilful use of the stick, though bottles and stones might also be employed, and slashed faces and broken heads were common. L. O. Innis' memory of Carnival in the 1870s was that 'bands of intoxicated people went through the streets, carrying torches and armed with Gasparee sticks, shouting ribald songs and dancing to the sound of big drums and spoiling for an encounter with a rival band'. These fights were illegal, and numerous arrests were made each Carnival, but, until 1880, no serious effort was made to stop them. Canboulay was an important feature of the jamet Carnival. This was a procession of band members, usually masked, carrying lighted torches and staves, which started at midnight on Carnival Sunday and continued until next morning. It was accompanied by a great deal of drumming, hooting, singing and shouting, and it was the occasion for fights between rival kalinda champions. Canboulay was felt to be objectionable by the police, and by most respectable Trinidadians: the noise was kept up all night; there was a danger of fire from the torches; and, more particularly, the presence of so many men armed with staves and in an aggressive mood was a potential source of riot and disorder. But Canboulay was tolerated by the authorities until 1880.87 Perhaps even more objectionable than band conflicts and Canboulay, to the upper and middle classes, was the obscenity of the jamet Carnival. Bands of prostitutes roamed the streets of Port of Spain making 'indecent gestures' and singing 'lewd songs'. There were traditional masques with explicit sexual themes. The most notorious was the Pissenlit (or Pisani), literally 'wet the bed', usually translated as 'stinker'. It was played by masked men dressed as women in long transparent nightdresses; it involved much sexual horseplay and was accompanied by obscene songs in patois. The jamet bands included both men and women. The women would generally be prostitutes, active or retired, dressed in the traditional Martinique costume, always masked. At some times, and in some places, they exposed their breasts. The men were elaborately dressed, and would dance and strut through the streets, making suggestive comments to bystanders and propositioning women. Transvestitism and accompanying

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horseplay were very common, whether in the Pissenlit, or individually. 88 Victorian Trinidad, in its publicly expressed expectations and norms, was certainly less tolerant and more prudish than in the days of slavery. The press made much of the alleged corruption of lower-class youth which took place before, during, and after Carnival. Perhaps it did; though in the teeming and squalid backyards of the city's slums it would have been difficult not to have got corrupted, Carnival or not. No doubt respectable society felt genuinely scandalised by the explicitly sexual masques, and these would eventually be purged; yet transvestitism has remained in Mas, 'obscenity' in calypso. Throughout the 1870s the attitude taken by the authorities towards the jamet Carnival was vacillating. But in 1877 Captain Baker became Inspector-Commandant of Police, and he was altogether more militant a character than his predecessor, the historian L. M. Fraser. He made it one of his objects to control, and if possible to destroy, the Port of Spain bands. The Carnivals of 1878 and 1879 were strictly controlled, and stick-fights broken up. In 1880 Baker decided to use an 1868 Ordinance to suppress Canboulay. He called on the marchers to surrender their torches, staves, and drums; probably taken by surprise, for the move had not been publicly announced, they did so without resistance.89 The Carnival passed off quietly. But Baker's successful suppression of Canboulay in 1880 was widely regarded as a step to the total suppression of Carnival, and the bands organised to resist police interference in 1881. There was a general agreement that band members would fight only against the police, not against each other; this time they would be prepared. Again without prior notice, Baker tried to seize the torches and sticks on the Sunday night. He had previously armed the force with a special issue of balata clubs. When he struck against the torch-bearers he met with united resistance from several hundred men armed with sticks, stones, and bottles. A fight ensued in which 38 out of 150 policemen present were injured; it ended inconclusively. Many street lamps were smashed by the mobs. Their attitude seemed highly threatening by the Monday morning, and a meeting of the Executive Council decided on drastic preparations for resisting a serious riot.90 On the Monday afternoon, the Borough Council went to the Governor, Sir Sanford Freeling, and pleaded with him to make some conciliatory gesture to avert civil disorder. They argued that the maskers were excited but not riotous and would be satisfied by such a move. Freeling went to the Eastern Market and addressed the maskers. He said that the Government had no desire to stop the Carnival; the interference with the torches was only to prevent fire. He had confidence in the people and they should be peaceful for the rest of Monday and on Tuesday; the police would not

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be allowed to 'molest' them and would be confined to barracks until the Wednesday morning. After the Governor's address, there were one or two incidents; an effigy of Baker was burnt outside the police barracks; but on the whole the rest of Carnival passed peacefully. The reaction of the press to the events of the 1881 Carnival is interesting. Without exception, the editors condemned Baker's actions as highhanded and provocative, and commended Freeling's. 91 This unanimous reaction showed one thing clearly. Though the editors, and the people they spoke for, were disgusted by many features of the jamet Carnival, and though they hoped for its ' natural death', they strongly resented any attempt by the executive to interfere with it by force. They recognised that Carnival was the only truly 'national' festival, the only one the people could claim as their own. 92 If it was a conflict between a highhanded and expatriate government and the people, the press came down on the people's side, even if they disliked the forms of the popular festival. After the events of 1881, the following Carnival was the cause of much anxiety. A proclamation was issued authorising Canboulay; this was clearly a defeat for Baker. On the other hand, the government took elaborate precautions against disorder, including the summoning of two warships.93 But apparently the maskers had themselves determined that there would be no disorder. A deputation of them had called at the Port of Spain Gazette office asking the paper to use its influence to ensure a quiet Carnival. And a broadsheet entitled 'Advice for the Coming Carnival', obviously the work of bandleaders, was circulated calling on maskers to play peacefully and not to betray the Governor's confidence in them.94 Canboulay passed off quietly, though celebrated on a larger scale than usual. No fights took place. On the Monday and Tuesday the bands disciplined themselves, refusing to fight rivals. The Carnival as a whole was 'the quietest that has been known for years'. 95 But in 1883, the Carnival was quite as disorderly as before the riots. Presumably the maskers felt less threatened than in 1882. Band fighting was on a large scale. One band in particular, the Newgates, provoked and attacked other bands; they were unmasked, and their only purpose seemed to be to attack other bands. Private houses were stoned and forced open. One theory was that the police incited and encouraged the Newgates in order to discredit the maskers and avenge the reversals of 1881 and 1882. Baker was said to have openly promoted disorder by calling on the other bands to beat and arrest Newgates whenever they met them. In any case the police made very few arrests of the offending band members. There was band fighting in San Fernando, Arima and Arouca, as well as in the capital.96 Probably the disorder of the 1883 Carnival strengthened the hand of the anti-Carnival faction in the government, and finally brought Freeling

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round to the view that Canboulay had to be stopped and the bands broken up. Two Ordinances passed early in 1884 g a v e ^ Governor power to prohibit by proclamation public torch processions, drum beating, any dance or procession, and any disorderly assembly of ten or more persons armed with sticks or other weapons. The maximum penalty for any offences under these ordinances, on summary conviction, was a fine of ^ 2 0 or six months in prison.97 This, of course, gave the government the authority to abolish Canboulay and the large bands. Two proclamations prohibited torch processions, assemblies of ten or more persons carrying sticks, and the playing of any musical instruments except between Monday at 6 a.m. and Tuesday midnight. 98 In Port of Spain, all was quiet. No attempt was made to stage Canboulay. There were no disturbances and no inclination to confront the police. It meant that the government had once and for all abolished Canboulay, and the press, probably dismayed by the disorder in 1883, reacted with general approval.99 Outside the city there was trouble. In San Fernando a mob armed with bottles, stones, and sticks, and carrying torches, resisted the police on Sunday night. There was a brief skirmish before the mob dispersed, and several arrests were made. In Princes Town a serious riot developed. Two bands, about five hundred strong, attacked the police station on the Sunday night with stones and bottles. The police fired; two band members were killed and five seriously injured. It was thought that the ringleaders of the worst Port of Spain bands, knowing that the police would be too strong to resist in the city, had gone to the south to hold their Canboulay.100 But the general consensus on the government's new policy was that it had succeeded, despite the bloodshed in the south. Canboulay was permanently abolished in 1884; so was the assembling of large bands of stickmen, and organised band conflict. What remained to be tackled, before Carnival could be acceptable to the middle and upper classes, was the obscenity associated with the jamet Carnival. The business of purging Carnival proceeded slowly after 1884. Arrests were made by policemen in civilian clothes, picked for their knowledge of patois, for obscene speech or behaviour; eighty-nine convictions on this charge were secured in 1886.101 In 1895 a new regulation made the 'Pissenlit' mask illegal; as a result there was none of the more flagrantly obscene masking in the Carnival of 1895. 102 After 1895 the grosser forms of obscenity so characteristic of the jamet Carnival were no longer possible; Carnival had been purged. The way was clear for the respectable classes to re-enter Carnival, and for the festival to develop slowly into a 'national' event. Clear signs of this may be seen between 1885 and 1895. In the former year a 'relatively large number' of respectable persons felt safe enough to mask and play in the streets. Three years later a group of upper-class people, including a

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lady, appeared masked as courtiers. In 1890 ladies followed 'their' bands in carriages.103 By about 1890 businessmen were beginning to recognise the commercial benefits of Carnival. College boys and store clerks began to organise bands. In the 1890s Ignacio Bodu, a city merchant, Borough Councillor, and patron of Carnival and calypso, organised competitions for costumed bands in Port of Spain in order to improve the festival's moral tone. Calypsonians, as we noted, began to sing calypsoes entirely in English, and to organise better tents; both were concessions to the increasing number of respectable patrons, who would probably not understand patois. The historian of Carnival sums up: 'from 1890 onwards Carnival moved spasmodically towards the place it holds today', acceptable to nearly all sectors of the population. 104 The study of Carnival illustrates several aspects of Trinidad society in this period. In the 1870s, Carnival was essentially confined to the Creole masses, especially of Port of Spain. In fact the really active participants were a group within a group, for they were members of the jamet society of the city's slums. It should be stressed that the majority of the working classes were not jamets themselves and would not have approved of much of their way of life. But, each Carnival, the jamets came out in their glory and the whole Creole working class felt a vicarious pride in their exploits. There was nothing really vicious about the jamet Carnival. The fighting rarely resulted in serious injuries, though certainly people got their heads broken and there was a lot of disorder. As for the obscenity, it probably reflects the far more casual approach to sex which characterised the masses as compared to the 'respectable' classes. Privacy and delicacy were impossible in the physical conditions under which they lived, and masques like Pissenlit were probably harmless tomfoolery to them. Carnival as a whole served the function of an escape valve for the masses, whose lives were harshly limited, and desperately hard. The decision to end the two features of Carnival which were most enjoyed by the jamets, Canboulay and band fighting, was taken by the government in response to pressure from the upper and middle classes, and in response to their own feelings about Carnival. The decision was carried out by force in 1881 and 1884 and both times the maskers resisted, in 1884 with fatal results. It would not be an exaggeration to describe this as a class action. Certainly the actual maskers were a minority of the Creole lower classes, but large numbers who did not mask cherished Carnival. Once the fighting and Canboulay had been forcibly put down, respectable society turned its attention to the public indecency, and this was largely suppressed by about 1895, again by police action rather than by a campaign of popular education. It was only then, after the upper and middle classes had licked Carnival into the shape they wanted, that respectable persons began to participate.

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At many points between 1870 and 1895 ^ t o t a l suppression of Carnival seemed likely. This never happened. When it came to a crisis, as in 1881, the press resented what it considered high-handed attempts by an ' alien' executive to put down a festival which, disgusting though it might be, belonged to the people. If Carnival could be persuaded to die a 'natural' death, well and good. If not, forcible suppression was unacceptable. Instead the respectable classes took it over, purged it and controlled it, and remade it in their own image. Yet, as we have noted, transvestitism and explicit sexual themes have remained in Carnival, 'obscenity' or 'smut' in calypso; organised band conflict re-emerged with the steelbands after 1945. Carnival had been purged, but the forces which had produced the jamet Carnival remained strong. The spirit of the jamet Carnival survived. While respectable patrons began to impose some of their standards on calypso and Mas, beneath it all a spirit of protest and anarchy remained alive among the masses, seeking an outlet.

9 The Indians

Of all the immigrant groups which came to Trinidad during the course of the nineteenth century, the Indians were immeasurably the most important. They came in far greater numbers than any other group. Furthermore, they belonged to an intricate, ancient society, with a rigid system of stratification, strongly established non-Christian religions, and a high culture essentially alien to the westernised host society. They constituted an entirely new element in Caribbean societies, an element which would have to find a place in the existing race, class, and caste systems. The Indians were imported into Trinidad to provide the stable and manageable labour force which, the sugar planters believed, had been lost to them since the full emancipation of the blacks in 1838. Other possible sources of labour had proved inadequate; it was India which proved satisfactory. India had a huge population, millions living close to destitution; most of the sub-continent was under British control, so that there was no necessity for troublesome negotiations with foreign governments; India's climate was not unlike that of the Caribbean, and most of her people were accustomed to agricultural work. The cost of importation, though high, was not prohibitive as it was in the case of China. Trinidad, of course, was only one of several colonies receiving Indian immigrants in the nineteenth century; a global traffic in Indian labourers was established, taking them to Assam, South-East Asia, East Africa, South Africa, Mauritius, the Pacific, and the West Indies. Between 1845 and 1917, with a short break in 1848-51, Indians arrived steadily each year, the great majority being channelled through Calcutta; perhaps ninety per cent of the immigrants came from the area of the Ganges plains: United Provinces, Bihar, Orissa, and Central Provinces; a minority came from Bengal, the North West Provinces, and South India via Madras. 1 Although a total of 37,440 Indians had arrived by 1869, they were not yet thought of as permanent settlers in Trinidad. The free return passage after ten years in the colony, which was insisted on by both the Colonial Office and the government of India, made the Indians seem like transient labourers, not a permanent addition to the popultaion. And the indentureship system, by which the new arrivals were 176

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contracted to the plantations for a five-year term of unfree labour, kept most of the Indians on the estates as resident indentured labourers, severely restricting their freedom of movement and their contacts with the wider society. At the beginning of our period, in fact, the overwhelming majority of the Indian population resided on the sugar estates; nearly forty per cent were indentured. They had hardly improved their material condition since 1845, nor had they made much progress in establishing their own social organisation and institutions. 2 Further, their languages, physical appearance, religions and culture were so strikingly different that the Indians were considered to be separate and apart from the host society. Despite their increasing numerical strength, the Indians were regarded as an exotic group, marginal to Trinidad society, insufficiently integrated to be considered a part of it. 3 The indentureship, the Indians' connection with a particular government department, special legislation affecting them exclusively, the separate social services provided for them: all this reinforced the Indians' separation from the rest of the island's population. They were, to repeat, a group outside the basic three-tier structure of nineteenth-century Creole society. Yet they constituted a large and rapidly growing proportion of the people. Between 1870 and 1900 a total of 71,584 Indians arrived; within the whole period of Indian immigration, 1845 to 1917, 143,939 i m m i grants entered the island.4 It is important to note that the great majority did not return to India. Between 1870 and 1899, o n ty X 5? 2 1 1 o r 2 I - 2 P e r cent of those eligible for repatriation chose to return. 5 This made possible the development of a settled Indian community, and, of course, the emergence of a growing Trinidad-born Indian population. The latter formed only 16.5 per cent of the total Indian population in 1871, but by 1901 they were 44.8 per cent: nearly as many as the India-born immigrants. Thus the composition of the Indian group was changing over our period in favour of locally born Indians - the * Creole Indians' - which naturally reinforced the development of a permanent Indian community. As the Indian population increased, both by annual immigration and by natural growth, its contribution to the total island population became significant. Indians constituted 25 per cent of the population in 1871; by 1901 they were 33 per cent.6 Their numbers alone made the Indians a critically important segment of the island's people. At the beginning of our period close to 40 per cent of the Indians were still indentured, and all the new immigrants had to serve an initial five years' indenture. It seems logical, therefore, to begin our consideration of the Indian population by analysing the position of the indentured Indians, all of whom were resident on the estates. The essential element of the indentureship system was a long contract with a single employer, main-

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tained by the sanctions of the criminal law. From 1862, immigrants signed up for a five-year indenture, during which they could not leave their employer, demand higher wages, live off the estate they were assigned to, or refuse the work given them to do. If they infringed the immigration laws, they could be prosecuted as criminals and sentenced to jail terms. Once the indenture had expired, however, they became free, although even time-expired Indians continued to be subjected to certain restrictions which did not apply to the rest of the population. After the indentureship was over, the Indian was granted a ' certificate of industrial residence', a sort of 'free paper' certifying that the person's indenture had expired and that he was a 'free' Indian. Even then, he was not entitled to a free return passage until a total of ten years' residence in the colony had been completed. After 1895, immigrants had to pay a proportion of the cost of their repatriation.7 A multiplicity of laws governed the immigrants' wages and hours of work. The indentured labourer was guaranteed in law 280 days' work per calendar year, with five days a week out of crop and six days during crop. Most field work was assigned on a task basis in Trinidad, and a task was supposed to be what an able-bodied labourer could perform in seven hours; for day-work a limit of nine hours was set in the field, but in the factory, during crop, fifteen-hour days were permitted. An 1872 Ordinance prescribed a minimum wage for indentureds of 25 cents (is. id.) per day or per task for able-bodied adults, 16 cents (8d.) for others. Hours worked in the field during crop often went far beyond the legal nine hours; in the factory very long working days were usual, but wages were higher.8 The system of indentureship gave the planters a core group of resident, unfree labourers whose work was completely dependable; they were usually sufficient to meet the out-of-crop demand for labour, while during crop they provided the stable nucleus of a labour force which could be supplemented by resident free workers and nonresident labour. Throughout our period Indians, indentured and free, dominated the plantation labour force in Trinidad. In 1872 they constituted 75.3 per cent of the total sugar estate labour force; in 1895 the proportion had reached 87 per cent. Of the Indian estate labourers, 44.7 per cent were indentured in 1872; they were the principal source of guaranteed labour available to the planters.9 Indian labour had made possible the recovery of the Trinidad sugar industry after 1848, and its vigorous expansion in the 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s. But the last two decades of the century were times of trouble for West Indian sugar producers, with sugar prices falling drastically on the British market, particularly in 1884-5 and 1894-7. 10 Planters attempted to cut labour costs by laying off non-resident labourers, reducing the

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wages of unindentured workers, and offering less work to resident labourers, both indentured and free. This is why the situation of the Indian plantation labourers deteriorated in the last twenty years of the century. Because the 1872 Ordinance had established a legal minimum wage for indentureds, planters pushed down their earnings by the simple expedient of increasing the extent of the tasks; and field work was predominantly assigned by tasks in Trinidad. This device, of course, had precisely the same effect as reducing wages, and it was widely resorted to in 1884-5 and 1894-7. ^ h e indentured Indians became so disillusioned at the extension of tasks at the same wage rate that they told the Protector of Immigrants in 1894 that they would prefer day-work to tasks. A wave of strikes took place in the 1880s, mostly to protest against the excessive size of tasks, and these strikes led the Protector of Immigrants to investigate the actual earnings of indentured Indians on a number of large estates. He concluded that on most of the larger estates, more than 15 per cent of the adult male indentureds were earning less than an average of 12 cents (6d.) per day (calculated over 365 days), the minimum average daily earnings stipulated by Ordinance 13 of 1870. The Legislative Council, with the cooperation of the Governors, simply passed special laws suspending the operation of the relevant clause of the 1870 law. In this way, the protective device which was intended to guarantee the indentureds minimum actual earnings was neutralised in the 1890s; and despite the 1872 law establishing a minimum wage rate of 25 cents per day or per task, the indentured Indian found his wage rate falling during the 1880s and 1890s. The conclusion is inescapable: during the last twenty years of the nineteenth century, the great majority of indentured Indians earned far less than the minimum legally guaranteed to them. 11 They protested against the deteriorating conditions of plantation labour by a series of strikes, at least fifty-two between 1870 and 1900, with a peak in 1882-4. The majority took place out of crop, and the excessive lengthening of tasks was the predominant cause. But the majority of these plantation strikes during the indentureship period were spontaneous affairs, with little evidence of planning or coordination. They usually occurred in response to planters' increasing tasks, reducing wages, or withholding accustomed privileges; the strikers were defending existing plantation conditions from interference by planters rather than demanding new and better ones, and so these strikes were not a serious threat to the indentureship system.12 The maintenance of that system depended on the sanctions of the criminal law. For the Immigration Ordinances allowed criminal prosecutions and penalties for breaches of contract by the indentured immigrant. Employers could prosecute indentureds for a wide variety of offences,

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ranging from threatening language or gestures, to negligence or carelessness in performing work, to wilful disobedience of a lawful order. The offence by indentureds which was most frequently brought to the courts was absence without leave, and the more serious charge of desertion. Penalties usually involved fines or jail terms, and could be severe; a sentence of fourteen days was common for wilful disobedience, or the use of insulting language against an estate authority. Desertion, or unlawful absence for three days or more, carried a maximum jail sentence of two months. The indentured Indians were in constant danger of prosecution for breaches of contract; by contrast, the officials of the Immigration Department were often reluctant to prosecute estate managers on behalf of labourers. It seems clear that prosecutions, or the threat of prosecutions, were often used to intimidate and coerce indentureds: a reliance on the courts to maintain estate discipline. It seems fair to conclude that the most objectionable feature of the indentureship system was the fact that labourers who infringed the immigration laws, even quite trivially, could be prosecuted as criminals and sentenced to jail terms. 13 Those critics of the system who claimed that indentureship was merely slavery with the jail substituted for the whip were not far from the truth. Once the Indian had worked out his five-year indenture, he was freed from these kinds of harassment. And the effect of reduced wages after the 18 70s, and the low actual earnings of resident labourers, was to accelerate the withdrawal of free Indians from the plantations. As the century reached its end, indentured labourers were only a small fraction of the total Indian population; by 1901 they were only 8.5 per cent of the total. More and more Indians left the plantations after their indentureship expired - following the example of the ex-slaves after 1838 - and the centre of gravity of the Indian population shifted to the new Indian settlements away from the estates. In 1869 Governor Gordon agreed to grant the request of twenty-five free Indians for grants of Crown lands in exchange for forfeiting their claim to a return passage to India. He hoped that his action 'would probably do much to induce a large portion of the Indian immigrant population, from being mere temporary sojourners, to become permanent colonists, a result greatly to be desired'. 14 His decision was the beginning of a short-lived but significant scheme, lasting between 1869 and 1879, by which time-expired Indians were granted lots of Crown lands in lieu of their return passage. This scheme may be said to have initiated the transformation of the Indians into peasant proprietors. The authorities hoped to achieve two objectives: to reduce the financial liability of the colonial government for return passages to India; and to settle the free Indians in orderly communities within easy distance of the sugar estates, so as to provide the planters with a convenient source of non-resident but seasoned

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labourers during crop. The lands granted under the scheme were all close to sugar estates. The Warden for Montserrat in central Trinidad reported with satisfaction that free Indians there 'evince a strong desire to form themselves into small communities, generally. . .within easy distance of some sugar estate, where they may obtain employment'. 15 Between 1869 and 1880, a total of 2,643 adult male immigrants were settled on 19,055 acres of Crown lands under the commutation scheme. In terms of the acreage granted, the scheme was significant; and it marked the beginning of an established Indian peasantry, with at least twenty-six settlements established. But the scheme encountered a number of difficulties : inadequate access roads to the new settlements, poor selection of lands, government neglect to provide basic social services like schools, suspicion by many Indians that the whole scheme was only a trick to defraud them of their return passage. Since many planters and a number of officials also lost faith in the commutation scheme, the land grants in lieu of the return passage were ended in 1879. 16 But, by then, Indians had begun to buy parcels of Crown land in large numbers. Once Gordon had opened up the Crown lands to small purchasers in 1869, the way was open for free Indians to become landowners in the normal way. Between 1885 and 1896 24 per cent of all Crown land sales were to Indians; from 1891 to 1895 ^ w a s 34 P e r c e n t - 1 7 At least 37,256 acres of Crown lands were sold to Indians between 1885 and 1900; by the latter date, at least 56,311 acres of Crown land were in Indian ownership.18 In addition, Indians rented land from landowners of their own race, or abandoned plantation land might be offered for rent in smallholdings and taken up by free Indians. By the end of our period, a substantial Indian peasant proprietorship had been established. The Indian peasants cultivated a variety of crops, but probably their most important contribution to the island's economy was in the production of a local food supply. By the end of the century Indian settlements were the major producers of food crops in their districts, and the Indians reduced the colony's dependence on imported provisions and vegetables. They took enthusiastically to rice-growing, especially in the swamp lands of the Caroni Savannah and Oropouche Lagoon; by 1896 6,000 acres were in padi rice, providing one-sixth of local consumption. Cocoa became popular with Indian peasants; many became cocoa contractors or freeholders cultivating the crop. The last two decades of the century saw a large movement of Indian peasants into the remoter cocoa districts in the interior of the island. In these decades too the Indians entered canefarming; by 1906 they outnumbered Creoles in this field. The Indian peasants strengthened the island's economy by producing food crops and by helping to diversify agriculture. But, for the Indians themselves, the importance of the establishment of an Indian peasantry

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was that it provided solid economic foundations for the development of an Indian community with roots in the colony. It gave the Indians in the new peasant settlements a degree of economic stability and independence, which would allow the development of autonomous social institutions. 19 Free from the constraints of plantation discipline, the Indian villagers found it possible, and necessary, to recreate some of the social institutions of village India. But, inevitably, these institutions had to be modified in Trinidad, often drastically. The family structure which Indians in Trinidad developed is a case in point. Because of the disparity between the sexes - a feature of nineteenth-century Indian immigration to many parts of the world - females assumed greater importance than in India; Charles Mitchell observed in 1888 that 'a person with two or three female children here has very valuable property, because the men want wives'. 20 In Trinidad, the custom developed of the bridegroom giving valuable presents to the bride and her parents, and paying the wedding expenses, a custom often misinterpreted as a 'bride price' or 'daughter-selling'. Another novel feature was that village endogamy was usual, and that inter-caste marriages, even Hindu-Moslem marriages, were common. Indian marriages in Trinidad, in fact, could not be in conformity with traditional Indian personal law and religion. 21 Furthermore, Hindu and Moslem priests were not recognised as marriage officers throughout this period, so that the religious ceremonies had no legal validity; Indian marriages had to be registered with the civil authorities in order to be recognised as legal. But the vast majority did not register their marriages, feeling, no doubt, that the age-old religious rite was all that really mattered to make a marriage legitimate; in India Hindu marriages were recognised. In the eyes of the law, therefore, Indian marriages were invalid and the overwhelming majority of Indian children were technically illegitimate. The scarcity of Indian women throughout the nineteenth century posed serious difficulties for the re-establishment of family life. Tensions and jealousies which resulted from this situation led to the notorious 'Coolie wife-murders', crimes of violence by Indian men against wives suspected of infidelity. Between 1872 and 1900, eighty-seven murders of Indian women occurred, of which sixty-five were wife-murders.22 These crimes occurred primarily among the estate-resident Indians. On the plantations, the traditional sanctions of village India against infidelity had been eroded, and the abnormal living-conditions in the barracks, with frequent absences of husbands in jail or in hospital, contributed to marital tensions. Furthermore, in a situation where women were scarce, the possession of a wife was an important symbol of status and masculinity on the plantation, a crucial element in the husband's self-esteem, which he could ill afford to lose. Traditionally, the Indian husband was expected to keep his wife in subjection; this was almost impossible in the plantation

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situation where women earned their own living and were greatly in demand; the shame of failure was wiped out by 'the cleansing violence of self-righteousness'. The man whose wife had been unfaithful suffered a disastrous loss of self-esteem, and in the absence of other mechanisms for expressing anger and self-assertion, violence directed against the other (murder or mutilation of the woman) or against self (suicide was almost as frequent in these situations) was the only way to recover his pride. 23 Yet Indian men did not cohabit with Creole or African women. As late as 1871, the Protector of Immigrants thought 'there is not probably at this moment a single instance of an indentured immigrant. . .who cohabits with one of the negro race'. 24 Sexual unions between Indians and blacks remained extremely rare up to 1900, and there were no known cases of legal marriages between the races. Indians in Trinidad found it impossible to recreate the extended family of India. Most immigrants came alone. In general, the traditional joint family, patrilocal and extended, was not established in Trinidad in the later nineteenth century, so that Indians in the first few generations in the island grew up with a quite different set of family relationships from those which their parents had experienced. The nuclear family and its interests took precedence over the extended family.25 Both Hindus and Moslems found it possible to re-establish the practices and rites of their faiths in Trinidad. Temples and mosques were built, Hindu personal household worship was conducted, and various reformist Hindu sects were active in the island in the 1880s and 1890s. The adherents of both faiths proved to be strongly resistant to Christian missionary efforts, the Moslems, perhaps, more than the Hindus. Indian religious festivals wTere celebrated early in the immigration period. Firepass was a South Indian festival, celebrated by 'Madrasi' Indians since 1868 at Peru Village near Port of Spain, and elsewhere. It attracted considerable publicity because of its sensational nature, but the actual walking over hot coals was only the climax of an elaborate religious festival. From the early 1870s the press criticised this festival as a 'degrading practice' carried on by 'gangs of semi-barbarians'; one editor regretted 'the Police have not thought proper to interfere with these scandalous doings of the Coolies, which go to show their total ignorance of civilisation'. In the early 1880s restrictions were imposed on the celebration of Firepass in order to discourage it.26 But it was Hosein which became the major Indian festival in Trinidad. It soon lost its special religious meaning as a commemorative rite celebrated by Shi'ite Moslems in memory of the murder of Mohammed's grandson, and became almost entirely secular. Most of the participants were Hindus, not Moslems, and Creoles participated enthusiastically up to 1885. Hosein became a general Indian holiday. John Morton said it

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was a 'fete day' in which Indians joined to remember the old country, while Sir Henry Norman called it 'a sort of national Indian demonstration'. It was celebrated chiefly by estate-resident Indians, and was the occasion for friendly rivalries between different estates, which sometimes caused street fights like those of Carnival.27 The celebration of Hosein, involving large numbers of Indians and working-class Creoles, began to cause anxiety in the early 1870s, because of the allegedly increasing tendency to riotous behaviour.28 The anxiety was increased in the 1880s, when discontent among estate-resident Indians was widespread because of reduction of wages and the lengthening of tasks. Further, the police action against Carnival in 1881-4 prepared the way for the authorities to move against Hosein. The Hamilton Report on the 1881 Carnival riots had made the point that Hosein should also be regulated to prevent it from developing into a disorderly affair like Canboulay. Hamilton thought that it would be a grievance if any privilege, such as the right to carry torches on a public street, was given to the Indians but withheld from the Creoles.29 Accordingly, regulations were issued in 1884 to prevent Indians celebrating Hosein from entering Port of Spain or San Fernando, and from going along any public highway in procession. Excitement among estate-resident Indians mounted, the authorities prepared for a confrontation, and the result was a major disaster in San Fernando, where twelve Indians were killed and 104 injured.30 Despite this massacre, the Government was determined to enforce the regulations rigidly in 1885 and subsequently, and the celebration of Hosein between 1885 and 1900 was restrained and orderly. One of the objects of the 1884 regulations was to prevent Creoles from participating in Hosein, and gradually after 1885 they withdrew from it. The presence of a large non-Christian population in Trinidad presented a challenge to the Christian Churches. Bishop Rawle of the Anglican Church felt uneasy ' about these crowds of heathens, on whose influx the prosperity of the island depends', and he feared that the 'imperfect Christianity' of the Creole population was not improved by the presence of so many non-Christians. He secured the services of a Hindustanispeaking priest in 1884, but this individual left Trinidad in the following year, and it was only in 1891 that a very modest Anglican mission to the Indians was established.31 The majority Church of Rome did not entirely neglect the Indians; one Catholic priest, Marie-Francois Ribon, was known as 'Pere des Coolies' for his work in the 1870s with Indians in and around Port of Spain. This priest vigorously attacked 'paganism' wherever it manifested itself. In 1876 he stopped a Hindu animal sacrifice just outside Port of Spain, and in 1877 he tried to end the Firepass festival in Peru Village; he so exasperated the Indians that his life was threatened on one occasion. But when this militant missionary died, the Catholic

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mission to the Indians around Port of Spain was virtually abandoned.32 Nevertheless, some 2,258 Indians had converted to Catholicism by 1891, despite the strong resistance which both Hindus and Moslems offered to Christian missionary efforts. Kenneth Grant, the pioneer Canadian Presbyterian missionary to the Trinidad Indians, thought that in all lands and at all times, Moslem converts to Christianity were very rare; for Islam, being monotheist, had 'a strength and vitality to which Hinduism is a stranger'. The Hindu in Trinidad, he believed, was more amenable to instruction than in India. Indians were 'a profoundly intellectual race who have to be reached through the reason as well as through the emotions to be convinced of Christian truth; but there are many who hear and enquire'. 33 Grant noted that Presbyterian missionaries and catechists were instructed not to attack Hinduism or Islam, but to preach Christ; and one important reason for the unique role played by the Canadian Mission was that it never demanded a complete break from the Indian past and tradition of its converts. Further, it provided the principal channel for the education of the Indians, for its major strategy for evangelising the Indian population was through the education of the young. Both English and Hindustani were used in Canadian Mission schools, in the services, and on churchrelated social occasions, and the Canadians were quick to train a native ministry. By the end of the century, the Canadian Mission virtually monopolised the education of Indian children. In 1892 it was providing schooling for about eighty per cent of Indian children attending a school. 34 The combination of education and relative tolerance towards Indian cultural tradition gave the Canadian Mission its special appeal to the Indians. Its staff performed an important role as intermediaries and guides in the acculturation of Indians to the wider society, helping them in many practical ways to survive in a strange world. In this way, despite its limited success in gaining converts, the Canadian Mission became closely identified with the Indian population in the later years of the century. 35 One of the most important social institutions of India which was radically modified in Trinidad was caste. From the moment that the immigrant entered the immigration depot in Calcutta, he was thrown together with peoples of different castes and he found it impossible to follow caste guidelines governing contacts with people of lower caste. On board ship caste rules and regulations were further weakened. On the plantation the breakdown of caste as a principle of social organisation was accelerated. Everyone shared communal bathing and drinking facilities; traditional caste occupations were submerged in the common labour of the fields, as the indentureship exercised a levelling effect on all the immigrants. In a functionally oriented, achievement-based economic system, a low-caste could earn more than a Brahmin, could succeed in the plantation

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world. Members of different castes lived and worked together, and were ranked according to their performance as plantation functionaries. On die plantations, therefore, caste divisions weakened drastically, and even when most Indians had moved to the village settlements, the essential features of caste - occupational specialisation, caste endogamy, separation of castes in social functions and religious festivals - could not be revived. 36 No longer could caste function as an essential principle of social organisation among Indians in Trinidad. Caste affiliation remained a sensitive subject among them, but high-castes soon found that the traditional reverence was being eroded, particularly among Trinidad-born Indians. As a result, the Indians, who had previously been separated by a rigid system of stratification, were now compressed into a single group. Other marks of status, wealth and, later, education, reintroduced an element of stratification, but neither was as rigid or as permanent as that deriving from caste, and both were based on factors which fostered mobility.37 But these developments within the Indian community went unnoticed by the wider society. Very few Trinidadians, black or white, tried to understand the culture or social organisation of the Indian community, or the changes which that community was experiencing in the later years of the century. The attitude of the host society to the new arrivals from the East was almost entirely negative. Because Indians entered the society on peculiarly disadvantageous terms, as indentured labourers replacing exslaves, it was only too easy for black and white Trinidadians to despise them. The legal disabilities of the indentureship set the Indians apart from the rest of society, as unfree and inferior beings; the low-status jobs which they performed on the sugar estates made it possible for the recently freed blacks to look down on them. Partly as a result of the indentureship, partly because of the Indians' culture and religions, a whole collection of unfavourable stereotypes was built up during the nineteenth century, which did much to form the attitudes of the host society towards the immigrants and their descendants. From the Euro-Christian perspective of the dominant groups, Indians were generally judged to be an immoral people. John Morton, the pioneer Canadian missionary, thought they were morally unprincipled and degraded; husbands and wives were unfaithful, the women were 'quite as wicked as the men, and more ignorant and prejudiced'. 38 Indians were considered to be deceitful, prone to perjury, and abnormally fond of litigation. 'A jury knows', wrote Henry Taylor of the Colonial Office in 1871, 'that a Coolie is presumably a liar'; and the San Fernando Gazette thought that Indians systematically perjured themselves in court to defeat the ends of justice for their own interests. 39 Their attitude towards money was another aspect of the stereotype. Like most first-generation immigrants, Indians during the indentureship were single-minded in saving

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their miserable wages and in sacrificing present comforts for future security. This thrift was felt to be almost a vice in the Indians; it contrasted sharply with the attitude of the lower-class Creole, famous for his love of lavish spending. Even the traditional dress of those Indians who had not yet adopted Western clothes was subject to ridicule: they were too mean to dress decently, too uncivilised to clothe themselves in a Christian fashion. Further, the Indians' religions, especially Hinduism, were a source of contempt. Morton claimed that the Hindus themselves 'speak with the utmost levity of their gods and without the least reverence or respect'; the 'uncleanness' of the Hindu deities fostered 'a low sense of sin'. 40 Of course Morton, as a missionary, had a clear interest in attacking Hinduism. But the Trinidad newspapers expressed a similarly unfavourable judgement of Indian religions. Hindu and Moslem ceremonies were described as 'degrading practices', 'vile customs', 'scandalous performances carried on by gangs of semi-barbarians', 'painted devilry'.41 Indians soon acquired a reputation for violence which was almost completely undeserved. Indeed, an essential element in the host society's reaction to the newcomers was fear: fear of their potential for violence and rebellion. Memories of the Mutiny reinforced this reaction. 'The horrors of an Indian Mutiny are fresh in the recollections of Englishmen', wrote an editor in 1870, 'and we do not need to be reminded that the race to which our immigrants belong is easily roused.' A newspaper correspondent wrote in the following year: The day is not far off, when these Coolies, bent on having everything their own way, and meeting with the slightest resistance on the part of the authorities, will break out in open rebellion, and reproduce here the barbarities of the great chief Nana Sahib in British India a few years ago.42

A white Creole judge, presiding over the trial of nine Indian labourers for assaulting Creoles, warned that' upon the slightest provocation, coolies would band together in large numbers to beat anyone not of their own nationality'; the editor of the San Fernando Gazette commented on 'the riotous tendency of coolies when banded together and the wonderful facility with which, under the least excitement, they are led into acts of violence and brutality'. 43 These anxieties were increased in the 1880s as a result of the discontent among estate-resident Indians, expressed in a wave of strikes. The police authorities reported a 'disturbed state of feeling' among the Indians in 1882-4, and on the eve of the 1884 Hosein the Port of Spain Gazette urged: Let it not be forgotten that these Asiatics now form one third of our population, and that, fanatics of an effete superstition and a most corrupt form of ethics, they must, as a matter of self-preservation, be kept in subjection to our laws under pain of the most disastrous results.44

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Although no serious Indian insurrection ever occurred, the fears persisted. For Indians were a people 'whose every thought and habit are antagonistic to our system of civilisation', and they constituted 'a permanent source of danger hanging over our heads'. 45 Yet the same editors who accused the Indians of being prone to violence stereotyped them as passive and docile when it suited them. The Indian was 'naturally submissive, and as a general rule very easily guided by a little kindness', declared the Port of Spain Gazette, apparently unconscious of any editorial inconsistency. Another editor described the 'pliant and submissive coolie' as suiting the planter better than the independently minded Barbadian. 46 Indeed, newspapers hostile to Indian immigration often contrasted Indians unfavourably with the British West Indian immigrants as potential settlers. The San Fernando Gazette believed that the Indians were not valuable settlers because they had no real commitment to the colony. The Indian was ' a dead weight.. .inert in all matters of Christian civilisation, and only a temporary aid to a development entirely material. He has no sympathies with the social and moral wants of the place.' This paper even refused to give the Indian credit for being a valuable peasant cultivator and pioneer of cultivation.47 New Era, another opponent of immigration, considered that Indians contributed little to the community: The Coolie is notoriously with us only, but not of us. He gives nothing for what he takes, and thus contributes but little to the wealth of the country. He hoards his treasure to take it back to his native land, and while among us, consumes hardly anything of our imports.48

These papers took the position that Indian immigration was carried on to serve the selfish interests of the planters, to the detriment of the wider community. The evidence strongly suggests that Creoles of all colours despised Indians. The Rev. R. H. Moor was only one of many who made this point: The Creole, as a rule, looks down on the Indian; he is a semi-civilised being. He speaks in barbarous languages and his manners are barbarous. . .He takes work cheaper than the Creoles will do, hence he must be ill-treated when he can be illtreated with impunity.49

But we can feel fairly sure that the contempt was mutual. The Indians, heirs to the system of caste, soon decided that by the guidelines of that system, the blacks were hopelessly polluted. They invented a myth about the origin of the blacks which identified them with the ungodly and the polluted. Blacks engaged in occupations which were ritually impure, they ate the flesh of cattle and pigs, and in general their habits seemed unacceptable to most Indians. In effect, Indians tended to regard blacks as the equivalent of untouchables, and this attitude prevailed especially in

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the question of intermarriage. 50 As we have noted, despite the scarcity of Indian women, sexual relations between Indian men and Creole or African women were extremely rare in this period. The characteristic Northern Indian contempt for darker-skinned people was brought by the immigrants to Trinidad, reinforcing the existing network of prejudices surrounding race and colour. The foundations of mutual prejudice and antipathy between the two races had been firmly laid. It seems clear that Indians interacted with members of other races as little as possible. During the indentureship period, the Indians were largely concentrated in the sugar belt, or in new settlements which were often exclusively Indian, and such contact as they had with other races off the estates was usually temporary, such as visits to Port of Spain. In the towns, they tended to be roughly treated by Creoles. Casual abuse and ill-usage of Indian porters and domestics were commonplace; policemen would persecute them for trivial misdeeds; provocation of defenceless Indians was a kind of game for lower-class urban blacks. 51 On the plantations there was regular contact with white or coloured managers and overseers, but this was in a formal management-labour relationship. Interaction between Creole and Indian labourers was minimal; there was a tacit separation of the races. A planter explained: Somehow they do not come into contact with one another. There are certain works that the Negro will not do which are appropriated to the coolies. You do not generally find them working together in gangs. 52

Conflict between Indian and black estate labourers was not uncommon, but it was generally restricted to small-scale episodes, involving a few workers on a particular plantation. Two Indians were convicted of the murder of a black foreman on Macoya estate in 1870; a Creole driver of La Fortunee estate murdered an Indian labourer in 1878 after a dispute over tasks.53 An 1872 case, in which nine Indian workers of Jordan Hill estate were convicted of assault against three Creole labourers of the same estate, reinforced fears about the Indians' tendency to 'acts of national violence'.54 A serious riot on St Clair estate in 1879, between Indian and Creole labourers, had also caused anxiety.55 Despite these and similar incidents, there was no large-scale violence between the races during the indentureship period; and granted the numbers involved, the long time span, and the possibilities for conflict, one has to conclude that violent conflict between Indians and Creoles in nineteenth-century Trinidad was conspicuous by its rarity. They never came into headlong collision. Geographical and occupational separation, combined with mutual contempt and misunderstanding, kept the races apart. Until the early 1880s, Creoles and Indians were not competing for jobs or other scarce resources. The sugar estates continued to use Creole

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labour for factory jobs and for the heavier and more skilled field work. As cultivation expanded as a result of indentured immigration, the estate jobs preferred by the Creoles became easier to get. The general economic development of the 1850s to 1870s opened wider fields of employment to Creoles.56 After the 1870s, however, as more and more Indians were introduced while the sugar market was depressed, cultivation spread very slowly, and improved technology lessened the number of factory jobs, there is no doubt that the Indians caused unemployment and depressed wages. Further, Indians began to enter the jobs hitherto held mainly by Creoles. By the later years of the century, Creoles were well aware of the economic threat posed by the Indians, and a systematic critique of Indian immigration was developed by spokesmen for the coloured and black middle class. These spokesmen argued that immigration had unfortunate social effects on the community, causing severe strain on the colony's social services and demoralising the population. The moral degradation of slavery and slave-ownership was perpetuated. They built up a strong case that the general community was taxed for the sole benefit of the planters, and had to meet the indirect costs of immigration by paying for the courts, jails, and hospitals which the system required. Perhaps their most telling argument was that immigration allowed the planters to control the labour market and force down wages.57 Some critics of the system expressed fears of racial domination by the rapidly increasing Indian population. The Port of Spain Gazette claimed that Trinidad might soon cease to be a West Indian island, as Indians came to 'swamp' Creoles, 'so that the mistakes of Columbus will have been ethnologically rectified'. 58 Needless to say, the attack on the immigration system and its effects on the society and economy of Trinidad helped to reinforce hostile attitudes towards the Indians themselves. The result was that Indians tended to avoid contact with people of other races, particularly with the blacks. 'The two races do not, and it is to be feared never will amalgamate', wrote Charles Kingsley; and J. A. Froude echoed him: The African and the Asiatic will not mix. . .There is no jealousy, but. . .there is no friendship. The two races are more absolutely apart than the white and the black. 59

Indians preferred to remain within the protection of their own people rather than to interact with an often hostile host society. It was in the last thirty years of the nineteenth century that the Indians in Trinidad were transformed into a community with roots in the island, no longer essentially dependent on the continual introduction of immigrants. The overwhelming majority lived away from the estates by 1901, while only a small fraction (8.5 per cent) was still indentured. This growth

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and shift in the nature and composition of the Indian population lay behind the development of group-consciousness among them, while the wider society became aware of them as a community. Indians began to consider Trinidad as their homeland long before others recognised this fact; and Trinidad-born Indians often persuaded their India-born relatives to remain in the island.60 By the end of the century Trinidad Indians began to resent the use of 'coolie' and 'immigrant' to describe them. Early in 1888 an Indian wrote to the San Fernando Gazette criticising the use of 'Coolie' when applied to Indian cultivators, merchants, clerks and others; and in the following year its editor decided that Indians found the word offensive and suggested the use of 'Indian' instead. The Canadian Mission staff had abandoned 'Coolie' at an early date, and the 1896 Protector of Immigrants' Report was the first to use 'East Indian' consistently as a general term of reference.61 By the 1890s Indians had come to resent the term 'immigrant' when applied to people who had lived for at least ten years in the island. K. J. Grant said that educated Indians regarded the term as 'odious'. These changes in terminology, and the awakening resentment of the use of 'Coolie' or 'immigrant', symbolised the emergence of an Indian community identified as such by itself and by others. It was at this same time that a body of views expressing an 'Indian opinion' began to appear in the Trinidad press. Letter-writers using pseudonyms like 'Son of India' or 'Indo-Trinidadian' developed an image of the Indian community which contributed to a sense of group-consciousness. They rejected the low evaluation of Indian civilisation and pointed to the glories of India's past. In their view, Indians had contributed a great deal to the colony: they had kept the estates going and sustained agricultural development, they had opened up the country, they were tax-payers, proprietors and merchants; yet they were not justly rewarded. They were ill-treated in Trinidad, denied justice as British citizens, regarded as 'aliens' despite their valuable services. This sense of being a group which had done much for Trinidad, yet was deprived unfairly of its just deserts, was also expressed in the first Trinidad newspaper to be owned by an Indian, the Indian Kohinoor Gazette, with material in both Hindi and English, which began in 1898.62 The first formal Indian organisation in Trinidad was established in 1897-8, to organise a campaign of protest against Ordinance 12 of 1897, which contained several sections which infringed the rights of free Indians. This was the East Indian National Association, which outlived its original purpose, and its efforts after 1898 increased the self-awareness of the Indian community. And in 1897 a group of Indians submitted a memorandum to the West India Royal Commission, in which they requested, for the first time, direct representation by an Indian member in the

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Legislative Council. Although unsuccessful at the time, the request highlighted a growing political awareness; it indicated that Indians were beginning to consider themselves as an identifiable group with its own interests, different and separate from those of other groups, and with demands to be articulated.63 The last decades of the century saw the transformation of the Indians from gangs of immigrant labourers on the sugar estates to a community based on its own economic interests. By 1900 most Indians lived in villages and scattered settlements; peasant proprietorship was now more typical than estate residence. As they acquired a degree of economic independence and stability, the outlines of an Indian community emerged, with its own religious celebrations and festivals, an autonomous social organisation, and an awakening group-consciousness. The Indian presence immensely complicated the pattern of race relations in nineteenth-century Trinidad.

IO Racism and race relations: the divided society

Nineteenth-century West Indian society was pervaded by the racist ideology of local and metropolitan whites, an ideology created, as Donald Wood writes, by 'the whole intricate experience of the Afro-European encounter since the Renaissance, the stereotypes formed by slavery, the legacy of the master and servant relationship'. 1 The complex of prejudices and judgements which formed the white view of the 'negro character' during slavery, a mixture of affection and contempt, patronage and fear, was carried into the period of post-emancipation adjustment. Some of these ideas were modified by developments after 1838; others were to persist virtually unchanged all through the century. Furthermore, the second half of the nineteenth century saw a hardening of racist attitudes on the part of the educated British and European public, directed especially against Africans, and this inevitably helped to shape the views of Europeans and Creole whites in Trinidad. This was a period when British humanitarianism, so long a dominant influence on official circles, was becoming less sure of itself. The cause of the oppressed peoples of the world, including the ex-slaves and blacks in general, was unpopular with the British public after the 1850s. Blacks had their champions, but the defence was weakening; many overt defences of the African gave way to cultural or racial prejudice on almost every point short of the minimum claim of spiritual equality. 2 Victorian comments about Africans were often outspokenly derogatory. The 'proverbial indolence' of the black, as we have seen, was an integral part of nineteenthcentury British attitudes to race; the British public tended to contemplate blacks 'with mild amusement as irresponsible loafers in the sun'. 3 The distorted 'image of Africa' as a place of savagery, superstition, and vice was another element in nineteenth-century racism. The middle decades of the century were important years in the development of the concept of race. British and European intellectuals developed the idea of racial types as the most important method of classifying people; mankind was divided into permanently different biological types. These 193

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writers explained differences in physique, and unequal levels of material and cultural progress, by biological laws which determined the cultural advance or backwardness of each racial type. They often thought that each type was adapted to a given geographical region, but they also argued that there was a tremendous gulf between the different types and that some races, because of innate characteristics, could never advance as far as others. It was easy for these theorists to develop the idea of a hierarchy of racial types and the natural inequality of the races. Most of them thought that Caucasians, or Aryans, were at the top of the hierarchy, while * Negroes' were close to the bottom. James Hunt, influential founder of the Anthropological Society of London, thought that 'the Negro race can only be humanised and civilised by Europeans', for it was a naturally inferior race.4 In the last decades of the century the writings of various publicists of social Darwinism influenced European and American ideas about race. In particular, they argued that antagonism and struggle between the races were inevitable as the highly developed races spread at the expense of the backward ones; that this struggle for domination was the moving force of all history; and that the relationship between the races was a biologically determined conflict without which human progress was impossible. From this viewpoint, racial antagonism and prejudice had positive, evolutionary functions. An offshoot of social Darwinism was 'anthropo-sociology', a school which placed much emphasis on data from physical anthropology, especially the size and shape of heads and cranial measurements.5 These ideas occasionally found their way into the Trinidad press. An English editor concluded a discussion on racial types with the pronouncement: ' several writers assert (what we think may be observed) that the cultivated negro, without any admixture of blood, acquires something of the physiognomy of Europe'. 6 And an editorial in another paper assured its readers: it is an acknowledged fact that the animal organs of the African race are far more developed than their intellectual ones and that this constitutes one of the greatest barriers against their moral and social improvement. Negroes are more animal and low in their views, desires, and propensities than Europeans and other civilised races.7

We can only speculate on the reaction of the paper's non-white readers, for this editorial apparently provoked no indignant letters. The doctrines of racial type and social Darwinism, expounded in the second half of the century by theorists who claimed scientific status for them, helped to create a climate of opinion which was hostile to darkskinned peoples everywhere, and particularly to Africans. The more popular version of these 'scientific' doctrines stressed a crude negrophobia, reaching its most extreme expression in the notion that Africans were sub-

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human. The physical appearance of Africans, especially those of pure descent, was identified with primitive savagery in the European mind. A liberal Englishman wrote perceptively that the great thing against the African, and the real objection to him in the eyes of European races, is the fact that he is black, and in most cases, his features are of the Negroid type, and he has wool instead of hair.. .With Europeans the association of ideas leads all of them to deem this colour, these features, and this wool, to be signs of permanent inferiority.

He was echoed by a black West African lawyer, who wrote that the African was not despised because he was stupid, or immoral, or cruel, but because he is ugly, because his woolly pate is not so becoming as the flaxen hair of the Anglo-Saxon, because the flat nose of the Negro is more like the nasal organ of the ape than is the aquiline nose of the Aryan races, because blubber lips are not as pretty as thin ones, because a black complexion is displeasing compared with a fair or olive one. . .The features and colour of the Negro is [sic] the fons et origo of all his troubles.8

It was against this background that Europeans and Creole whites resident in Trinidad formed their variant of racism. But the views of outsiders who visited Trinidad and the West Indies, and of local whites, reveal a wide range of opinion. At one end of the spectrum, Carlyle's strident negrophobia was echoed by several European and American visitors in the later nineteenth century. The noted English novelist Anthony Trollope, we have already seen, dismissed West Indian blacks as indolent, docile, and brutish.9 J. A. Froude's book, The English in the West Indies, is imbued with the same spirit. Charles Kingsley, the novelist, who visited Trinidad in 1869-70, praised the fine physique of the blacks, but concluded that 'the Negro may have the corpus sanum without the mens sana\ He thought it necessary to point out to his readers that blacks were, after all, human beings.10 W. A. Paton, an American traveller writing in 1887, was thoroughly Froudian in tone. He thought that if Europeans withdrew entirely from the West Indies, the blacks would relapse into 'hordes of mild-mannered, indolent semi-savages'. The great mass of blacks were 'indolent, physically and mentally - ignorant beyond belief, unambitious, superstitious; in fact brutish'. 11 This view was echoed by the author of a guide book on Trinidad written in 1897. If Europeans left, 'hats and clothes will disappear also, and the natural man will reappear'; the tendency of Trinidad blacks was towards barbarism. 12 The historian of the Anglican Church in the West Indies devoted a whole chapter to the faults and virtues of the blacks; the former considerably outweighed the latter. The West Indian black was immoral, deceitful, unstable, capricious, dishonest, thieving, quarrelsome; on the credit side, he was abstemious, hard-working when fairly treated, cheerful, devoted

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to leaders or employers, and not given to serious crimes of violence. This author thought the Negro mind is of a compartmental order; it can hold in one part to religious profession, and in another to vicious practice, to an extent quite inordinate.. , 13 He was even harsher on the coloureds: 'inauspicious in the circumstances of their birth.. .physically weaker than the Negroes, and intellectually weaker than the whites'. 14 The condition of independent Haiti was seized on by Europeans to justify their racist assessment of the blacks' capacity to manage their affairs. Spencer St John wrote an influential book on Haiti, published in 1889, which helped to reinforce a pessimistic view of the blacks. St John agreed with Froude in protesting against representative governments for the British colonies: I know what the black man is, and I have no hesitation in declaring that he is incapable of the art of government, and that to entrust him with framing and working the laws for our islands is to condemn them to inevitable ruin. 15

His knowledge of Haiti had convinced him of the incapacity of the black man to manage his own affairs: As long as he is influenced by contact with the white man.. .he gets on very well. But place him free from all such influence, as in Hayti, and he shows no sign of improvement; on the contrary, he is gradually retrograding to the African tribal customs, and without exterior pressure will fall into the state of the inhabitants of the Congo. . .1 now agree with those who deny that the negro could ever originate a civilisation, and that with the best of educations he remains an inferior type of man. He has as yet shown himself totally unfitted for self-government and incapable as a people to make any progress whatever.16

H . H. Prichard, writing on Haiti around the turn of the century, saw nothing but sloth, disorder, cruelty, and economic stagnation.17 The blacks in the British West Indies were fortunately exposed to the influence and control of the higher races and thus escaped the excesses of the Haitians, but the general view was that they were ineffectual and exasperating people. The Royal Commission of 1897 judged the black to be fond of display, open handed, careless as to the future, ordinarily good humoured, but excitable and difficult to manage, especially in large numbers, when his temper is aroused.18

In a word, childlike. An attitude of exasperated amusement was taken by several writers. St John thought absurdity was 'inherent to the blacks'. 19 Eden Phillpotts, a well-known humorist who published a book on the West Indies in 1893, expressed the same view: Poor, happy, noisy, laughable, lazy, unreliable, exasperating sons and daughters of Africa! Not our own flesh and blood? So say the West Indians. But they seemed

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human enough to me.. .They lie and thieve and rob their employers, and carry off each other's wives, and love their babies; they laugh and cry; they are sick and sorry; and they put on their best things to go to church on Sundays. If they had higher intelligence and greater advantages, they would be just as human as we are. All the degraded instincts of humanity are there.20

'Whatever West Indians may declare to the contrary', wrote this popular author, I believe the average negro.. .will do more for a word than a blow, provided the word is spoken with a little consideration. Exasperating to the verge of madness Quashie undoubtedly is, but there are points of extremely interesting nature about him, and a man may easily learn things worth knowing from the study of his peculiar character.21

Thus the black man was sinister in Haiti, quaintly ridiculous in the British islands. An author writing at the turn of the century thought that the ' native' had his ludicrous side, especially he of the country villages, who on fete days may be seen arrayed in a chimney-pot hat, frock coat, white breeches, patent leather boots, and astride a jackass, en route to some local festival.22

St John had also ridiculed the 'dressed-up' black as grotesquely absurd. 23 All whites, Creole or expatriate, were irritated by the sight of uneducated blacks in fashionable European clothes; it was a time when clothes were still very much an index of status. The author of an important book on the West Indies published in 1901 wrote of the passionate nature of the negro and his lack of self control. Every friend of the negro.. .emphasised his principal want as being that of character.

Plantation labour was the only hope for the black, in view of his 'low mental development'. Like many other writers, he stressed that the withdrawal of resident whites would be most detrimental to the future prosperity of the West Indies, and more particularly to that of the Negroes themselves, who, as is admitted by their best friends, urgently require continued contact with a higher race. 24

All these writers whose views we have cited were outsiders, European (or American) authors who often spent little time in Trinidad or in the West Indies and whose ideas had probably been formed long before their visits to the Caribbean. They reflect the racist ideology of nineteenthcentury Britain. But the general body of stereotypes revealed by these authors was probably held by most Trinidad whites in the later part of the century. Spencer St John noted that there were still (in 1889) many West Indian whites who

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not only look upon the negro as of an inferior species - which he may be - but as fit only for servitude, and quite unworthy of freedom.. .They speak of a mulatto as they would of one affected with leprosy.25

In print, however, Trinidadian whites had to be somewhat more discreet than that. Yet Louis de Verteuil probably spoke for his class when he described West Indian blacks as vengeful, lacking in moral courage, irresponsible, casual in their attitude to sex and marriage, capricious as parents, lazy, excessively fond of display, vain, imprudent, extravagant, lacking in foresight. De Verteuil thought that slavery was chiefly to blame for these vices, but, writing in 1858, he judged that the ex-slaves had made little progress. Yet the African, though inconsistent and inconstant, is susceptible of improvement to an extent which, perhaps, has never been fairly tested; for he is.. .a being of pre-eminently religious feelings and.. .of quick intelligence.26

In the 1884 edition of his book, de Verteuil revised his opinion; he observed that the descendants of the slaves had, as a class, 'progressed most satisfactorily. . .the white Creoles should look to them as not unworthy antagonists in the field of competition'. 27 This was a generous admission from the influential leader of the French Creole community. Perhaps more typical were the views of J. H . Collens, an English teacher long resident in Trinidad. He listed among the characteristics of the blacks invincible laziness, outward devotion and piety combined with a superstitious belief in spirits and obeah, a love of ceremonies and display, sexual immorality, dishonesty, lack of thrift and ambition, and a tendency to steal. On the credit side were their politeness to and respect for social superiors, and their quickness to learn and to imitate. 28 Despite the prevailing racism of local whites, some white Creoles and resident Europeans were capable of more generous views. We have already noted Louis de VerteuiPs recognition of the progress made by black and coloured Trinidadians. John Chittenden, the English doctor of liberal views, was impressed with the ' rapid progress' of Creole blacks in Trinidad, which had brought about their altered relationship with what has hitherto been regarded as the Dominant Race; this progress is clearly shown by their accumulation of wealth, their great advancement in order, morality, culture and high social qualities, their great anxiety for education of their children, and amongst the peasantry marked outward semblances of civilisation.

Yet despite this testimony, Chittenden believed that the 'coloured races' would never develop qualities 'such as to form a nation' on their own; they would continue to look to Europe for political inspiration.29 Another liberal English resident whose judgements of the blacks was unusual was

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Robert Guppy, the prominent advocate of constitutional reform and opponent of Indian indentured immigration. He stated unequivocally that the black man (I speak of the unmixed African race and not of the intermediate class) is possessed of great independence of character, and of patience under privation. I believe that if treated as a European working man is treated, he makes a valuable labourer; but rather than submit to mal-treatment and injustice, he will undergo semi-starvation.30

Chittenden and Guppy were unusual in that they refused to adopt uncritically the prejudices and stereotypes which were part of the ideology of local whites. But it is reasonable to assume that most metropolitan whites entering the society did conform, despite any good intentions they might have had. A deep-rooted conviction that the African was innately inferior was part of the ideology of the great majority of whites in nineteenthcentury Trinidad, Creole or metropolitan. It was against the background of this racism - ideological and institutional - that people of different ethnic groups in Trinidad interacted. It is difficult to describe and analyse the pattern of race relations in a contemporary society; it is far more difficult when the actors are long dead. People of many different ethnic origins and colour combinations were involved, and, of course, the pattern of relationships was constantly changing. Creole whites, in contact with blacks since infancy, were made aware from a very early age of the complexities of race and colour; they knew 'instinctively' how to deal with lower-class blacks, and, in fact, with all non-whites. As Donald Wood notes, they set the tone which would be adopted by Europeans coming into the society: the Creole's advantage was that he had been born into a colour-conscious milieu; and where questions of colour were concerned, he was sure that he knew how to behave and that he could teach the uncertain newcomer.31

Perhaps the clearest insight into race relations in nineteenth-century Trinidad may be derived from the local papers. Editorials, letters and articles on race and colour questions reflect the concerns, the grievances, and the attitudes of articulate Trinidadians of this period, with an immediacy which is unaffected by twentieth-century preoccupations and prejudices. Whenever questions of colour and race were discussed in the press, correspondents and editors divided into two camps. There were those who argued that it was important to bring into the open the existence of race feeling and discrimination, in order to destroy it; they were nearly always coloured or black. And there were those, often but not exclusively white, who argued that to discuss race questions was to fan the fires of ill-feeling and that the best policy was simply to ignore them. H. J. Clark, a liberal white official, thought that the experience of slavery 'is one which, I feel

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sure, every right-thinking man in the community, to whatever race he may belong, would gladly see buried in complete oblivion'. 32 By contrast we have already noted that black and coloured radicals were anxious to revive memories of past wrongs to the African race, and that this was an important element in the growth of race pride. 33 Yet Clark's view was shared by many educated blacks. Samuel Carter of the San Fernando Gazette, for instance, criticised the reprinting of J. B. Philip's A Free Mulatto because he believed it would simply revive disturbing memories in a society already too sensitive on questions of race and colour. 34 Some whites affected to be entirely free of all vulgar prejudices. The English editor of the Star of the West complacently assured his readers that our pages will testify that we at least have no prejudice in this matter, and that provided a man's conduct is what it ought to be, we care very little for questions of race or extraction.. .There are polished and learned, honest and honourable black men, as well as brutish whites.35

This line was, of course, taken by whites in order to avoid bringing the subject into the open. The division between those who wished for public discussion of race questions and those who wished to ignore them was clearly illustrated in a newspaper correspondence in 1893. E. Scipio-Pollard, a coloured lawyer, had accused the Principal of St Mary's College of trying to exclude black boys.'Trinidadian' rebuked him for raising the issue: Prejudices, unfortunately, prevail in the Colony, and those prejudices, whatever their origins, are not confined to one class.. .1 consider it the patriotic duty of all. .. to endeavour to soothe down, if not to eradicate the baneful evil in the true interests of society.. .1 will never consider as friends of the country, those who willingly or unconsciously fan the fire.

Pollard replied 'my method has been to trample underfoot these ignoble prejudices, whenever they have obtruded themselves upon my unwilling notice - not to stoop to "soothe" or even to "eradicate" them'. Here were the two opposing viewpoints, concisely stated. At this point L. M. Fraser, the historian, entered the correspondence with an interesting letter: A residence of nearly forty years in the Colony and an intimate acquaintance with its history has taught me that this unfortunate question of colour, criminal in its origin and absolutely ridiculous in our days, has been the bane.. .of this Island. .. Let it be frankly admitted at once, the wrongs, the absolutely unpardonable wrongs which the Africans in the first place, and then the people of colour, suffered for long and weary years, all lie at the doors of the white race. I know that I am on dangerous and delicate ground, that.. .1 run the risk of wounding the susceptibilities of a highly sensitive race, but I do so in their own interests. . .There is but one way of ridding the Colony of this incubus which prevents union and good fellowship and consequently progress. The question of colour should by mutual consent be dropped.. .Those who have the most to forget and forgive have undoubtedly the

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hardest task but they have also the most to gain. Let them therefore set the example of abstaining from all allusions to a period and a state of things full of painful reminiscences for one section of the community and of remorseful regrets for the other, and their example will soon be followed, and we shall then hear no more of this detestable question.86

What Fraser was saying here was that if people stopped talking about colour questions, they would disappear. It was not a viewpoint which appealed to the more race-conscious among the educated black and coloured middle class. Most, but not all, of those who wrote on colour questions put the blame for discrimination and prejudice on the whites, and usually on a small group of whites. One editor thought that most Europeans coming to Trinidad imbibed colour prejudices through indoctrination soon after their arrival. The 'pure white* Creoles, and the Europeans who had been long resident in the island, viewed the whole subject with contempt. So did the respectable and educated coloured families. The mischief makers, the editor felt, fell into two categories. First, there were 'adventurers' from Britain who carried on a whispering campaign against blacks. Secondly, a few people of mixed ancestry, who were ashamed of their African origin and were obsessed with the idea of 'passing' as white, did all they could to discredit blacks in order to 'prove' their own whiteness. These two sets of people, though few in numbers, had succeded in disturbing social life.87 New Era, in a long editorial on the establishment of the exclusive 'whites only' Trinidad Club, analysed the pattern of race relations. In Trinidad, colour was the main basis for a man's position in society: Wealth, of course, can purchase admission and even toleration for that son of the soil.. .who boasts of an origin having Africa for, at least, one point of reference, but it requires the genuine European birth to ensure the grip of true fraternity.

No doubt all white Creoles would be admitted, but unless British, 'or so immensely rich as to have the absence of this speciality nicely gilded over', it would be only a second rate acceptance. The editor had grasped the complex relationship between wealth, colour, and class. He went on to ask why coloureds and blacks in Trinidad were without their own club, and he answered that the obstacle to our self-preservation, as a section of the community, is that want of unity which leaves each of us to fight out, single-handed, the battle of social emancipation, while every adventurer from Europe, however worthless, and illiterate, can dare.. .to be contemptuous towards the worthiest son of the soil.38

The arguments put forward in this editorial are still made in letters to the press today, just over a hundred years later. Joseph Lewis, editor of New Era, was a man whose ponderous style

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could not obscure an acute analytical mind and a shrewd grasp of the West Indian 'social problem'. He wrote that the salient feature of Trinidad's social history was the antagonism between blacks and whites. It began during slavery and had persisted since: Forgiving, even if they are unable to forget the past, the coloured population of the West Indies have striven to work out, side by side, the social problem.. .They have striven on, and the result has been that a struggle which at first was one for the merest recognition of human rights, has through perseverance, become a rivalry for power and social and intellectual distinction.

The dominant whites saw this rivalry as a direct threat to their scheme for the society, in which blacks were supposed to do 'their duty in that state of life to which it has pleased God to call them': in other words, manual labour for white employers. They tried to bar them from further progress by limiting their educational opportunities: But let it be at once understood, the coloured man will die rather than return. We believe that we have spoken very plainly - too plainly perhaps for the sensitiveness of some - but faithful exponents of the people we represent, we do not wish to be misunderstood by anyone.. .We are drifting, day by day, near to the point where the two classes must understand each other and it may be as well that the explanation begin at once.39

Lewis interpreted race relations as essentially a struggle for power between two opposing classes. But many Trinidadians saw that race prejudices were not the monopoly of any group. It was not, said J. J. Thomas, a matter of oppressing whites and oppressed blacks; race prejudice and discrimination were practised by all the sectors, and the coloured and black middle class was the most shade conscious of them all.40 The equation of whiteness with superiority had been thoroughly internalised by many educated coloureds and blacks, and the consequences of this indoctrination were easily noticed. There were those self-styled whites who desperately tried to conceal their 'Negro blood'. According to Edgar Maresse-Smith, Philip Rostant was one of these: Mr. Rostant, in defiance of his crisped hair and the copper colour of his skin, has elected to be a white man. This would be harmless folly if Mr. Rostant would persuade himself of his bequeism and allow others to think as they please. But he feels that he dupes no-one and therefore falls into convulsions as soon as the word 'African' is pronounced.. .for fear that a hyphen will be placed between himself and the detestable African race.41

Maresse-Smith and Rostant were political enemies, and the accusation may have been entirely untrue. But the letter describes what was probably a well-known phenomenon. The widespread acceptance of white superiority led to an exaggerated

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anxiety to associate and identify with whites. One writer thought that much of the abuse and arrogance which blacks suffered from whites was due to just that anxiety. Were we less anxious to associate with them; could we feel as much honour in being seen with friends of our own class in public as with them; were we less ambitious to select our friends and partners in life from that very class;.. .we would most assuredly have less of that arrogance.. .The tendency to believe them a higher order of creation than ourselves.. .is one of the many baneful influences of slavery, countenanced and encouraged by those whose interest it is to do so.

The black man must be made to see that he was not inferior to the white, that he was not ordained to be a manual labourer forever, and that the race was never meant to be perpetually a 'subject race'. When he accepted these precepts, there would be an end to 'this skin question 5.42 The institutional aspect of racism was manifested in discrimination against non-whites in business, the civil service, the churches and schools, the courts, and social life in general. We have already noted the reaction of the educated black and coloured middle class to such discrimination. From time to time, 'incidents' took place which were caused, in the view of the aggrieved party at least, by race or colour prejudices. Some became celebrated; most remained obscure affairs. Yet a Governor felt it important enough to inform the Secretary of State of a minor fracas between a white store-owner and his coloured employee; the use of the word 'nigger' had led to a fight in the store.43 The Colonial Office was also informed of the resignation of the second master of Queen's Royal College because of a 'question of colour'. The English master had been accused of beating a coloured boy, the son of a respectable businessman, and of telling Charles Warner's son not to play with coloured boys at the school. Though he had been exonerated, he nevertheless resigned because the case had been widely publicised.44 A black artisan from Belmont wrote to New Era in 1873 to complain of discrimination against him in the courts. He had been shot and wounded by three 'young gentlemen' whose Sunday pastime it was to shoot at passers-by to frighten them. One of them had told his victim, 'Go along with you, that is nothing for a negro, it is only small shot.' The magistrate dismissed the case against the offenders on the grounds that 'it would be a pity' to send the young men to jail. The writer complained that just before, two men of his own race had been sentenced to three months' hard labour for merely discharging a gun on the road over four miles from town. They, of course, were not 'of the privileged few'. The editor commented that the incident was 'another sad illustration of the anomalies of justice in Trinidad, which today is rather between class and class than between man and man'. 45 In San Fernando, a group of white managers and overseers was charged for furious driving; one of them

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called the policeman who arrested him 'a damned negro'. The editor of the San Fernando Gazette commented: 'it is in fact the worthlessness of a negro's life that renders it in the minds of these men immaterial to what amount of risk the general public is exposed', and he criticised 'the frequent lessons of forbearance towards a certain class [whites] which the negro police is taught by his preceptor', meaning the white NCOs and officers. In this case the whites were fined; probably the first time, commented the editor, that they were made aware that in the eyes of the law, white and black had equal rights. 46 Such reports as these make it clear that by the late nineteenth century, whites in Trinidad were obliged to modify their crudely racist opinions and practices; for there were articulate coloured and black spokesmen prepared to attack cases of racial discrimination and to defend non-whites' rights to legal equality at the minimum. The college master was forced to resign, the San Fernando managers and overseers were arrested by a black policeman and fined. No doubt crudely racist actions by local whites became less frequent, and they did not commit to print the extreme views of outsiders like Trollope or Froude. Discretion, a somewhat lower profile, were in order; but the ideology of white superiority was certainly not abandoned in this period, for to do so would have meant the abandonment of pride in blood and in caste. As we noted in the preceding chapter, the Indians were considered to be outside Creole society, despite their large numbers. Race relations in nineteenth-century Caribbean societies were essentially the relations of whites, coloureds, and blacks. Some scholars, particularly Hoetink, believe that there is an important difference in race relations between the 'Iberian' and the 'North European' Caribbean: between the Spanish and the British, French and Dutch islands. The crucial distinction has to do with marriage, for, as Hoetink notes, 'the dominant characteristic of a multiracial society is the concentration of race or colour prejudices around marriage'. 47 He thinks that in the Iberian societies marriages between whites and light-skinned coloureds have been, and are, more frequent and more acceptable, than in the North European societies. Nineteenth-century Trinidad is difficult to fit into this scheme. The governing power was, of course, 'North European'; and the superstructure of government, law, and education derived from Britain. But there was an important elite group which cherished ideas and values which were Latin and French rather than Anglo-Saxon. White Creoles of French and Spanish descent outnumbered the English Creoles and British residents, and were almost certainly more influential in setting the tone of the society. Although Britain had attempted to anglicise the people and the institutions of Trinidad for nearly a century - and intensively since 1838 - her success had been partial at best. The Catholic faith, the use of

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French, patois, and Spanish, the French-oriented Creole cultural complex, were still strong. But the 'foreign' Creoles looked to France rather than to Spain, so that we can hardly classify the society as 'Iberian'. We might think of Trinidad in the nineteenth century as a French Caribbean society with a British-derived superstructure; and a critic of Hoetink has noted that the French West Indies are difficult to classify as 'North European' societies.48 Whether North European or Iberian, or both, marriage between an upper-class white and any person known or believed to have African ancestors would have been extremely difficult and highly unusual in nineteenth-century Trinidad. Perhaps lightness of complexion was less important than public knowledge of a non-white ancestor. Thus, for example, a newspaper article observed of two well-known Trinidadians: 'the late Mr. Agostini was not fairer than Mr. Fitzjames, and yet he was far from considering himself a coloured man'. 49 Agostini was of Corsican descent, the product of centuries of race mixture in the Mediterranean region; but as a member of a distinguished 'French Creole' family, he was unquestionably white, whatever his somatic image. Fitzjames, with known African ancestry, was coloured. My researches have revealed only one definite case of marriage between a white Creole and a coloured woman in the second half of the century, involving the radical journalist Philip Rostant, something of a maverick figure.50 One does note, however, the beginning of what became a very common pattern: the coloured or black professional who studied abroad and married a British (or European, or North American) woman. M. M. Philip married an Englishwoman in the 1850s; one can only speculate how this marriage was accepted in Trinidad society. Creole whites, or Europeans living in Trinidad, could not marry people of non-white ancestry. Marriages between coloureds and blacks were probably not common, but they certainly occurred, for the line between them was far less rigid than the line separating whites from all non-whites. It is clear that Trinidad in the later nineteenth century was a segmented society, a society in which there were several sectors, whose members interacted at certain levels and in certain activities, but were conscious of belonging to definite and separate groups. The lines of demarcation between the sectors, as we have seen, were lines of race, religion, nationality, and class. Contemporaries were well aware of the situation, and many articulate Trinidadians lamented the divisions in the society. Arthur Gordon's analysis of the island he governed convinced him that composed as the population is, of men of many various descendant nationalities and hostile religions, it would be difficult to find or invent, a pretext which would suffice to unite the different fractions into which it is broken up; 51

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and this analysis was shared by most thoughtful commentators. An English editor long resident in the island complained that political, religious and national divergences, prejudices of clique and professional jealousies, so often run into personal antipathy and other madness under a tropical sun, that anything which involves combination is most difficult to carry out in these islands.52

New Era complained of a lack of patriotism, and a 'pervasive selfishness. . .Our social position is as unsound as it is exclusive, and, therefore, pernicious.' Social and religious differences had produced a situation where 'with a few honourable exceptions, the deep feeling evidently is, those of our coterie are entitled to our sympathy; those who are not, have no claim on us'. 53 The Port of Spain Gazette wrote of miserable, unmeaning and petty social divisions in our community.. .Every day there is a new birth given to some fresh faction of society.. .Each little clique, called into some existence by some real or imaginary social affront, takes care to consecrate a day to vengeance. This disgraceful social condition of things in Trinidad is without parallel in any other colony.54

Another editor believed that one of the most deplorable results of the heterogeneous constitution of Trinidad society is the instinctive avoidance of each other by its various constituent elements. This.. .is a natural consequence of an unnatural state of things: class feelings, national jealousies or antipathies, grafted on social pretensions on one side, and the natural pride of conscious worth on the other.55

A letter in 1879 described the society as divided into 'several hostile camps, hating or despising each other with an intensity which bursts forth on the most trifling occasions'. There were the groundless pretensions of the English element, the pseudo-aristocracy of the country; the rather exaggerated susceptibility of the Creoles of French descent. . .who, feeling themselves fully as loyal, and as a rule, superior in birth, in education, in manners, and in general moral worth, resent the conduct of those who affect to look down on them; the regrettable policy of isolation adopted by many of our most numerous and highly respectable coloured families...

On the other hand, the editor of this paper thought that social antipathies were not found in the commercial world: Commercially, our merchants and tradesmen.. .have always been on the best of terms, while the distance between the social barriers has always been scrupulously observed.56

The sectors met 'in the market place'; but in private life and in social relationships they operated as self-contained entities. What, then, held this society together? What common institutions and values existed? There was, in the first place, the fact of metropolitan control through the Crown Colony system. Everyone in Trinidad, whatever his race, class,

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or colour, was affected by this fact. The colonial government, the law and the courts, the machinery of enforcement and punishment, operated over the whole society. Secondly, most people accepted the white elite as the legitimate upper class. L. E. S. Braithwaite, among others, thinks that a common acceptance of an upper class is one of the most important factors in holding together a fragmented society.57 Thirdly, the economic system the market place - included most of the population. Relatively few peasants, hunters and backwoodsmen, living in the deep forest, were outside the market economy. Fourthly, the dominant group attempted (with some success) to impose its own religious, social, and cultural norms on the whole society. A number of writers on the Caribbean have used the term 'Creole society' to describe this kind of social system. R. T. Smith characterises Creole society in this way: it was rooted in the political and economic dominance of the metropolitan power, it was colour stratified, and was integrated around the conception of the moral and cultural superiority of things English.58

He goes on to consider the means by which it was held together and stabilised. Force was certainly an element, for the police, the troops, and the warships of the Imperial power could be called on to defend the structure of the society in any crisis. But it was never the only element. There was a conscious attempt by the dominant group to create an ideology for the whole society. This ideology involved the importance of Christianity, of education, respect for the law, 'good' as opposed to 'rough' or 'bad' behaviour, the need for moral upliftment, and the importance of using proper language; all factors which emphasised not only the de facto power of the Europeans, but also the superiority of English culture.59

These were the norms of the dominant culture which the upper and middle classes sought to impose on the whole population. But at the same time, the racial differences were stressed. The values for the whole society were European, or 'white', and so total conformity was impossible for non-whites. Everyone could, and should, aspire to European culture. But only whites, perhaps only English whites, could truly achieve it. Thus the value system performed two functions: it helped to hold society together by providing common aspirations and values; and it ensured the continued dominance of the whites. The whites attempted to impose on the whole population their selfserving colour hierarchy, by which whiteness was equated with superiority, blackness with inferiority. We have already examined the reaction of the educated coloured and black middle class, and of the black masses, and we can only conclude that both sections resisted the equation with considerable success. Many educated blacks, many illiterate labourers and

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peasants, rejected the notion of black inferiority and constantly affirmed their identity. The whites also tried, as Smith has argued, to impose European cultural forms. While the middle class enthusiastically adopted these forms, the Creole (and Indian) masses resisted. Despite their acceptance of many European cultural and religious practices, they successfully defended their own culture and lifestyle in the face of determined and powerful opposition from the ruling class. In this way they could form a syncretic culture, distinct and different from the European and the African traditions. In Trinidad, therefore, the attempt by the dominant whites to impose the notion of black inferiority, and European cultural forms, on the whole population met with very limited success. Nevertheless, there was a tendency for a 'Creole identity' to emerge, which was common to the whites and the educated blacks and coloureds. Hoetink has pointed out that the first stage in this process is for the local whites to develop a cultural identity vis-a-vis the metropolitan country and its representatives; the second stage involves the growth of a cultural, even national identity which affects non-white groups.60 There is evidence that a 'Creole identity' shared by local whites and educated coloureds and blacks was emerging in Trinidad; a Creole solidarity in opposition both to the British representatives and to the Asiatic immigrants. This is why white editors and writers sometimes came to the defence of black or coloured West Indians when Englishmen cast aspersions on them. 61 It reflected the solidarity of educated Creoles against metropolitan criticism. J. J. Thomas argued that educated and respectable Creoles of all colours shared a common love for their country and a common sense of identity. These were the people he called the 'colonists', who had the capacity and the right (in Thomas' view) to participate in the government of the colony.62 The same idea was expressed in an optimistic editorial at the end of the century: The descendants of the old French and Spanish families, whether they have preserved their distinctive idiosyncracies by intermarriages among themselves, or have formed a distinct race by the intermingling of African blood, as well as those who form that portion of intelligent blacks who have of late come to the front, are now known and designated as Creoles. These different sections of the native population are now so well linked to each other by intermarriage and daily intercourse that they form a compact body.63

Although it is clear that the educated blacks and coloureds did participate in a sense of Creole solidarity along with the local whites, the editorial just quoted was quite out of touch with the reality of race and colour barriers. The development of an inclusive Creole identity was impeded by white mistrust of coloureds and blacks. 64 When the white elite was exclusive and endogamous, mistrustful of the non-white population groups, it was difficult for the sense of Creole solidarity vis-a-vis

The divided society

209

the metropolitan country to develop into a broader, inclusive national identity. The rigid stratification system hindered this process. For Creole society depended on social stratification, on class and on caste lines. It was a caste line which separated the white upper class from all other groups. A person known to have African ancestors could not be accepted into the white upper class, however wealthy or educated he was, however light his complexion, however important the position he occupied. On the other hand the line between the black masses and the nonwhite middle class was a class line rather than a caste line. A lower-class black could, through education or economic success, move into the middle class. Certainly mobility was extremely limited. But it did exist, mainly in the form of children of * respectable' working men moving through education into the middle class, and becoming teachers, clerks, civil servants, journalists and the like. Strictly speaking, the only truly caste-like group in late nineteenthcentury Trinidad (excluding the Asian population) was the white elite. It depended on a complex ideology, which involved racial fears and hostilities, an obsession with 'purity of blood', and an exaggerated deference to birth, breeding, and family connections. But if the white elite was the only caste-like group, the caste principle operated throughout the society, assigning status primarily in terms of birth, enforcing endogamy to a great extent, limiting social contacts between groups, and restricting certain occupations to the 'right' people. Race and caste divided the society; but there were also class lines. We cannot hope to understand the pattern of race relations unless we consider the broad class divisions in nineteenth-century Trinidad society. Caste, race, colour, and class: they formed an intricate whole. There seem to be three important indices by which a family's class may be determined. There is usually a hierarchy of values in the society in terms of which families may be judged and ranked. In Trinidad, the belief in the superiority of whiteness and of European culture determined the upper-class position of the white Creole families; so did the values based on the historical factors of slave ownership, plantation ownership, and the patriarchal master-servant tradition. Secondly, a class tends to express its values in a more or less comprehensive and integrated style of life. The white elite, and the coloured and black middle class, practised a broadly similar life-style. They both modelled their life-styles on the European upper and middle classes and subscribed to their cultural and social values. The white elite, being the wealthier group, could probably afford more of the material trappings of such a life-style. The black masses, on the other hand, lived in a cultural world very different from the whites and the educated blacks and coloureds; their social and cultural forms were quite distinct, their values markedly different.

210

Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

The third index of class may be actual or potential social intercourse of a type which symbolises mutual acceptance as social equals. Marriage in the sociological sense is the clearest example of such intercourse, and endogamy is characteristic of a class, though there are usually many exceptions. Intimate family visiting is another example of social interaction symbolising equality. Intimate social interaction by white upperclass persons was almost exclusively within the group, and, as we saw, this sector practised a rigid endogamy. There were indeed intimate relationships between upper-class whites and lower-class blacks - black mistresses, black domestics - but they were relationships in which social inequality was carefully preserved. Intimate social interaction between upper-class whites and educated blacks or coloureds seems to have been very rare. Educated blacks did not become domestic servants, and few ' respectable' middle-class coloured or black girls would become mistresses to white men. Members of the coloured and black middle class would certainly have interacted with lower-class blacks. Some of them, especially the self-made men who had attained status through education, would have had parents and other relatives in the lower class. It is hardly reasonable to assume that blacks who 'made it' cut all their ties with their lower-class relatives. The point is that intimate relationships do not necessarily imply equality. As far as marriage was concerned, however, it would have been unusual for a middle-class coloured or black person to marry an uneducated lowerclass black. The middle class was broadly endogamous, though certainly there must have been many exceptions. And their intimate social intercourse took place mainly within the group; they were banned from white society, and their education and life style would have made social interaction with lower-class blacks outside their own families distasteful to them. It is clear that class - regardless of the added dimension of race and colour - pervaded the society. This was a time when everyone had his place and was expected to stay in it. Nothing irritated the upper groups so much as lower-class persons aspiring to things 'above their station in life'. L. M. Fraser expressed the idea succinctly when he complained that people with a smattering of schooling thought themselves above their position and 'rendered themselves daily ridiculous by aping the dress and manners of their social superiors'. The remedy was a sound system of education based on ' the good, if old fashioned notion, that everyone, high or low, rich or poor, should be taught first his duty towards God'. 65 The Superintendent of the Royal Botanic Gardens said that it was difficult to persuade young men to train in agricultural science, for there are no means to separate them from the ordinary labourers. . .To call a man a 'gardener' here is to at once class him with the Portuguese jobber, who is

The divided society

211

of a low type. There is much in a name, especially in a mixed community like ours, where the people are super-sensitive to social standing.66

The Portuguese jobber was, of course, white. Here it was class prejudice, not race, at work. Many incidents could be cited to illustrate the pervasiveness of class feeling, and the way it operated at all levels in the society. A naive policeman caused laughter in court when he testified that he had seen a lady and gentleman behaving indecently on a public seat in the Botanic Gardens and had asked them to move on. 'It was not my duty to have arrested the lady and gentleman; I would have done so if they had been common people, but as they were respectable I gave them a chance.' 67 Were they white? Or did the policeman know they were 'a lady and a gentleman' by their clothes or their speech? Similarly, in 1878 a mildly sensational trial for arson resulted in the conviction of the accused, a member of a well-known Creole family. The Chronicle, welcoming the conviction, said that people had feared that the class position, charming manners, and general respectability of the accused would have protected him: Trinidad juries. . .have been accused, and not without cause, of carrying into the jury box.. .the class feelings and prejudices which make a just decision difficult.68

The accused may have been white or coloured; none of the reports indicate which he was; what is stressed is his 'class position' and his 'respectability'. Respectability was a crucial concept in nineteenth-century Trinidad. 69 In many ways the true gulf in the society was between those who were respectable and those who were not, rather than between whites and nonwhites. Whites were by definition respectable. A white person, excluding the Portuguese who were not 'sociologically white' in this period, would have had to do something very shocking to lose his respectable status. With non-whites, on the other hand, and notably with blacks and East Indians, the onus was on them to prove their respectability. It was assumed that they were not respectable, unless they showed that they were by their education, attainments, occupation, and style of life. This is essentially what marked off the coloured and black middle class from the Creole masses; not wealth, not lightness of skin, but 'respectability', proved by a certain life-style and especially by command of European culture and 'manners'. The meaning, and the significance, of respectability are well illustrated in an 1872 court case. A young Scottish merchant had seized a policeman's baton to prevent him from beating a drunkard; he had been convicted of assaulting a policeman in the execution of his duty and sentenced to seven days' hard labour; he appealed against the conviction. Charles Warner, for the appellant, said, 'Mr. Gordon was a young man very widely and

212

Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

well known in this community and equally respected. He was of a particularly quiet and gentlemanly disposition.' A battery of witnesses testified as to his good character (they were not eye-witnesses of the incident), all 'members of some of the most respectable families in the Colony', including such well known Creole families as the Pantins, Ganteaumes, Wehekinds, Andres, Zurchers, and Bernards. The Chief Justice's decision, quashing the conviction, was greeted with applause from the 'large and respectable assembly' in the public gallery. The Chief Justice said the court could not believe the evidence for the respondent, while they entirely believed the highly respectable body of evidence which had been advanced on the part of the appellant.70

In this case, respectability seems to have been the important factor in the court's decision. The Chief Justice gave no reason for preferring the evidence of the 'highly respectable' witnesses for Gordon to the evidence of the black policeman. It was obvious to him, to the appellant, to the witnesses, and to the public attending, that the evidence of respectable persons, because of their respectability, was more credit-worthy than the evidence of a lower-class policeman. Class, colour, caste and race combined to create an immensely complex pattern of human relationships in late nineteenth-century Trinidad. Some of the more subtle instances of the operation of class and colour prejudices can only be guessed at from this distance of time. Concrete instances of discrimination, or of what people at the time were convinced was discrimination, can be cited to show the operation of race prejudice. We cannot hope to arrive at a clear-cut or definite picture of race relations in the Trinidad of a century ago; it would be difficult enough to achieve such a picture for contemporary Trinidad. But we have been able to use different types of source materials to suggest what Trinidadians in this period thought about race, and class, and colour, and to indicate how these attitudes affected their relationships with other Trinidadians. Our study points both backwards and forwards. It points back to the slavery period, when race relations were, in one sense, so much simpler. Trinidadians in 1870 were only one generation removed from emancipation, and the fears, hostilities, and prejudices generated by the peculiar institution and its abolition were living issues. It points forward to the twentieth century. The coloured and black middle class was to emerge, reinforced with Indo-Trinidadians, as the group which held the key to the island's political future, the group which produced the people who led Trinidad to self-government. And, later still, in the 1930s, the despised and exploited masses, of African and Indian origin, emerged on to the political stage. The story is a continuing one: the evolution of a national society.

Abbreviations

GENERAL

CO CP OAG POS RFC UWI WIRC

Colonial Office Council Paper Officer Administering the Government (of Trinidad) Port of Spain Royal Franchise Commission, 1888 {Report and Evidence published 1 University of the West Indies West India Royal Commission, 1897 TRINIDAD NEWSPAPERS

Chron DN Echo FP NE Ob Pall PO POSG SFG SW Tel TN TRG TT

Trinidad Chronicle Daily News Echo of Trinidad Fair Play New Era Observer Trinidad Palladium Public Opinion Port of Spain Gazette San Fernando Gazette Star of the West Telegraph Trinidad News Trinidad Royal Gazette Trinidad Times PERIODICALS

ASA WIB CQ CS ]CH JEH SES

African Studies Association of the West Indies Bulletin Caribbean Quarterly Caribbean Studies Journal of Caribbean History Journal of Economic History Social and Economic Studies

213

Notes

CHAPTER

I

INTRODUCTION

1 M. G. Smith, The Plural Society in the British West Indies (Berkeley, 1965),

P- 3°72 E. Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica iyyo-1820 (Oxford, 1971), p. xiii. 3 c£. Smith, pp. 8, 310; and D. Wood, Trinidad in Transition (Oxford, 1968), p. 303. 4 See Chapter 9. 5 cf. Smith, pp. 14-15, 67-8. 6 J. Millette, The Genesis of Crown Colony Government (POS, 1970), p. 105. 7 Wood, p. 44. 8 ibid. 9 Wood, p. 65. 10 Wood, pp. 74, 80. Slightly different figures are given by J. Asiegu, Slavery (London, 1969), Appendix vi. He and the Politics of Liberation IJ8J-I86I estimates that between 1841 and 1861 a total of 8,385 Africans came from Sierra Leone, St Helena, Rio, and Havana. 11 POSG 22.2.1879: Letter from 'Pax'. CHAPTER 2

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

THE ENVIRONMENT

Censuses for 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891. See Returns of 1901 Census, Table A. Chron 16.5.1871. NE 6.6.1881, 18.7.1881. POSG 2.6.1891. A. A. Burkett, Trinidad, a Jewel of the West (London, 1914), pp. 3-5. S. E. Morton, John Morton of Trinidad (Toronto, 1916), p. 35. C. Kingsley, At Last, a Christmas in the West Indies (London, 1889), p. 16. J. N. Brierly, Trinidad Then and Now (POS, 1912), p. 184. D. Wood, Trinidad in Transition (Oxford, 1968), p. 24. NE 29.4.1872. L. O. Innis, Reminiscences of Old Trinidad (POS, 1932), p. 3. B. Mathews, Crisis in the West Indian Family (Kingston, 1953), p. 96. Wood, p. 269. See also J. K. Chapman, The Career of A. H. Gordon, First Lord Stan more, 1829-1912 (Toronto, 1964), pp. 91-2. A. E. Aspinall, The British West Indies (London, 1912), pp. 333-5. Wood, pp. 27-8. Morton, pp. 316, 417. Annual Register (Trinidad) for 1875, p. 99. For more detail on the Crown lands, see B. M. Brereton, *A Social History of Trinidad 1870-1900* (Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, UWI, 1972), fos. 37-44. 214

Notes to pp. 16-23

215

17 Kingsley, p. 378. J. H. Collens, A Guide to Trinidad (London, 1888), p. 18. 18 POSG 28.1.1878: Extract from London Standard 25.12.18yy. C. P. Bruce, The Broadstone of Empire (London, 1910), vol. 1, p. 309. 19 See Ch. 3, pp. 47-9. 20 See R. A. Lobdell, * Patterns of Investment and Sources of Credit in the British West Indian Sugar Industry 1838-1897*, in JCH, 4 (May 1972), pp. 42-3, 48-9. 21 Annual Register for 1895. 22 CO 295/262 Longden to Kimberley 1.6.1872 No. 119. 295/267 Longden to Kimberley 9.6.1873 No. 103. 23 E. B. Underhill, The West Indies (London, 1862), p. 64. W. H. Gamble, Trinidad, Historical and Descriptive (London, 1866), pp. 68-9. 24 Chron 13.11.1878. 25 W. A. Green, British Slave Emancipation (Oxford, 1976), pp. 52-3. 26 R. W. Beachey, The British West Indian Sugar Industry in the late 19th Century (Oxford, 1957), p. 87. 27 ibid., pp. 142-65. 28 CO 295/302 OAG Bushe to Derby 6.6.1884 No. 138. ibid., 7.6.1884 No. 140. 295/303 Bushe to Derby 27.10.1884 No. 263. 29 CO 295/303 Derby to OAG Bushe 26.11.1884 No. 253. 30 CO 295/366 OAG Knollys to Chamberlain 30.10.1895 No. 417. 31 CO 295/366 Broome to Chamberlain 7.11.1895 No. 423. 32 See Beachey, pp. 142-65. 33 C. Y. Shepherd, The Cacao Industry in Trinidad (POS, 1932), part 4. 34 For more on cocoa, see Chapters 3 and 7. 35 CO 295/258 Longden to Kimberley 2.12.1871 No. 223. 36 CO 295/310 Robinson to Granville 5.4.1886 No. 77. 295/325 Robinson to Knutsford 30.12.1889 No. 434. 37 CO 295/313 Robinson to Holland 18.12.1887 No. 36. 38 CO 295/318 Robinson to Knutsford 15.9.1888 No. 257. 295/325 OAG Fowler to Knutsford 20.11.1889 No. 407. 295/329 Robinson to Knutsford 29.7.1890 No. 226. 39 cf. his speeches in the Council when presenting the estimates for 1886 and 1889: TRG 3.11.1886 and 25.12.1889. 40 A. and J. Niehoff, East Indians in the West Indies (Milwaukee, i960), p. 31. Wood, p. 276. 41 C. Y. Shepherd, 'Agricultural Labour in Trinidad', in Tropical Agriculture, xn X ( 935)> P a r t 4> PP- 8 7~ 8 42 W. Greig, 'Rice', in Victoria Institute, Industrial Trinidad (POS, 1903), pp. 581-5. 43 See TRG 5.11.1890: CP No. 105 for this correspondence. 44 Collens, pp. 69-70. 45 POSG 1.4.1882. 46 H. de R. Walker, The West Indies and the Empire (London, 1901), p. 165. 47 Blue Boo\ (Trinidad) for 1889. 48 POSG 1.4.1882. 49 TRG 4.3.1891, 18.3.1891, 3.6.1891, 17.6.1891: Minutes of Council. 50 TRG 4.5.1892: Minutes of Council. See B. M. Brereton, 'Sir John Gorrie: A Radical Chief Justice of Trinidad 1885-92' (Unpub. seminar paper, Dept. of History, UWI, St Augustine, 1976).

216

Notes to pp.

51 CO 295/260 Longden to Kimberley 9.3.1872 No. 49. 295/262 Longden to Kimberley 6.7.1872 No. 150. 52 CO 295/283 Irving to Hicks Beach 17.5.1879 No. 92. 53 See Ch. 3, pp. 51-3. 54 J. Paget, Illustrated Guide to Trinidad (POS, 1901), pp. 62-3. Collens, p. 223. 55 For a late expression, see Bruce, The Broadstone of Empire (London, 1910), vol. 1, p. 233. 56 PO 11.8.1894. 57 F. R. Augier, 'Before and After 1865', in New World Quarterly, 2, No. 2 (1966), p. 33. 58 CO 295/256 Longden to Kimberley 10.4.1871 No. 60. 59 CO 295/258 Longden to Kimberley 30.12.1871 No. 242. 60 Annual Register for 1871. 61 CO 295/325 Robinson to Knutsford 28.12.1889 No. 422. Minute by Wingfield 21.9.1890. 62 cf. CO 295/325 Robinson to Knutsford 31.12.1889 No. 435. Minutes by Wingfield 20.1.1890 and Herbert 29.1.1890. 63 CO 295/282 Irving to Hicks Beach 25.11.1878 Conf. 64 For information on the Colonial Office in the second half of the nineteenth century, consult D. B. Swinfen, Imperial Control of Colonial Legislation 1813-1865 (Oxford, 1970); J. W. Cell, British Colonial Administration in the mid-iyth Century (New Haven, 1970); R. V. Kubicek, The Administration of Imperialism: Joseph Chamberlain at the Colonial Office (Durham, N.C., 1969); and especially B. L. Blakeley, The Colonial Office 1868-1892 (Durham, N.C., 1972). 65 CO 295/311 Stanhope to Robinson 13.13.1886 No. 95. 66 POSG 14.12.1872 and 7.7.1877. CO 295/303 OAG Bushe to Derby 23.8.1884 No. 203: Encl. Return of Estates owned by Public Officers. 6y POSG 15.6.1892. 68 cf. CO 295/276 Irving to Carnarvon 13.4.1876 No. 69. 69 TRG 9.5.1877, 10.12.1884, 4.3.1885: Minutes of Council. 70 CO 295/358 Broome to Ripon 24.12.1894 No. 571. Ripon to Broome 15.1.1895 No. 10. TRG 19.12.1895: Minutes of Council. 71 TRG 27.6.1892: Report on the Administration of Justice in the Colony d. 15.6.1892. See Brereton, 'Sir John Gorrie\ 72 See note 51. 73 TRG 4.4.1883: CP No. 22. TRG 2.4.1883: Minutes of Council. My italics. 74 CO 295/313 Robinson to Holland 4.6.1887 No. 150. 75 CO 295/324 OAG Fowler to Knutsford 19.9.1889 No. 332. Minute by Wingfield 22.11.1889. Knutsford to Robinson 7.12.1889 No. 229. j6 CO 295/308 Robinson to Stanley 27.11.1885 Conf. Minutes by Wingfield 22.12.1885 and Herbert 23.12.1885. 77 CO 295/310 Robinson to Stanley 17.2.1886 No. 37: Encl. Message to Council 16.2.1886. 78 See H. Johnson, 'Crown Colony Government in Trinidad 1870-1897' (Unpub. D.Phil, thesis, University of Oxford, 1969), fo. 176. 79 TRG 3.9.1890: CP No. 83. 80 TRG 3.1.1895: CP No. 248. 81 CO 295/361 Broome to Ripon 9.1.1895 No. 15: Encl. Minutes of Council 31.12.1894. 82 TRG 23.3.1895: CP No. 49: Broome to Ripon 9.1.1895 No. 15.

Notes to pp. s°~9

21

7

83 CO 295/361 Broome to Ripon 9.1.1895 No. 15. Minutes by Olivier 7.2.1895 and Wingfield 10.2.1895. 84 TRG 23.3.1895: CP No. 49: Ripon to Broome 25.2.1895 No. 60. 85 CO 295/363 Broome to Ripon 18.4.1895 No. 144: Encl. Unofficial Members of Council to Ripon 8.4.1895. 86 CO 295/363 Broome to Ripon 18.4.1895 No. 144. Chamberlain to OAG Knollys 8.8.1895 No. 224. 87 CO 295/363 Broome to Ripon 31.5.1895 No. 210. Minutes by Olivier 28.6.1895 and Wingfield 3.7.1895. 88 cf. POSG 3.6.1882, 19.8.1882, 5.1.1895. 89 iV£ 19.7.1886,30.11.1885. 90 NE 16.3.1885. 91 PO 28.8.1894, 31.8.1894, 11.8.1894. 92 POSG 8.1.1895, 8.4.1895, 23.4.1895, 21.3.1895. 93 For the 'Reform Movement* of the 1880s and 1890s, see H. A. Will, Constitutional Change in the British West Indies (Oxford, 1970), chapters 6 and 7; and B. M. Brereton, 'The Reform Movement in Trinidad in the later 19th Century', in Papers presented to 5th Conference of Caribbean Historians, St Augustine, Trinidad, 1973, vol. 1 (Trinidad, 1976). CHAPTER 3

THE WHITE ELITE

1 J. J. Thomas, Froudacity (London, 1969), pp. 132-3. 2 NE 11.7.1890. 3 C. S. Salmon, The Caribbean Confederation (London, 1889), p. 29. 4 H. Hoetink, The Two Variants in Caribbean Race Relations (Oxford, 1967), p. 66. 5 L. M. Fraser, History of Trinidad (2 vols., POS, 1891, 1892), vol. 1, p. 11. 6 P. G. L. Borde, Histoire de la Trinidad sous le gouvernement espagnol (2 vols., Paris, 1876, 1882), vol. 2, p. 188. 7 ibid., pp. 361-4. 8 POSG 15.2.1898 and 20.1.1891. 9 SW 8.4.1869. I. Bodu, Trinidadiana (POS, 1890), p. 28. 10 A. de Verteuil, Sir Louis de Verteuil, his Life and Times (POS, 1973), pp. 4-5. 11 Bodu, pp. 60-2. 12 De Verteuil, Sir Louis, pp. 84-5. 13 Borde, vol. 2, pp. 265-6, 268. 14 POSG 1.10.1887. SFG 10.1.1894. PO 21.4.1891. POSG 22.4.1895. Reform 28.2.1898. 15 Borde, vol. 2, pp. 264-300, especially pp. 299-300. 16 Chron 22.6.1871. PO 27.11.1894. 17 Quoted in A. P. Maingot, '19th Century Trinidad. A Discussion of the Relative Position of the French Creole Group in the Society* (Unpub. M.A. Thesis, University of Puerto Rico, 1962), ch. 4. 18 De Verteuil, Sir Louis, pp. 54, 57. 19 A. de Verteuil, And Then There Were None (POS, 1974), pp. 68-99. 20 POSG 1.10.1887. 21 cf. SFG 23.5.1874: L. C. Begorrat Devenish to Clemence Devenish. 22 POSG 9.1.1891 and 20.1.1891. PO 27.11.1894. 23 e.g. Leon d'Abadie to Louise Rignault: POSG 21.1.1895. 24 Ob 12.2.1894: 'British Honour',

218

Notes to pp. 39-50

25 Borde, vol. 2, p. 270. 26 The only such case in this period that I know of is Philip Rostant's second marriage, at the age of 69, to Alice Sebastien, aged 23, who seems to have been a coloured school teacher: PO 25.8.1891. Rostant, a radical journalist, was something of a maverick, generally disapproved of by his class. 27 SFG 12.8.1892. Louis de Verteuil's biographer only hints at this episode. 28 L. Bates, Path of the Conquistadors (London, 1912), pp. 69-70. 29 Borde, vol. 2, pp. 274-5. 30 De Verteuil, Sir Louis, pp. 17-20. 31 CO 295/247 Gordon to Granville 24.5.1869 (Secret). 32 Royal Franchise Commission, Report and Evidence (POS, 1889). Statement by Robert Guppy, 15th meeting, p. 18. 33 Pall 2.12.1876. FP 16.8.1877. 34 CO 295/270 Longden to Kimberley 25.11.1873. No. 242. TRG 3.12.1873: Minutes of Council. 35 cf. Fraser, vol. 2, p. 359. Echo 1.10.1870. 36 CO 295/363 Broome to Ripon 15.5.1895. No. 186. 37 PO 8.9.1891 and 11.9.1891. SFG 26.9.1891. 38 POSG6.11.1893. 39 POSG 2.4.1881. 40 POSG 10.9.1881. 41 POSG 10.9.1881. Pall 15.11.1879. 42 Recorder 3.1 o. 18 83. Baker was Chief of Police. 43 PO 26.9.1894. 44 cf. H. Johnson, 'Crown Colony Government in Trinidad 1870-1897' (Unpub. D.Phil, thesis, University of Oxford, 1969), fos. 93-100. 45 Chron 21.6.1879 and 25.6.1879. The editor was English and Protestant. 46 D. Wood, Trinidad in Transition (Oxford, 1968), ch. 14, especially pp. 299300. 47 Fraser, vol. 1, p. 291. 48 Echo 9.7.1870. 49 POSG 1.10.1870. Echo 10.9.1870 and 22.10.1870. 50 Bodu, p. 64. PO 19.10.1892. 51 POSG 12.6.1891. 52 Bodu, pp. 60-2. 53 PO 24.6.1896. 54 For the News Room affair, see Ob 19, 31.1.1894 and 7, 8, 9, 10, 12.2.1894; Herald 9, 16.2.1894; SFG 14, 21.2.1894; Weekly News 3.2.1894. 55 S. Gordon, Reports and Repercussions in West Indian Education 1835-1933 (London, 1968), pp. 26-7. 56 De Verteuil, Sir Louis, p. 57. 57 See Annual Registers for 1871, 1875, 1880, 1885, 1890, 1895. 58 CO 295/270 Longden to Kimberley 25.11.1873. No. 243. POSG 18.9.1873. 59 NE 18.7.1881. See Wood, pp. 97-101. 60 See C. Y. Shepherd, The Cacao Industry in Trinidad (POS, 1932), part 4. 61 See note 57. Some of the owners' names cannot be classified as French Creole or as English with any certainty. 62 POSG 16.3.1887: Annual Report for Montserrat Ward Union for 1886. 63 PO 19.1.1892. 64 Shepherd, part 4.

Notes to pp. 50-j 65 66 67 68 6g 70 71 72 73 74 75 j6 yy 78

79

80 81

82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

219

De Verteuil, Sir Louis, p. 88. De Verteuil, And Then There Were None, pp. 68-99. Echo 10.3.1895. TRG 10.3.1875. Chron 26.1.1878. POSG 10.7.1886. NE 12.7.1886. SFG22.10.1Sg1. A. A. Burkett, Trinidad, a Jewel of the West (London, 1914), p. 12. SFG 3.10.1891. CO 295/354 Broome to Ripon 11.6.1894. No. 227. CO 295/323 OAG Fowler to Knutsford 1.7.1889. No. 230. SFG 27.10.1894. PO 24.11.1891. SFG 31.1.1874. Bodu, pp. 73-4. ibid., p. 71. PO 3.12.1892. PO 24.11.1892. George Garcia was the son of Dr Raymond Garcia, born in Caracas in 1778, who served as Governor of Guyana in the early years of the century and was involved in the Wars of Independence. He came to Trinidad in 1813 and died in 1869. Review 28.8.1869. Bodu, p. 6y. NE 28.1.1887. J. H. Collens, A Guide to Trinidad (London, 1888), p. 61. But in the view of one Governor whom he served, Bushe was * better suited to a second than a first place', lacking firmness and being too timid to assume responsibility. Advice like this prevented Bushe from ever receiving a permanent appointment as Governor. CO 295/273 Longden to Carnarvon 26.4.1874 (Private and Confidential). Bodu, pp. 53-4. CO 295/353 Broome to Ripon 30.5.1894. No. 205. This petition called for a law preventing any person being admitted to practise as a solicitor in Trinidad, who was not previously admitted in Britain. Such a law would close of! a profession which had been a popular ladder for ambitious blacks too poor to go to Britain for a university education. Bodu, pp. 24-7. Annual Register for 1870. TRG 24.2.1875: CP No. 16. cf. CO 295/352 Broome to Ripon 3.4.1894. No. 95: End. Rostant to Ripon 31.3.1894. For Gorrie, see B. M. Brereton, 'Sir John Gorrie: A Radical Chief Justice of Trinidad (1885-92)' (Unpub. seminar paper, Dept. of History, UWI, St Augustine, 1976). For Guppy, see PO 12.11.1894. SFG 17.11.1894. See S. E. Morton, John Morton of Trinidad (Toronto, 1916), and K. J. Grant, My Missionary Memoirs (Halifax, 1923). W. H. Gamble, Trinidad, Historical and Descriptive (London, 1866) and J. N. Brierly, Trinidad Then and Now (POS, 1912). J. Paget, Illustrated Guide to Trinidad (POS, 1901). ibid., p. 86. DN 4.1.1893. POSG 5.8.1882 and 16.3.1895. TRG 14.11.1883. The selection of exclusively white cricket teams by the QPCC, which often resulted in defeat, was criticised by SFG 30.8.1895. Collens, pp. 216, 221-2. TRG 14.11.1888: CP No. 82. The Temperance movement, with the objective of reducing consumption of alcohol, was a formidable interest group in late nineteenth-century Britain. The Band of Hope Union had 16,000 branches by 1889, with around two million members. See R. Shannon, The Crisis of Imperialism 1865-1915 (London, 1974), pp. 496-7.

220 92

93 94 95

96 gy 98 99

100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 no in

112 113 114

Notes to pp. 58-66 The oldest Lodge was Les Freres Unis, affiliated to the Grand Lodge of France. After the Revolution it was affiliated to the Lodge of Pennsylvania. Collens, pp. 219-20. Brierly, p. 278. POSG 2.1.1891. TRG 17.4.1889: Notice. Borde, Histoire. See also E. V. Goveia, A Study on the Historiography of the British West Indies to the end of the 19th Century (Mexico City, 1956), pp. 126-7; a n c * A. P. Maingot, 'From Ethnocentric to National History Writing in the Plural Society', CS 9, No. 3 (1969), p. 75. Fraser, History. Goveia, pp. 127-30 and Maingot, p. j6. Collens, p. 72. A. Brassey, In the Trades, the Tropics, and the Roaring Forties (London, 1885), pp. 151-2. D. Hart, Trinidad and the other West Indian Islands and Colonies (POS, 1866), pp. 169-70. He insisted, significantly, that most Creole ladies were 'very fair', though a few were 'handsome brunettes'. FP 22.1 o. 18 74: Letter from Mrs Polly Hopkins. POSG 2.8.1884. Review 19.7.1884, 19.6.1884, 26.6.1884. Wood, pp. 171-2. NE 21.10.1887. POSG 22.9.1888, 29.9.1888. PO 4.2.1893: Letter from 'A Negro'. PO 10.2.1891: Letter from 'J.P.' and 3.3.1891: Letter from 'Fantasia'. Bates, pp. 62-3. PO 13.1.1891. POSG 31.5.1892. NE 14.3.1890. Wood, p. 173. Gawthorne's paper was celebrated for being the most scandalous of the local papers during its short career (1862-74). CO 295/303 OAG Bushe to Derby 4.9.1884. No. 217. Scandal is still a major feature of Trinidad society. Review 1.1.1870. This was also Borde's viewpoint. J. A. Froude, The English in the West Indies (New York, 1888), p. 82. Wood, pp. 1, 174. CHAPTER 4

1

2 3

4 5 6

EDUCATION AND MOBILITY

For the development of education 1851-70, see C. C. Campbell, 'The Development of Education in Trinidad 1834-1870' (Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, UWI, 1973); and E. R. Seesaran, 'Church and State in Trinidad 1814-1870' (Unpub. M.A. thesis, UWI, 1974), chs. 3, 4, 5 and 6. See also D. Wood, Trinidad in Transition (Oxford, 1968), ch. xi. CO 295/239 Gordon to Buckingham 24.5.1867 No. 72 and enclosures. Buckingham to Gordon 12.10.1867 No. 79. S. Gordon, Reports and Repercussions in West Indian Education 1835-1933 (London, 1968), pp. 77-9. (This includes most of the Keenan Report.) The Report is closely analysed in Campbell, pp. 448-71 and Seesaran, ch. 5. CO 295/248 Gordon to Granville 8.9.1869 No. 119. Letter from Bishop Rawle, 4.7.1875, quoted in G. Mather and C. J. Blagg, Bishop Rawle, A Memoir (London 1890), p. 268. CO 295/272 Longden to Kimberley 1.1.1874 No. 1. TRG 10.2.1875: CP No. 1.

Notes to pp. 66-74 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

221

CO 295/274 Irving to Carnarvon 25.2.1875 No. 21: Message to Council 1.2.1875. ibid. CO 295/274 Irving to Carnarvon 13.7.1875 No. 84. CO 295/277 Irving to Carnarvon 8.5.1876 No. 81. TRG 1.10.1879. POSG 10.10.1885: Report of Inspector of Schools for 1884-5. CO 295/279 OAG des Voeux to Carnarvon 8.11.1877. Minute by Irving 9.12.1877. 295/281 Irving to Hicks Beach 25.9.1878 No. 201. TRG 11.10.1882: CPNo. 6y. TRG 24.8.1887: CP No. 78. CO 295/319 Robinson to Knutsford 17.12.1888 No. 339. 295/323 OAG Fowler to Knutsford 18.7.1889 No. 254. Minute by Robinson 19.8.1889. CO 295/327 Robinson to Knutsford 4.1.1890 No. 6: Message to Council 20.12.1889. TRG 18.7.1894: CP No. 134: Broome to Ripon 11.7.1894 No. 313. POSG 4.5.1895: The Education Commission. TRG 27.6.1895: CPNo. 117. Broome to Under-Secretary of State 6.10.1895 and 3.11.1895, quoted in Board of Education, Special Reports on Educational Subjects (London, 1905),

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

vol. 12, part 1, pp. 247-9. ibid., pp. 183-95. Campbell, pp. 297-8. Chron 4.11.1869. Chron 8.2.1876. CO 295/287 OAG Pyne to Kimberley 24.8.1880. Minute by Irving 19.9.1880. CO 295/338 Broome to Knutsford 1.6.1892 No. 159. CO 295/338 Knutsford to Broome 15.7.1892 No. 146. CO 295/338 Broome to Knutsford 1.6.1892 No. 159: Encl. Superintendent Girls' Model School to Lady Broome 11.2.1892; Superintendent Boys' Model School to Colonial Secretary 17.3.1892. TT 3.2.1892. POSG 16.2.1892: Letter from Louis de Verteuil. Speech by Charles Warner in Council 2.9.1857, quoted in Campbell, pp. 343, 347CO 295/239 Gordon to Buckingham 24.5.1867 No. 72. Buckingham to Gordon 12.10.18 67 No. 79. ibid. And CO 295/243 Gordon to Buckingham 8.1.1868 No. 9. C. Kingsley, At Last, a Christmas in the West Indies (London, 1889), p. 291. See Wood, pp. 283-7; Gordon, pp. 27-40; and J. K. Chapman, The Career of A. H. Gordon, First Lord Stanmore, 1829-1912 (Toronto, 1964), pp. 62-5. CO 295/255 Longden to Kimberley 22.2.1871 No. 35. ibid. Gordon, p. 26. POSG 9.6.1891. POSG 8.7.1882. CO 295/311 Robinson to Granville 10.8.1886 No. 186. ibid., Robinson to Stanhope 8.11.1886 No. 264. CO 295/339 Broome to Knutsford 4.8.1892 No. 223. Ripon to Broome 21.11.1892 No. 251. D. Hart, Trinidad and the Other West Indian Islands and Colonies (POS, 1866), pp. 169-70. SFG 4.2.1882.

222 43 44 45 46

Notes to pp.

NE 19.7.1875. POSG 29.1.1892. SFG 12.12.1895. CO 295/270 Longden to Kimberley 10.10.18 73 No. 214: End. Report of Inspector of Schools for 1872-3. 47 TRG 6.10.1880: CP No. 48. NE 1.8.1881. 48 NE 31.1.1890. A. A. Burkett, Trinidad, a Jewel of the West (London, 1914), p. 26. 49 CO 295/288 Freeling to Kimberley 15.11.1880 No. 285: End. R. L. Guppy to Ag. Colonial Secretary 19.10.1880. 50 CO 295/345 Broome to Ripon 13.5.1893 No. 152. 51 cf. H. Johnson, 'Crown Colony Government in Trinidad 1870-1897' (Unpub. D.Phil, thesis, University of Oxford, 1969), fos. 386-90. 52 Wood, pp. 214-15. 53 Speech by R. L. Guppy to Victoria Institute, 19.5.1898. In Trinidad Reviewer (London, 1900), p. 243. 54 Chron 12.3.1875: Letter from 'I.C 55 POSG 5.12.1885. 56 Chron 11.5.1869. 57 SFG 14.3.1868: Letter from Robert Guppy. 58 NE 18.8.1873. POSG 23.8.1873. 59 POSG 26.9.1885. 60 Agricultural Record, vol. 7, No. 1 (July 1892): Resolutions of Committee on Agricultural Education 18.5.1892. 61 ibid., vol. 7, No. 4 (October 1892): Letter from 'H.P.D.' and editorial comment 62 Chron 11.5.1869. 63 POSG 18.5.1895. 64 Campbell, pp. 305-6. 65 NE 18.8.1873: Letter from 'Vindex'. 66 SFG 16.10.1869 and 13.11.1869. 67 SFG 19.11.1887. 68 SFG 19.4.1890, 10.5.1890, 5.7.1890. 69 SFG 23.5.1895: Letter from V. 70 Ob 20.3.1894: Letter from H. C. Bonar. 71 L. A. A. de Verteuil, Trinidad (London, 1858), p. 386. 72 DN 11.2.1893: Letter from J. D. Alcazar. 73 Ob 12.5.1894. 74 CO 295/353 Broome to Ripon 3.5.1894 No. 165: End. Petition of Some of the Inhabitants of Trinidad, n.d. [1894]. 75 ATE 22.1.1877, 15.10.1877. y6 POSG 27.10.1893. yy POSG 24.6.1892: Letter from W. Miles and editorial. There were never as many as twenty or thirty free boys in one college at one time. 78 SFG 19.7.1892 and 29.7.1892: Letters from Emilie Maresse-Paul. 79 DN 4.2.1893. TRG 8.2.1893: Minutes of Council 3.2.1893. 80 DN 2, 3, 9, 11.2.1893: Letters from Edgar Maresse-Smith, E. H. Senhouse, J. D. Alcazar, and editorials. 81 TRG 1.12.1875: Ordinance 24 of 1875. The Education Rate was a special levy on property in the wards which between 1851 and 1875 had been allocated to the maintenance and expenses of the ward schools.

Notes to pp. 84-94 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

223

TRG 6.10.1875: Minutes of Council 1.10.1875. TRG 30.1.1878: Minutes of Council 22.1.1878. R. L. Guppy, the Inspector of Schools, was opposed to the imposition of fees. NE 24.1.18 76: Letter from * Justice \ Chron 8.2.1876. SFG 6.7.1878. POSG 4.5.1895: Evidence of C. C. Smith to Education Commission. POSG 7.11.1885, 14.11.1885. TRG 23.7.1890: Minutes of Council 14.7.1890. Speech at QRC Achievement Day, 16.3.1972. Tapia 7.5.1972.

CHAPTER 5

THE RISE OF A COLOURED AND BLACK MIDDLE CLASS

1 P. G. L. Borde, Histoire de la Trinidad sous le gouvernement espagnol (2 vols., Paris, 1876, 1882), vol. 2, p. 271. 2 See D. Wood, Trinidad in Transition (Oxford, 1968), pp. 41-2. 3 SFG 14.2.1894. 4 See C. L. R. James, 'M. M. Philip, an Impression', in The Beacon, 6 (September 1931). 5 NE 20.10.1873. CO 295/239 Gordon to Buckingham 23.5.1867 No. 71. 295/241 Gordon to Buckingham 9.12.1867 No. 151. 295/241 Gordon to Buckingham 24.12.1867 No. 163. 6 FP 21.8.1882. 7 SFG 29.1.1887; 28.3.1890; 30.8.1888; 19.7.1892 and 29.7.1892: Letters from Emilie Maresse-Paul. 8 SFG 3.8.1878, 8.1.1876, 7.10.1882. 9 C. Kingsley, At Last, a Christinas in the West Indies (London, 1889), p. 245. CO 295/247 Gordon to Granville 24.5.1869 (Secret). 10 W. Sewell, Ordeal of Free Labour in the British West Indies (New York, i860), pp. 113-14. 11 PO 25.10.1892. 12 CO 295/345 OAG Fowler to Ripon 12.6.1893 Conf. 13 CO 295/256 Longden to Kimberley 8.5.1871 Conf. 14 NE 28.10.1887. 15 Chron 26.11.1869, 30.11.1869. 16 Echo 24.12.1870.

17 For this and the last paragraph, see B. M. Brereton, 'J. J. Thomas, an Estimate', in JCH, 9 (May 1977). 18 A. A. Burkett, Trinidad, a Jewel of the West (London, 1914), p. 30. 19 J. R. Hooker, H. S. Williams, Imperial Pan-Africanist (London, 1975), ch. 1; and O. C. Mathurin, H. S. Williams and the Origins of the Pan-African Movement, 1869-1911 (Westport, Conn., 1976), chs. 1 and 2. 20 NE 20.7.1888. " 21 NE 19.7.1875. 22 PO 19.8.1892. 23 See B. Samaroo, *C. P. David: A Case Study in the Emergence of the Black Man in Trinidad Polities', JCH, 3 (November 1971). 24 NE 30.8.1887. 25 Chron 5.5.1871. 26 SFG 12.3.1887, 11.2.1888. 27 A. Caldecott, The Church in the West Indies (London, 1889), pp. 192-4.

2 24 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 6y 68

Notes to pp. 95-103 SPP 16.3.1871. TW6.12.1871. NE 25.10.1889. Chron 14.11.1873. ^£6.11.1871. SFG 11.10.1895. SFG 4.1.1894. SFG 14.4.1894. CO 295/247 Gordon to Granville 24.5.1869 (Secret). L. O. Innis, Trinidad and Trinidadians (POS, 1910), p. 87. NE 2.6.1873. Echo 28.5.1873. SFG 19.5.1888: Letter from 'Several West Indians'. Tel 4.12.1872: Letter from 'Democrites'. NE 10.6.1872: Our San Fernando Correspondent. Tel 22.5.1872: Obituary of Etienne Gouffe. FP 23.1.1879: Letter from E. L. Boucaud and editorial comment. FP 23.1.1879: Letter from 'Several Coloured People*. K. J. Grant, My Missionary Memoirs (Halifax, 1923), p. 91. Truth 28.7.1888 and POSG 8.8.1888: Letters from Samuel Proctor. J. J. Thomas, Froudacity (London, 1969), pp. 166-7. SFG 28.7.1888. NE 26.7.1875, 16.8.1875. Echo 28.7.1895, 4.8.1895. POSG 17.8.1895. CO 295/256 Longden to Kimberley 9.5.1871 Conf. CO 295/345 Broome to Ripon 10.5.1893 No. 148: Minute by Wingfield 10.6.1893. ibid. Encl. Chief Justice to Broome 27.4.1893. Italics in original. CO 295/281 Irving to Hicks Beach 25.9.1878 No. 200. CO 295/279 OAG des Voeux to Carnarvon 7.9.1877 Conf. CO 295/351 Broome to Ripon 8.3.1894 No. 64: Encl. in Minutes: Director of Public Works to Baillie Hamilton (Private, n.d.). NE 4.8.1873. Tel 3.4.1872. Tel i9-5- l8 73CO 295/252 Longden to Kimberley 24.9.1870 Conf. 295/255 Longden to Kimberley 7.1.1871 Conf. Kimberley to Longden 17.2.1871 No. 127. NE 19.7.1886, 15.7.1887, 28.10.1887. NE 6.7.1888. James, 'Philip', p. 19. SFG 1.8.1891. Chron 16.6.1871. NE 22.6.1874: 'Caste and Education, by a Native'. CO 295/355 Broome to Ripon 10.7.1894 No. 306: Encl. Petition from Inhabitants of Trinidad 9.7.1894. Ripon to Broome 30.8.1894 No. 310. See also Ob 15, 20, 23, 25.6.1894. PO 15.8.1894, 5.10.1894. CO 295/295 Freeling to Derby 7.12.1882 No. 286. 295/299 Freeling to Derby 19.10.1883 No. 216. ibid., Freeling to Derby 19.10.1883 Conf. FP21.6.1883. CO 295/336 Broome to Knutsford 9.1.1892 Tel. ibid., Broome to Knutsford 22.2.1892 No. 61. CO 295/336 Broome to Knutsford 28.1.1892 No. 34: Encl. Gorrie to Broome 24.1.1892. TT 11.3.1892. SFG 25.2.1892, 10.3.1892. NE 18.4.1870.

Notes to pp. 103-14 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 j6 yj 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

225

Pall 3.8.1878. C. L. R. James, Life of Captain A. A. Cipriani (Nelson, Lanes., 1932), p. 15. FP 1.3.1883. A. Pearse, 'Mitto Sampson on Calypso Legends of the 19th century', in CQ, 4, Nos. 2 and 3 (1956). Tel 2.1 o. 18 72: Letter from Thomas. NE 31.8.1874, 14.9.1874: Letters from Thomas. ibid. Thomas, Froudacity, p. 68. ibid., p. 179. ibid., pp. 180-1. ibid., p. 193. For a more extended treatment of Thomas' views, see Brereton, 'J. J. Thomas'. Truth 16.6.1888: Letter from Edgar Maresse-Smith. Truth 21.7.18 8 8: Letter from ' Titus Africanus'. SFG 14.4.1888. SFG 2.6.1888. Truth June to August 1888. NE 3, 29.6.1888, 20.7.1888, 3.8.1888. POSG 27.6.1888, 4.8.1888. SFG July to August 1888. See also Mathurin, pp. 10-11. SFG 5.1.1889. NE 29.12.1873: Letter from 'Old Quashie'. NE 28.2.1876: Letter from 'Sphink\ Hooker, ch. 5; Mathurin, pp. 93-100. CHAPTER

6

THE

URBAN LABOURING

POPULATION

1 R. Kuckznski, Demographic Survey of the British Colonial Empire (Oxford, 1953), vol. 3, p. 10. 2 See G. W. Roberts, 'Emigration from the Island of Barbados', in SES, 4, No. 3 (1955). 3 West India Royal Commission, 1897. C.8657. Evidence of Agricultural Society of Trinidad, p. 248. 4 Proceedings of the Agricultural Society of Trinidad, vol. 1 (1894-5): Report of meeting with Barbados Emigration Commission, 24.4.1895. 5 POSG 24.10.1894. 6 CO 295/269 Longden to Kimberley 25.8.1873 No. 172. 295/270 Longden to Kimberley 5.11.1873 No. 226. 7 TRG 16.4.1879: Immigration Report for 1877-8. 8 Report of Barbados Emigration Commission, p. 8. Quoted in H. Johnson, 'Barbadian Immigrants in Trinidad 1870-1897', in CS, 13, No. 3 (October I973)> P- 149 Royal Franchise Commission, Report and Evidence (POS, 1889). Evidence of Charles Mitchell, 13th meeting, p. 22. 10 PO 30.8.1894. 11 WIRC: Evidence of Dr Gooding. Quoted in Johnson, 'Barbadian Immigrants', p. 11. 12 RFC: Evidence of H. Harragin, n t h meeting. 13 RFC: Evidence of J. Drennan, 9th meeting, p. 19. 14 POSG 22.4.1895. 15 PO 30.8.1894. 16 RFC: Evidence of Charles Mitchell, p. 23.

226 ly 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

Notes to pp. 114-21 POSG 3.11.1891. CO 295/327 Robinson to Knutsford 1.2.1890 No. 37. TRG 9.8.1893: CP No. 132. ibid., Letter from J. N. Brierly, December 1891. POSG 16.5.1885: Statements to the Norman Commission. RFC: Evidence of Charles Mitchell, p. 23. cf. Johnson, 'Barbadian Immigrants', p. 18. RFC: Evidence of J. Drennan, p. 19, and of J. A. Lynch, n t h meeting, p. 21. RFC: Evidence of L. M. Fraser, 10th meeting, p. 47. Chron 16.5.1871. NE 6.6.1881. POSG 2.6.1891. TRG 15.2.1888: Registrar-General's Report for 1887. Chron 7.1.1885. PO 30.8.1892. This paragraph is based mainly on POSG 19.9.1885. POSG 8.10.1887: Letter from J. Chittenden. Weekly Tattler 20.10.1887. Chron 3.11.1883. TT 7.1.1892. RFC: Evidence of Charles Fabien, 2nd meeting, p. 8. Ob 1.5.1894. POSG 30.11.1872. Chron 16.9.1875. POSG 7.2.1885: Board of Health 2.2.1885. POSG 7.3.1885: Board of Health 5.3.1885. H. J. Clark, The Material and Moral Progress of Trinidad During the last 50 Years (POS, 1888), p. 8. POSG 29.11.1884. CO 295/238 Gordon to Buckingham 24.4.1867 No. 60. NE 20.8.1877. POSG 29.11.1884. POSG 15.9.1888. CO 295/238 Gordon to Buckingham 24.4.1867 No. 60. CO 295/306 Havelock to Derby 16.4.1885 No. 93. CO 295/308 Havelock to Stanley 16.9.1885 No. 256. CO 295/310 Robinson to Stanley 7.1.1886 No. 8: Encl. Memorandum by Surgeon-General 9.12.1885. POSG 4.7.1888: Board of Health. POSG 5.2.1887 and 4.2.1888. TRG 29.4.1891: CP No. 45. ibid. TRG 31.8.1892: CP No. 65. One should note that infant mortality among the working class in British cities in the late Victorian period was very high. In York in 1901, the infant mortality among the poorest class was 247 per thousand. See J. Laver, The Age of Optimism: Manners and Morals 1848-1914 (London, 1966), pp. 251-2. Chron 1.8.1871. TRG 25.4.1894: CP No. y^. TRG 29.4.1891: CP No. 45. POSG 26.11.1887. TRG 29.4.1891: CP No. 45. CO 295/267 OAG Rennie to Kimberley 14.4.1873 No. 72. TRG 29.4.1891: CP No. 45. SFG 20.10.1888. CO 295/317 Robinson to Holland 27.2.1888 No. 49. We have already noted the Unofficials' reaction to this Ordinance. CO 295/293 Freeling to Kimberley 8.5.1882 No. 121. PO 15.8.1892.

Notes to pp. 121-8

227

60 NE 27.9.1889. Review 2.10.1884. 61 I owe these insights to Gordon Rohlehr. 62 SFG 19.9.1885: Letter from 'Argus'. TRG 14.6.1882: Report of Inspector of Prisons for 1881. 63 7W30.8.1871. 64 CO 295/272 Longden to Kimberley 4.1.1874 No. 6 and 22.1.1874 No. 22. 295/318 Robinson to Knutsford 4.8.1888 No. 214. 65 CO 295/278 OAG des Voeux to Carnarvon 18.5.1877 No. 87: End. Inspector of Prisons to Colonial Secretary 7.5.1877. 66 TRG 4.5.1881 and 16.5.1883: Reports of Inspector of Prisons for 1880, 1882. 6y TT 19.3.1892. 68 TRG 24.2.1875: Report on Contagious Diseases Ordinance. 69 POSG 23.7.1881. SFG 10.8.1878. But one should note that mid- and lateVictorian London contained thousands of prostitutes, street arabs, vagabond children and adults. Mayhew recorded evidence from women who had become prostitutes at eleven or twelve. Probably at no other time in English history was prostitution so rampant as in the mid-Victorian era. cf. Laver, pp. 84-96. 70 CO 295/277 Irving to Carnarvon 8.7.1876 No. 126: Encl. Report of Inspector of Prisons for 1875. 71 POSG 23.2.1889. 72 SFG 2.9.1876: Letter from 'Pro Bono Publico'. SFG 23.6.1883. 73 FP 9.3.1882. 74 CO 295/283 Irving to Hicks Beach 21.6.1879 No. 119: Encl. Report of Attorney-General on Ordinance 7 of 1879, 20.6.1879. 75 Echo 26.1.1876 and 29.4.1874. y6 Pall 7.4.1877: Letter from 'Q' and editorial comment. yy POSG 12.4.1884: Criminal Sessions. Review 31.1.1884. 78 TRG 21.11.1888: Memorandum from Superintendent of Prisons. 79 POSG 1.12.1891. 80 CO 295/241 Gordon to Buckingham 24.11.1867 No. 147. 81 CO 295/244 Gordon to Buckingham 24.6.1868 No. 95: Encl. L. M. Fraser to Colonial Secretary 25.5.1868. 82 NE 25.9.1882. Chron 26.6.18yy. 83 Chron 18.2.1882, 22.7.1882. 84 R. W. Root, The British West Indies and the Sugar Industry (London, 1889), p. 114. 85 SFG 21.7.1877. NE 26.3.1883. 86 Chron 22.8.1885, 11.2.1885. Sy NE 4.9.1882. 88 CO 295/296 Freeling to Derby 31.3.1883 No. 68: Encl. Petition from Burgesses of Port of Spain and San Fernando and Other Educated Inhabitants of Trinidad, n.d. [1883]. 89 ibid. 90 TRG 16.5.1883: CP No. 3: Report of Inspector of Prisons for 1882. 91 POSG 13.1.1883. FP 29.8.1883 and 21.9.1883. 92 Recorder 28.3.1883. Pall 9.6.1883. 93 TRG 18.7.1894: CP No. 134. 94 TRG 1.3.1893: Report of Inspector-General of Police. 95 J. J. Thomas, Froudacity (London, 1969), pp. 96-7. 96 SFG 31.7.1880. NE 17.11.1873. SFG 18.2.1882: Letter from 'Fair Play'.

228 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104

Notes to pp. 128-35 D. Wood, Trinidad in Transition (Oxford, 1968), p. 66. CO 295/244 Gordon to Buckingham 24.6.1868 No. 95: End. L. M. Fraser to Colonial Secretary 25.5.1868. SFG 5.2.1896. POSG 22.10.1881: Hamilton Report on the Carnival Disturbances. CO 295/334 Robinson to Knutsford 25.7.1891 No. 241 and enclosures. SFG 27.6.1895. TRG 5.8.1874: Report of Inspector of Prisons for 1873. CO 295/294 OAG Bushe to Knutsford 7.7.1882 No. 192: Encl. Inspector of Prisons to Colonial Secretary 25.3.1882. CHAPTER

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

7

THE BLACK RURAL MASSES

L. M. Fraser, History of Trinidad (2 vols., POS, 1891, 1892), vol. 2, p. 99. R. P. Cothonay, Trinidad, Journal d'un Missionaire Dominicain des Antilles Anglaises (Paris, 1893), p. 406. Chron 18.5.1875. C. Kingsley, At Last, a Christmas in the West Indies (London, 1889), p. 157. SFG 4.8.1883: The Tattler. Guaraoons, Guarahounds, Warahoons, Waraoons, Guarrano have all been noted. SFG 2.10.1875. See also SFG 2.8.1884, NE 7.10.1887, Cothonay, pp. 118-19, 180-2, Kingsley p. 157; and W. H. Gamble, Trinidad, Historical and Descriptive (London, 1866), pp. 28-9. cf. D. Wood, Trinidad in Transition (Oxford, 1968), pp. 43-4. For the aborigines, see L. A. Newson, Aboriginal and Spanish Colonial Trinidad (London, 1976). Wood, p. 34. CO 295/243 Gordon to Buckingham 8.4.1868 No. 46: Encl. Report of Robert Mitchell, Commissioner for Montserrat, 28.12.1867. SFG 24.3.1892. Chron 5.10.1875. PO 19.12.1884. POSG 11.10.1884: Letter from J. Chittenden. Alfonso was a Port of Spain cocoa dealer. Royal Franchise Commission, Report and Evidence (POS, 1889). Evidence of J. Alcazar and W. Grey. E. A. Valerio, Seiges and Fortunes of a Trinidadian (POS, 1919). See chs. 1 and 2 for this and the next paragraph. Valerio, p. 25. See G. W. Roberts, 'Immigration of Africans into the British Caribbean', in Population Studies, 7, No. 3 (1954). M. Warner, 'Africans in 19th century Trinidad', in ASAW IB, No. 5 (1972) and No. 6 (1973). ibid. J. J. Thomas, Froudacity (London, 1969), p. 142. Wood, pp. 39-40. A. Halliday, The West Indies (London, 1837), pp. 321-2. S. Hodgson, Truths from the West Indies (London, 1838), pp. 151-2, 358. C. C. Campbell, 'Jonas Mohammed Bath and the Free Mandingos in Trinidad', in Pan African Journal, 7, No. 2 (1974); and 'Mahammedu Sisei of

Notes to pp. 135-40

24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

48 49

50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

229

Gambia and Trinidad 64 Herbert, William, 54, 90, 96-7, 100-1 Hindus, 182, 183, 185, 187 Hoetink, H., 204, 205, 208

248

Index

Holy Ghost, Order of, 71-2 Hosein, 183-4, 187 housing: in Port of Spain, 116-18; in Montserrat, 133; of peasants, 142-3 illegitimacy: and upper classes, 60-1; among Creole masses, 120-1 indentureship, 177-80, 186, 189 India, 69, 114, 176, 180, 182, 185, 187, 191

Indians: and Creole society, 2, 176, 177, 204; immigration to Trinidad, 10, 12, 176, 177; and rice, 22, 181; and chaiteyi, 23; peasants, 139, 142, 180-2, 192; estate labourers, 143, 144, 17780; and indentureship, 177-80; Trinidad-born, 177, 191; acquire land, 180-1; family structure, 182-3; relations with other groups, 183, 184, 186, 187, 189-90; religions, 183-5; and Hosein, 183-4; and Christian churches, 184-5; an 175 kalinda, see stick-fighting Keenan, Patrick, 65, 73 Kingsley, Charles, 16, 72-3, 89, 95, 143, 144, 157, 160, 190, 195, 236 nio Lamont, Norman, 17, 147 Lange, Eugene, 50, 58, 83 Laughlin, T. R. N., 40, 55 Laurence, Stephen, y6, 90, 92 Le Blanc, Norman, 163, 168, 169 Legislative Council: and sugar crisis, 19; composition of, 24; Unofficial members of, 25-32; Finance Committee, 29; Immigration Committee, 30; and black members, 150; and indentureship, 179; Indian membership in, 191-2

Leotauds, 39; Charles, 51; Antoine, 55

Le Roy, Louis, 42, 48 Lewis, Joseph, 90, 96, 101, 107, 201-2 Llanos, 36, 39 Lodges, Masonic, 23, 57-8, y69 96, 220 n92 Longden, James, Governor (1870-4): urges diversification, 20; abolishes income tax, 23; and M. M. Philip, 101

Madeirans: immigration to Trinidad, 10, 34, 210-11

magistrates, 126-7 Maingot, Philip, 39, 41 Mandingoes, 8, 134-5, J37> I38» *53 Manzanilla, 14, 15, 134, 137, 139, 156: 'Manzanillan', 137 Maraval, 14, 164 Maresse-Paul, Emilie, 82-3, 88 Maresse-Smith, Edgar, 55, 83, 88, 93, 106-7, 2 O 2 marriage: among Creole masses, 120-1 Mayaro, 14, 15, 21, 145 middle class, coloured and black, 5-6, 62-3, 64, 85, 86, 211, 212: free coloured group, 86-9; in urban occupations, 89; in white-collar jobs, 8994; teachers, 90-2; doctors and lawyers, 92-3; cultural activities, 94-6; and newspapers, 96-7; discrimination against, 97-103, 203; attitude towards other groups, 103-4, 202-4, 206, 210; race consciousness, 5-6, 104-8; attitudes to slavery, 106-8; emergence of Creole identity, 208-9; anc * marriage, 210

Miles, William, 82-3 Mitchell, Charles, 27, 113-14, 115, 166, 182

Mitchell, Robert, 135, 136, 139 Model Schools, 69-71, 75, j6 Montserrat: settlement of, 9, 15, 132, *33> J35> X 3 6 ; c o c o a grown in, 49, 132; Baptists in, 138; peasants dispossessed in, 141; Indians settle in, 181

Morton, Rev. John, 56, 138, 183-4, 186, 187 Moruga, 14, 15, 140 Moslems: Africans, 136-7, 138; Indians, 182, 183, 185, 187 muscovado, ix, 17, 18, 48-9

Index

249

Nannee, Papa (Antoinc), 153, 154, 1556 Naparima, 15, 87, 88, 142, 144, 166 New Era, 32, 75, 78, 80, 82, 84, 96, 101, 103, 107, 118, 121, 126, 128, 146, 160, 166, 169, 188, 201-2, 203, 206 Normal School, 69, 91 Northern Range: settlement in valleys, 9, 15, 132; and Amerindians, 131; and Spanish-speakers, 165 Nurse, Malcolm (George Padmore), 92, 114

ciation branch, 108; Barbadians in, 113; working-class life, 116-20, 129; health conditions, 118-20; crime, prostitution and vagrancy, 122-6; bands, 124-5, 167; petition against taxes in, 149; and Carnival, 171-5; Catholic mission to Indians, 184-5 Port of Spain Gazette, 23, 40, 45, 55, 78, 80, 84, 112, 118, 119, 123, 127, 144, 150, 164, 172, 187, 188, 190, 206 Portuguese, 10, 34, 210-n press, 96-7, 172, 173, 175, 191, 194 Princes Town, 15, 52, 108, 113, 159,

obeah, 151, 155, 156, 198, 231ml O'Brien, James, 100, 102, 103 Observer, 46, 82, 117 O'Connor, D. L., 39, 54 Oropouche, 21, 181

prisons, 129, 180 Proctor, Samuel, 98, 99 prostitution, 122, 123, 169, 170, 227 n69 Public Opinion, 32, 45, 55, 61, 121, 132, 146-7 public works, 112-13, I 43

Padmore, George, 92, 114 Palladium, 124, 127 Pan-African Association, 92, 93, 108 patois: spoken by Creole blacks, 6, 8, 152, 163-6, 173, 205; Creole Grammar, 91, 94, 95; in calypso, 162, 164, 168 Paton, W. A., 147, 195 peasants, 79-80, 132, 138-43, 148: acquire land, 139; dispossessed of estates, 140-1, 230 ^ 9 ; see also agricultural labourers peons: settle in Trinidad, 8, n o , 131, 152; pioneers of cultivation, 131-2, 139, 148; life-style, 133; Spanishspeaking, 165, 166 Philip, Jean-Baptiste, 87, 94, 200, 236 n 34 Philip, M. M., 27, 54, 87, 90, 93, 98, 100, 101, 103, 205 Phillipps, C. H., 57, 93, 102-3 Phillpotts, Eden, 196-7 police, 113, 127-8, 161-2, 171-2, 173, 204, 211-12 population: increases 1861-91, 12 Port of Spain: new suburbs after 1838, 9; growth in population, 12; business firms, 24; Mayors, 54, 87, 89, 93, 96; social life, 61-2; schools, 65, 69, 75, 76; ex-slaves settle in, 89; Borough Council, 93, 171; Pan-African Asso-

Queen's Collegiate School, 69, 71, 72, 73-4 Queen's Royal College, 71, y^, 74, y69 82, 83, 203 race, attitudes towards, 147-8, 193-9: in Trinidad, 199-204 race relations, in Trinidad: difficult to investigate, 3-4, 212; between Indians and Creoles, 188-90; metropolitan ideas about, 193-7; questions of colour, 199-204; race incidents, 2034; and marriage, 204-5, 2 I ° j interaction between groups, 204-10 Radas, 151, 153-6, 158, 2 3 1 m l railways: built in Trinidad, 14-15, 11213, 143; and cocoa, 49 Rawle, Bishop, 65, 164, 184 reform movement, 32-3, 93, 115: Reform Committee, 93 Review, 62, 70, 95 roads, 14, 49, 112 Robinson, Sir William, Governor (188591): and diversification, 20-1, 22, 142; and planters, 27; and Trade and Taxes Commission, 29; and education, 6y, 78; and British West Indian immigration, 114; and illegitimacy, 121; and labourers, 145

250

Index

Roman Catholic Church, 64-5, 6y, 71-2, 81, 157-8: discrimination by, 98, 99; and Amerindians, 130-1, 165; and Afro-Christian cults, 155, 157, 158-9; and Indians, 184-5 Rostant, Philip, 54, 55-6, 107, 165, 202, 205, 218 n26 Royal Franchise Commission (1888), 93, 115, 132, 138, 145, 149-50, 164, 165 St Helena: immigration from to Trinidad, 10, n o , 134, 214 nio St John, Spencer, 196, 197-8 St Joseph, 15, 37, 113, 167 St Joseph's Convent, 47, 70, 74 St Mary's College, 47, 71-2, 73-4, 82, 99, 166, 200 Salmon, C. S., 35, 146 San Fernando: new suburbs after 1838, 9; growth in population, 12; roads, 14; railway to, 15; Scottish community, 52; schools, 65, 69, 74, 75, y6, 91-2; first Mayor, 87; Borough Council, 96, 148; and San Fernando Gazette, 96; race incidents in, 97, 203-4; Pan-African Association branch, 108; Barbadians in, 113, 148; prostitution and vagrancy, 123-4; offers mobility, 129; and Guarahoons, 131; protest against taxes, 148-9; bands, 167, 172, 173; Hosein massacre in, 184 San Fernando Gazette, 46, 55, 75, 80-1, 84, 96, 99, 103, 107, 121, 128, 144, 156, 159, 169, 186, 187, 188, 191, 200, 204, 206 Santa Cruz, 27, 50, 164 Saturnin, Dr, 87-8 Savannah Grande, 130, 133, 164, 165 Scipio-Pollard, E., 82, 200 Scots: in Trinidad, 24, 51-2 Scott, F. E., 45, 51 Scott, F. J., 45, 51 Scott Bushe, John, 42, 54, 219 n79 Shango, 136, 156, 158 Sierra Leone: immigration from to Trinidad, 10, n o , 134, 136, 138, 214 nio Siparia, 20, 130, 131, 165 slaves, ex-slaves, 86, n o , 151, 152, 157, 160, 162, 166, 169: emancipated, 8; settlements after 1838, 9, 89, 138

Smith, R. T.: on Creole society, 207, 208 Spanish: spoken in Trinidad, 6, 131, 152, 164-5, l66 » 2O 5 squatting, 9, 15-16, 49, 139 Star of the West, 40, 62, 200, 220 n i n stick-fighting, 167-8, 169-70, 173 Stollmeyer, Conrad, 39, 53 sugar: developments in industry, 17-19; W. F. Burnley and Co., 17; Turnbull, Stewart and Co., 17; cultivation methods, 18; Usine Ste Madeleine, 18; depression of 1880s and 1890s, 18-19, 48-9, 178, 190; and taxation, 30-1; changes in ownership, 47-9; and coloured planters, 88; and canefarming, 141-2; and labour, 143-4, 178-9, 180-1, 189-90, 192; and Indians, 176, 178-9, 180-1, 189-90, 192; see also Colonial Company; Tennant and Co. susu, 22-3, 136 Tacarigua, 15, 159 tambour-bamboo bands, 162, 168 taxation, 23-4, 28-9, 146-7: and sugar, 30-1

Telegraph, 96, 97, 122 Temperance Movement, 56, 57, 219 n9i Tennant and Co., 17, 26, 141 Thomas, J. J., 34-5, 91-2, 94-6, 98, 99, 101, 104-6, 108, 127-8, 134, 136, 202, 208 tobacco: cultivated in Trinidad, 20, 21 Tobago, 20, 52, 96, 142 Toco, 14, 15, 130, 132 Trade and Taxes Commission (1886-7), 24, 29 Trinidad Monthly Magazine, 58, 94, 95 Trollope, A., 147, 195, 204 Tunapuna, 134, 167 Union Club, 57, 59 Unofficial, members of Legislative Council, 25-6, 52, 87, 92, 93: and governors, 26-7; and Colonial Office, 27, 30-1; and officials, 27-8; and taxation, 28-9; influence policy, 2931; represent planters, 31-2; criticised, 32; and Bastardy Ordinance, 60-1; and free school places, 83

Index Valerio, Eusebio, 132-3 Venezuela, 69, n o , 131, 132, 133, 142, 144, 152 Venezuelans: in Trinidad, 8, 12, 34 Verteuil, Louis de, see De Verteuil, Louis wakes, 151, 156-7 Warner, Charles, 42, 71, 154, 203 Warner, Frederick, 26, 42, 211-12 Warner, Maureen, 135-6 West India Regiment: ex-soldiers of, 110, 137-8 West India Royal Commission (1897), 19, 144, 147, 191-2, 196 white Creoles: definition, 2, 34; and sugar, 17, 47-8; values, 35; conflicts with expatriates, 43-4; a ruling class, 47, 209; hold public offices, 53-4; in professions, 54-6; attitudes towards

251

blacks and coloureds, 193, 195, 1967, 198-9, 204, 208-9; approach to colour questions, 199-201, 205; emergence of Creole identity, 208-9 white upper class, 34, 209: cultural activities, 57-8; ladies, 59-60; and lower-class women, 60-1; social life, 61-2; relations with other groups, 62-3, 210; and schools, 71-5, 77-85; attitudes towards coloureds and blacks, 193, 195, 196-7, 198-9, 204, 208-9; approach to colour questions, 199201, 205; cultural values, 207-8 Williams, Henry Sylvester, 92, 108, 114 Wood, Donald, 14, 44, 47, 60, 62, yy, 132, 151, 193, 199 Yorubas, 135-6, 137, 152, 156, 158 Ziircher, Fritz, 39, 53