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Eric Williams

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Eric Williams
Eric Williams (cropped).jpg
1st Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago
In office
31 August 1962 – 29 March 1981
MonarchElizabeth II
PresidentEllis Clarke
Governors-GeneralSolomon Hochoy
Ellis Clarke
Opposition LeaderRudranath Capildeo
Vernon Jamadar
John R. F. Richardson
Basdeo Panday
Raffique Shah
Preceded byHimself as Premier of Trinidad and Tobago
Succeeded byGeorge Chambers
1st Premier of Trinidad and Tobago
In office
9 July 1959 – 31 August 1962
MonarchElizabeth II
GovernorSolomon Hochoy
Edward Beetham
Opposition LeaderBhadase Sagan Maraj
Preceded byPosition established
Succeeded byPosition abolished
2nd Chief Minister of Trinidad and Tobago
In office
28 October 1956 – 9 July 1959
MonarchElizabeth II
GovernorEdward Beetham
Opposition LeaderBhadase Sagan Maraj
Preceded byAlbert Gomes
Succeeded byPosition abolished
Political Leader of the People's National Movement
In office
1955–1981
Preceded byParty established
Succeeded byGeorge Chambers
Personal details
Born
Eric Eustace Williams

(1911-09-25)25 September 1911
Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
Died29 March 1981(1981-03-29) (aged 69)
Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
Political partyPeople's National Movement
Other political
affiliations
West Indies Federal Labour Party (1957–1962)
Spouses
  • Elsie Ribeiro (m. 1937; sep. 1948; div. 1951)
  • Evelyn Siulan Soy Moyou
    (m. 1951; died 1953)
[1][2]
Children3
Alma materSt. Catherine's College, Oxford Queen's Royal College
NicknameThe Father of the Nation[3][4][5][6][7]

Eric Eustace Williams TC CH (25 September 1911 – 29 March 1981) was a Trinidad and Tobago politician[8] who is regarded by some as the "Father of the Nation",[9][4][5][6][10] having led the then British Colony of Trinidad and Tobago to majority rule on 28 October 1956, to independence on 31 August 1962, and republic status on 1 August 1976, leading an unbroken string of general elections victories with his political party, the People's National Movement, until his death in 1981. He was the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago and also a noted Caribbean historian, especially for his book entitled Capitalism and Slavery.[11]

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Trinity Cross

Trinity Cross

The Trinity Cross was the highest of the National Awards of Trinidad and Tobago, between the years 1969 and 2008. It was awarded for: "distinguished and outstanding service to Trinidad and Tobago. It was awarded for gallantry in the face of the enemy, or for gallant conduct." Either nationals or non-nationals were awarded the honour, but no more than five may have been awarded in any year. The President was awarded the Trinity Cross in an ex officio capacity. The award was first presented in 1969, last conferred in 2005, and was subsequently replaced by The Order of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago in the year 2008.

Father of the Nation

Father of the Nation

The Father of the Nation is an honorific title given to a person considered the driving force behind the establishment of a country, state, or nation. Pater Patriae, also seen as Parens Patriae, was a Roman honorific meaning the "Father of the Fatherland", bestowed by the Senate on heroes, and later on emperors. In monarchies, the monarch is often considered the "father/mother of the nation" or as a patriarch to guide his family. This concept is expressed in the divine right of kings espoused in some monarchies, while in others it is codified into constitutional law.

People's National Movement

People's National Movement

The People's National Movement (PNM) is the longest-serving and oldest active political party in Trinidad and Tobago. The party has dominated national and local politics for much of Trinidad and Tobago's history, contesting all elections since 1956 serving as the nation's governing party or on four occasions, the main opposition. As a result, it has sometimes been referred to as Trinidad and Tobago's "main political party". There have been four PNM Prime Ministers and multiple ministries. The party espouses the principles of liberalism and generally sits at the centre to centre-left of the political spectrum.

Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a subregion of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea and its islands, the nearby coastal areas on the mainland may also be included. The region is southeast of the Gulf of Mexico and the North American mainland, east of Central America, and north of South America.

Capitalism and Slavery

Capitalism and Slavery

Capitalism and Slavery is the published version of the doctoral dissertation of Eric Williams, who was the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago in 1962. It advances a number of theses on the impact of economic factors on the decline of slavery, specifically the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the British West Indies, from the second half of the 18th century. It also makes criticisms of the historiography of the British Empire of the period: in particular on the use of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 as a sort of moral pivot; but also directed against a historical school that saw the imperial constitutional history as a constant advance through legislation. It uses polemical asides for some personal attacks, notably on the Oxford historian Reginald Coupland. Seymour Drescher, a prominent critic among historians of some of the theses put forward in Capitalism and Slavery by Williams, wrote in 1987: "If one criterion of a classic is its ability to reorient our most basic way of viewing an object or a concept, Eric Williams's study supremely passes that test."

Early life

Williams was born on 25 September in 1911. His father Thomas Henry Williams was a minor civil servant and devout Roman Catholic, and his mother Eliza Frances Boissiere (13 April 1888 – 1969) was a descendant of the mixed French Creole elite and had African and French ancestry. He saw his first school years at Tranquillity Boys' Intermediate Government School and he was later educated at Queen's Royal College in Port of Spain, where he excelled at academics and football. A football injury at QRC led to a hearing problem which he wore a hearing aid to correct.

He won an island scholarship in 1932, which allowed him to attend St. Catherine's Society, Oxford (later renamed St. Catherine's College). In 1935, he received a first class honours degree, and ranked first among history graduates that year. He also represented the university at football. In 1938, he went on to obtain his doctorate (see section below). In Inward Hunger, his autobiography, he described his experience of studying at Oxford and his travels in Germany after the Nazis' seizure of power.

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French people

French people

The French people are a Romance ethnic group and nation primarily located in Western Europe that share a common French culture, history, and language, identified with the country of France.

Queen's Royal College

Queen's Royal College

Queen's Royal College, referred to for short as QRC, or "The College" by alumni, is a secondary school in Trinidad and Tobago. Originally a boarding school and grammar school, the secular college is selective and noted for its German Renaissance architecture, academic performance and alumni representation in sports, politics and science in Trinidad and Tobago and globally.

Port of Spain

Port of Spain

Port of Spain, officially the City of Port of Spain, is the capital of Trinidad and Tobago and the third largest municipality, after Chaguanas and San Fernando. The city has a municipal population of 37,074, an urban population of 81,142 and a transient daily population of 250,000. It is located on the Gulf of Paria, on the northwest coast of the island of Trinidad and is part of a larger conurbation stretching from Chaguaramas in the west to Arima in the east with an estimated population of 600,000.

Scholarship

Scholarship

A scholarship is a form of financial aid awarded to students for further education. Generally, scholarships are awarded based on a set of criteria such as academic merit, diversity and inclusion, athletic skill, and financial need.

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany quickly became a totalitarian state where nearly all aspects of life were controlled by the government. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", alluded to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which Hitler and the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945 after 12 years when the Allies defeated Germany, ending World War II in Europe.

Nazi Party

Nazi Party

The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party, was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor, the German Workers' Party, existed from 1919 to 1920. The Nazi Party emerged from the extremist German nationalist, racist and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in post–World War I Germany. The party was created to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism. Initially, Nazi political strategy focused on anti–big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric, which was later downplayed to gain the support of business leaders. By the 1930s, the party's main focus shifted to antisemitic and anti-Marxist themes. The party had little popular support until the Great Depression, where worsening living standards and vast unemployment drove Germans into political extremism.

Adolf Hitler's rise to power

Adolf Hitler's rise to power

Adolf Hitler's rise to power began in the newly established Weimar Republic in September 1919 when Hitler joined the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. He rose to a place of prominence in the early years of the party. Being one of its best speakers, he was made the party leader after he threatened to otherwise leave.

Scholarly career

In Inward Hunger, Williams recounts that in the period following his graduation, He was "severely handicapped in my research by my lack of money ... I was turned down everywhere I tried ... and could not ignore the racial factor involved". However, in 1936, thanks to a recommendation made by Sir Alfred Claud Hollis (Governor of Trinidad and Tobago, 1930–36), the Leathersellers' Company awarded him a £50 grant to continue his advanced research in history at Oxford.[12]

He completed the D.Phil in 1938 under the supervision of Vincent Harlow. His doctoral thesis was titled The Economic Aspects of the Abolition of the Slave Trade and West Indian Slavery, and was published as Capitalism and Slavery in 1944,[13] although excerpts of his thesis were published in 1939 by The Keys, the journal of the League of Coloured Peoples. According to Williams, Fredric Warburg – a publisher of Marxist literature, who Williams asked to publish his thesis – refused to publish, saying that "such a book... would be contrary to the British tradition".[14] His thesis was both a direct attack on the idea that moral and humanitarian motives were the key facts in the success of the British abolitionist movement, and a covert critique of the established British historiography on the West Indies (as exemplified by, in Williams' view, the works of Oxford professor Reginald Coupland) as supportive of continued British colonial rule. Williams's argument owed much to the influence of C. L. R. James, whose The Black Jacobins, also completed in 1938, also offered an economic and geostrategic explanation for the rise of abolitionism in the Western world.[15]

Gad Heuman states:

In Capitalism and Slavery, Eric Williams argued that the declining economies of the British West Indies led to the abolition of the slave trade and of slavery. More recent research has rejected this conclusion; it is now clear that the colonies of the British Caribbean profited considerably during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.[16]

However, Capitalism and Slavery covers the economic history of sugar and slavery beyond just the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and discusses the decline of sugar plantations from 1823 until the emancipation of the slaves in the 1830s. It also discusses the British government's use of the equalisation of the sugar duties Acts in the 1840s to sever their responsibilities to buy sugar from the British West Indian colonies, and to buy sugar on the open market from Cuba and Brazil, where it was cheaper.[17] In support of the Williams thesis, David Ryden presented evidence to show that by the early nineteenth century there was an emerging crisis of profitability.[18] Williams' arguments that the plantation system fueled the Industrial Revolution are now established.[19]

Williams's argument about abolitionism went far beyond this decline thesis. What he argued was that the new economic and social interest created in the 18th century by the slave-based Atlantic economy generated new pro-free trade and anti-slavery political interests. These interacted with the rise of evangelical antislavery and with the self-emancipation of slave rebels, from the Haitian Revolution of 1792-1804 to the Jamaica Christmas Rebellion of 1831, to bring the end of Slavery in the 1830s.[20]

In 1939, Williams joined the Political Science department at Howard University.[15] In 1943, Williams organized a conference about the "economic future of the Caribbean."[21] He argued that small islands of the West Indies would be vulnerable to domination by the former colonial powers in the event that these islands became independent states; Williams advocated for a West Indian Federation as a solution to post-colonial dependence.[21]

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Alfred Claud Hollis

Alfred Claud Hollis

Sir Alfred Claud Hollis was British administrator who served as British Resident to the Sultan of Zanzibar between 1923 and 1929 and Governor of Trinidad and Tobago between 1930 and 1936 and author of a historical account of Spanish Trinidad.

Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy

A Doctor of Philosophy is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study and research. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is an earned research degree, those studying for a PhD are required to produce original research that expands the boundaries of knowledge, normally in the form of a dissertation, and defend their work before a panel of other experts in the field. The completion of a PhD is often a requirement for employment as a university professor, researcher, or scientist in many fields. Individuals who have earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree use the title Doctor with their name, although the proper etiquette associated with this usage may also be subject to the professional ethics of their own scholarly field, culture, or society. Those who teach at universities or work in academic, educational, or research fields are usually addressed by this title "professionally and socially in a salutation or conversation." Alternatively, holders may use post-nominal letters such as "Ph.D.", "PhD", or "DPhil". It is, however, considered incorrect to use both the title and post-nominals at the same time.

Capitalism and Slavery

Capitalism and Slavery

Capitalism and Slavery is the published version of the doctoral dissertation of Eric Williams, who was the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago in 1962. It advances a number of theses on the impact of economic factors on the decline of slavery, specifically the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the British West Indies, from the second half of the 18th century. It also makes criticisms of the historiography of the British Empire of the period: in particular on the use of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 as a sort of moral pivot; but also directed against a historical school that saw the imperial constitutional history as a constant advance through legislation. It uses polemical asides for some personal attacks, notably on the Oxford historian Reginald Coupland. Seymour Drescher, a prominent critic among historians of some of the theses put forward in Capitalism and Slavery by Williams, wrote in 1987: "If one criterion of a classic is its ability to reorient our most basic way of viewing an object or a concept, Eric Williams's study supremely passes that test."

League of Coloured Peoples

League of Coloured Peoples

The League of Coloured Peoples (LCP) was a British civil-rights organization that was founded in 1931 in London by Jamaican-born physician and campaigner Harold Moody with the goal of racial equality around the world, a primary focus being on black rights in Britain. In 1933, the organization began publication of the civil-rights journal, The Keys. The LCP was a powerful civil-rights force until its dissolution in 1951.

Fredric Warburg

Fredric Warburg

Fredric John Warburg was a British publisher, who in 1935 founded the company Secker & Warburg. He is best known for his association with the author George Orwell. During a career spanning a large part of the 20th century and ending in 1971, Warburg published Orwell's major books Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), as well as works by other leading figures such as Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka. Other notable publications included The Third Eye by Lobsang Rampa, Pierre Boulle's The Bridge over the River Kwai, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf and William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Abolitionism in the United Kingdom

Abolitionism in the United Kingdom

Abolitionism in the United Kingdom was the movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to end the practice of slavery, whether formal or informal, in the United Kingdom, the British Empire and the world, including ending the Atlantic slave trade. It was part of a wider abolitionism movement in Western Europe and the Americas.

C. L. R. James

C. L. R. James

Cyril Lionel Robert James, who sometimes wrote under the pen-name J. R. Johnson, was a Trinidadian historian, journalist and Marxist. His works are influential in various theoretical, social, and historiographical contexts. His work is a staple of Marxism, and he figures as a pioneering and influential voice in postcolonial literature. A tireless political activist, James is the author of the 1937 work World Revolution outlining the history of the Communist International, which stirred debate in Trotskyist circles, and in 1938 he wrote on the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins.

French Revolutionary Wars

French Revolutionary Wars

The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of sweeping military conflicts lasting from 1792 until 1802 and resulting from the French Revolution. They pitted France against Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and several other monarchies. They are divided in two periods: the War of the First Coalition (1792–1797) and the War of the Second Coalition (1798–1802). Initially confined to Europe, the fighting gradually assumed a global dimension. After a decade of constant warfare and aggressive diplomacy, France had conquered territories in the Italian Peninsula, the Low Countries and the Rhineland in Europe and abandoned Louisiana in North America. French success in these conflicts ensured the spread of revolutionary principles over much of Europe.

Napoleonic Wars

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of conflicts fought between the First French Empire under Napoleon (1804–1815), and a fluctuating array of European coalitions. The wars originated in political forces arising from the French Revolution (1789–1799) and from the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802), and produced a period of French domination of Continental Europe. There were seven Napoleonic Wars, five named after the coalitions that fought Napoleon, plus two named for their respective theatres: (i) the War of the Third Coalition (1803–1806), (ii) the War of the Fourth Coalition (1806–1807), (iii) the War of the Fifth Coalition (1809), (iv) the War of the Sixth Coalition (1813–1814), (v) the War of the Seventh Coalition (1815), (vi) the Peninsular War (1807–1814), and (vii) the French invasion of Russia (1812).

Captaincy General of Cuba

Captaincy General of Cuba

The Captaincy General of Cuba was an administrative district of the Spanish Empire created in 1607 as part of Habsburg Spain's attempt to better defend and administer its Caribbean possessions. The reform also established captaincies general in Puerto Rico, Guatemala and Yucatán.

Empire of Brazil

Empire of Brazil

The Empire of Brazil was a 19th-century state that broadly comprised the territories which form modern Brazil and Uruguay. Its government was a representative parliamentary constitutional monarchy under the rule of Emperors Dom Pedro I and his son Dom Pedro II. A colony of the Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil became the seat of the Portuguese Empire in 1808, when the Portuguese Prince regent, later King Dom John VI, fled from Napoleon's invasion of Portugal and established himself and his government in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. John VI later returned to Portugal, leaving his eldest son and heir-apparent, Pedro, to rule the Kingdom of Brazil as regent. On 7 September 1822, Pedro declared the independence of Brazil and, after waging a successful war against his father's kingdom, was acclaimed on 12 October as Pedro I, the first Emperor of Brazil. The new country was huge, sparsely populated and ethnically diverse.

Baptist War

Baptist War

The Baptist War, also known as the Sam Sharp Rebellion, the Christmas Rebellion, the Christmas Uprising and the Great Jamaican Slave Revolt of 1831–32, was an eleven-day rebellion that started on 25 December 1831 and involved up to 60,000 of the 300,000 slaves in the Colony of Jamaica. The uprising was led by a black Baptist deacon, Samuel Sharpe, and waged largely by his followers. The revolt, though militarily unsuccessful, played a major part in the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire.

Shift to public life

In 1944, Williams was appointed to the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission. In 1948 he returned to Trinidad as the Commission's Deputy Chairman of the Caribbean Research Council. In Trinidad, he delivered a series of educational lectures, for which he became famous. In 1955 after disagreements between Williams and the Commission, the Commission elected not to renew his contract. In a famous speech at Woodford Square in Port of Spain, he declared that he had decided to "put down his bucket" in the land of his birth. He rechristened that enclosed park, which stood in front of the Trinidad courts and legislature, "The University of Woodford Square", and proceeded to give a series of public lectures on world history, Greek democracy and philosophy, the history of slavery, and the history of the Caribbean to large audiences drawn from every social class.

Entry into nationalist politics in Trinidad and Tobago

From that public platform, Williams on 15 January 1956 inaugurated his own political party, the People's National Movement (PNM), which would take Trinidad and Tobago into independence in 1962, and dominate its post-colonial politics. Until this time his lectures had been carried out under the auspices of the Political Movement, a branch of the Teachers Education and Cultural Association, a group that had been founded in the 1940s as an alternative to the official teachers' union. The PNM's first document was its constitution. Unlike the other political parties of the time, the PNM was a highly organized, hierarchical body. Its second document was The People's Charter, in which the party strove to separate itself from the transitory political assemblages which had thus far been the norm in Trinidadian politics.

In elections held eight months later, on 24 September the Peoples National Movement won 13 of the 24 elected seats in the Legislative Council, defeating 6 of the 16 incumbents running for re-election. Although the PNM did not secure a majority in the 31-member Legislative Council, he was able to convince the Secretary of State for the Colonies to allow him to name the five appointed members of the council (despite the opposition of the Governor, Sir Edward Betham Beetham). This gave him a clear majority in the Legislative Council. Williams was thus elected Chief Minister and was also able to get all seven of his ministers elected.

Federation and independence

After the Second World War, the Colonial Office had preferred that British colonies move towards political independence in the kind of federal systems which had appeared to succeed since the Canadian confederation, which created Canada, in the 19th century. In the British West Indies, this goal coincided with the political aims of the nationalist movements which had emerged in all the colonies of the region during the 1930s. The Montego Bay conference of 1948 had declared the common aim to be the achievement by the West Indies of "Dominion Status" (which meant constitutional independence from the British government) as a Federation. In 1958, a West Indies Federation emerged from the British Caribbean, which with British Guiana (now Guyana) and British Honduras (now Belize) choosing to opt out of the Federation, leaving Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago as the dominant players. Most political parties in the various territories aligned themselves into one of two Federal political parties – the West Indies Federal Labour Party (led by Grantley Adams of Barbados and Norman Manley of Jamaica) and the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) led by Manley's cousin, Sir Alexander Bustamante. The PNM affiliated with the former, while several opposition parties (the People's Democratic Party, the Trinidad Labour Party and the Party of Political Progress Groups) aligned themselves with the DLP, and soon merged to form the Democratic Labour Party of Trinidad and Tobago.

The DLP victory in the 1958 Federal Elections and subsequent poor showing by the PNM in the 1959 County Council Elections soured Williams on the Federation. Lord Hailes (Governor-General of the Federation) also overruled two PNM nominations to the Federal Senate in order to balance a disproportionately WIFLP-dominated Senate. When Bustamante withdrew Jamaica from the Federation, this left Trinidad and Tobago in the untenable position of having to provide 75% of the Federal budget while having less than half the seats in the Federal government. In a famous speech, Williams declared that "one from ten leaves nought". Following the adoption of a resolution to that effect by the PNM General Council on 15 January 1962, Williams withdrew Trinidad and Tobago from the West Indies Federation. This action led the British government to dissolve the Federation.

In 1961 the PNM had introduced the Representation of the People Bill. This Bill was designed to modernise the electoral system by instituting permanent registration of voters, identification cards, voting machines and revised electoral boundaries. These changes were seen by the DLP as an attempt to disenfranchise illiterate rural voters through intimidation, to rig the elections through the use of voting machines, to allow Afro-Caribbean immigrants from other islands to vote, and to gerrymander the boundaries to ensure victory by the PNM. Opponents of the PNM saw "proof" of these allegations when A. N. R. Robinson was declared winner of the Tobago seat in 1961 with more votes than there were registered voters, and in the fact that the PNM was able to win every subsequent election until the 1980 Tobago House of Assembly Elections.

The 1961 elections gave the PNM 57% of the votes and 20 of the 30 seats. This two-thirds majority allowed them to draft the Independence Constitution without input from the DLP. Although supported by the Colonial Office, independence was blocked by the DLP, until Williams was able to make a deal with DLP leader Rudranath Capildeo that strengthened the rights of the minority party and expanded the number of Opposition Senators. With Capildeo's assent, Trinidad and Tobago became independent on 31 August 1962, 25 days after Jamaica. In addition to primeministership, Williams was also Minister of Finance from 1957 to 1961 and from 1966 to 1971.[22]

Black Power

Between 1968 and 1970 the Black Power movement gained strength in Trinidad and Tobago. The leadership of the movement developed within the Guild of Undergraduates at the St. Augustine Campus of the University of the West Indies. Led by Geddes Granger, the National Joint Action Committee joined up with trade unionists led by George Weekes of the Oilfields Workers' Trade Union and Basdeo Panday, then a young trade-union lawyer and activist. The Black Power Revolution started during the 1970 Carnival. In response to the challenge, Williams countered with a broadcast entitled "I am for Black Power". He introduced a 5% levy to fund unemployment reduction and established the first locally owned commercial bank. However, this intervention had little impact on the protests.

On 3 April 1970, a protester was killed by the police. This was followed on 13 April by the resignation of A. N. R. Robinson, Member of Parliament for Tobago East. On 18 April sugar workers went on strike, and there was the talk of a general strike. In response to this, Williams proclaimed a State of Emergency on 21 April and arrested 15 Black Power leaders. In response to this, a portion of the Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force, led by Raffique Shah and Rex Lassalle, mutinied and took hostages at the army barracks at Teteron. Through the action of the Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard the mutiny was contained and the mutineers surrendered on 25 April.

Williams made three additional speeches in which he sought to identify himself with the aims of the Black Power movement. He reshuffled his cabinet and removed three ministers (including two White members) and three senators. He also proposed a Public Order Bill which would have curtailed civil liberties in an effort to control protest marches. After public opposition, led by A. N. R. Robinson and his newly created Action Committee of Democratic Citizens (which later became the Democratic Action Congress), the Bill was withdrawn. Attorney General Karl Hudson-Phillips offered to resign over the failure of the Bill, but Williams refused his resignation.

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People's National Movement

People's National Movement

The People's National Movement (PNM) is the longest-serving and oldest active political party in Trinidad and Tobago. The party has dominated national and local politics for much of Trinidad and Tobago's history, contesting all elections since 1956 serving as the nation's governing party or on four occasions, the main opposition. As a result, it has sometimes been referred to as Trinidad and Tobago's "main political party". There have been four PNM Prime Ministers and multiple ministries. The party espouses the principles of liberalism and generally sits at the centre to centre-left of the political spectrum.

Constitution

Constitution

A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed.

Edward Beetham

Edward Beetham

Sir Edward Betham Beetham was a British colonial official who was Resident Commissioner in Swaziland from 1946 to 1950 and in the Bechuanaland Protectorate from 1950 to 1953.

Colonial Office

Colonial Office

The Colonial Office was a government department of the Kingdom of Great Britain and later of the United Kingdom, first created to deal with the colonial affairs of British North America but required also to oversee the increasing number of colonies of the British Empire. Despite its name, the Colonial Office was never responsible for all Britain's Imperial territories; for example, protectorates fell under the purview of the Foreign Office, and British India was ruled by the East India Company until 1858, while the role of the Colonial Office in the affairs of the Dominions changed as time passed.

Canada

Canada

Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's second-largest country by total area, with the world's longest coastline. It is characterized by a wide range of both meteorologic and geological regions. The country is sparsely inhabited, with most residing south of the 55th parallel in urban areas. Canada's capital is Ottawa and its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.

British West Indies

British West Indies

The British West Indies (BWI) were colonised British territories in the West Indies: Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Montserrat, the British Virgin Islands, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, British Guiana and Trinidad and Tobago. Other territories include Bermuda, and the former British Honduras. The colonies were also at the centre of the transatlantic slave trade, around 2.3 million slaves were brought to the British Caribbean. Before the decolonisation period in the later 1950s and 1960s the term was used to include all British colonies in the region as part of the British Empire. Following the independence of most of the territories from the United Kingdom, the term Commonwealth Caribbean is now used.

British Guiana

British Guiana

British Guiana was a British colony, part of the mainland British West Indies, which resides on the northern coast of South America. Since 1966 it has been known as the independent nation of Guyana.

Guyana

Guyana

Guyana, officially the Co‑operative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern mainland of South America. Guyana is an indigenous word which means "Land of Many Waters". The capital city is Georgetown. Guyana is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north, Brazil to the south and southwest, Venezuela to the west, and Suriname to the east. With 215,000 km2 (83,000 sq mi), Guyana is the third-smallest sovereign state by area in mainland South America after Uruguay and Suriname, and is the second-least populous sovereign state in South America after Suriname; it is also one of the least densely populated countries on Earth. It has a wide variety of natural habitats and a very high biodiversity.

British Honduras

British Honduras

British Honduras was a Crown colony on the east coast of Central America, south of Mexico, from 1783 to 1964, then a self-governing colony, renamed Belize in June 1973, until September 1981, when it gained full independence as Belize. British Honduras was the last continental possession of the United Kingdom in the Americas.

Belize

Belize

Belize is a country on the north-eastern coast of Central America. It is bordered by Mexico to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and Guatemala to the west and south. It also shares a water boundary with Honduras to the southeast. It has an area of 22,970 square kilometres (8,867 sq mi) and a population of 441,471 (2022). Its mainland is about 290 km (180 mi) long and 110 km (68 mi) wide. It is the least populated and least densely populated country in Central America. Its population growth rate of 1.87% per year is the second-highest in the region and one of the highest in the Western Hemisphere. Its capital is Belmopan, and its largest city is the namesake city of Belize City. Belize is often thought of as a Caribbean country in Central America because it has a history similar to that of English-speaking Caribbean nations. Belize's institutions and official language reflect its history as a British colony.

Colony of Jamaica

Colony of Jamaica

The Crown Colony of Jamaica and Dependencies was a British colony from 1655, when it was captured by the English Protectorate from the Spanish Empire. Jamaica became a British colony from 1707 and a Crown colony in 1866. The Colony was primarily used for sugarcane production, and experienced many slave rebellions over the course of British rule. Jamaica was granted independence in 1962.

Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad and Tobago, officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is the southernmost island country in the Caribbean. Consisting of the main islands Trinidad and Tobago, and numerous much smaller islands, it is situated 11 kilometres off the coast of northeastern Venezuela and 130 kilometres south of Grenada. It shares maritime boundaries with Barbados to the northeast, Grenada to the northwest and Venezuela to the south and west. Trinidad and Tobago is generally considered to be part of the West Indies. The island country's capital is Port of Spain, while its largest and most populous city is San Fernando.

Death

Prime Minister Eric Eustace Williams of Trinidad and Tobago, died on 29 March 1981 at his official house in St. Anne, a Port of Spain neighborhood in Trinidad and Tobago. He was 69 years old at the time of his death.[23][24]

Personal life

Eric Williams had married Elsie Ribeiro, a music studies student born to a mother from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and a Portuguese Trinidadian father, on 30 January 1937, while he was a postgraduate student at Oxford University. He had known Ribeiro from Trinidad before he left for the United Kingdom. The ceremony was private out of fear that the terms of his scholarship could have prohibited marriage and he did not want it to be terminated. After he graduated, they moved to Washington, D.C. in the United States where he obtained a position at Howard University. They had a son, Alistair Williams, in 1943 and a daughter, Elsie Pamela Williams, in 1947. However, Williams questioned the paternity of Elsie Pamela, thus leading to problems in the marriage. In May 1948, Williams left Washington, D.C. to go back to Trinidad, abandoning his wife and children. His reason for not financially support them after leaving was because Ribeiro refused to send their children to Oxford University in the future.[1][2]

After returning to Trinidad in 1948, he met Evelyn Siulan Soy Moyou, a typist 13 years his junior of Chinese descent on her father's side and Chinese, African, and Portuguese descent on her mother's side, and she was a niece of Solomon Hochoy, the future Governor and Governor-General of Trinidad and Tobago during Williams's premiership. She worked at the Caribbean Commission where Williams had taken up a position. They began a relationship and he initiated divorce proceedings from Ribeiro in January 1950 on a Caribbean Commission trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands.[1][2]

Ribeiro responded with an injunction restraining him from proceeding with his petition. After dropping the proceedings, in a letter of April 1950 submitted to the jurisdiction of the District of Columbia court, he agreed to abide by its decision and be bound by an order regarding alimony. However, a few months later while on a research holiday in the United States he reinitiated divorce proceedings in Reno, Nevada, known for its quick divorces, due to the fact that Moyou was pregnant with his child. However, Ribeiro obtained an injunction preventing Williams from making any attempt at divorce, on the grounds that he had earlier subjected himself to the jurisdiction of the District of Columbia court. Williams filed formal proceedings for a divorce on 24 November 1950. On 13 December 1950, Williams was ordered to appear in court, most likely because he had filed for a divorce in Reno, even though he had earlier submitted himself to the jurisdiction of the District of Columbia. Even though a lawyer had been assigned to him, he did not appear and on 22 December 1950 he was ordered to be taken into custody by a US Marshal. His lawyer in Reno pointed out that his divorce had been granted, though a search of the court records showed no entry for a final decree. Williams eventually met the six-week residential requirement to obtain a Nevada divorce and on 2 January 1951, he married Moyou in Reno, in a ceremony performed by The Rev. Munroe Warner of First Christian Church. Their daughter, Erica Williams, was born on 12 February 1951, in Reno. After his second marriage, Ribeiro obtained a divorce from him on 20 January 1951, on grounds of desertion. It was made effective on 21 July 1951 and he was ordered to pay a monthly alimony of US$250 for the maintenance of his first wife and two children. On 26 May 1953, Mayou died from Tuberculosis.[1][2]

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Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is an island country in the Caribbean. It is located in the southeast Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, which lie in the West Indies at the southern end of the eastern border of the Caribbean Sea where the latter meets the Atlantic Ocean.

Portuguese Trinidadian and Tobagonian

Portuguese Trinidadian and Tobagonian

Portuguese Trinidadians and Tobagonians are the descendants of emigrants from Portugal to Trinidad and Tobago.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is located on the east bank of the Potomac River, which forms its southwestern border with Virginia, and borders Maryland to its north and east. The city was named for George Washington, a Founding Father, commanding general of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War, and the first president of the United States, and the district is named for Columbia, the female personification of the nation.

United States

United States

The United States of America, commonly known as the United States or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. The United States is also in free association with three Pacific Island sovereign states: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 333 million, it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third most populous in the world. The national capital of the United States is Washington, D.C. and its most populous city and principal financial center is New York City.

Howard University

Howard University

Howard University is a private, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C., located in the Shaw neighborhood. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity" and accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.

Solomon Hochoy

Solomon Hochoy

Sir Solomon Hochoy was the last colonial governor of Trinidad and Tobago and the first governor-general upon the country's independence in 1962. He was the first non-European governor of a British crown colony and the first ethnically Han Chinese and nationally Caribbean person to become Governor-General in the Commonwealth.

Caribbean Commission

Caribbean Commission

The Caribbean Commission, originally the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission, was established on 9 March 1942 to improve the common social and economic problems of the region and deal with wartime issues. In 1946, the governments of the United States and United Kingdom invited France and the Netherlands to join, creating the Caribbean Commission with a central secretariat in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.

Reno, Nevada

Reno, Nevada

Reno is a city in the northwest section of the U.S. state of Nevada, along the Nevada-California border, about 22 miles (35 km) north from Lake Tahoe, known as "The Biggest Little City in the World". Known for its casino and tourism industry, Reno is the county seat and largest city of Washoe County and sits in the High Eastern Sierra foothills, in the Truckee River valley, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. The Reno metro area occupies a valley colloquially known as the Truckee Meadows which because of large-scale investments from Greater Seattle and San Francisco Bay Area companies such as Amazon, Tesla, Panasonic, Microsoft, Apple, and Google has become a new major technology center in the United States.

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in which case it is known as latent tuberculosis. Around 10% of latent infections progress to active disease which, if left untreated, kill about half of those affected. Typical symptoms of active TB are chronic cough with blood-containing mucus, fever, night sweats, and weight loss. It was historically referred to as consumption due to the weight loss associated with the disease. Infection of other organs can cause a wide range of symptoms.

Legacy

Academic contributions

Williams specialised in the study of slavery. Many Western academics focused on his chapter on the abolition of the slave trade, but that is just a small part of his work. In his 1944 book, Capitalism and Slavery, Williams argued that the British government's passage of the Slave Trade Act in 1807 was motivated primarily by economic concerns rather than by humanitarian ones. Williams also argued that by extension, so was the emancipation of the slaves and the blockade of Africa, and that as industrial capitalism and wage labour began to expand, eliminating the competition from wage-free slavery became economically advantageous.

Williams' impact on that field of study has proved of lasting significance. As Barbara Solow and Stanley Engerman put it in the preface to a compilation of essays on Williams that was based on a commemorative symposium held in Italy in 1984, Williams "defined the study of Caribbean history, and its writing affected the course of Caribbean history.... Scholars may disagree on his ideas, but they remain the starting point of discussion.... Any conference on British capitalism and Caribbean slavery is a conference on Eric Williams."

In an open letter to Solow, Yale Professor of History David Brion Davis refers to Williams' thesis of the declining economic viability of slave labor as "undermined by a vast mountain of empirical evidence and has been repudiated by the world’s leading authorities on New World slavery, the transatlantic slave trade, and the British abolition movement".[25] A major work which was written to refute Eric Williams' thesis was Seymour Drescher's Econocide, which argued that when the slave trade was abolished in 1807, Britain's sugar economy was thriving. However, other historians have noted that Drescher ended his study of the economic history of the British West Indies in 1822, and did not address the decline of the British sugar industry (something which was highlighted by Williams) which began in the mid-1820s, and continued until the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833.[26] The majority of Eric William's thesis, which addressed the decline of the sugar industry in the 1820s, the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, and the sugar equalisation acts of the 1840s, has continued to influence the historiography of the 19th-century West Indies and it's connection to the wider Atlantic world as a whole.[19][27]

In addition to Capitalism and Slavery, Williams produced a number of other scholarly works focused on the Caribbean. Of particular significance are two published long after he had abandoned his academic career for public life: British Historians and the West Indies and From Columbus to Castro. The former, based on research done in the 1940s and initially presented at a symposium at Clark Atlanta University, sought to challenge established British historiography on the West Indies. Williams was particularly scathing in his criticism of the work of Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle. The latter work is a general history of the Caribbean from the 15th to the mid-20th centuries. The work appeared at the same time as a similarly titled book (De Cristóbal Colón a Fidel Castro) by another Caribbean scholar-statesman, Juan Bosch of the Dominican Republic.

Williams sent one of 73 Apollo 11 Goodwill Messages to NASA for the historic first lunar landing in 1969. The message still rests on the lunar surface today. He wrote, in part: "It is our earnest hope for mankind that while we gain the moon, we shall not lose the world."[28]

The Eric Williams Memorial Collection

The Eric Williams Memorial Collection (EWMC) at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago was inaugurated in 1998 by former US Secretary of State Colin Powell. In 1999, it was named to UNESCO's prestigious Memory of the World Register. Secretary Powell heralded Williams as a tireless warrior in the battle against colonialism, and for his many other achievements as a scholar, politician and international statesman.

The Collection consists of the late Dr. Williams' Library and Archives. Available for consultation by researchers, the Collection amply reflects its owner’s eclectic interests, comprising some 7,000 volumes, as well as correspondence, speeches, manuscripts, historical writings, research notes, conference documents and a miscellany of reports. The Museum contains a wealth of emotive memorabilia of the period and copies of the seven translations of Williams' major work, Capitalism and Slavery (into Russian, Chinese and Japanese [1968, 2004] among them, and a Korean translation was released in 2006). Photographs depicting various aspects of his life and contribution to the development of Trinidad and Tobago complete this extraordinarily rich archive, as does a three-dimensional re-creation of Williams' study.

Dr Colin Palmer, Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University, has said: "as a model for similar archival collections in the Caribbean...I remain very impressed by its breadth.... [It] is a national treasure." Palmer's biography of Williams up to 1970, Eric Williams and the Making of the Modern Caribbean (University of North Carolina Press, 2008), is dedicated to the Collection.

Film

In 2011, to mark the centenary of Williams' birth, Mariel Brown directed the documentary film Inward Hunger: the Story of Eric Williams, scripted by Alake Pilgrim.[29]

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Atlantic slave trade

Atlantic slave trade

The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The vast majority of those who were transported in the transatlantic slave trade were people from Central and West Africa that had been sold by other West Africans to Western European slave traders, while others had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids; Europeans gathered and imprisoned the enslaved at forts on the African coast and then brought them to the Americas. Except for the Portuguese, European slave traders generally did not participate in the raids because life expectancy for Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa was less than one year during the period of the slave trade. The colonial South Atlantic and Caribbean economies were particularly dependent on labour for the production of sugarcane and other commodities. This was viewed as crucial by those Western European states which, in the late 17th and 18th centuries, were vying with one another to create overseas empires.

Capitalism and Slavery

Capitalism and Slavery

Capitalism and Slavery is the published version of the doctoral dissertation of Eric Williams, who was the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago in 1962. It advances a number of theses on the impact of economic factors on the decline of slavery, specifically the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the British West Indies, from the second half of the 18th century. It also makes criticisms of the historiography of the British Empire of the period: in particular on the use of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 as a sort of moral pivot; but also directed against a historical school that saw the imperial constitutional history as a constant advance through legislation. It uses polemical asides for some personal attacks, notably on the Oxford historian Reginald Coupland. Seymour Drescher, a prominent critic among historians of some of the theses put forward in Capitalism and Slavery by Williams, wrote in 1987: "If one criterion of a classic is its ability to reorient our most basic way of viewing an object or a concept, Eric Williams's study supremely passes that test."

Government of the United Kingdom

Government of the United Kingdom

The Government of the United Kingdom, officially His Majesty's Government, is the central executive authority of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The government is led by the prime minister who selects all the other ministers. The country has had a Conservative-led government since 2010, with successive prime ministers being the then leader of the Conservative Party. The prime minister and their most senior ministers belong to the supreme decision-making committee, known as the Cabinet.

Humanitarianism

Humanitarianism

Humanitarianism is an active belief in the value of human life, whereby humans practice benevolent treatment and provide assistance to other humans to reduce suffering and improve the conditions of humanity for moral, altruistic, and emotional reasons. One aspect involves voluntary emergency aid overlapping with human rights advocacy, actions taken by governments, development assistance, and domestic philanthropy. Other critical issues include correlation with religious beliefs, motivation of aid between altruism and social control, market affinity, imperialism and neo-colonialism, gender and class relations, and humanitarian agencies. A practitioner is known as a humanitarian.

Blockade of Africa

Blockade of Africa

The Blockade of Africa began in 1808 after the United Kingdom outlawed the Atlantic slave trade, making it illegal for British ships to transport slaves. The Royal Navy immediately established a presence off Africa to enforce the ban, called the West Africa Squadron. Although the ban initially applied only to British ships, Britain negotiated treaties with other countries to give the Royal Navy the right to intercept and search their ships for slaves.

David Brion Davis

David Brion Davis

David Brion Davis was an American intellectual and cultural historian, and a leading authority on slavery and abolition in the Western world. He was a Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, and founder and director of Yale's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.

Abolitionism in the United Kingdom

Abolitionism in the United Kingdom

Abolitionism in the United Kingdom was the movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to end the practice of slavery, whether formal or informal, in the United Kingdom, the British Empire and the world, including ending the Atlantic slave trade. It was part of a wider abolitionism movement in Western Europe and the Americas.

Atlantic Ocean

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about 106,460,000 km2 (41,100,000 sq mi). It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the "Old World" of Africa, Europe, and Asia from the "New World" of the Americas in the European perception of the World.

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer and navigator from the Republic of Genoa who completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, opening the way for the widespread European exploration and European colonization of the Americas. His expeditions were the first known European contact with the Caribbean and Central and South America.

Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 2008. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist and Cuban nationalist, he also served as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1961 until 2011. Under his administration, Cuba became a one-party communist state; industry and business were nationalized, and socialist reforms were implemented throughout society.

Clark Atlanta University

Clark Atlanta University

Clark Atlanta University is a private, Methodist, historically black research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Clark Atlanta is the first Historically Black College or University (HBCU) in the Southern United States. Founded on September 19, 1865, as Atlanta University, it consolidated with Clark College to form Clark Atlanta University in 1988. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity".

Dominican Republic

Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean region. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares with Haiti, making Hispaniola one of only two Caribbean islands, along with Saint Martin, that is shared by two sovereign states. The Dominican Republic is the second-largest nation in the Antilles by area at 48,671 square kilometers (18,792 sq mi), and third-largest by population, with approximately 10.7 million people, down from 10.8 million in 2020, of whom approximately 3.3 million live in the metropolitan area of Santo Domingo, the capital city. The official language of the country is Spanish.

Selected bibliography

  • Capitalism and Slavery, 1944.
  • Documents of West Indian History: 1492–1655 from the Spanish discovery to the British conquest of Jamaica, Volume 1, 1963.
  • History of the People of Trinidad and Tobago, 1964.
  • British Historians and the West Indies, 1964.
  • The Negro In The Caribbean, 1970.
  • Inward Hunger: The Education of a Prime Minister, 1971.
  • From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean 1492–1969, 1971.
  • Forged from the Love of Liberty: Selected Speeches of Dr. Eric Williams, 1981.

Source: "Eric Williams", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, March 15th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Williams.

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Notes
  1. ^ a b c d "The private Eric Williams". 2 September 2001.
  2. ^ a b c d http://www.triniview.com/kimjohnson/eric3.html
  3. ^ McLeod, Sheri-Kae (31 August 2020). "#Independence: Trinidad and Tobago Prime Ministers Since 1962". Caribbean News. Retrieved 19 April 2021.
  4. ^ a b "Trinidad & Tobago 50plus Of Canada". Trinidad & Tobago 50plus Of Canada. Retrieved 19 April 2021.
  5. ^ a b "Trinidad chosen by Chinese President for first regional visit | Trinidad and Tobago Government News". www.news.gov.tt. Retrieved 19 April 2021.
  6. ^ a b Loubon, Michelle. "De Fosto sings tribute to Mother Trinbago". www.guardian.co.tt. Retrieved 19 April 2021.
  7. ^ Wilson, Sacha. "??Jack: Williams burnt 'constitution' in 1960". www.guardian.co.tt. Retrieved 19 April 2021.
  8. ^ "C. L. R. James, Eric Williams, and the End of Slavery in the Caribbean". jacobinmag.com. Retrieved 21 February 2022.
  9. ^ McLeod, Sheri-Kae (31 August 2020). "#Independence: Trinidad and Tobago Prime Ministers Since 1962". Caribbean News. Retrieved 19 April 2021.
  10. ^ Wilson, Sacha. "??Jack: Williams burnt 'constitution' in 1960". www.guardian.co.tt. Retrieved 19 April 2021.
  11. ^ Horne, Gerald (5 October 2021). "Eric Williams and the Tangled History of Capitalism and Slavery". The Nation. ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved 21 February 2022.
  12. ^ The Leathersellers' Company Court Minutes, 1 July 1936, ref. GOV/1/25, pp. 136–37.
  13. ^ Neilson, David; Peters, Michael A. (15 April 2020). "Capitalism's slavery". Educational Philosophy and Theory. 52 (5): 475–484. doi:10.1080/00131857.2019.1595323. ISSN 0013-1857. S2CID 150904617.
  14. ^ Levine, Philippa (2019). The British Empire: Critical Readings. Principles. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 269. ISBN 978-1-4742-6534-8.
  15. ^ a b Getachew, Adom (2019). Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination. Princeton University Press. p. 6. doi:10.2307/j.ctv3znwvg. ISBN 978-0-691-17915-5. JSTOR j.ctv3znwvg. S2CID 242525007.
  16. ^ Gad Heuman, "The British West Indies" in Andrew Porter, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire – Vol. 3: The 19th Century (1999), 3:470.
  17. ^ Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (London: Andre Deutsch, 1964).
  18. ^ David Ryden, West Indian Slavery and British Abolition, 1783-1807 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
  19. ^ a b Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch (2004), p. 103.
  20. ^ Williams, Capitalism and Slavery.
  21. ^ a b Getachew, Adom (2019). Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination. Princeton University Press. p. 111. doi:10.2307/j.ctv3znwvg. ISBN 978-0-691-17915-5. JSTOR j.ctv3znwvg. S2CID 242525007.
  22. ^ "Former Ministers of Finance - Ministry of Finance, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago". 21 February 2014. Archived from the original on 21 February 2014.
  23. ^ "Dr Eric Eustace Williams (1911 - 1981)". The Presidency of Republic of South Africa.
  24. ^ Fraser, Gerald (31 March 1981). "ERIC WILLIAMS,LEADER OF TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO, IS DEAD". The New York Times.
  25. ^ Davis, David Brion; Barbara L.Solow (18 November 2017). "The British & the Slave Trade" – via www.nybooks.com. {{cite magazine}}: Cite magazine requires |magazine= (help)
  26. ^ Seymour Drescher, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010).
  27. ^ David Geggus, The British Government and the Saint Domingue Slave Revolt, 1791–1793, The English Historical Review Vol. 96, No. 379 (Apr. 1981), pp. 285–305, at p. 287. Published by: Oxford University Press JSTOR 568291
  28. ^ "Apollo 11 Goodwill Messages" (PDF). NASA. 13 July 1969. Retrieved 30 June 2012.
  29. ^ Raymond Ramcharitar, "Inward Hunger: The Movie", Guardian Media, 5 October 2011.
References
  • Eric Williams. 1944. Capitalism and Slavery Richmond, Virginia. University of North Carolina Press, 1944.
  • Eric Williams. 1964. History of the People of Trinidad and Tobago. Port of Spain. ISBN 1-881316-65-3
  • Eric Williams. 1964. British Historians and the West Indies, Port of Spain.
  • Solow, Barbara, and Stanley Engerman (eds). 1987. British Capitalism & Caribbean Slavery: the Legacy of Eric Williams.
  • Cudjoe, Selwyn. 1993. Eric E. Williams Speaks: Essays on Colonialism and Independence. ISBN 0-87023-887-6
  • Drescher, Seymour. 1977. Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition
  • Meighoo, Kirk. 2003. Politics in a Half Made Society: Trinidad and Tobago, 1925–2002. ISBN 1-55876-306-6
  • Rahman, Tahir (2007). We Came in Peace for all Mankind- the Untold Story of the Apollo 11 Silicon Disc. Leathers Publishing. ISBN 978-1-58597-441-2.
External links


Preceded by Chief Minister of Trinidad and Tobago
1956–59
Succeeded by
none
Preceded by
none
Premier of Trinidad and Tobago
1959–61
Succeeded by
none
Preceded by
none
Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago
1962–81
Succeeded by
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