Trinidad and Tobago

The Loss of El Dorado: A Colonial History

The history of Trinidad begins with a delusion: the belief that somewhere nearby on the South American mainland lay El Dorado, the mythical kingdom of gold. In this extraordinary and often gripping book, V. S. Naipaul–himself a native of Trinidad–shows how that delusion drew a small island into the vortex of world events, making it the object of Spanish and English colonial designs and a mecca for treasure-seekers, slave-traders, and revolutionaries.

Amid massacres and poisonings, plunder and multinational intrigue, two themes emerge: the grinding down of the Aborigines during the long rivalries of the El Dorado quest and, two hundred years later, the man-made horror of slavery. An accumulation of casual, awful detail takes us as close as we can get to day-to-day life in the slave colony, where, in spite of various titles of nobility, only an opportunistic, near-lawless community exists, always fearful of slave suicide or poison, of African sorcery and revolt. Naipaul tells this labyrinthine story with assurance, withering irony, and lively sympathy. The result is historical writing at its highest level.

The Steelband Movement: The Forging of a National Art in Trinidad and Tobago

Carnival Music in Trinidad: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (Global Music Series) W/CD

Carnival Music in Trinidad is one of several case-study volumes that can be used along with Thinking Musically, the core book in the Global Music Series. Thinking Musically incorporates music from many diverse cultures and establishes the framework for exploring the practice of music around the world. It sets the stage for an array of case-study volumes, each of which focuses on a single area of the world. Each case study uses the contemporary musical situation as a point of departure, covering historical information and traditions as they relate to the present. Visit www.oup.com/us/globalmusic for a list of case studies in the Global Music Series. The website also includes instructional materials to accompany each study.
Home to the most elaborate Carnival celebration in the Caribbean, Trinidad is the birthplace of the steelband and a hub for calypso and soca, musical genres that have been influential throughout the world. Collectively, these and other performance genres constitute the dynamic event of Carnival, which for more than a century has been an occasion for an intense exchange of ideas about society, culture, and tradition in Trinidad.
Carnival Music in Trinidad examines the history and aesthetics of calypso, steelband, soca, and other genres, relating musical structure, lyrics, sound, and style to the major roles they play in Trinidadian culture. It also analyzes how the instruments, sounds, and lyrics of Carnival music provide a sense of national and ethnic identity. Author Shannon Dudley describes calypso's traditional role as a voice for the common people, acknowledging the tensions between this history and calypso's ties to modern commercial music markets. He also presents the story of the steelband--an art form born in the most downtrodden neighborhoods of Port of Spain--as both a parable of the nation's struggles and successes and as a continuous process of musical exploration. Written in a lively style accessible to both students and general readers, Carnival Music in Trinidad features vivid eyewitness accounts and illustrations of performances. The book is packaged with a 40-minute CD containing examples of the music discussed in the text.

Everyday Harm: Domestic Violence, Court Rites, and Cultures of Reconciliation

Eric Williams and the Making of the Modern Caribbean

Born in Trinidad, Eric Williams (1911-81) founded the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago's first modern political party in 1956, led the country to independence from the British culminating in 1962, and became the nation's first prime minister. Before entering politics, he was a professor at Howard University and wrote several books, including the classic Capitalism and Slavery. In the first scholarly biography of Williams, Colin Palmer provides insights into Williams's personality that illuminate his life as a scholar and politician and his tremendous influence on the historiography and politics of the Caribbean.

Palmer focuses primarily on the fourteen-year period of struggles for independence in the Anglophone Caribbean. From 1956, when Williams became the chief minister of Trinidad and Tobago, to 1970, when the Black Power-inspired February Revolution brought his administration face to face with a younger generation intellectually indebted to his revolutionary thought, Williams was at the center of most of the conflicts and challenges that defined the region. He was most aggressive in advocating the creation of a West Indies federation to help the region assert itself in international political and economic arenas. Looking at the ideas of Williams as well as those of his Caribbean and African peers, Palmer demonstrates how the development of the modern Caribbean was inextricably intertwined with the evolution of a regional anticolonial consciousness.

Caliban and the Yankees: Trinidad and the United States Occupation

In a compelling story of the installation and operation of U.S. bases in the Caribbean colony of Trinidad during World War II, Harvey Neptune examines how the people of this British island contended with the colossal force of American empire-building.

Carnival, Canboulay and Calypso: Traditions in the Making

Starting from the days of slavery and following through to the first decades of the twentieth century, this book traces the evolution of Carnival and secular black music in Trinidad and beyond. Calypso emerged as the preeminent Carnival song form at the end of the nineteenth century and its association with the festival is investigated, as are the first commercial recordings by Trinidad performers. Considerable use is made of contemporary newspaper reports, colonial documents, travelogues, oral history and folklore, providing an authoritative treatment of a fascinating story in popular cultural history.

Starting from the days of slavery and following through to the first decades of the twentieth century, this book traces the evolution of Carnival and secular black music in Trinidad and beyond. Calypso emerged as the pre-eminent Carnival song from the end of the nineteenth century and the early commercial recordings are discussed. Considerable use is made of contemporary newspaper reports. colonial documents, travelogues, oral history and folklore, providing an authoritative treatment of a fascinating story in popular cultural history.

Free Mulatto

New Negroes from Africa: Slave Trade Abolition and Free African Settlement in the Nineteenth-century Caribbean (Blacks in the Diaspora)

In 1807 the British government outlawed the slave trade, and began to interdict slave ships en route to the Americas. Through decades of treaties with other slave trading nations and various British schemes for the use of non-slave labor, tens of thousands of Africans rescued from illegally operating slave ships were taken to British Caribbean colonies as free settlers. Some became paid laborers, others indentured servants. The encounter between English-speaking colonists and the new African immigrants are the focus of this study of the Bahamas and Trinidad--colonies which together received fifteen thousand of these "liberated Africans" taken from captured slave ships. Adderley describes the formation of new African immigrant communities in territories which had long depended on enslaved African labor. Working from diverse records, she tries to tease out information about the families of liberated Africans, the labor they performed, their religions, and the culture they brought with them. She addresses issues of gender, ethnicity, and identity, and concludes with a discussion of repatriation.

Days of Wrath: The 1990 Coup in Trinidad and Tobago

A full decade before the horrific attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001, the small Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago came under its own terrorist assault from a small fundamentalist Muslim group known as the Jamaat al Muslimeen.

For six days in 1990, the country, a former British colony that had achieved its independence in 1962, was virtually held for ransom as the terrorists launched an armed invasion of the sitting Parliament and the countryÂ’s lone television station.

Days of Wrath recounts the six days of terror wrought by a handful of Muslim terrorists. Told by a seasoned journalist who was one of the hostages in the Trinidad and Tobago Television building, this sensational account describes in vivid detail the scene that had the citizens of the nation wondering if they would now have to submit to another form of colonization.