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Caribbean Islands HISTORICAL SETTING
Colonial Heritage
Spain received the island of Trinidad as part of the fief of
Christopher Columbus and controlled the island for nearly 300 years
(see The European Settlements, ch. 1). The Spaniards subdued and
enslaved the native Caribs and Arawaks but until the late 1700s
paid little attention to Trinidad as other ventures were more
profitable. As a result, Trinidad's population was only 2,763 in
1783. Amerindians composed 74 percent of that total (2,032).
Although African slaves were first imported in 1517, they
constituted only 11 percent of the population (310) in 1783.
Indeed, the slave total was barely larger than the 295 free
nonwhites who had emigrated from other islands. The remaining 126
Trinidadians were white.
In an effort to make Trinidad more profitable, the Spanish
opened the island to immigration in 1776 and allowed Roman Catholic
planters from other Eastern Caribbean islands to establish sugar
plantations. Because French Catholic planters on the islands that
had been granted to Britain after the Seven Years' War (1756-63)
were subject to religious and political discrimination, they were
attracted by Spanish promises of land grants and tax concessions in
Trinidad. In seeking immigrants, Trinidad linked landownership to
the ownership of slaves; the more slaves, the more land. Land
grants were also given to free nonwhite immigrants, and all landed
immigrants were offered citizenship rights after five years. As a
result of this new policy, thousands of French planters and their
slaves emigrated to the island in the 1780s and 1790s. By 1797 the
demographic structure of the island had changed completely. The
population had expanded dramatically to 17,718, about 56 percent of
whom were slaves. There were also 4,476 free nonwhites and 2,151
whites. The Amerindian community declined by 50 percent from the
level achieved 14 years earlier and represented only 6 percent of
the total population. As of 1797, there were hundreds of sugar,
coffee, and cotton plantations producing for export (see Growth and
Structure of the Economy, this ch.).
The British, who were at war with Spain and France, conquered
Trinidad in 1797 during the Caribbean unrest that followed the
French Revolution. Trinidad was formally ceded to Britain in 1802.
After debating how to govern the new island, the British finally
decided on crown colony (see Glossary) rule under a governor (see
Political Traditions, ch. 1). As this was occurring, investors and
colonists expanded the sugar plantations to take advantage of high
sugar prices. During the first five years of British rule, the
number of sugar estates increased markedly. The British census of
1803 counted 28,000 people, a tenfold increase in 20 years; of
these, there were 20,464 slaves, 5,275 free nonwhites, and 2,261
whites. About half of the free people and most of the slaves spoke
French, and the rest of the population was divided between Spanish
and English speakers. The Amerindian population continued to
decline, with several hundred members scattered in rural
settlements.
A decade after slavery was abolished in 1834, the British
government gave permission for the colonies to import indentured
labor from India to work on the plantations. Throughout the
remainder of the century, Trinidad's population growth came
primarily from East Indian laborers. By 1871 there were 27,425 East
Indians, approximately 22 percent of the population of Trinidad and
Tobago; by 1911 that figure had grown to 110,911, or about 33
percent of all residents of the islands. Small numbers of Chinese,
Portuguese, and other groups also immigrated, contributing to the
multiracial character of the island.
Tobago, Robinson Crusoe's island, changed hands twenty-two
times between 1626 and 1814, as various European countries tried to
secure possession of its safe anchorages. Its population in 1791
was 15,102, about 94 percent of whom were slaves. The British
finally acquired Tobago permanently in 1814, after several previous
attempts to conquer the island. The British continued to govern
through a local assembly that they had installed during an earlier
conquest of Tobago in 1763. Under this arrangement, political
control rested with a number of British civil servants and the
assembly, elected by a tiny electorate and supported by the sugar
plantations.
By the late nineteenth century, Trinidad and Tobago were no
longer profitable colonies because sugar was being produced more
cheaply elsewhere. In 1889 the British government united Trinidad
and Tobago in an effort to economize on government expenses and to
solve the economic problems of the islands. In 1898 Tobago became
a ward of Trinidad, thereby losing its local assembly, which was
not reinstated until 1980. Subsequently, Britain ruled Trinidad and
Tobago as a crown colony until 1956. Between 1889 and 1924, the
government of Trinidad and Tobago included, in addition to its
governor, a wholly appointed Legislative Council. The first step
toward self-government was taken in 1925 when there were limited
elections to the Legislative Council and to the governor's
Executive Council.
As noted, the populations of both Trinidad and Tobago owe their
main origins to massive eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
importations of African slaves and East Indian indentured servants
who were needed to work on the sugar plantations. When the sugar
industry declined, unemployment became widespread. In the early
twentieth century, oil replaced sugar as the major export; oil is
a capital-intensive industry, however, and it did not solve the
problem of unemployment in Trinidad and Tobago.
The labor movement began to assume importance after World War
I, spurred by the return of Trinidadians who had fought with the
British armed forces. The most important of these was Captain
Andrew Arthur Cipriani, a white man of Corsican descent, who had
served as commander of the West India Regiment. Cipriani resented
the fact that the West India Regiment was not allowed to fight for
the British Empire but instead was sent to Egypt, where its forces
served as labor battalions. Upon his return to Trinidad, Cipriani
organized the masses, giving them national pride and teaching them
to oppose colonialism. He revitalized the Trinidad Workingman's
Association, which was renamed the Trinidad Labour Party (TLP) in
1934; by 1936 the TLP had 125,000 members. Because Cipriani was
white, he was able to transcend the black-East Indian racial
dichotomy and became known as "the champion of the barefoot man."
In the first elections held for the Legislative Council, Cipriani
was elected in 1925 and remained a member until his death in 1945.
He was also elected mayor of Port-of-Spain eight times. In these
two offices, Cipriani struggled against racial discrimination and
fought for constitutional reform, universal suffrage, and better
rights for workers.
During the 1930s, Trinidad and Tobago suffered severely from
the effects of the worldwide depression. Living standards
deteriorated as workers were laid off from the plantations. The
situation was aggravated by unjust labor practices. Wages on the
sugar estates and in the oil fields were kept low while shareholder
dividends in London rose. Workers moved away from Cipriani's
moderate policies, and the labor movement became radicalized.
Between 1934 and 1937, there were strikes and riots on the sugar
plantations and in the oil fields throughout the Caribbean. Tubal
Uriah Butler, a black Grenadian who had been expelled from the TLP
for extremism, emerged as the leader of the black oil workers, who
were the best paid and most politicized laborers on the island.
Butler called for racial unity among black workers and organized
strikes, heading a highly personalized party that was known as the
"Butler Party." Although the British labeled Butler as a "fanatical
Negro" during the 1930s, Trinidad and Tobago has since recognized
him as a man who sensitized the common man to the evils of
colonialism. The strikes in Trinidad and Tobago in the 1930s
included many incidents of racial violence, culminating in twelve
deaths and over fifty injuries in 1937.
The British responded by deploying marines from Barbados and
appointing two successive commissions from London to investigate
the causes of the riots in Trinidad and Tobago and elsewhere in the
Caribbean. Both commissions noted the low wages and poor working
conditions throughout the region. The second commission, chaired by
Lord Moyne, which completed its report in 1940, was very critical
of the British colonial system in the Caribbean and recommended
housing construction, agricultural diversification, more
representative government for the islands, and promotion of a
middle class in preparation for eventual self-government (see Labor
Organizations, ch. 1). Although the Moyne Commission's findings
were not made public until after World War II, some of its
recommendations were put into effect under the Colonial Development
Welfare Act of 1940.
The British government had encouraged the formation of trade
unions in the belief that labor organization would prevent labor
unrest. After the islandwide strikes of 1937, Butler succeeded
Cipriani as the leader of the Trinidadian labor movement. Butler's
associate, Adrian Cola Rienzi, an East Indian, organized both oil
workers under the Oilfield Workers Trade Union (OWTU) and the sugar
workers under the All Trinidad Sugar Estates and Factory Workers
Trade Union (ATSE/FWTU). Railroad and construction workers were
organized under the Federated Workers Trade Union (FWTU), and a
number of smaller unions were also formed.
Following a recommendation of the Moyne Commission, government
was made more representative. Constitutional reform in 1925 had
provided for six elected members on the twenty-five-member
Legislative Council, but franchise restrictions limited voters in
the 1925 election to 6 percent of the population. In April 1941,
the number of unofficial elected members on the Legislative Council
and the governor's Executive Council was increased, giving the
elected members a majority. Some of these elected members were
included on official committees and the governor's Executive
Council, although the governor retained ultimate authority and veto
power.
Trinidad and Tobago had been profoundly changed by World War
II. For the first time since British annexation, the islands were
widely exposed to another foreign influence. The 1941 Lend-Lease
Agreement (also called the Bases-for-Destroyers Agreement) between
the United States and Britain included ninety-nine-year leases of
the deepwater harbor at Chaguaramas to the United States Navy and
of Waller Field in central Trinidad to the United States Army (see
Historical Background, ch. 7). Many United States and Canadian
personnel were brought in to work at these bases, and thousands of
Trinidadian workers were employed at the bases for higher wages
under better conditions than ever before (see Patterns of
Development, this ch.). As a result, by the end of World War II
many Trinidadians had become used to a higher standard of living
and wanted to keep it.
Although the election in 1946 was the first under universal
adult suffrage, less than half of the registered voters cast
ballots. The trade unions did not consolidate into a cohesive
political entity. The labor vote fragmented, as blacks and East
Indians divided and as racial slurs became a common part of
campaign rhetoric. Butler, who had been detained throughout the
war, was released from jail and campaigned for the Legislative
Council, but he was defeated by Albert Gomes, a trade unionist of
Portuguese descent. The labor movement was unable to gain a
majority because no leader could command the widespread support of
both the blacks and the East Indians, a pattern that continued
throughout the ensuing forty years. The middle class--comprising
primarily blacks and a smaller number of East Indians--came to
dominate the political scene in the crucial elections that led to
independence and has dominated it into the late 1980s.
Data as of November 1987
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