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Caribbean Islands Growth and Structure of the Economy
Trinidad was neglected by Spanish mercantilists until the late
1700s because it was perceived to be poorly endowed. In 1776
Spanish authorities finally allowed French planters from other
Eastern Caribbean islands to enter Trinidad, stimulating the
subsequent expansion of a sugar plantation economy based on slave
labor (see Colonial Heritage, this ch.). After the creation of the
first sugar plantation in 1787, agriculture expanded so rapidly
that a decade later there were 159 sugar plantations, 130 coffee
estates, 60 cacao (the bean from which cocoa is derived) estates,
and 103 cotton estates. The rapid success of the French planters
attracted the interest of the British, who captured the island in
1797.
In the early 1800s, Trinidad's agricultural economy was based
on highly productive cane fields and on coffee, cacao, and other
export crops. Trinidad's average sugar plantation (over 240
hectares) was larger than that in other Commonwealth Caribbean
islands. Unlike smaller islands, such as St. Christopher and
Antigua, Trinidad was less dependent on sugar for its labor and
exports, as other export crops held relatively important economic
roles. Agricultural estates were worked by slaves imported from
West Africa until 1807, when the British abolished the slave trade.
After complete emancipation in 1838, freed blacks played a
decreasing role in agriculture because of the annual importation of
about 2,000 indentured East Indians, more than in any other
Caribbean island. At a time when other English-speaking islands
were suffering declines in sugar production, Trinidad's quadrupled
from 1828 to 1895, mostly as a result of the imported East Indian
labor force. Although sugar wages were low, wages of Trinidadian
sugar workers in the 1800s already surpassed those of their
Caribbean counterparts.
Tobago, officially linked to Trinidad in 1889, was
traditionally neglected by both the Spanish and the British in
economic terms. Nevertheless, Tobago was one of the top sugar
producers in the West Indies in the early 1800s. Tobago's
agricultural production was characterized by the French
métayer system, a form of sharecropping, imported with
French planters from St. Lucia. As late as 1839, the island
registered an annual trade surplus as large as 20,000 British
pounds sterling. As its sugar industry declined in the late 1800s,
however, it received less and less attention from the British,
preventing significant infrastructural development. Economic
neglect continued for decades, so that by 1946 Tobago was the most
underpopulated island in the British Caribbean.
Trinidad and Tobago entered the twentieth century with the
fortuitous discovery of oil in 1907. The discovery changed
Trinidad's patterns of economic development and further
differentiated it from other English-speaking islands in the
Caribbean. Exports of oil left the island for the first time in
1909, but production did not drastically increase until the British
Royal Navy converted to oil during the following decade. During
World War I, Trinidad and Tobago became the major source of oil for
the navy. As oil output skyrocketed from 125,000 barrels a year in
1910 to over 2 million barrels by 1920, so did the number of
foreign oil companies competing for control of the precious
resource. The oil boom during the second decade of the 1900s was
not experienced in the rest of the economy, however, which was
depressed.
As the decade came to a close, two events changed Trinidad's
economic future. The termination of East Indian indentureship in
1917 created greater economic demands from the agriculture labor
force, whose wages had hardly increased over a century. The other
major event was the return of Trinidadian soldiers from World War
I who served in the West India Regiment. Exposed to greater
personal freedoms and workers' rights, as well as prejudice, these
veterans were at the forefront in organizing for greater economic
benefits for labor from foreign sugar and oil companies.
The first visible signs of Trinidad's growing labor movement
appeared in the aftermath of the riots of 1919 when Cipriani
assumed the clear leadership of the movement. The Cipriani-led
labor movement in the 1920s fought for a minimum wage, eight-hour
day, child labor laws, compulsory education, heavier taxation of
foreign oil companies, and general social reform. A moderate,
Cipriani tempered the burgeoning labor movement under British
colonial rule until the early 1930s, when the labor movement was
radicalized by the advent of the Great Depression.
The economic hardship of the depression resulted in fewer jobs,
poor health conditions, low wages, and growing resentment of
wealthy, foreign ownership in the oil and sugar industries. The
decline in sugar that accompanied the depression, severe droughts,
and disease of the cacao crops drastically increased rural
unemployment in the early 1930s. The downturn in sugar, in
particular, led to the consolidation of the landholdings of the
dominant British firm, Tate and Lyle, which continued to pay its
London stockholders handsome dividends. Decreased economic
opportunities in the countryside sparked widespread demonstrations
in the sugar belt by 1934. Meanwhile, health conditions remained
poor, as many Trinidadians suffered from malaria, ancylostomiasis,
tuberculosis, and yellow fever. As unemployment remained high,
wages were kept low--only US$0.72 a day for an unskilled oil worker
and US$0.35 a day for an unskilled sugar worker in 1937. Large
profit remittance continued in the oil industry as well as in the
sugar industry, causing growing worker resentment of foreign
ownership; this resentment culminated in the riots of 1937.
Butler emerged from the islandwide strikes of 1937 as the
undisputed successor to Cipriani as the leader of the Trinidadian
labor movement. Butler, more radical and uncompromising than
Cipriani, continued to forge a strong trade union movement in
Trinidad and Tobago. Rienzi, Butler's associate, was another rising
labor leader who came to lead the powerful OWTU and later presided
over the FWTU, an umbrella labor organization. The labor movement
in the 1930s was also marked by the growing participation of East
Indians, most notably through the ATSE/FWTU. Although by 1940
Trinidad and Tobago had extensive and relatively responsible trade
unions, it was not until 1943 that they possessed the procedural
framework to negotiate industrial disputes effectively with the
British. Nonetheless, Trinidad and Tobago generally enjoyed strong
negotiating power with the British because of the colony's vital
oil resources.
Data as of November 1987
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