"C.L..R. James' 1938 seminal text, The Black Jacobins, and Eric Williams' 1944 tour de force, Capitalism and Slavery, constitute much more than foundational works in West Indian nationalist historiography. Both authors, born in colonial Trinidad and writing Caribbean history within its Atlantic context, made significant contributions to development discourse within the traditions of Enlightenment Idealism. As critical realists they considered popular historiography indispensable to any attempt to root philosophical ideals within recognizable terms of everyday living. In The Black Jacobins, James documents the struggles of the enslaved peoples of St. Dominique, the mercantile showpiece of French colonial capitalism in the West Indies for freedom and social justice. In addition, he details the transformation of this successful anti-slavery rebellion into something much more elaborate in terms of Atlantic history--the creation of Haiti, the Caribbean's first nation-state. In Capitalism and Slavery, Williams expands and develops the paradigm of African labor enslavement and European capital liberation, first outlined by James in The Black Jacobins, that became the basis of the revolutionary reorganization of productivity for European economic development." (author)
"It is not possible to separate his intellectual legacy from his political stewardship over the affairs of Trinidad and Tobago for some twenty-five years. The inventory of failure and achievement will undergo great variations according to the angle of vision and sectoral interests which are being reflected. For a quarter of a century he would have been at the center of the most controversial exchanges at both the national and the regional level: Federation, Chaguaramas, Independence, The University of the West Indies, CARICOM, Cuba, Grenada, and his own February Rebellion of 1970." (author)
A personal and political analysis of Eric Williams' contribution to nationalist ideas and to the way nationalism was perceived and was directly or indirectly beneficial to many of Mohammed's generation
Examines Eric Williams' 'Documents of West Indian History'. Argues the text is a precursor of distinctive features of recent historical fiction from the Caribbean
"On 4 December 1960 the Trinidad Guardian announced that Sir Gerald Wight had joined the Democratic Labour Party. The announcement was presented in such a way as to suggest that this was a feather in the cap of the Democratic Labour Party [DLP], and therefore the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago should follow the lead of Sir Gerald Wight. Consequently, in my address here in the University on 22 December, in which I reported to the people the outcome of the Chaguaramas discussions in Tobago, I poured scorn on the Guardian reminding them that our population of today was far too alert and sophisticated to fall for any such claptrap. I told the Guardian emphatically: Massa Day Done." (author)
