Trinidad and Tobago has worked to preserve its historical record through the Eric Williams Memorial Collection at the University of the West Indies Library in St. Augustine, Trinidad
Cateau,Heather (Author) and Carrington,Selwyn H. H. (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2000
Published:
New York: P. Lang
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
247 p, Contents: Eric Williams and Howard university / John Hope Franklin -- The legacy of Eric Williams / George Lamming -- Eric Williams and his intellectual legacy / Colin Palmer -- Capitalism and slavery, fifty years after / Joseph Inikori -- Capitalism and slavery / Seymour Drescher -- William as historian / Andrew O'Shaughnessy -- Capitalism and slavery / Ibrahim Sundiata -- Economic aspects of the british trade in slaves / William Darity -- Planters, slaves and decline / David Ryden -- War, revolution and abolitionism, 1793-1806 / Claudius Fergus -- Globalization / Kari Levitt
The Eric Williams Memorial Collection was opened at the University of the West Indies in St. Augustine in 1998. The collection commemorates Eric Eustace Williams, who led Trinidad and Tobago to independence in 1962
"F. S. J. Ledgister observed that in writing about British racism in the nineteenth--century Caribbean, 'Williams presents establishment figures such as Carlyle and Trollope as demonic, but he fails to mention comparable figures on the other side. Williams's objective in assaulting Carlyle in British Historians and the West Indies is clearly political rather than historiographical'." (Selwyn Cudjoe, 11/12/2006 review of Colin Palmer's book on Eric Williams)
"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)
Examines Eric Williams' 'Documents of West Indian History'. Argues the text is a precursor of distinctive features of recent historical fiction from the Caribbean
