Eric Williams and the Making of the Modern Caribbean

Introduction

INTRODUCTION * * * * * "The circumstances of my birth were quite unremarkable," Eric Eustace Williams wrote in the unpublished version of his memoir. "They," asserted Williams, "in no way differed from those of other West Indian children of the lower middle class." The year was 1911,the month was September. Delivered with the assistance of a midwife, Eric was the first child of his parents. His birth was not reported immediately because it "coincided with a smallpox epidemic and stern government measures to enforce vaccination." Since he was "supposed to be quite ill" when he was born, Williams surmised that "no doubt there was a desire to spare me the pain of vaccination until it was absolutely necessary." Consequently, his birth was not registered until October 12, eighteen days after he was delivered.1 The child of economically challenged parents, Williams was born in a small house on Oxford Street in Port of Spain, Trinidad. He recalled that the house "reminds one of a square wooden box placed right on the street pavement." His father—thirty-threeyears old at Williams's birth—was "a strong, silent man, reserved except in the company of close friends, somewhat inclined to asceticism." He was "a son of his class, partial to a good Sunday table and the usual delicacies at Christmas and other festiveseasons ." His mother, ten years younger than his father, "was much lighter in color than he was." She had a French name, "of which both she and my father were quite proud."2 Williams's father, by dint of his class background, received only a primary school education. He entered the civil service as a junior clerk at age seventeen. As Williams would later observe, "Myfather was a superior soul, a superior soul was he, cut out to play a superior role in the god damn bourgeoisie." But "theonly difficulties were that the bourgeoisie wouldn't allow him . . . because he lacked social qualifications. The necessary social I N T R O D U C T I O N qualifications in Trinidad were colour,money and education, in that order of importance. Myfather lacked all three."3 Trapped in a low-paying job with a family that increased in size every two years, his economic situation was precarious. AsWilliams expressed it, "The family followed the basic West Indian pattern, a growing disproportion between population and resources, between birth rate and purchasing power." He thought that his father's "reputation for independence of outlook and speaking his own mind" was a disadvantage in dealing with his white superiors and impeded his chances for promotion. His father "found himself passed over in favour of men who were younger, more pliant, more malleable ." The inevitable consequence of his economic plight was "the increasing load of debt and judgment summonses, which afforded the authorities the excuse they needed for bypassing my father." In the twenty years before Williams left Trinidad for England, his family had changed houses "no fewer than eight times."4 Having won a scholarship at age eleven,young Eric entered Queens Royal College, in Port of Spain, "an imposing structure" designed "to produce coloured Englishmen in the West Indies."5 A disciplined and outstanding student, he eventuallywon the prestigious Island Scholarship in 1931. Over his father's objections, he eschewed medicine in favor of reading for a degree in history at Oxford University. The Trinidad and Tobago into which Eric Williams was born was a colonial society par excellence. The two islands, of some 1,980 square miles, had a population of about three hundred thousand. A majority of the residents were of African descent, their ancestors having been brought there as slaves. Indians, who were imported as indentured servants after slaveryended, constituted a smaller but growing minority. Individuals of European descent— the English, the French, the Spanish, and the Portuguese—made up a third group. Becauseof their racial ancestry, the latter exercised economic, social, and political power disproportionate to their numbers. As in other West Indian communities, whites occupied the pinnacle of the racial hierarchy, setting social standards and behaving as ifit was their divine right to rule the islands to serve their own interests. This society made no pretense about being egalitarian. It was never based on the consent of the governed, and its survival depended on various coercive mechanisms. The Habitual Idlers Ordinance, for example, allowed the authorities to require those who could not prove they had a job to work on private estates.6 6 [3.145.131.238] Project MUSE...