Eric Williams and the Making of the Modern Caribbean

• Publisher:   The University of North Carolina Press
• Number Of Pages:   352
• Publication Date:   2006-02-20
• ISBN-10 / ASIN:   0807829870
• ISBN-13 / EAN:   9780807829875

Born in Trinidad, Eric Williams (1911-81) founded the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago's first modern political party in 1956, led the country to independence from the British culminating in 1962, and became the nation's first prime minister. Before entering politics, he was a professor at Howard University and wrote several books, including the classic Capitalism and Slavery. In the first scholarly biography of Williams, Colin Palmer provides insights into Williams's personality that illuminate his life as a scholar and politician and his tremendous influence on the historiography and politics of the Caribbean.

Palmer focuses primarily on the fourteen-year period of struggles for independence in the Anglophone Caribbean. From 1956, when Williams became the chief minister of Trinidad and Tobago, to 1970, when the Black Power-inspired February Revolution brought his administration face to face with a younger generation intellectually indebted to his revolutionary thought, Williams was at the center of most of the conflicts and challenges that defined the region. He was most aggressive in advocating the creation of a West Indies federation to help the region assert itself in international political and economic arenas. Looking at the ideas of Williams as well as those of his Caribbean and African peers, Palmer demonstrates how the development of the modern Caribbean was inextricably intertwined with the evolution of a regional anticolonial consciousness.

Well of cause you must like the TT or major in the Caribbean history (or just be a very curious person).But it is a great book. I decided to find our more about Dr Williams after a friend told me that Dr Williams would never take his dark shades off in public, pointing at a picture in La Piarra airport. You definitely get a better understanding of how it was, and why it is the way it is, and other questions you may have about the TT. You go beyond what's on surface and get into true psychology of Triny life. Kudos to Colin A. Palmer, and as someone else has noticed already, I wish the book went beyond 1970.

The book is well written. It is balanced, and gives an insight into the deep love and commitment Dr. Eric Williams had for the people of the Caribbean, and especially citizens of Trinidad and Tobago. The book discloses in authentic detail, the struggle to reclaim Chaguramas from the United States of America, who had got if from the British in the second world war, ostensibly for defence of North America, South America, and the Caribbean. It is a treasure of history, showing the struggle of a former British colony reaching for its political and economic independence. The book is also well worth reading from a literary point of view.

Eric Williams was a complex and controversial giant who led a small Caribbean nation into independence. Professor Palmer attempts to understand him and his influence on the modern Caribbean by dissecting some of the major issues with which he dealt in the course of constructing his government. The result is a fascinating, well-researched study which should interest students of the Caribbean but also those interested in the problems of governance of small countries generally. He ends his book in 1970, though Williams continued as Prime Minister until his death in 1981; the years of plenty when high oil prices funded an economic boom are not covered, and would also make fascinating reading. However, while there is much more to say about Williams' tenure, what Palmer does cover can be taken on its own merits. Just one quibble: the author's arithmetic in the paragraph beginning at the bottom of page 228 doesn't add up, making his conclusions unintelligible; I trust this is the result of typographical error??

Bookmark Eric Williams and the Making of the Modern Caribbean

Hyperlink code: