The Trinidad Census of 1946

This Trinidad and Tobago Government Census was taken in 1946, and published in 1948. It was executed by Noel Bowen and Blazini Montserin and was the last pre-Independence census. This is the section with the tables on "Population" and "Race and Nationalities", which has population statistics going back to 1733.

Cover image of the 1948 publication

 

Passenger exchange between tram and omnibus

Trinidad Population statistics of 1733, 1789 and 1797

 

 

Broadway in Port of Spain looking North toward Marine Square

Population statistics 1797 to 1946

  

Frederick Street looking North from Marine Square

 

 

Population and economic statistics by county 1837 to 1946

The Red House in Port of Spain

 

Population statistics by birth place, marital status and age 1851 to 1946

The St. Clair Tram

Vital statistics 1851 to 1946, population statistics by race and birth place

The Governor inspects the troops in front of the train station

Historical background to the race and nationality statistical data

Population statistics and historical background of East Indian descended population 1851 to 1946

Migration is Changing Trinidad’s Identity

Interview with Gerard Besson

Cultural researcher, historian, blogger, writer, and founder/director of Paria Publishing Company Ltd

by Trinidad Guardian Reporter Shereen Ali, September 1, 2016

Intro:

In this land of many peoples and people of many ancestries, how do people see their ethnic heritage? How do they practice it, ignore it, or celebrate it?

On the occasion of our 54th year of independence from Britain, Guardian feature writer Shereen Ali spoke to T&T citizens of different backgrounds to ask how they see issues such as ethnicity, race and in some cases, their own uniquely diverse heritages. People, in their own words, helped paint a picture of an ever-changing, complex twin-island nation of many different ancestral influences.

Last week we heard from people of First Peoples ancestry. Yesterday and today, we hear from people who have European ancestry as part of their heritage. Today's contributions are from historian Gerard Besson, who describes himself as a mix of French Creole and African.

When you have to fill in a form asking you your race, what do you put?

I put “mixed”.

How do you see your ethnic roots & heritage? Is it important to how you define yourself, or is it irrelevant, an accident of birth?
I see myself as Afro-French Creole. It is important because it gives me a sense of identity. I see myself as being a part of the French/African-Creole, patois-speaking Catholic people of long ago.

But I think heritage goes beyond ethnicity. It goes to identifying yourself in terms of being a Trinidadian. And not only a Trinidadian, but for me, someone who was born and grew up in Port-of-Spain.

Do you celebrate your ethnic heritage, ignore it as irrelevant, or have mixed feelings about it?
I acknowledge and embrace my heritages. For example, in 1970 I empathised with Geddes Granger; I was only in my 20s at the time, but I understood deeply what the Black Power movement was about, and I empathised with it. It expressed itself in my work at the time. I didn’t ignore it.

And then on the other hand, at another time in my life, I went to France to see the village that my family had come from in the first place. It was a nice feeling to do that as well. So I think that I have celebrated both aspects of my heritages at some point in my life.

I also celebrate my ethnic heritages in the work I do as a historian. For instance, when I took an interest in the African part of my heritage I spent a few years researching the Rada people and Shango in Trinidad. I went to Haiti and to Brazil. I found great similarities.

Do you know about the beliefs and lifestyles of T&T people of different ethnic heritages from your own?

Yes. I’ve spent much time reading, researching and writing about people here. Dr Bridget Brereton and I, for instance, published a book in 1989 called “The Book of Trinidad”, really an anthology of different people’s writings and observations about T&T over the years. That book will give you a fairly good historical perspective.

And then, in a different kind of way, I recently published a historical novel on Trinidad called “Roume de Saint Laurent … a Memoir”. Roume is interesting because he was the person who was responsible to a considerable degree for the creation of a document called Cedula for Population. He was especially visionary for his time.

The significant thing about the Cedula for Population is that it enshrined the rights and the privileges of free black and coloured people in Trinidad. So that, yes, about 1,200 French European people came to Trinidad as a result of the Cedula, but 11,000 free black and coloured people also came! They were all French-speaking.

That document has been described by Professor Carl Campbell as the first Constitution of Trinidad. Because it spelt out the terms and conditions, in law, for people coming to living here. And it acted as precedent for many of the laws that came into existence subsequently. So much so that there is a distinguished jurist right now in Trinidad, retired, who is studying this particular document with a view to seeing how it has affected the evolution of jurisprudence in Trinidad.

I tell the story of Roume de Saint Laurent and his affairs and his adventures, but what I also do is publish the entire Cedula of Population, so people can get an understanding of the foundation of Trinidad. You see, people do not understand these foundational elements of our society.

Do you think race is important in T&T?

Race touches everything that we do.

T&T is a segmented society with a lot of overlaps, because of miscegenation over time — well, not a very long time when compared to Jamaica or Barbados, because both these islands are much older than Trinidad in terms of their colonial settlement. Tobago has a different history, its colonial experience is as old as Barbados.

Trinidad’s society came into existence suddenly. Before 1783 and the Cedula for Population, if can you imagine, the population was about 126 Europeans, a few hundred people of African descent, who were not really slaves because there was no industry, and a handful of Amerindians — tribal people.

From then on, with the advent of the Cedula and plantation slavery the population expanded.

Free blacks and coloured people as well as white French people brought slaves together with their own societal landscapes and political and religious views to Trinidad; as compared to Barbados and the older islands where the society developed over a long period, even though it was a period of slavery, their societies matured more slowly.

In Trinidad everything seems to have happened almost overnight. It went from a few dozen people in 1780s, to 50 years later, more than 50,000 people. So Trinidad began in a strange, unique way in itself.

Race in Trinidad is a very loaded topic. It morphs into politics very easily. And this is so, because of the movement for Independence, how that came about and who did it, and under which group it happened.

Because for a very long time, for some 200 and something years, Europeans controlled the economic landscape of Trinidad, and these white people were both local and foreign.

The local ones were in agriculture, mostly cocoa, and government service, and the foreign ones were in sugar, business and government. That is how it was. It was a society that was not as segregated as say Barbados, but still segregated in terms of class as well as race.

The black population, as it advanced, went into teaching, the Civil Service, law and medicine, and later gradually into other professions.

So those two groups, the local white group and the coloured, Afro group, controlled Trinidad completely.

They posessed a Creole identity. The Indians, who had arrived in 1845 to 1917 were largely confined to the countryside. For most of the 19^th century, they often needed a pass to leave the estates – even if their indentureship was over.

All this changed after the world wars. After Independence, the children of the dominant groups began to go away to make a better life and a great many never came back. This was the French Creole people, mixed-race people, and people of African descent.

Trinidad has experienced in the last 50 or 60 years a demographic upheaval that no other island in the Caribbean has had, in that in the non-Indian population — this is in the Afro, mixed and other groups — say 500,000 or 600,000 people, over a third of that segment have gone away. And at the same time, about that same number of people have come from the other islands. That has been a blow to the identity that was formed from the 1780s to Independence.

No other island in the Caribbean has had the experience of hundreds of thousands of people going to it at the same time that so many people have left. The result of that is this:

The creole population, the product of the late 18^th century and 19^th century society, has had a huge dislocation caused by emigration and immigration.

This has produced a great disturbance within the cohesion of that group. A lessening of a Trinidadian identity. Now that is a serious issue. I notice that recently some social scientists are beginning to comment on it.

Now, insofar as the Indian side of the population is concerned, it has been argued that there were some events that made Indian people feel more intensely “Indian”, and less intensely “Trinidadian”, such as the black power movement of the 70s, being in political opposition, after Independence, for such a long time, what thirty years; the work of the various Indian religious orders whether it is in the context of Hinduism or Islam. The  appearance of Bollywood as well as the increase in business and wealth. There were many things that happened in the last 40—50 years in the Indian community that have made Indians feel more Indian, in a sense; while, in a contrary sort of a way, also more Trinidadian.

With the dislocation in the creole society taking place and with a deepening in the Indian society of an identity, the division has become more sharp and more obvious.

So there has been a dislocation in the society instead of the predominant races finding common ground with the sharing of identity. And this is what we see played out in politics. Because you don't see it played out in daily life, you don't see it played out in love affairs, you don't see it played out in business and work, it is played out in politics, where political parties go after their imagined constituencies.

So with Independence and the movement of people, the loss of a significant part of the Creole population, has meant that Trinidad has lost a lot of its Creole soul, and acquired, on the other hand, an increased Caribbean reality.

And you see it in the disappearance of certain cultural forms. Carnival is not as it was. The music — calypso — hardly exists anymore. You have to go in search of it in the tents. It has been replaced by other musical forms. Patois is no longer heard — and you have to bear in mind that up until the 1940s and 50s, a large amount of people in both Indian Trinidad and certainly Creole Trinidad — spoke this language.

Another important factor that has also impacted on identity was the end of the agricultural sector.

People see the agricultural sector from the perspective of today. And they only see Indian people – the world of the cane farmer.

In truth, the agricultural sector in the past was enormous. It included a lot of black and French Creole and mixed people. It existed for some 200 years.

But the ending of the agricultural sector was one of the things that undermined notions of identity which were built through the 19^th century and into the first half of the 20^th century.

One of the effects of the loss of the agricultural sector is a more compassionless society. Because when you have hundreds of thousands of people, whether they are Indian people, white people, mixed people or African people, who are devoted to the bringing up of livestock, who are devoted to gardening, market gardening, vegetable planting, to cocoa and coffee and so on, you have people who have a lot of love — for their animals and for their plants. You have to love your donkey!

So when you move hundreds of thousands of people out of that world of compassion, you create an increasingly compassionless society.

I think the agricultural sector died from the 1950s. The model that was introduced by Sir Arthur Lewis, the famous Nobel Prize-winning economist, in Trinidad, and through Dr Williams, saw a nation that would be modern and industrialised. It was a form of social engineering. A lot of these little islands in the Caribbean moved away from agriculture and went into tourism. It was considered modern, it was thought the thing to do. I do not believe it was the right thing.

So the combination of the end of the agricultural economy, the end of the railways (in itself a vast societal network of people who operated them), and then the displacement of so many people, in the emigration and immigration phenomena, created a dissonance and a collapse, a loss of identity.

You see, it was not only a brain drain; it was also a deep cultural drain. A lot of the identity of the 19^th century to the first half of the 20^th century began to fall away.

And what that culture has been replaced with is something imported through television, through cinema, and through the importation of black American culture. And you see it expressed in dance music and gangland activity and so on.

So what has happened is that the society on the whole, as a result of the Independence movement, has suffered more than it has gained.

The Indian segment of the society, however, because of the isolation, of being 30-40 years in opposition, and being apart from the Creole society, because of their extended family support, the pursuit of independence though economic means, the pursuit of education (there are more Indians with tertiary education, a startling number of them young women, than anybody else), has produced a society within the society that owns an economy that is very, very large. Whereas the other side of the society does not possess an economy; there is no big Afro business there – it depends on the State.

So these are the differences in the society that create the movements and the tensions and the feel of the place.

Prof Selwyn Ryan wrote in one of his articles some time ago that for 150 years, the elements of the white society and elements of the black and coloured society dominated Trinidad, possessed a hegemony over Trinidad, and this hegemony is now decreasing at a rate. He startled a lot of people with that, but what he said was true. Immigration and emigration have changed the landscape of Trinidad. All this has had a deleterious effect on the identity-forming mechanisms of the society.

Notions of identity as a Trinidadian or a Trinbagonian are increasingly becoming something more important than just merely how you vote at election time.

I think that there's a generation of people who are growing up, not necessarily young young people, but people in their 30s or 40s, who are increasingly beginning to come to an understanding about their own identity in the concept of a Trinidad & Tobago.

Do you think different ethnicities have different values?

I think different people have different values. This is not a matter of ethnicity. I think the human race is possessed of the same yardstick where it comes to morals, ethics, values. I think they all possess the same thing. So it’s not ethnic.

People express these values differently depending on how they have been socialised.

How long have you/your family had roots here (best estimate)?
Both my mother and father’s antecedents have lived here for more than 200 years. They named Besson Street in east Port-of-Spain after my family – my father’s ancestor came to Trinidad in 1787. Boissiere Village is named for my mother’s people.

What do you like and dislike about T&T culture?

I like most things about our cultures, except the recent introduction of extremely loud music.

Also, in order to analyse important issues such as the impact of immigration and emigration, you have to have information available. And the Central Statistical Office in Trinidad is one of the places from where you do not get statistics (laughs).

I am 74 years old. And what I have seen in my adult life is an enormous change in Trinidad. I mean, when you take something like the Red House – 30, 40, 50 years ago or more, leaving a significant building like the Red House in a dilapidated state would have been a big uproar. Same thing with President’s House. Now, increasingly, there are fewer and fewer people who care about those iconic sites, because they don’t mean much to them.

Indian Women

Thank goodness, today we can take it for granted to see women of East Indian descent hustle to work in their “power suits”, see them dance “Chutney” in beautiful, traditional outfits on television, and enjoy their competence and leadership on many levels of national life. To reach there, the way has sometimes been rather thorny for the daughters of India! Shameen Ali, in a chapter of “150 Years of the Indian Contribution to Trinidad and Tobago”, gives a very interesting summary of the historical development of what Indian women were “permitted” to do. “Permitted” stands here in a rather wide sense: the 19th century Victorian and early 20th century society operated based on very narrow class, race and gender restrictions for everybody. The women of East Indian descent, a minority in a minority in a minority, had therefore a particularly difficult situation from where to fulfill their dreams and grow.

But to start on a positive note: the women who migrated from their homeland to an unknown place in the western world were probably the more “gutsy” ones from the start. More often than not, they had gone through hard times in India, fled from impossible familial situations, abuse, prostitution, famine. Some had been kidnapped by recruiting officers. Only a small minority came as wives or daughters of male immigrants.

In Trinidad, they faced the difficult situation of being very few in a ever-growing male Indian immigrant population. From the start, they had the handicap of being paid even lower wages than the indentured men, if that is at all possible. Having come from the caste system and an overbearingly strict patriarchal structure, they were used to be at the receiving end of injustices, and took it in stride. Bad housing conditions were nothing new for many of them, as was a lack of medical care.

In Trinidad, those sub-standard living conditions for the indentured labourers were, however, often life-threatening for the East Indian women. Promiscuity, prostitution and “wife-chopping” were not infrequent 19th century occurrences in the Indian community, isolating them even further from the Creole population (who saw themselves as “indigenous”, albeit the fact that both Europeans and Africans had immigrated just 3 or 4 generations earlier).

From the start, Indian women were earning their own living, something that was not always easy for their male counterparts to deal with. In traditional India, that was just never heard of. It lead to many conflicts, often with a violent outcome, in the Indian population, which contributed to its stereotyping by the Creole population, namely that the Indians were promiscuous and violent “wife-choppers”. As more and more Indian women came to live in Trinidad, this situation eased up, but the prejudices often remained.

In terms of religious and family life, Indian women had several challenges to face. On the one hand, they were much coveted as brides, given the fact that they were few and far between. Large dowries often changed hands. On the other hand, Hindu and Muslim marriages were not officially recognised by the British administration, which made children of a marriage illegitimate.

From the 1870s onwards, when many Indian women had terminated their indentureship contracts and decided to stay in Trinidad, they became increasingly the religious and cultural backbone of their families, maintaining beliefs and practices. Indian villages were created with the land the formerly indentured received as grants instead of a return passage to India, and some families were now in their third generation.

The majority of Indian women lived in rural areas, or more precisely in what was then rural. A lot of Indian villages from 100 years ago have grown into sizable towns since! Many of them interacted more with black and Creole Trinidadians than Indian men did. The Indian woman selling cow’s milk was a frequent sight in the morning light, so much so that she was depicted in popular comics. One such woman was, for example, Valiama, who came to settle in Trinidad from Martinique with her daughter. She spoke French and Patois, and wore foulard and madras, which made it easy for her to interface with the Creole neighbourhoods of St. Clair where she delivered milk. Eventually, she was able to carve out a niche for herself and her family in Boissière Village, and she became the mother of all the Pillais!

Education was and is of course key in the advancement of women. Today we know that women excel in academia, but many patriarchal cultures denied girls even a basic education in those years. In Trinidad, Indian girls had access to education, primarily through the efforts of Canadian Presbyterian missionary schools. Later, they would become teachers themselves, such as Anna Mahase snr., who was the first Indian woman to become a teacher in 1918, and Florabelle Harnarayn, who was the first woman to be appointed school supervisor in 1967.

Increasingly, Indian women entered into secondary and tertiary education. Dr. Stella Abidh was one of the several female medical doctors of Indian descent of the first half of the 20th century. She was the first woman to be appointed district medical officer for South Trinidad. Amongst her peers were Dr. Olga Rampersad, Dr. Pearl Ramkallop, Dr. Sylvia Ramcharan, Dr. Rosie Sheik, Dr. Indra Delipsingh and Dr. Rosie Ali.

With the introduction of the screening of Indian movies in Trinidad from the 1930s onwards, another arena opened up to the women of East Indian descent: public dancing and singing. As Shaheen Ali writes:

“Indian films kindled a new kind of pride in Indians for their heritage. Thus inspired, singers like Rhoda Asgarli, Myroon Mohammed and Zora Seesahai emerged together with the dancer Champa Devi who thrilled audiences throughout Trinidad during the 1940s and the 1950s.”

The awakening of the local performing arts, if one might call it thus, spanned in those years not only the Creole world in figures like Madame Chesola, who taught ladies how to dance, dancers Marie Basilon, Beryl McBurnie and Thora Dumbell, but also the women of the Indian community, who started to develop their very own Trinidadian expressions.

It seems that the 20th century was marked by an ongoing challenging of traditional roles by women, be it in the field of education, sports, entertainment, business, politics or religion. In the 1950s, Ruth Seukaran was the first woman of Indian descent to emerge on the political arena. Indira Rampersad was the first Hindu pandita in Trindad. Many have followed in their footsteps, making history, and often making the world just a little brighter for everyone.

Have rice? - Be wealthy!

Perceptions of wealth in the traditional Indian society in Trinidad

Almost 30 years of after the system of indentureship had been introduced, an Ordinance had defined a legal minimum wage. The plantations found a way around this by simply increasing the tasks to be performed. The result was lower wages. When this was added to the poor housing and almost total lack of amenities, there was considerable disappointment and depression on the sugar estates. Many protested that they were working “daywork” instead of tasks.

A variety of laws oversaw the working conditions of the Indians. By law, they were guaranteed not to work more than 280 days of work per calender year, with five days a week out of crop and six days during crop. A task was a body of work performed over a seven-hour period by an able bodied person. Day work, on the other hand, was nine hours in the field. However, up to fifteen hours was day work in the factory during crop time. The Ordinance laid down a minimum wage of 25 cents per day or per task and 16 cents for youngsters. Field work during crop went much longer than nine hours, but there was a little more to be earned.

The indentureship period was a boost to the plantation system and to the economy of the colony. Indians worked in both sugar, cocoa and coffee estates. The third crop of great importance to Trinidad was rice. This was entirely in Indian hands. Rice was introduced by Indians and to the present is mostly cultivated by them. By the 1870s, it was apparent that rice was being cultivated in the Caroni swamp; and to some degree in the Oropouche lagoon. In a 1960 study produced by Arthur and Juanita Niehoff entitled “East Indians in the West Indies”, it is said:

“In the first place there is a traditional sentimental value attached to growing and possessing large amounts of rice. Among Hindus rice is the one important crop in which religious rites are involved.”

Trinidad’s other agricultural harvests, sugar and cocoa, were not invested with supernatural beliefs by the Indian immigrants. However, rice fields were supposed to have guardian spirits, and many Hindus made offerings to them in form of rum, cigarettes, candles and biscuits at the time of harvest.

Rice is treated much more ceremoniously by the Hindu society in Trinidad than other crops. This also includes the preservation of religious traditions, e.g. that a small amount of the first  rice crop were given to a Brahman, preferably a pundit  (priest), or to a saddhu (religious ascetic). At pujas and weddings, rice is an intergral part of the ritual offering.

“The only other crops in this area to which religious ceremonialism is attached are watermelons and cucumbers, of which the first fruits are given to the Brahman,” write A. and J. Niehoff. “It may be relevant that both of these are grown in the rice fields during the dry season. That is, the fields which produce rice take on some of the sacred character which is attached to the grain itself.”

Apart from the religious standpoint, the possession of rice serves as a symbol of plenty. No matter how poor a family may be, to have several barrels of rice put away was an indication of worth. The possession of money, however, was another matter. Banks were generally not trusted by the Indians.

“The Indians came to Trinidad in search of better economic conditions,” write A. and J. Niehoff. “Those who came were consequently from the poorer classes of India and they had little more than their personal belongings when they arrived. What they have today is therefore a result of their efforts since they have lived on the island.”

The living wage, 1 shilling, 1 pence per day for men and 8 pence for women was even in those days hardly a sum upon which great future investments could be built. Thriftiness had to become a lifestyle beyond modest living for the Indians. As Niehoffs write, Collens described that the Indians ‘hoarded to a fault, often living on the plainest and coarsest diet in order to save money’.

However, in the 1870s and 1880s, Indians deposited large amounts of money in the local branches of banks. Not quite trusting the slip of paper they got in return, it so happened that sometimes an Indian would withdraw all his or her savings just to verify that it was really there! Many Indians didn’t trust banks at all and hid their money in hollow trees or buried it. Others again didn’t even trust in money and instead melted their silver coins and made beautiful bracelets.

“There are Indians of the present generation who remember this thriftiness to the point of deprivation among their emigrant ancestors,” write A. and J. Niehoff. “The old Indians were described by this son and his wife, who were by no means spendthrifts, as follows: ‘They didn’t spend their money. You could never tell a man was rich by looking at him. They wore plain clothes even if they could afford better.’”

Education was perceived as a way to an improved life, and by the late 1860s the opportunity was grasped. Historian Gertrude Carmichael remarks:

“Early in 1869, the Reverend John Morton proposed to Sir Arthur Gordon a scheme for the education of the East Indian children, to be entirely dependent on Government finance. The matter was raised before the Legislative Council by the Govenor who said:

‘The present system of education has failed to produce the anticipated fruits ... hardly an Indian child has attended a ward school, whilst the small number of children of these immigrants who are recieving any education are almost exclusively tobe found in private schools of the strictest denominatioal character and uninspected by the state.’”

It seems that 130 years ago, the education system in Trinidad and Tobago already had its familiar problems: inactivity of the Board of Education, the inefficiency of many of the teachers, and lack of supervision and local interest (as Governor Arthur Gordon said in 1869 in reference to the failure to educate the children of the East Indian community).

No satisfactory policy on schools for East Indian children was produced by the members and the chairman. It was the Reverend John Morton, the Secretary, who due to his personal enthusiasm, petitioned the Board of Education to open a trial school with government aid in San Fernando.

“In 1871, the first school for East Indian childeren was opened in Cipero,” writes Carmichael. “Government aid amounted to £175 per year for a teacher; $5.50 as result fee for every child who showed reasonable progress in the annual examinations and a 50 cents capitation fee per quarter for every child who recorded thirty attendances. Under these conditions it was possible to send a child to school to make a small profit towards the rent of £200 per year for which the mission was responsible.”

With four hours’ teaching per day devoted to secular objects, and outside of this complete freedom of religious instruction, the education scheme found the support of the planters in  south, and by 1874, twelve school were open, ten supported entirely by planters, one by the Mission itself and one by the government. By 1899, Rev. Morton directed 16 schools, 14 of which received government support.

The importance to the colony’s economy of its agricultural sector is today hard to understand. The extent to which this sector had collapsed in the period right after the abolition of slavery was such that virtually all economic growth had been seriously threatened. The recovery was slow but steady. The impact of the new immigrants was felt in many ways as is reported by Daniel Hart, Senior Civil Servant, who in 1865 states:

“Crop of 1864

78,678,000 lb Sugar; 5,090,017 lb Cocoa; 13,329 lb Coffee; 72,120 lb Galls. Rumm; 1,729,640 Galls. Molasses; 55,500 lb Cotton. - Population 90,000.

No doubt some estates have made good crops, and those crops have yielded to the proprietor a fair, or even a handsome nett return, but how many estates have done so? On the other hand, it cannot be denied that without the large number of immigrants that have been introduced, the present crops could never have been made.”

The immigration of thousands of people from a completely different culture was not without its problems in the eyes of the Victorian westeners, however. In the days before radio and television, even before colour photography (black and white photography had barely been invented in 1838 and was still a complicated, expensive and poisonous affair), people had no idea of what people from other parts of the world looked like and behaved like. This led to immense cultural clashes in the 19th century, which Hart describes:

“It is stated that on their arrival in the French Colonies, the Indians are, previous to landing, made to attire themselves as civilised beings. For this purpose proper clothing is provided for them- nor are they permitted to be engaged as shopkeepers or traders in any way. In Trinidad the eyes of the inhabitants, high and low, are to behold these people almost in an entire state of nudity- it being contended that there should be no interference with them in this respect. ... Surely there should be no reason why they should not be told that they must clothe themselves as other people do- and if this were done, it would also tend to benefit trade- as the Dry Goods merchants would necessarily have to increase the importations.”

In many ways, the local population (which was in itself constituted of European and African immigrants and their immediate descendants) misunderstood the Indians’ way of life completely. Because the Indians were not Christians, they were considered as people who did not respect the ‘laws of God and Man’, as Hart describes:

“They cannot tend to the general benefit and advancement of the Colony to that extent as they ought, or, no doubt, would do, were the frequently and quietly exhorted by the clergy who should without, in the slightest manner, infringing on their Faith or Religion (if they do possess either, which is doubtful) remind them that the laws of God demand that every man should labour honestly and industriously six days of the week for his daily bread, and that the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord his God.”

The thiftyness of the mostly dirt-poor and displaced Indians also was interpreted as a disadvantage by the Europeans.

“Indians have no motive for any great exertion. Their simple wants are confined to a few pounds of rice, and a few peppers, and thus one or two days’ work is sufficient to provide them with a week’s subsistence. Hence, the limited extent of labour that is performed by or obtained from them as a whole.”

Daniel Hart as the statesman and economist was not only observant in the ‘cultural clashes’ between the local planters and the immigrants from far-away countries, he also deduced what action needs to be taken in order for the situation to improve:

“From all this follows the necessity for the planters to do all in their power for the benefit of their labourers. This should be one of their primary objects. Attention to their wants and comforts, together with sound and wholesome advice, would tend to do much good. Nor can it be denied that it is within the means of every planter to do a considerable amount of good in this way. Measures such as these, aided by the labour of the clergy, will, no doubt, tend to make the Indian and Chinese labourer more treatable.  This would render the task of dealing with them less irksome. The advancement of an island like Trinidad, where there is such a mixture of nations, depends in a great measure upon the spiritual attention and instruction of the labouring population; the stringent enforcement of the p olice-laws; and the prevention, by the strong arm of the law, of vagrancy and idleness.”

Daniel Hart’s overall attitude and point of view is typical of the colonists. Underlying it all is the real fear of a collapsing economic future.

The reality, however, was that there was actual privation in the Sugar Belt, if not the entire agricultural sector. The vast majority of indentured Indians earned far less than the minimum wage that was legally guaranteed to them. Strikes on the estates began to occur. They appeared to be spontaneous. They were basically concerned with the collapse of working conditions as the Indians understood it. Some 50 strikes occured between 1870 and 1900.

“They usually occured in response to planters increasing tasks, reducing wages or withholding accustomed privileges; the strikes were defending existing plantation conditions from interference by planters rather than demanding new and better ones, and so the strikes were not a serious threat to the indentureship system.” (Dr. Bridget Brereton, ‘Race relations in Colonial Trinidad’)

In fact the system provided little protection for the indentured. More often than not the Protector of Immigrants, an official member of the Legislative Council, sought to protect the interest of the planters and not those under his charge.

Calcutta Street

A series of events involved two traditional enemies, France and England, this time not on the battlefields of Europe or in the sparkling Caribbean waters, but in far away India.

The circumstances that brought our ancestors to these islands of Trinidad and Tobago are as varied as we ourselves. Events set in motion on the other sides of the world, in some cases precipitated by circumstances whose origins had their roots in the contentions of other nations, would produce causes that would affect the lives of thousands 200 years later.

Take for example the term ‘black as the black hole of Calcutta’, which has come to mean to us a very dark night, a dark and dingy room or a very bad mood. The ‘black hole of Calcutta’ was originally an awful prison in that Indian city.

About the year 1700 there were no more than a few hundred English people living in India. 100 years later, tens of thousands of English men, women and children lived there. Whole regiments of soldiers fought on the borders to the Himalayas; elaborate bureaucracies adjucated over states with populations greater than the British Isles themselves. How did it then happen that viceroys were in control of extensive provinces, and kings of ancient lineage and maharajas who were the descendants of the Gods started to pay homage to a slightly plump, somewhat stern elderly lady of mostly Germanic descent, named Victoria?

This remarkable development was in part a result of the struggle between France and Britain, which filled the age and was fought out all over the globe. It can be argued that the events that culminated in the creation of an Indian Empire, however, would not have taken place had not the time been ripe for European intervention there.

The great empire of the moguls was in a process of disintegration. The East India Company, a trading concern, had done very well in India from the 1600s onwards. Controlled from the City of London, the company had become so wealthy that it could support an army in India and all the necessary apparatus to conduct elaborate trade, commerce and diplomacy.

The French too possessed a trading company, the Compagnie des Indes. Both organisations had the same object: the promotion of commerce and the gaining of financial profit for their principles.

Those convivial times of making money began to change. By the 1740s, events in Europe prompted keen competition to become open hostility, and the European business interest to take sides in the collapsing mogul empires’ administration. The continent of India was up for grabs.

Various princes and maharajas were courted by the interests of the warring European powers as expressed in their trading companies. Pitched battles were fought with local troops being commanded by either French or Englishmen.

Out of this milieu arose a significant individual. His name was Robert Clive. He came from a middle class family in Shropshire. At the age of 18, he was a clerk in India. At 27, he was pronounced by the British prime minister Pitt a ‘heaven-born general’.

Things came to a head when an Indian prince, Surajah Dowlar, prompted by the French, laid siege to British-held Calcutta. The small garrison and mostly the English civilians fought bravely, but in three or four days it was all over. They had lived in peace too long. A terrible fate now overtook them. 146 Europeans surrendered after the enemy had penetrated their defences under a flag of truce. Taken, they were thrust into a prison cell, 20 feet square. - the black hole of Calcutta, as the English press described it subsequently. By the morning, all but 23 were dead. The city was looted and occupied and the East India Company’s premises burnt.

In January of 1757, Clive relieved Calcutta at the head of an army comprising about 1,000 British soldiers and 1,500 Indian troops. He blasted his way through the city’s ancient walls, and in a series of terrifying street battles defeated a French/Indian force of some 40,000. Within ten years, much of India was under British control - not British government control, but the East India Company’s control.

Clive of India was one of several empire builders, which included Gordon of Khartoum, Lawrence of Arabia and Alexander of Tunis. Englishmen named for places scattered all over the world in an empire ‘upon which the sun never set’.

British India of ‘the Raj’ was administered from the City of London. Its banking and commercial establishments controlled a vast land mass made up of diverse peoples ranging from stone age, post-Neanderthal tribes to the white priests of Brahma in the Himalayas. Layers upon layers of civilisations, literally one upon the other, remnants of ancient religions, promoted by living saints, versed in languages now extinct except to pundits and maharajas. Vast populations lived rural lives in never-ending landscapes. Great poverty existed next to sumptuous wealth, and instant death was any and everyone’s constant companion.

Religious control of millions of people had long been institutionalised by military means, and a regimented order of the society had produced a system of organising the entire continent into a hierarchy of classes or castes. Depending into which you were born, your position in life would be immutable.

All this appealed to the British. Once conquered - and India knew about conquerors - it was not too difficult to absorb the newcomers, especially as the new rulers were much easier than the previous Mongol emperors.

By the turn of the 1800s, Britain had emerged as the winner of the European wars of the previous century. It controlled the shipping routes of teh world’s oceans from the distant east to the West Indian islands in the Caribbean sea.

As African slavery proved increasingly too expensive to maintain and with profits falling in the Caribbean, the British government decided to free the slaves, and in so doing save the City of London’s commercial interests. This really meant to stop seeing the slaves as commercial property and to suddenly perceive them as human beings, and subsequently leave them to their own devices under the law of cause. But this, however, did not solve the economic problems of the City of London’s interest in the Caribbean. Within seven or eight years after the emancipation of the African populations in teh British colonies, the mutual interest of London in both India and the Caribbean, namely Guyana and Trinidad, proceeded upon a courcse of action that resulted in the wholesale transportation of several hundred thousand Indians to the New World over a period of 72 years, to work here under a system of forced labour, known as indentureship.

The fate of nations was controlled by a handful of government officials and bankers. To paraphrase historian Donald Wood in his book ‘Trinidad in Transition, Trinidad and Tobago is a product of the Seven Years War between England and France, of the French Revolution and of Napoleon Bonaparte.

The relief of Calcutta, following the deaths in that city’s black hole, produced British India. The fall of French power in the Caribbean made for the freeing of the slaves by the British and the transportation of a people to the other side of the world to Trinidad. So next time you walk up Calcutta Street in St. James, know that this is not just a quiet street in suburbia, but a landmark in memory of world events that brought so many of us here.

The History of Rum and Sugar Cane Part 2

“We weighed anchor with the morning breeze, and stood down gently before its refreshing breath to the modern capital of the colony, Port of Spain. I shall not be weak enough to attempt a detailed description of the enchanting scenery which presented itself to us; nothing but painting could hope even faintly to convey an image of it to the inhabitants of the temperate zone.

The Gulf of the purest ultramarine, just wreathed into a smile and not more; on the right hand the mountains of Cumana with their summits lost in the clouds; on the left the immense precipices of Trinidad covered to the extremest height with gigantic trees which seemed to swim in the middle ether; the margin fringed with the evergreen mangroves, which were here hanging themselves rising out of the midst of the soft waves; behind us the four mouths of the Dragon of Columbus with the verdant craggy isles between them; before us Port of Spain with its beautiful churches, the great Savannah, and the closing hills of Montserrat.

Meanwhile the Eden gracefully bent beneath the freshening wind, the long dark canoes glanced by us with their white sails almost kissing the sea, and enormous whales ever and anon lifted their monstrous bodies quite out of the water in strange gambols, and falling down created a tempest around them, and shot up columns of silver foam. We came to anchor two miles from shore, and had a boat race in the evening.

Port of Spain is by far the finest town I saw in the West Indies. The streets are wide, long, and laid out at right angles; no house is now allowed to be built of wood, and no erection of any sort can be made except in a prescribed line.”

The English writer Henry Coleridge visited Trinidad in 1829. In his description, the little town on the edge of the beautiful ‘lake’ of Paria is as fair as paradise.

The huge primeval forest was slowly being cut away by the slave labour, imported by the French planters. The Otaheite cane was yielding significant crops from which was produced sparkling brown sugar, pungent molasses and a fiery rum which one day blended and refined, would be amongst the best in the world.

Coleridge saw Trinidad a decade before the abolition of slavery. He saw it during the administration of Sir Ralph Woodford, after the tumultuous times of the military administrators Picton, Hislop and Munroe.

But ‘pax Woodford’ was not to last, for by 1839 the island was gripped in another round of turmoil. This time, it was not war, but an economic crisis brought on by the shortage of labour on the estates. To deal with this, the planters, aided by the British colonial government, brought in some 10,278 West Indian labourers over a ten year period. This did not work, as those immigrants were former slaves themselves, and they soon left the eststes, set up small holdings or drifted into the town.

As is stated in the book ‘From Colonial to Republic’, William Burnley, planter and Trinidad’s first millionaire, encouraged other immigrants to come to Trinidad, many of whom, however, stayed only for a short time. By 1847, 1,301 U.S. immigrants had arrived, but most of them were skilled craftsmen and did not want to work as labourers, and they returned to the U.S. Some Africans from Sierra Leone and St. Helena, who had been freed from non-British slave ships, also came to Trinidad, as well as a few French and Germans who arrived in 1839, and in 1846 some Portuguese. All these sources of labour failed, since the immigrants were not able to work under tropical conditions.

Chinese immigration was ended in 1866, because the Chinese government insisted on free passages for their people. 2,500 Chinese had entered the island until that date, and those who stayed on became shopkeepers and market gardeners - again no labour force for the sugar estates!

This was to change when in 1845, indentured labourers were brought from India. The Indians were unskilled, thus cheap labourers; they were used to the climate and since India was another British possession at the time, there were no administrative obstacles.

In 1846, the Sugar Duties Act worsened the situation of the West Indian planters. Indian immigration stopped around 1848, but was resumed in 1851 under a better organised system, with a Protector of Immigrants appointed to look after the the interests of the Indians. The cost of the immigration was mainly paid for by the planters.

Under the indentureship contract, the Indians were offered a free return passage to India after having worked for five years on an estate. In 1854, a new ordinance was passed which required the Indians to spend another five years in Trinidad after their five year contract with the estate was over before repatriation to India. From 1869 onwards, Indians who had resided here for at least 10 years, were offered 10 acres of crown land in exchange for their free return passage. Many accepted that offer, and the temporary nature of Indian immigration to Trinidad changed into a permanent arrangement. By 1871, there were almost 27,500 Indians in Trinidad, one-sixth of whom were born here.

While money had been invested in the sugar industry was invested in the 1840s, and the 1850s had marked the beginning of the recovery of the industry, and the 1860s and the 1870s saw its expansion. Modernisation of the sugar mills had taken place, and new techniques such as the vacuum pan method were put in place, increasing production quantitatively and also producing sugar of a higher quality.

In 1874, when England removed import duties from all types of sugar, consumers in Great Britain did not buy the lower-grade ‘muscovado’ sugar anymore, and instead turned to more refined, white sugar.

Even when in 1880 there was no longer a shortage of workers, the colonial office continued to permit Indian immigration. This created an over-supply of labour, allowing the planters to lower the wages. Indentured labourers received about 25 cents per task, non-indentureds about 30 cents. When a crisis occured in the sugar industry in the mid-1880s, planters increased the tasks for indentured labourers and lowered the wages of non-indentureds. Many plantations survived thanks to this availability of cheap labour when the sugar duties were removed in 1874, and their prices had to compete with sugar from places like Brazil.

The story of the sugar cane industry and its derivatives, molasses and rum, must now describe the people from that distant subcontinent and that ancient culture who made the journey here, and in so doing drove their roots deep into the soil of their adopted homeland. As Dr. Bridget Brereton points out in her article ‘Indians and Indentureship 1845 - 1917’, published in ‘Book of Trinidad’ (abridged):

“A total of 143,939 people came to te island from the subcontinent. The great majority had lived in the provinces along the Ganges river, expecially in Bihar and Orissa, while a smaller group came from south India. Hindi (with its variant Bhojpuri) was the majority language of the immigrants and Hinduism the majority faith, representing the caste spectrum found in north Indian society. A significant minority were Muslims.

The overwhelming majority were simple rural folk, accustomed to hard work and poverty, deeply attached to the land. It was essential to tie them to the plantations and to extract a guaranteed minimum of labour from them by some legal restrictions.

Hence the indenture system. This was not slavery, yet the immigrant so long as he remained under indentureship, was not free. He or she could neither change their employer, nor refuse to perform any lawful tasks, nor leave the plantation without written permission during working hours. Any breach of this contract (and indenture simply means contract) could be punished by jail sentences. At any point in time between 1845 and 1917, hundreds of Indians were in jail for breach of the immigration laws.

Gradually, although attachment to Mother India remained strong, more and more Indians began to put down roots in the island. Locally born people with no first-hand knowledge of India reinforced this development. So did the emergence of a large Indian land-owning group, since from 1869 onward, it became possible for ex-indentured labourers to obtain land. A large Indian peasantry soon developed, growing rice, cocoa, cane, all kinds of food crops and raising livestock.

They settled all over the island, helping to open it up after 1870 and creating new villages. By the time indentureship ended in 1917, the Indians were deeply rooted in the island, making a vital contribution to the economy especially as agriculturists and plantation workers. They contributed a great deal to their new society by practising their rich diversity of religious and cultural forms. Temples and mosques were built; Hindu and Moslem festivals introduced. Indian dance, music and song enriched the already complex culture. The island’s cuisine was enlivened by the addition of roti and all kinds of curried dishes. Indian jewellers and workers in gold and silver practised their traditional crafts. Thus the mosaic that was Trinidad and Tobago society and culture received new patterns, new colour and new beauty from the people from India.”

Rum Glossary

Rhum agricole: Rum distilled from fresh cane juice

Rhum industriel: Rum distilled from fermented molasses

Distillation: Separating and concentrating of a certain component in a liquid (alcohol, medicines, perfumes). Invented in China in 800 BC, distillation came to Europe in the the 13th century.

Heavy’light rum: Depending on the purity to which the alcohol is distilled, that is, at which point in the distillation process it is taken out of the still, a lighter or heavier rum is the result. The later it is taken out, the higher the alcohol content, and the lighter the rum. Also, cane juice or molasses (called ‘wash’) that has fermented quickly (less than a week) will yield lighter rum.

Aging: When it comes out of the still, rum is clear and strong. Transported to Europe in barrles, it improved and darkened - the aging process was discovered!

Blending: Mixing rum from different stills, adding spices, flavouring like caramel and water.

Alcohol content:

Degrees: used in French islands for percentage of volume (40º)

US proof: twice the percentage of volume (86 = 43% alcohol of volume)

British proof: percentage of alcohol of volume divided by 0.571

Overproof: 40 overproof+ (100+40) x 0.571 = 79.94% alcohol of volume. Got it?

Bunsee

Great Hopes, Great Bucks and the Great Blast

From labourer to millionaire - the ‘Trinidadian Dream’ came almost true for East Indian immigrant Bunsee Partap

On 2nd February 1869, the good ship Poonah brought 215 immigrants from India to Trinidad. One of them was a man called Bunsee Partap, who was indentured to Belle Vue Estate in Oropouche.

Bunsee was a Hindu. In India he had belonged to the Malla caste, a low service caste. He was not to remain single for a long time: family tradition has it that a year or two later, he married the widow Luckpatea, whose high-caste husband had died shortly after coming to Trinidad.

After their indentureship was up, the couple accepted £5 each in lieu of a return passage to India and purchased 2 1/2 acres of land adjoining Belle Vue estate, as well as 10 acres near Fyzabad.

They must have worked very hard in their little family business, and eventually Bunsee was also lending money at the then ususal interest rate of around 10 to 12 per cent. Like other former indentured Indians, he leased out his lands to small farmers, who were allowed rent-free usage of the land for a limited amount of time in return for planting and raising a specified amount of cocoa trees. After their lease was up, Partap was left with a huge cocoa estate full of mature trees bearing fruit. He was thus able to profit from the cocoa boom of the late 19th century.

With their various business ventures, the hard-working Partaps became well-off people. Among the villagers in Oropouche Bunsee had the nickname ‘Mahatoo’, the ‘great one’. When the first world war started in 1914, he and his wife, who were by then into their seventies, lived on the Fyzabad-Guapo road.

Their peaceful cocoa planter lives were to change forever, though. During the war, the British fleet changed its machines from coal to fuel, making mineral oil exploration all of a sudden very viable. In Trinidad, feverish attempts to find more of the ‘Black Gold’ were made, and one success followed another. In 1917, oil was found in Fyzabad, and the British Apex Oilfields Company soon had acquired drilling rights on the lands surrounding the Partaps’ estate.

Bunsee, however, did not want to even negotiate with the oil pioneers. The noise of the machinery closeby was annoying enough, the dirt of the trucks and the endless stream of foreign workers - he definitely did not want that on his land!

In the end, however, he was coaxed into cooperation by Bobby Wade, a young Trinidadian driller of English creole parentage, and Ralph Sammy, a businessman from San Fernando. They formed the Fyzabad Dome Oil Company, and in 1928, nine drilling sites were mapped out on the eleven acres of Bunsee’s estate.

Two of the wells struck oil, and a third one was drilled. This one was to prove fatal, though: on the evening of December 7, 1928, the pressure of oil and gas in the well got out of control, and the well exploded. The Great Blast killed sixteen people who at that time had been in its vicinity, trying to stop the precious oil from gushing and flowing into the river.

Amongst the dead were Bobby Wade, Ralph Sammy and old Bunsee Partap.

“All that remained of Bunsee Partap was an insignificant heap of ash and calcined bone, a belt-buckle, a bunch of five keys and the ramins of a watch in an initialled metal fob, by means of which he was identified.” writes Anthony de Verteuil in his book ‘Eight East Indian Immigrants’.

However, Bunsee’s sudden death did not stop the Partap fortune. His main inheritor was his grandson Sobran, who with the help of his lawyer Mikey Hamel-Smith, took charge of the complex business of Dome Oil Fields. He fared extremely well. When cocoa and sugar prices dropped into nothingness in the 1930s, Sobran acquired the Belle Vue Estate (1,100 acres) for the dumping price of $ 10,000! But the most successful oil field was still the original 11 acres his grandfather had purchased, bringing in a huge profit for the otherwise stingy Sobran. He built fabulous residences in Oropouche and in Scotland Bay, bought the latest Buick models, and lived a generally opulent life. On the other hand, he paid his staff little and was stingy with his relatives.

Maybe through the combination of great wealth with a mistrustful and ungenerous attitude, Sobran attracted a lot of envy. He was threatened and blackmailed, and on 25th March, 1939, he was shot in his bedroom. The crime to this day remains unsolved; the killers were never found. As de Verteuil relates,

“For many, many years, his palatial mansion was uncared for and uninhabited and avoided, as a house that was haunted.” For the Oropouchians, the curse of the exploding well and the shooting still hovered over the Partap property.