Sweet Sorrow: The Timeline of Sugar in Trinidad and Tobago

16th–18th Century

1540s
Sugar cane comes to Trinidad
Sugar cane is introduced in Trinidad circa 1542 by Spanish residents, but only for their own sugar and rum production. For the next 230 years, sugar plays no major economic role.

Tobago’s sugar plantations are developed to a high degree much earlier than Trinidad’s.
In the 1780s, French migration to Trinidad begins after Roume de St. Laurent, a French Creole from Grenada, visits Trinidad. As a result, the Spanish government issues the Cedula of Population of 1783,  which gives crown land concessions to Catholic settlers. French planters from the other islands with their African slaves develop sugar and cotton plantations in Trinidad. In 1797, the British capture Trinidad from the Spanish crown, and the island remains in British hands until Independence in 1962.

1780s
Sugar flourishes in Trinidad and Tobago

St. Hilaire Begorrat, a French planter,
introduces the Otaheite cane to Trinidad.

In 1782, a Frenchman by the name of St. Hilaire Begorrat introduces the Otaheite variety of cane, which flourishes in Trinidad. The sugar industry starts in the Port of Spain area.

The first sugar mill is erected in 1787 by a Frenchman, Picot de la Peyrouse, where Lapeyrouse Cemetery is today. Sugar becomes the leading export good and continues to be so, until 1897 when cocoa takes over.

Slave in the sugar
(Richard Bridgens, 1820s)

Slaves planting and harvesting sugar cane
(Richard Bridgens, 1820s)

Hogsheads, very large barrels,
were used to ship rum, sugar
and molasses abroad.

In 1799, Trinidad produces 2,700 tons of sugar. By 1808, there are 272 sugar mills operating, of which 257 are animal-driven and round in shape, producing 9,500 tons of sugar. Through a process of rationalisation, the number of mills dwindles to 101 by 1882, producing 53,000 tons of sugar.

Left: Transporting cane to the mill (Richard Bridgens, 1820s)
Right: Technical drawing of a mill (Bryan Edwards, 1780s)

The technology of sugar manufacturing changes over time. In the industrial revolution of the 19th century, technological advancements like the vaccum pan and centrifuges lead to more centralisation in sugar manufacturing. Smaller factories become uneconomical.
In 1872, the first central sugar factory, Ste. Madeleine, is completed.

In Tobago, the sugar economy ends in the 1890s due to the collapse of the British firm Gillespie & Co. of London.

Top left: Windmill at Lowlands estate, Tobago.
Top right: Muscovado factory with hand-fed conveyor belt.
Below: 1960s modern sugar factory.

Left: Interior of a boiling house, Trinidad, 1820s.
Right: Interior of a boiling house, Tobago, circa 1880s.

Population and crop statistics of the late 18th century.
(From: History of Trinidad by Lionel Mordaunt Fraser)

19th Century

1807
Abolition of the Slave Trade
The abolition of slavery changes the sugar industry permanently. Most of the former slaves abandon the plantations and either migrate to the towns seeking employment or settle on crown lands to grow food crops. A few skilled Africans remain on the plantations, mainly in the sugar factories which require the services of carpenters, masons, boiler-men, carters and factory operators. The African presence on the estates continues, although in diminished numbers.

1838
Emancipation of the Slaves
In 1834, slavery is abolished throughout the British Empire. For another four years, the former slaves are being kept as paid "apprentices" on the plantations, and in 1838 they are given full freedom.

From the 1840s onwards, Trinidad sugar comes under increasing competitive pressure in the UK markets. Reasons for this are a) the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, but not in other territories such as Cuba or Brazil, b) the abolition of import duties from non-British sugar and c) the displacement of cane sugar by beet sugar from the European continent.

Two of Trinidad’s early sugar barons 
Left: James Eccles, father of William Eccles and Rosina Burnley.
Right: William Burnley, 1780–1850, an American, settles in Trinidad in 1798
and becomes the largest planation owner in Trinidad.

1845
Beginning of Indian Immigration
In 1845, the first ship with indentured workers from India reaches Trinidad. The new arrivals are quarantined on Nelson Island and thence allotted the sugar estate on which to work for a period of five years (women for three years). Until the end of indentureship in 1917, approximately 144,000 people come from India. Many choose to stay after their indentureship contracts are over and found families in their new home country.

Population growth between 1782 and 1810
(from The History of Trinidad by Lionel Mordaunt Fraser)

1840s-60s
Portuguese and Chinese immigration
In 1846, sugar planters privately charter a ship to bring 219 Madeiran immigrant labourers to Trinidad. They are put to work on the more rigorous but better-paying sugar estates, but the harsh conditions of tropical sugar plantations prove to be too much for them. Some leave for the cocoa estates while others abandon plantation labour altogether and turn to petty shopkeeping. Other ships arrive later in 1846 and in 1847. The Portuguese are not compelled by law to indenture themselves and Madeira does not prove to be a viable source of labour. After 1847, Portuguese immigration is no longer considered a solution to the planters’ predicament and the Madeirans are followed by two groups of Asian indentured labourers—the Chinese and the Indians.

Between 1851 and 1969, 2,645 people from China arrive. The majority of the Chinese immigrants are male, and tend towards commerce rather than agricultural labour. This, combined with the high cost of transport, leads the Colonial Government to discontinue Chinese immigration. At right is the partial passenger list of the “Fortitude”, the first ship to bring Chinese immigrants to Trinidad in 1806.







1870-1895
Investment in Sugar Factories
Between 1870 and 1895, £339,000 is invested by the Colonial Company (later Usine St. Madeleine) in its machinery and transport facilities in Trinidad and British Guiana. To this figure is to be added the original cost of the Trinidad factory, Usine Ste. Madeleine,  £213,000.
One small estate, Palmiste, between 1883 and 1894 spends £52,600 in modernising its factory and transport facilities. These investments reduce the production cost of sugar from £8 to £3.
However, not enough investment in the scientific knowledge about cane cultivation is made into the cane farming community, which by the 1920s supplies 40% of canes to the factories. Houses and buildings fall into disrepair: a huge omission on the supply side of the sugar making process.

The cane cutter by Michel Jean Cazabon. Cazabon, one of the earliest recorders of Trinidad’s visual history, captured what may well be the earliest image of an cane cutter in this water colour rendered in the 1850s or 60s.

1882
Beginning of cane farming
Sir Neville Lubbock, Chairman of the West India Committee and a Director of the New Colonial Company Ltd. (later Usine Ste Madeleine), hits upon the idea of having workers on the sugar estates grow canes on idle lands of the sugar company. In 1882, eight men accept parcels of abandoned lands and become Trinidad’s first cane farmers.

Preparing land for cultivation.

20th Century

1937
Brechin Castle starts
In 1937 the English Company of Tate & Lyle purchases a number of small estates in Central Trinidad and sets up their headquarters at Brechin Castle in Couva. As a large international conglomerate Tate & Lyle soon becomes dominant on the landscape, absorbing most of the smaller sugar factories.

Between 1920 and 1927, over 9,000 Indians are repatriated. The total agricultural population is about 96,000. The development of the oil industry and road building begins to increase pressure on the supply of labour.

Aerial shot of Brechin Castle sugar factory in the 1950s.

1920s
From ox-cart to tractor
The 60 hp Caterpillar tractor, imported by Charles Massy since 1924, starts to be deployed in the cane fields for ploughing and grading.
Manure is vital for the fertilisation of cane fields, and sugar companies continue to have large herds of cattle and goats. Additional income from meat and dairy adds to the companies’ bottom line. Mules, horses and donkeys continue to be used for carting and manure. In all, tens of thousands of animals are kept by the sugar companies (in 1955: more than 130,000 animals).

In the 1910s, the Indian water buffalo and the zebu were received from India.

1930s
Trade Unionism
The 1930s are years of considerable turbulence in the colony. Workers in sugar and in oil revolt against low wages and poor working conditions in both these industries. The sugar workers are led by Adrian Cola Rienzi (Krishna Deonarine), a young lawyer from San Fernando. In November 1937, the All Trinidad Sugar Estates and Factory Workers Trade Union is formed, led by Rienzi. Union representation sees considerable improvement in the lives of the sugar and oil workers. Union leaders succeeding Rienzi include Anthony Geoffroy, Bhadase Maraj, Basdeo Panday and Rudranath Indarsingh.

1939-45
World War II
During the Second World War a major section of the work-force is siphoned away from sugar to the better-paying US bases at Chaguaramas and Waller Field. This exodus from the plantations creates shortfalls in sugar production and is a serious blow to sugar manufacture. Production picks up once again after the War and Tate & Lyle becomes a major player in the international sugar market.

This map shows the migration of the sugar industry southward. Up to the time of Emancipation in 1838, sugar cultivation is concentrated mainly in Northern Trinidad, from Diego Martin in the North West to the valleys of the Northern Range going East as far as Toco. The second half of the 19th century sees the decline of the sugar industry in Trinidad. The Sugar Duties Acts from 1846 equalizes the tariff on all sugars imported into Britain, which means that cheaper slave-grown sugar from Cuba, Haiti or Brazil can now compete with that produced by Trinidad, Tobago or Jamaica where labour costs are much higher. In other colonies like India labour costs are also much lower than the Caribbean. In addition European nations are producing beet sugar which now becomes a fierce competitor of Caribbean cane sugar. Plantations in Tobago are reduced into closure as are sugar estates in Northern and North Eastern Trinidad, and in Mayaro. Cultivation shifts to the fertile plains of Caroni and Naparima, well serviced by train lines, where it remains until the final closure of the industry in 2003. (Map from C.Y. Shepard, 1929)

1950s-1975
Tate & Lyle
During the 1950s Tate & Lyle are able to purchase as big an establishment as Usine Ste. Madeleine, making Tate & Lyle the colony’s and later nation’s largest producer of sugar, molasses, rum and bagasse. In 1966, Tate & Lyle owned the following holdings in Trinidad:
• Caroni Limited (70.59% - Sugar production)
• Caribbean Molasses Company (Trinidad ) Ltd. (Molasses purchase, transport, storage and distribution)
• Unital (Trinidad) Limited (Import and export agents for Caroni Limited, 70.59%)

Graph at left:
Crop season lasts from January to June, Trinidad’s dry season. For the sugar factory, it is important that a steady stream of harvested canes is fed into its machinery. However, Easter always means a big dip in production, and May coincides with the traditional marriage season of Indians! That also impacts on the man hours being devoted to the harvest. (Graph from C.Y. Shepard, 1929)






1962-75
Rising Nationalism

Indian sugar workers participate
in demonstrations staged
by the trade unions in the 1970s.

The post-war era is a period of heightened nationalism when Trinidadians and Tobagonians seek independence as well as ownership of their resources. Independence comes in 1962 but both sugar and oil remain under foreign control with little sign of changing. This state of affairs is largely responsible for the Black Power uprising of February 1970. At the end of this uprising the government is forced to make changes in the direction of a greater share in the national economy. One result of this change is the government’s purchase of Tate & Lyle’s Caroni Limited holdings headquartered at Brechin Castle in 1975 under the name Caroni (1975) Limited.












1918-2003
Caroni Distillery

The Caroni Distillery is established in 1918. In 1975, it becomes part of the Government Holdings of Caroni (1975) Limited’s rum division called Rum Distillers Limited. In 2001, Government sells its 49% holding to Angostura. A year later, with the impending closure of the sugar industry in Trinidad and Tobago, Caroni Distillery loses its ready source of local molasses and is closed. Today, Angostura remains the only distillery in the country and has to import its molasses for rum production. Like our sugar, it comes mainly from Guyana.

Caroni Distillery

1975-2003
The death of the Sugar Industry

Figures showing how pay rises in the 1970s
contribute to a steady loss in the sugar industry,
eventually contributing to its demise.

As a national company, Caroni (1975) Ltd continues to produce its traditional brands of sugar, rum, molasses and bagasse. In an effort to diversify, new programmes are introduced such as shrimp farming at Orange Grove, livestock rearing at Morne Jaloux and Rio Claro and citrus cultivation at El Reposo and Tableland. But these initiatives do not succeed, mainly because the management structure remains unchanged and decline is the inevitable result. Higher wages in oil continue to attract the best-trained technicians away from the sugar industry, and the newly established Point Lisas Industrial Estate, adjacent to Brechin Castle, contributes to this talent drain.

The sugar industry dies a slow but sure death. In 2003 Caroni (1975) Ltd is closed, thus ending the long history of sugar in Trinidad and Tobago. There are sad consequences of this closure. Some 20,000 workers suddenly are unemployed, leading to social displacement in the plains of Caroni and Naparima. The established way of life of the cane farmers comes to an end and considerable re-adjustment has to be made. Roads and traces in the sugar areas are handed over to the County Councils which are ill-equipped to take on these responsibilities. The many recreation centres which had been maintained by the sugar company fall into disrepair and are, like the factory itself and indeed Sevilla House, vandalised. At the same time some 75,000 acres of sugar lands are made available to the State for its own purposes. A good deal of these lands is later devoted to housing estates.
Thus ends the era of sugar cultivation in the history of Trinidad and Tobago.

Buy "The Book of Trinidad" by clicking here:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble

Buy "A Rada Community in Trinidad" by clicking here:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble

Trinidad Slave Census of in1813 And other population numbers

Total number of African slaves in Trinidad in 1813 was 25,696. Of these 11,633 were Creole slaves, that is, born on the estates or in the households of their owners. These can be broken down thus: 7,088 born in Trinidad, 2,576 from British Colonies, 1,593 from French Colonies, and 376 from other places.
Source, B. W. Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean 1807 --1834.

Total number of African slaves in Trinidad 13,984. Comprising :–
Ibo, South Eastern Nigeria                2,863
Congo, Congo                                   2,450                                  
Moco, Cameroons                             2,240                          
Mandingo,  Senegambia                    1,421
Kormantyn, Ghana, Gold Coast,
Fanti, Ashanti, others                         1,068
Kwakwa, Ivory Coast                           473
Sierra Leone, Temne 169, Susu 145
Kissi, 63,                                               377
Ibibio, South Eastern Nigeria                371
Raddah, Dahomey                                 281
Chamba, Nigeria                                   275
Fulani, Northern Nigeria                       171
Popo, Dahomey                                     112
Hausa, Northern Nigeria                       109
Yoruba, Western Nigeria                         10

Various tribal groupings                        818

             * * *

Trinidad's population in 1783 Source, L. M. Fraser, History of Trinidad, Book 1
Whites                                                   126
Free Colourds                                        295
Slaves                                                    310
Amerindians                                       2,032
                                                           _____
                                                           2,763

In 1797 at the time of the British conquest of Trinidad the population stood as:-
                                        WHITES:
Men                  Women                   Boys                  Girls                 Total
929                     590                        301                     266                 2,086

                                    FREE COLOUREDS:
1,196                1,624                        895                    751                  4,466

                                        AMERINDIANS:
305                     401                         190                    186                   1,082

                                               SLAVES:
4,164                3,505                       1,232                 1,108                10,009
_____             ______                     ______              ______             _______
6,594                6,120                        2,618                2,311               17,643


Trinidad's population in 1803:
                                 Whites             Coloured
English                       663                  599
Spanish                      505                1,751
French                     1,093                2,925
                               ––––––             –––––
                                2,261                5,275              7,563
Enslaved Africans                                                 20,000

            * * *

In 1796 the produce of the island of Trinidad had been:-
From 159 Sugar estates                                  7,800 hhds (hogheads)
  ''      130 Coffee   "                                    330,000 lbs
  "        60 Cacao    "                                      96,000  "
  "      103 Cotton   "                                    224,000  "

          * * *

In 1803 the produce of the island of Trinidad had been:-
Sugar                                                       16,014,036 lbs
Rum                                                              344,292 galls.
Molasses                                                       214,120   "
Cacao                                                            361,070 lbs
Coffee                                                           185,658  "
Cotton                                                           478,046  "
      

Buy "The Book of Trinidad" by clicking here:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble

Buy "A Rada Community in Trinidad" by clicking here:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble

                                           

Independence of Trinidad and Tobago - The Way It Began

This series of articles, written by Gerard Besson and illustrated with images from the Paria Publishing Archives, was published by Newsday in a special magazine on 31st August 2013, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Independence of Trinidad and Tobago. 

Click here to see the entire magazine! 


Trinidad and Tobago came under British rule at the end of the European wars that marked the close of the 18th century. It is interesting to observe how our population developed over the next century and a half. To understand why so many people came here from so many corners of the world, one needs to take the various economies that were developed here into consideration, as these shaped our collective characteristics and the uniqueness of the variety of cultures which have contributed in the formation of our national identity. However, to begin, it would be suffice to say that “We are all here because of sugar, cocoa and oil” in that historical sequence.

The Cedula of Population of 1783 and the Sugar Economy
The sugar, cotton and tobacco economies brought the first Europeans, mostly French families and “Free Blacks and Coloureds” (meaning people from the French Antilles, some of whom were of mixed European, mostly French and African heritage, but were free and slave-owning), and African enslaved peoples to Trinidad in the closing decades of the 18th century. The Cedula of Population of 1783, which was the endeavour of a French Creole Grenadian by the name of Phillip Roume de St. Laurent, was the legal instrument that made their settlement possible. This document, according to Professor Carl Campbell of the UWI, must be viewed as our first constitution, as it outlined the legal framework that made the populating and settlement of a Spanish colony by a non-Spanish people possible, thus putting into place an Afro-French-Creole population that expressed a French identity.
Upon arrival, the cedulants encountered the remnant Spanish colonists as well as the remainder of the Amerindian population which pre-dated Spanish colonisation. This influx of farmers and unfree labour, which occurred against the backdrop of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, led to large-scale cultivation of the countryside mainly with sugar, but also with all sorts of other agricultural produce for export and domestic consumption. French and Creole Patois speaking, the free population was in the main Catholic, and apart from some Republican elements, was almost entirely French Royalist in outlook, a distinguishing quality that would endure for some one hundred and fifty years, influencing cultural mores, manners, cuisine and the Carnival arts.

Tobago and Emancipation
Tobago, our elder sister, with her older history of European colonisation and African slave importation, was already an established plantation economy in the 1780s, possessing representative institutions, albeit very limited. Tobago had in fact changed hands several times as a result of the various European conflicts. From the time it became a British colony in 1814 until its eventual union with Trinidad, Tobago had sugar and cotton as the main crops until these were replaced by coconuts. Tobago, one could say like Barbados, is a Protestant island. Over the generations, Tobagonians became a conservative, hard working, land-owning Yeomanry, who are well known for their hospitality and their sense of serenity. Towards the end of the 19th century, Tobago, despite possessing its own representative systems was ignoble reduced to becoming a Ward of Trinidad.
In 1807, ten years after the capture of Trinidad, the British government  abolished the trade of African slaves in the Empire, and thirty-one years later, in 1838, all enslaved people were given their full freedom. This action—for whatever the reasons given or the causes explained, whether an expeditious economic necessity, a political trick to achieve a moral position, or an act that was based on a sense of ‘justice and humanity’—when passed into law by the government of the United Kingdom was in truth significant moral achievement. These laws, when enacted, demonstrated a major advancement of Western civilization.
Emancipation signalled the end of that first plantation economy. For the sugar planters—mostly French, although by this time there were some English—this meant an acute dearth of labour on the estates. Many were reduced to poverty, despite being paid large sums for the loss of free labour. The former enslaved people received nothing. Understandably, the former slaves did not feel inclined to continue the hard labour in the cane fields for their former masters, even for wages. After the horrific experience of slavery, they preferred to set up themselves in their own small-scale operations, as artisans, labourers, gardeners, clerks, minor trades people, or simple just to do nothing at all.
The French-Patois speaking Free Blacks and People of Colour, who had benefited from the generous terms of the Cedula of Population, having survived attempts by the British colonial government to reduce their legal rights and other privileges, also suffered as the result of this first plantation economy coming to a close. They were joined, however, by the more upwardly mobile former slaves and commenced the ardorous process of gaining an education and establishing themselves in the new post slavery society. In fact, they, by the end of the 19th century, had created a core professional class, from which a university-trained intelligentsia would eventually emerge.
After some “experimentation” (in fact, British Prime Minister Canning described Trinidad a few decades later as an “experimental colony”) with people from China and Portuguese Madeira and other improvished Europeans, all groups having proven unsuitable for work in the cane fields, the British government began from 1845 to 1917 to “import” people from the Indian sub-continent as indentured labourers for the sugar estates. This scheme worked very well for the British investors and a new thriving sugarcane economy was reestablished and continued to flourish well into the 20th century.

The Cocoa Economy creates the first Trickle-down Economy
Towards the last quarter of the 19th century, cocoa farming came into its own as significant acreages in the northern, central and southern regions were devoted to this crop. Cocoa was an important addition to the agricultural economy of these islands, because it involved many levels of the society. It meant that a much larger cross-section of society were able to enjoy what could only be described as a windfall. Cocoa formed the livelihood for people of various ethnicities, including those of Amerindian descent, known to us as cocoa pañols. From small holdings—and these were in the vast majority, belonging to ‘ordinary’ people—on to the large estates, belonging to the French Creoles and foreign firms such as Cadbury’s, people of all backgrounds were able to benefit materially and so improve themselves and educate their children as a result of the cocoa economy. Cocoa was a genuine trickle down economy. From the countryside to the towns, particularly as the railways were extended, Trinidad bustled with agricultural activity. Small and large businesses were set up in Port-of-Spain and San Fernando to export the island’s produce, of which its cocoa was regarded as the best in the world. By the end of the 19th century, King Cocoa had dethroned King Sugar as the colony’s most profitable export. It was at that time that Tobago and Trinidad were joined together as a twin-island colony by Colonial Office decree.
Commerce flourished with the growth of the import-export houses that lined Marine Square, now Independence Square, and saw the introduction of numerous insurance companies and commercial banks. All this served to produce an enlarged and more specialised Civil Service. These all provided jobs and increased income streams for the emerging middle class, which grew exponentially in this period, thus making Trinidad and Tobago one of the more prosperous colonies in the British West Indies. The pretty suburbs of Port of Spain and San Fernando with their gingerbread house architecture emerged during this time, and grand public buildings were erected. It was during this era, towards the end of the 19th century, that Port of Spain, which still possessed its original Spanish and French architecture, with its Grand Savanna, tree-lined streets and spacious parks, was known as the most attractive town in the British West Indies.
This greater spread of wealth and access to education led the population to a more vocal demand for greater self-rule, reform of the colony’s administration, and participation in the affairs of government by the local intelligentsia and the emerging Labour movement.
In the meanwhile, people continued to come to Trinidad and Tobago. In fact, no other territory in the West Indies has experienced such a constant stream of immigration over the last two centuries. Besides the Indian indentured workers, immigrants in quantity came from the other West Indian islands from the late 1840s and indeed from all over the world. From Europe came Germans, Corsicans, the Scots and some Irish, from Asia came more Chinese, and from the Middle East, as the 20th century dawned, came the Lebanese and Syrians.

Oil Discovery and the Birth of the Trade Unions
Trinidad was famous from early times for its pitch lake at La Brea. Sir Walter Raleigh in caulking his ship there in the 1590s, could be regarded as our first exporter of petroleum. Oil, however, was extracted in Trinidad in commercial quantities in the early 20th century in the south of the island, adding yet another facet to the colony’s overall wealth. This attracted yet another wave of immigrants. Social inequalities and low wages that had always existed emerged more dramatically during this period, particularly in the years between the world wars, which led to the coming into being of a strong Trade Union movement that fought not only for the rights of workers, but for a greater say and a deeper involvement of everyone in the colony’s affairs. The Trade Unions’ new and robust involvement in civil society, notably headed by the oil and sugar workers, together with the Reform Movement, was instrumental in putting into place the foundation for the political movements that were to form the features of our nascent national identity and later the Independence movement, as our earliest politicians were invariably Trade Union leaders.
The First and especially the Second World War made Trinidad and Tobago’s oil a precious commodity, making us doubly blessed by having a two-tiered economy comprising agriculture and petroleum, unique in the Caribbean. The refineries at Point Fortin and at Pointe-a-Pierre led the way in the world’s development of high grade aviation fuel. This 100 octane aviation fuel was instrumental in the overall successful war effort, and in particular in the winning of the Battle of Britain, where the Spitfires and the Hurricanes were flying on ‘Trinidad oil’. This period saw the establishment of American bases in Trinidad which provided jobs for skilled and unskilled workers, both blue collar and white collar. And also left its mark on the social fabric of these islands many felt in a negative way.
The post-war era witnessed the de-colonisation of the former British Empire, when within a decade the most amount of nations came into existence since the Wars of Liberation broke Spain’s domination of the New World.

Agriculture just before Independence
In 1955 there were 409 agricultural credit societies with 16,000 peasant membership, assets $300,000 and working capital of $1,067,140. Sugar Estates canes acreage 36,000. Farmers’ canes acreage 44,000; number of farmers 111,000. Citrus acreage planted 13,000, 432,000 crates of citrus handled in 1954. Bananas 45,546 stems exported in 1953, Rice; 18,000 acres devoted to rice production in 1953, 288 mills produced 12,000 tons of rice. Coconuts, 40,000 acres under cultivation, 21,400 tons of copra valued $1,840,509, 1953. Cocoa 120,000 acres under cultivation produced 200,000 cwt., in 1954. Forest production reserves in 1953 were 49,000 acres; protection reserves, 194,900 acres; Teak plantation 7,000 acres. Timber production for 1954 all woods, 5,607,000, ft. Life stock population; 1954, cattle, 37,900, water buffaloes, 3,000, goats, 39,000, sheep, 5,000, swine, 35,000, horses, 2,400, mules,2,800, donkeys, 6,000, poultry, 1,134,244.
“Because of the perception that industrialisation by invitation was the motive force for growth and development, agricultural production in general received little emphasis. The combined result of these foreign policy strategies was that from being net exporters of food, Trinidad and Tobago became net importers of food from 1963.”
(Rosina Wiltshire-Brodber, Institute of International Relations, UWI. Excerpt from “The Independence Experience 1962–1987” by Selwyn Ryan (editor), p. 298)


Bhadase Sagan Maraj
Born in Caroni on 28 February 1919, losing his father as a lad of 13, he was looked after by loving relatives. Bhadase Sagan Maraj understood that education was the ticket to independence, first a Canadian Mission School in Caroni, later Pamphylian High School in P.O.S. As a young man he became a wrestler, set himself up as a contractor, by 1939 he was working for the U.S. Army on the Bases. He entered warehousing, he went into trucking. He became involved with the development of the residential area to be known as ‘Champs Fleurs’. Representing the Hindu Sanatam Dharma Association he travelled to the U.K. in 1949. He was elected President, Caroni East Indian Association and served as patron and member of several East Indian organisations. He entered politics and won the Tunapuna seat in the Legislative Council ‘handsomely’ in 1950. In 1952 he formed the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, a religious organisation which had as its goal the preservation of Hindu philosophy and possessed a political wing, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). A great wellspring of support rose about him. He was, however, not without detractors, who accused him of using his “Indianness” for political ends. It touched him, and he declared that he was a Hindu and could do nothing else but. He embarked on a school building programme. He became the leader of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) in 1953. He passed the reins of leadership to Rudranath Capildeo in 1960.


Uriah Butler
His name is famous, in fact synonymous in the struggle for improvements in the lot of the working classes in Trinidad and Tobago. Born in Grenada in 1897, he worked as a telegraph clerk there and saw service in the West India Regiment in World War I. He came to Trinidad in 1921 and found employment in the oilfields, where he was injured on the job. He then became a Spiritual Baptist preacher. In 1936 he was expelled from the Trinidad Labour Party for his “extremist tendencies”. He formed the British Empire Citizens’ and Workers’ Home Rule Party. He was also the founder and President of the British Empire Workers and Ratepayers Trade Union. He was instrumental in the organisation of hunger marches in 1935 for the unemployed, taking the march into Port of Spain. He style was courageous and confrontational, and he fearlessly challenged the Imperial might of Great Britain. Organising workers in the oil industry, he led the oilfield strikes of 1937 for improved wages and better working conditions in which several workers as well as police officers were killed. As a result of these riots, a Royal Commission of Inquiry was held in 1938, resulting in some modest improvements in working conditions for workers on the whole. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Butler was interned on Nelson Island for alleged seditious practices and served 18 months for inciting to riot and sedition. Butler visited the United Kingdom in 1948 where he lectured, returning in 1950. He was elected to the Legislative Council 1950–1955 for St. Patrick West. He served as a member of the Standing Orders Committee. The Butler Party captured the largest block of seats in the Legislative Council, but the Governor of the day chose to exclude Butler, and instead Albert Gomes became the first Chief Minister. Butler is looked upon as the founding father of the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU) and the labour movement and is honoured with a statue in Fyzabad. He was awarded the Trinity Cross, the nation’s highest honour, in 1970. Butler passed away in 1977.

Buy "The Book of Trinidad" by clicking here:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble

The History of Sugar Cane and Rum Part Three

We all are here because of sugar

Christopher Columbus, that intrepid traveller, opened the trade routes across the Atlantic to the western continents and the Caribbean isles towards the end of the 15 century. Conquistadors, conquerors of the new lands, followed in search of gold, and fortunes were made.

In the sunny islands, there was no gold, but the explorers who came after the soldiers brought with them many wonderful plants: breadfruit, orange and mango trees, and most remarkable of all the sugar cane plant. It has been suggested that the profits from sugar and rum produced in the Caribbean islands over the centuries have by far exceeded the gold sought by the conquistadors.

The sugar cane plant comes from the far Pacific islands, via China and India to Brazil. St. Hilaire Begorrat, a French creole colonist, introduced it to Trinidad. Interestingly, Begorrat is also said to be one of the main instigators of the Calypso art form.

During the centuries after the settlement of the Caribbean islands by Europeans, sugar was in such great demand in Europe that many of the islands became almost completely deforested to create canefields, for example Barbados, Antigua and half of Tobago. The sugar cane plant was grown en masse. Entire peoples, millions of them, were arbitrarily transported from a world away, from Africa and India, to work in the rolling fields of sugar cane - very much against their own inclinations.

Tremendous energy was poured into the endeavour. Murderous battles were fought over tiny islands in the sun that could grow sugar cane, and produce its basic product. One can say that we all are here because of sugar cane.

For close to two hundred years sugar produced from sugar cane was the primary source of sweetening (besides honey and natural fruit sugar). Then, in 1787, just four years after Roume de St. Laurent introduced a population to Trinidad, Franz Karl Archand developed a process to extract sucrose from sugar, and more importantly, from any sugar-carrying plant. The beet, for example, was one of those plants which oozed sucrose-containing liquid and thrived in temperate climate. It was possible to grow sugar beets in Europe in abundance underground, where the vicissitudes of war could not burn them or trample them down.

“The sugar cane went from being the economic focus of the Caribbean to a crop of far less importance,” comments Edward Hamilton in his authoritative ‘Rums of the Eastern Caribbean’. The wind was taken out of the Caribbean’s sugar economy sails, so to speak.

An essential aspect of the sugar cane industry - and one that was not replaced by beet sugar - was the production of rum. There are many varieties of sugar cane in the Caribbea, various hybrids produced for the varying soil and weather conditions, e.g. the quantity of rainfall. There are as many variations in the rums as there are distilleries. Every island claims a special blending, a unique aroma, a distinctively ‘smooth’, yet startling rich or rough experience to the palate, which could evoke a smile of delight or a shudder as if someone had just stepped over your grave.

“The primary factor affecting the taste of the spirits (...) is the raw ingredients,” remarks Hamilton. And quite so. Rum may be made from either fresh cane juice, cane syrup or from molasses.

Cane syrup is cane juice that has been boiled or vacuumed to remove the water. Molasses is that dark, rich-smelling liquid that is left after all the commercially producible sugar has been removed from the juice.

Sweet juices have been fermented by mankind for years. Thousands of years ago it was discovered that if you were to leave a sweet juice around long enough, a natural yeast would form, ferment, consume the sugar and turn it into alcohol. This metamorphosis of sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide progresses until all the sugar is consumed or the alcohol produced whips out the yeast.

Then the process of distilling commences. This is to separate and concentrate the vital component. The sugar from the cane is fermented and the resulting alcohol is concentrated by distillation.

Rums may be described as heavy or light, depending on the purity to which they are distilled. Rum produced on a continuous still is considered ‘good light rum’. Rum made on a potstill, in your backyard, bush rum or ‘babash’ may be described as ‘heavy’.

The mixing of rum from different stills, or rum distilled to different purities, and the placing of the mix in barrels for various lengths of time is called blending. This skill is basic to the production of rum. The art of the blender, especially before scientific controls were introduced, made or broke the brand.

In Trinidad, Angostura Limited buys molasses produced by Caroni Limited, and this is where the communality ends. Angostura’s multi-coloured distilling plant may well be the most modern of its kind anywhere. Using their own yeast cultures and distilling methods, Angostura produces the full range from light to dark rums.

In 1918, the Caroni sugar factory started to distill rum in a cast iron still. There were at that time some eight or ten other sugar factories operating, each owning some form of distilling apparatus and producing different types of rums. These rums were bought up and barrelled by various merchants, and then sold to rum shops all over the island. The haphazard blending, either by merchants or the rumshop proprietors, produced amazing one-offs, never to be repeated, and concoctions that sold over the counter in unlabeled ‘petit quarts’.

Over the years, Caroni improved the quality of its distilling process. From the original cast iron still to a wooden coffey still to a single column still, and to the new four-column still.

The rums produced in Trindiad are said to be amongst the best in the world. As Thomas Gatcliffe, chemist and retired chairman of Angostura Limited said:

“Rum is to the Caribbean what whisky is to the high lands of Scotland or wine to France.”

It is much better to drink good quality light Trinidad rums than inferior blends of artificially aromatised products that call themselves whisky, for style sake...

Cheers!

Trinidad's Economy

King Sugar, King Cocoa, King Oil

Trinidad’s ongoing development was dependent on various economies throughout the centuries. Starting with the island’s first substantial settlement after the Cedula of Population in 1783, there were three distinct phases: the sugar economy, which started in the 1780s, the cocoa economy, which began around 1870 and had its heyday in the first decades of the 20th century. Finally, the oil economy which commenced in 1910, and proved to be the economic backbone of Trinidad in the 20th century.

The Sugar Economy:

In the 1830s, Trinidad was - contrary to Tobago - still largely an undeveloped island. Vast amounts of fertile and potentially productive land were still untouched by enterprise. In 1838, only approx. 43,000 acres were cultivated out of a total acreage of 1.25 million. The cultivated land stretched in a narrow band from Chaguaramas to Arima, and from Port-of-Spain to San Fernando, surrounded by a vast, virgin forest.

In 1884 about 60% of the European sugar market was being satisfied by beet sugar, which was grown and produced in Europe. This commodity began to enter the British markets, making cane sugar production in Trinidad even less profitable. To make up for the shrinking margins, the acreage under cane was increased, from 41,639 acres in 1868 to 52,150 acres in 1877. However, with the advent of Indian indentureship, which began in 1845, the sugar economy was preserved.

Tobago, which previously had a very successful sugar economy long before Trinidad, was on the verge of bankrupcy by the 1880s, when sugar prices collapsed. Unlike Trinidad, it had no vast, uncultivated lands, and the soil was almost exhausted by years of cane cultivation. Also, it did not have the finances necessary to modernise its sugar refineries and to diversify into other crops. After emancipation, many ex-slaves in Tobago left the estates to work on their own small plots of land and to pursue small trading and crafts. West Indian and East Indian immigrants were attracted by Trinidad’s higher wages and did not come to Tobago in large numbers. Absentee owners did not oversee their investments properly. In 1899, the British government realised that Tobago was a great liability to the Crown, and the decision was made to attach the small island as a ward to Trinidad.

The Cocoa Economy:

Cocoa had always been cultivated in Trinidad - it is indigenous to the New World and the Amerindians were quite acquainted with the ‘Aztec’s chocolate’. Chocolate and drinking cocoa became items of mass consuption in the industrialised countries in the second half of the 19th century, and from 1870 onwards, cocoa became an export item for Trinidad planters and merchants.

The gradual improvement of transportation (roads, railways and bridges) had a positive impact on that process as well, as it removed obstacles to cultivation of the land. The collapse of the sugar estates between 1884 and 1903 freed up capital, labour and some land for cocoa cultivation. Former sugar workers started to work in cocoa plantations. Cocoa is not as capital-intensive as cane, and many local families of all ethnic backgrounds were able to mobilize their personal resources to finance the build-up of cocoa estates.

The market situation remained favourable up to the 1920s. Exports had averaged 8 million pounds a year in 1871-1880, by the decade of 1911 - 1920 they averaged 56.3 million pounds. King Sugar had been dethroned!

King Cocoa facilitated greatly the opening up of previously uninhabited areas of Trinidad, the valleys of the Northern Range, the country between Sangre Grande and the east coast, central Trinidad and the deep south. New villages were created, old settlements like Arima and San Fernando grew and prospered.

Cocoa contributed significantly to the prosperity of Trinidadians on the whole. It was not exclusively a large estate crop, and small producers were able to make a profit as well. When King Cocoa fell in the 1920s and 1930s, it had opened up the island, strengthened its economy and enriched its social and cultural development.

The Beginnings of the Oil Economy:

Strictly speaking, the awareness of petrochemical products in Trinidad started in the 16th century, when Sir Walter Raleigh caulked his ships at the Pitch Lake in La Brea. But it wasn’t until 350 years later that the petrochemical industry in Trinidad took its first tentative steps.

In 1857, the Merrimac Oil Company, an oil firm from the United States, drilled the first successful oil well in the world in La Brea. They struck oil at 280 feet, but the well was abandoned in 1859, when the company ran into financial difficulties. The demand was still very limited.

Ten years later, Captain Walter Darwent, an American soldier, established an oil company in 1865, the Paria Petroleum Company Limited. Darwent maintained that combustible fuel could be refined from oil drilled from the earth, and his entrepreneurial opponent Conrad F. Stollmeyer held the view that the ideal fuel could be distilled out of the asphalt from the pitch lake.

Darwent struck oil with three wells drilled in Aripero and San Fernando. In 1867, they were producing up to 60 gallons a week. (For comparison, total oil production in Trinidad today is around 125,000 barrels per day.)

Oil production and refining remained difficult, and after Darwent died only 47 years of age, Trinidad’s oil industry remained dormant for another 40 years. At the turn of the century, Randolph Rust and John Lee Lum resuscitated it.