Introduction

Abstract

This ethnographic field journal was kept by Gillian and me during 1964, and its subject matter covers the second and third years of independence of the former British Caribbean colony of Trinidad and Tobago.¹ The main reason for our research was the widespread international concern that Trinidad’s plural society,² comprising urban Creoles and rural East Indians (for definitions see glossary, pages xiii-xxii), would disintegrate through race/ethnic rivalry after it achieved sovereignty in 1962. More than forty-five years on, after a decade of greater cross-race collaboration, Trinidadians have recently reverted to the same race-competitive system that characterized the end of colonialism. The relevance of this book is, therefore, both historical and contemporary.