Abstract
The Spanish had not cared for Trinidad. In 1797 the British occupied it effortlessly, as they had Demerara the previous year. But in the vacuum of power that an unsupported administration fostered, a society grew steadily with few formal controls. By the 1790s there was little hard currency available and much of the economics of the island was that most basic of trade negotiation: barter. This was a transient world with landing points that permitted small boats to easily come into the capital, Port of Spain. People frequently came and went here, most of them unnoticed. Beyond the capital, a dangerous, undeveloped hinterland hid many secrets.1
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Notes
The best histories of early Trinidad are: E.L. Joseph, History of Trinidad (Henry James Mills, London, 1838), especially pp. 143–60; P.G. Borde, Histoire de L’Isle de la Trinidad Sous le Gouvernement Espagnol, 2 vols (Maisonneuve, Paris, 1882), particularly vol. 1.
See also Michael Anthony, Profile Trinidad: A Historical Survey From the Discovery to 1900 (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1975);
and Linda A. Newson, Aboriginal and Spanish Colonial Trinidad: A Study in Culture Contact (Academic Press, New York, 1976).
Two important books on the Spanish Empire that have appeared recently are Henry Kamen, Spain’s Road to Empire: The Making of a World Power 1492–1763 (Penguin, London, 2002);
and J.H. Elliot, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492–1830 (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2006).
The exception being the largely pastoral plains of the interior known as the Llanos. There are many books that cover the colonial history of Venezuela and Spanish South America more generally. See Mark A. Burkholder and Lyman L. Johnson, Colonial Latin America, 7th edn (Oxford University Press, 2010);
Salvador de Madariaga, The Fall of the Spanish American Empire (Hollis and Carter, London, 1947);
and Leslie Bethell (ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 1985), vols. 1–3.
I argue here that the Venezuelan Revolution was not the last of Spain’s American colonies to secede, but the Revolution marked the beginning of the end. See John Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions 1808–1826 (Weidenfeld &Nicolson, London, 1973), Chapter 10, ‘The Reckoning’, pp. 335–401.
Anthony de Verteuil, Seven Slaves and Slavery: Trinidad 1777–1838 (Scrip-J Printers, Port of Spain, 1992), Chapter 7, ‘Jonas’, pp. 272–3. See also Journal of the Royal Geographic Society, vols 1–10, Chapter 11, ‘Some Account of the Mohammedu-Sesei a Mandingo of Nyani-Maru on the Gambia by Captain Washington Royal Navy’ (John Murray, London, 1838), pp. 448–54.
Joseph, History of Trinidad, pp. 166–7; see also Sir Claud Hollis, A Brief History of Trinidad Under the Spanish Crown (A.L. Rhodes, Trinidad, 1941), p. 75.
See Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848 (Verso, London, 1988), particularly Chapters 5 and 6;
Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2004);
Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2004);
C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Overture and the San Domingo Revolution, 2nd edn (Vintage Books, New York, 1963);
Michael Craton, Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1982), particularly Part 4;
David Barry Caspar and David Patrick Geggus (eds), A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1997);
David Patrick Geggus (ed.), The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, 2001).
The best overview of free coloureds on Trinidad is Carl C. Campbell, Cedulants and Capitulants: The Politics of the Coloured Opposition in the Slave Society of Trinidad 1783–1838 (Paria Publishing, Port of Spain, 1992), especially Chapter 2, ‘Free Coloured Proprietors’.
A. Meredith John, The Plantation Slaves of Trinidad 1783–1816: A Mathematical and Demographic Enquiry (Cambridge University Press, 1988).
Jean Dauxion Lavaysse, A Statistical, Commercial and Political Description of Venezuela, Trinidad, Margarita and Tobago (Negro Universities Press, Westport, 1969, original edition, Paris, 1820), p. 329.
V.S. Naipaul, The Loss of El Dorado (Picador, Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 129–31.
For the population differences recorded for Trinidad, see Joseph, History of Trinidad, p. 165; Anthony de Verteuil, A History of Diego Martin 1784–1884 (Paria Publishing, Port of Spain, 1987), p. 3;
and L.M. Fraser, History of Trinidad in Two Volumes (Charles Reiss, Port of Spain, 1891), vol. 1, p. 286.
Chacon to the Prince de la Paz, 16 May 1796, Trinidad and Tobago Historical Society Collection (Port of Spain, 1935), no. 56, p. 2, quoted in James Millette, The Genesis of Crown Colony Government (Moko Enterprises, Curepe, 1970), p. 28.
Virtually the only biography of this outstanding general is James Abercromby, Lord Dunfermline, Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Abercromby K.B. 1793–1801: A Memoir by His Son (Edmonston and Douglas, Edinburgh, 1861).
Alan Knight, ‘Britain and Latin America’, in Andrew Porter (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. III, The Nineteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 1999), Chapter 7, p. 122–46; see also Lavaysse, A Statistical, Commercial and Political Description, pp. 275 and 281; and Baron de Montlezun, Souvenirs des Antilles: voyage en 1815 et 1816 aux États Unis et dans l’archipel Caraïbe (Chez Gide Fils Libraire, Paris, 1818), p. 251.
Harold A. Bierck Jr. (ed.), The Selected Writings of Simon Bolivar (Colonial Press, New York, 1978), pp. 39–41.
Michael Duffy, Soldiers, Sugar and Seapower: The British Expeditions to the West Indies and the War Against Revolutionary France (Clarendon, Oxford, 1987). In terms of losses, this campaign was second only to the Somme in 1916 — see in particular pp. 253–63. See also Cooper Williams, An Account of the Campaign in the West Indies in the Year 1794: Under the Command of Their Excellencies General Sir Charles Grey and Vice Admiral Sir John Jervis With the Reduction of the Islands of Martinique, St Lucia Guadeloupe, Marigalante, Desiada etc and The Events That Followed Those Unparalleled Successes, and Caused the Loss of Guadeloupe (J. Bensley, London, 1796).
John Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, 3 vols (Constable, London, 1996), vol. 3, The Consuming Struggle: see p. 400 and, for cabinet doubts, pp. 421 and 795–6. The plan was pushed mainly by Dundas, with Pitt taking an interest. In the end they both relented.
See John Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions 1808–1826 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1973), pp. 189–203;
J.E. Fagg, Latin America: A General History (Macmillan, New York, 1977), p. 331. Despite the presence of thousands of European mercenaries (most of whom turned out to be useless), it was a South American revolution;
see G.E Carl, First Among Equals: Great Britain and Venezuela, 1810–1910 (Universities Microfilms International, Syracuse, 1980).
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© 2012 Kit Candlin
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Candlin, K. (2012). Paper Tigers and Crooked Dispositions. In: The Last Caribbean Frontier, 1795–1815. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137030818_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137030818_3
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