http://hdl.handle.net/2139/6342 Fri, 24 May 2013 17:35:06 GMT 2013-05-24T17:35:06Z http://hdl.handle.net/2139/11132 Book review: Eric Williams: The myth and the man by Selwyn Ryan. Kingston: The University of the West Indies Press, 2009, pp. 842, ISBN: 978-976-640-207-5. The review will draw attention to Selwyn Ryan’s extensive research on the topic and longstanding familiarity with the subject matter. It will comment on the strength, limitation and relevance of this recent work. Eric Williams was a noted Caribbean statesman and scholar. He served as Trinidad and Tobago’s first Premier and Prime Minister, and was that country’s Head of Government until his passing in 1981. As both a politician and an academic, Williams has done, stated and written much. Likewise, much has been said and written about Williams, regarding his contribution to global intellectualism, the development of Trinidad and Tobago and Caribbean civilization. There have also been a number of attempts to psycho-analyse Williams. This review proposes to locate this latest contribution by Selwyn Ryan in relation to the broad corpus of literature already devoted to the analysis of Eric William’s life and career. Additionally, it will explore Ryan’s approach to the challenge of delineating myth from fact regarding this important and outstanding Caribbean personality.; The publication information for the book being reviewed : Kingston: The University of the West Indies Press, 2009, pp. 842, ISBN: 978-976-640-207-5. Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2139/11132 2011-03-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2139/11131 The dougla in Trinidad’s consciousness Regis, Ferne Louanne Trinidad is a complex multi-ethnic society where the two major ethnic groups - Africans and Indians - are in competition for power: economic, political and social. These contestations force the meeting and mixing of these two groups but militate against their merger. This is a reality that impacts significantly on the lives of their offspring the Dougla who are birthed into this complex social, cultural and linguistic situation and whose social position within this divide remain unclear and uncertain. Before 2011, Douglas were not designated in official censuses as a marginal ethnic community or even a biracial minority group leaving them free to declare themselves African, Indian or members of the umbrella categories Mixed and Other. Despite the steady increase in the number of people who define themselves as Douglas, their position in Trinidadian society remains ambivalent and indeterminate. This presentation maps the comparative invisibility of Douglas in Trinidadian society from the second half of the 19th and 20th centuries via an examination of social history and anthropology, creative writing, and popular culture. Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2139/11131 2011-03-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2139/11130 The roots/routes of the ancient order of foresters in the Anglophone Caribbean with special emphasis on Barbados Ramsay, Alicia Olivia Fraternal organisations transplanted into the Caribbean from the eighteenth century were aspects of European, African and American cultural expressions embraced by West Indians over time.This paper does not propose to expose any of the secrecy of fraternal organisations or Lodges, as they are known. It explores from the mid-nineteenth century, the roots and routes of the fraternal organisation, the Ancient Order of Foresters (AOF), primarily in Barbados and selected territories of the Anglophone Caribbean. It will be shown that former colonies such as Barbados were pivotal in both the early development and spread of some fraternal organisations in the Caribbean that had originated in Europe. This paper also seeks to determine whether there was any degree of regional unity facilitated by fraternalism. The intention here is to offer more perspectives on the connections between Barbados, the wider region and the former Mother Country, Britain. Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2139/11130 2011-03-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2139/11129 Unrepentant Euro-centrism in the movie Amazing Grace of Freedom Matthews, Gelien In the year 2007, as part of the commemoration of the bicentennial anniversary of the British abolition of the trade in captured Africans, Michael Apted directed the movie Amazing Grace of Freedom. While the movie is a good historical source for understanding the role played by British abolitionists in ending Britain’s involvement in the forced human traffic from Africa, it is flawed insofar as it exaggerates the agency of white British humanitarians. The movie is Eurocentric, seeped in the dominant and traditional humanitarian and religious explanations for abolition, male oriented and totally disregards the self liberating ethos of the enslaved. The contribution of the wider British public, of women, of blacks in the United Kingdom of the enslaved in the colonies, and of economic factors in abolition are either sidelined or ignored altogether in the themes explored in the movie. A critique of the movie’s shortcomings is essential, not only because of its narrow interpretation of abolition but also because in an age of readily accessible technology just by the click of a button this attractively packaged but faulty historical source can get into the hands of millions of viewers around the world. Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2139/11129 2011-03-01T00:00:00Z