SUNDAY 6 MAY, 2018 – UWI TODAY
13
BOOKS
The discipline of history
, like all branches of
knowledge, develops through the training and
mentoring of young scholars, usually within
institutions of tertiary educationwhich offer graduate
programmes in the field. Promising graduate students
are really the “seed corn” of the historian’s profession.
So I was pleased to read a new volume of
essays, titled
Ideology, Regionalism, and Society
in Caribbean History
, edited by Shane Pantin and
Jerome Teelucksingh. Pantin is a UWI graduate in
both history and law and a budding attorney, while
Teelucksingh is a lecturer in the History Department
at St Augustine. Unlike most academic collections of
this kind, six out of the ten contributors are either
currently enrolled in post-graduate programmes
or received their PhD fairly recently. That this was
a deliberate strategy is confirmed by the book’s
dedication: To young academics and scholars.
Another interesting aspect is that most of the
essays deal with recent history, the second half of the
last century. Historians have traditionally been rather
reluctant to write about the recent past, preferring to
leave it to the political scientists, so this emphasis is
especially welcome.
Several essays deal with T&T history. A valuable
piece byAmerican historianMatthewQuest examines
the New Beginning Movement of the 1970s – to my
knowledge the first serious analysis of this small but
important revolutionary group, whose leaders were
mostly intellectuals and academics deeply influenced
by C.L.R. James’ ideas. Quest uses the group’s
publications and oral history interviews to probe its
ideas and its creation of a network of like-minded,
left-wing intellectuals based in the Caribbean,
Canada, the USA and Britain. One of the advantages
of studying the recent past is that you can employ
the oral history methodology – using the spoken
memories of people still alive who witnessed or took
part in the events you are examining as a key source.
St. Augustine PhD History student Danalee
Jahgoo writes about the campaign led by Eric
Williams for the return of Chaguaramas, the World
War II base, in the 1950s and early 1960s. She
considers both the reasons for the campaign, and the
American responses in the context of the Cold War
and concerns about security. Her thesis will examine
the role of United States security-driven strategies in
shaping the development of T&T fromWorldWar II
to the 1980s.
Dealing with the same period, the 1950s,
another PhD student (and St. Augustine graduate),
Dexnell Peters, who is completing his thesis at the
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, analyses the
popular responses in Trinidad to the West Indian
Federation of 1958-62. His main sources are the
T&T
Guardian
, calypsos, and oral history interviews. He
Ideology, Regionalism, and
Society in Caribbean History
Shane Pantin and
Jerome Teelucksingh (eds)
Palgrave Macmillan, 2017
YoungHistoriansWorking
B Y B R I D G E T B R E R E T O N
shows how enthusiasm for the Federation – of course
its government and legislature were situated in Port
of Spain – co-existed uneasily with growing T&T
nationalism.
Coming right down to the early2000s, Teelucksingh
and Georgina Chami, who is based at the Institute
of International Relations at St. Augustine, look
at how the Trinidad Carnival has become a global
phenomenon. They see this as an example of “cultural
diplomacy” in action, what has come to be known as
the exercise of “soft power” in the international arena.
A leading authority on C.L.R. James, the British
scholar Christian Høgsbjerg, writes about the
International African Service Bureau, a London-based
Pan-African group which James once called “the most
striking West Indian creation between the wars.”
Established in 1937, it was led by fellow-Trini George
Padmore, and James wrote for and edited its journal
before he left for the USA in 1938.
Other essays deal with aspects of regional history.
An essay by recent UWI (Mona) PhD Renee Nelson,
which nicely complements that by Peters, examines the
work of the Federal Information Service between 1957
and 1962. Led by Trinidadian William Richardson, it
had the difficult task of trying to spread knowledge
about, and enthusiasm for, the short-livedWest Indian
Federation. One of the interesting things about this
essay is the use she makes of letters written by West
Indians to the “Federal Letterbox” – the public was
encouraged to write with questions, concerns and
comments about the Federation, and the letters were
read and replied to on the radio programme that
Richardson ran. These letters, in the archives of the
Federation now held by the Cave Hill campus of UWI,
provide rich testimony of ordinary people’s ideas and
concerns at this period.
Dane Morton-Gittens, a recent St. Augustine
History PhD, writes about a governor of Barbados
and the Windward Islands in the 1870s who tried
(and failed) to get the Barbadian elites to accept a new
“Confederation” scheme, while Fareena Alladin, a PhD
candidate in Sociology at St. Augustine, looks at the
place of food in Caribbean development.
Finally, co-editor Pantin contributes an interesting
piece about how history writing could promote
regional integration. Using themulti-volumeUNESCO
General History of the Caribbean (1997-2011) as his
starting point, he argues that history remains an
important force in shaping the region’s identity and so
historical research andwriting (like this book) can help
to develop a robust regional consciousness. He believes
that “the extensive use of history as an analytical tool
to comprehend the region’s philosophy, sociology, legal
environment and economy” is a vital aspect in the
ongoing process of Caribbean integration.
Unlike most academic
collections of this kind, six
out of the ten contributors
are either currently
enrolled in post-graduate
programmes or received
their PhD fairly recently.
That this was a deliberate
strategy is confirmed by the
book’s dedication: To young
academics and scholars.
