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2 books match the query 'Tobago'

cover of Beyond Boundaries: The Intellectual tradition of Trinidad and Tobago in the Nineteenth Century

Beyond Boundaries

The Intellectual tradition of Trinidad and Tobago in the Nineteenth Century

Selwyn R. Cudjoe

University of Massachusetts Press, 2003

When V. S. Naipaul received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, the award marked the culmination of a literary tradition that was almost two hundred years in the making. The island nation of Trinidad and Tobago has produced such important writers and thinkers as C. L. R. James, J. J. Thomas, Eric Williams, Oliver Cromwell Cox, Sylvester Williams, George Padmore, Earl Lovelace, Arnold Rampersad, and Merle Hodge. Yet this literary legacy is not well known, particularly with respect to works dating from the nineteenth century. 

Beyond Boundaries traces the development of the country's literary and intellectual history from the “Narrative of Louisa Calderon” (1803) to Stephen Cobham's Rupert Gray: A Tale of Black and White (1907). Selwyn R. Cudjoe examines a wide range of narratives by and about the people of Trinidad and Tobago, from treatises in the natural sciences, to journals and memoirs, histories, slave narratives, travelers' accounts, poems, stories, novels, theatrical works, and writings in the popular press. Along the way, he discusses such seminal works as Jean Baptiste Philippe's Free Mulatto (1824) and Maxwell Philip's Emmanuel Appadocca (1854), the first indigenous novel. He explores books that shed light on ideological processes, such as J. J. Thomas's The Theory and Practice of Creole Grammar (1869) and Froudacity (1899). He examines how notions of savagery and civilization were deployed in the writings of the dominant class to stymie the growing self-awareness of the colonized. And he traces the rise of racial pride and nationalist sentiments among Indo- and Afro-Trinidadians. 

Cudjoe demonstrates how Enlightenment concepts, English literature, African philosophy, Hindu theology, Islamic passion plays, and the culture of carnival all contributed to this body of ideas to create a vibrant literature, which in turn helped to shape a national identity.

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cover of Fueling Development: How Black Radical Trade Unionism Transformed Trinidad and Tobago

Fueling Development

How Black Radical Trade Unionism Transformed Trinidad and Tobago

Zophia Edwards

Duke University Press, 2025

Despite Trinidad and Tobago’s economic dependence on oil and gas production and its history of colonial exploitation of labor and resources, it enjoys relatively high democratic and redistributive development compared to other nations in the global South. In Fueling Development, Zophia Edwards draws on archival data, historical analysis, and Black radical political economic thought to trace Trinidad and Tobago’s success to a specific form of working-class mobilization she calls “liberation unionism.” A Black radical labor tradition, liberation unionism was multiracial, multisectoral, and gender inclusive; and Pan-African, anti-imperial, anticolonial, and diasporic; it advocated not only for workplace issues, but for economic, political, and social transformation. Emerging during the colonial period, liberation unionism forced the colonial state to increase its institutional capacity to promote equitable development. The movement persisted into the post-independence period and further compelled the independent state to channel oil windfalls toward increasing its ability to better serve the needs of the people. By uncovering liberation unionism’s power to create robust social and economic change, Edwards expands understandings of the relationship between development, race, labor, and political economy.
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