Tobago in the Caribbean and the World
Like many Tobagonians, Susan Craig went to high school in Trinidad, performing to bring credit to their families and providing markers of excellence for the whole nation. I am proud to say that Susan was Head Girl at Bishop Anstey High School when I was in fifth form. She was a role model and leader. I was not surprised to be able to acquire her history, The Changing Society of Tobago, 1838-1939 some 40+ years after BAHS. This two-volume work compiled by (now) Dr Susan E. Craig-James, was published in 2008 by the press which she founded in 1998, Cornerstone Press Limited. It is a work of art. All the values across the publishing process: research, writing, editing, layout and design and printing have been observed to the highest degree. It includes an index, extensive notes, old maps and several photographs. Here is a book that should be a watershed not only for Tobago, but the nation, and the Caribbean in the world.
Easy to read, well annotated and exhaustive, The Changing Society is a lifework, dedicated to her parents, Lionel and Sislyn Craig, who were farmers and vendors. Each chapter, the many statistical tables, and the lists of notes, provide information that would be the subjects of extensive discussion, seminars even. Her legacy is the bequest of an intact, cogent and integrated history that imbues simple lives and livelihoods with dignity and respect.
In her Preface, Craig-James writes “An island is a world. …. Now that the norms and values that fostered respect, hard work, co-operation trustworthiness and trust have been greatly eroded, it is clear that those norms and values were a precious part of Tobago’s heritage. They were the bedrock on which human security and social order were built.” She also claims for Tobago “the world in an island” explaining “this work analyses, through time, the interplay of external conditions and actors, on the one hand, and local structures and actors, on the other.”
Though I have not read Dr Craig-James’s history in its entirety, I feel compelled to encourage others to read it, and to share my own approach. What does Tobago need from this history told with such clarity? For one thing, I believe it allows us to appreciate the intelligence and adaptability, what we recognise today as resilience, of the enslaved people and their descendants; and on this small stage, Tobago, their ability to negotiate at the most human level with plantation owners and caretakers; and each other.
Volume 1 outlines the formation of society in Tobago. It touches on the Triangular Trade: British manufacture shipped to Africa; returning with enslaved Africans and British goods to the West Indies where sugar, rum and molasses produced using the labour of the enslaved were sent to Britain. Many of Tobago’s sugar plantations were run by overseers or attorneys employed by absentee owners. Sugar was so lucrative that at its peak, it gave rise to the term “rich as a Tobago planter.”
With the abolition of the slave trade (1807) and the abolition of slavery (1833), there was a lengthy period in which the owners and administrators had to come to terms with labour. The enslaved workers had always worked on the plantations as well as their “provision grounds” which provided food for their families. Accommodations were social, political and expedient. (With a ratio of two white men to one woman, “African housekeepers” became acceptable.)
Craig-James writes that, in 1838, “Central to the transition from slavery were the provision grounds and markets, through which the enslaved people asserted their humanity, enterprise, dignity, and desire to accumulate money. … the provision grounds and markets were, despite their connection to the plantation, counter-plantation enterprises. …Though regarded as property themselves, the enslaved people fought for and won de facto rights to own property and to transmit it to their heirs. … The thrust of the plantation was towards monoculture; that of the enslaved towards economic diversification, local food consumption, and a more balanced use of the island’s resources.”
In the second volume, extensive interviews present precise details of the lives of farmers and traders in the early twentieth century. This is the generation of Craig-James’s parents, and she writes with intensity and affection about the cultural traditions of villages, the striving to education; and the transits of sacred music to secular.
She cites Dr J.D. Elder’s comments on the singing fishermen of Charlotteville: “When I say music is central in the lives of these people, I really mean it, eh. When they coming home from fishing, in the evening, you hear… it’s a whole choir coming in: boatload by boatload, singing hymns. Tenor, alto, bass, treble, coming inside. …Music is – wake, work, dead; like when dey making de coffin, like when dey digging de graves, is music…”
She adds: “Elder’s comments on Charlotteville apply to all Tobago: Thus inside and outside the church, sacred music making became a constant feature of village life.”
Again and again, Craig-James asserts that a history is an interwoven tapestry of people, culture and place; a whole that is societal, political, environmental and industrial. Her context is internal to the island; external to the global forces in which the island exists. It is possible to pick a thread and follow it through the books.
You might follow the systems of co-operation, exchange and trade. Craig-James writes that, “…peasant production for subsistence and sale was based on community norms and values, some of them of African origin. Foremost was the system of pardners, whereby labour was exchanged … the exchange was often seen in terms of time (day fuh day) and not in terms of the monetary value …”
In 1935, Sir Frank Stockdale, an agricultural expert (for whom the building at UWI that houses the Cocoa Research Unit was named) commented: “Co-operative credit societies have made greater progress in Tobago than anywhere else in the West Indies… “
Craig-James follows the system of metayage and bartering: “From the late 1840s onwards, there were several metayers (sharecroppers) working under contracts that were unwritten. The terms of these contracts varied from estate to estate but all were for the production and manufacture of sugar… with half the sugar going to the estate and half to the metayer. Most metayers were employers of labourers on their metayer holdings… “
Though Craig-James argues and demonstrates that the metayage system was not productive for either plantation owner or metayer/ labourer, it nevertheless lingered until the 1920’s. It succeeded in bringing estate owners and workers in close relationships; it allowed food to be grown and bartered; produced informal systems of labour; and promoted maintenance of estate lands that otherwise might be abandoned. Needless to say, metayage could not survive in an increasingly materialistic society.
At the end of the Epilogue, Craig-James strikes a sombre note, “…as it was at the dawn of the twentieth century, two central issues face Tobago – sustainable development with social equity and popular empowerment…..” She warns of “the loss of its moral moorings; the increase in serious crime; poor physical planning to protect the environment; too little conservation of the historical and cultural heritage; widespread underachievement in education especially among males; inadequate human resources in the Public Service; and the politics of the unitary state.”
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