A look at South Trinidad’s history

However, having (I confess) skipped over the geological maps, I found it wasn’t too difficult to follow the author’s descriptions of the geology of South Naparima and actually returned to poring over the maps after I’d read most of this interesting history of the now-defunct sugar estates in the Southland.

I imagine that, apart from local history buffs, this book is of more interest to those who live in the South and know the estates that flourished on the fertile soils of South Naparima — as well as the descendants of the sugar barons still living in Trinidad.

Illustrations heading each chapter give one a glimpse of the past — that was not as peaceable as we like to imagine it. We all know that the prosperity of planters was based on slavery; only their descendants remember the original inhabitants of these islands, deprived of their land and way of life, abused even by some priests appointed to protect them. Fr de Verteuil does not, nor the slaves, but it is the earth, the soil itself, the fortunes and misfortunes of the proprietors, the landowners as properties and fortunes changed hands, that is the main focus of this book.

The second chapter highlights the Free Coloured community and the grants of land made to them. One commentator has estimated that as early as 1813 the free coloureds owned a third of the slaves and 32 percent of the sugar estates in the Naparimas. Fr de Verteuil reckons those figures to be too low. In some cases the free coloured inherited the estate from his white father, or married a free coloured girl who inherited an estate from her white father. In this chapter, too, we get lists of property owners and the number of slaves they owned.

The third chapter is the sad story of Mission and the people of the First Nation, the Amerindians ...

Chapter four focuses on Jean B.Philippe, free mulatto, and his family, some of whom lived the pleasant life of landed proprietors with houses in Port-of-Spain — until the Sugar Equalisation Act of 1846 heralded the end of slavery. Jean Baptiste’s main claim to fame is his championship of the free coloured in their fight against racial discrimination.

Michel Jean Cazabon’s life and work is the subject of chapter five; chapter six traces the career of Fran?ois Besson “From Riches to Rags”; the billionaire bastard John Lamont was the most prominent of the Scottish landowners in South Naparima, his story and those of other Scots is told in chapter 7.

The “Company” villages of the Americans who, having been trained as soldiers, were left more or less to fend for themselves as agriculturalists on the inferior, less fertile soils of South Naparima; their story is told in chapter eight.

The ninth, last (and longest) chapter of this book traces the career of John Nelson Bicaise — which should surprise no one because, as the cover clearly states, this book was written by Anthony de Verteuil CSSp with Chris-Arthur Wilde — who is currently working on a biography of John Nelson Bicaise, a South-Naparima-born slave trader who made a fortune trading in slaves in West Africa where in the end he died, a decrepit bankrupt (as befits a slave trader?) at the age of 62. Chris Arthur Wilde visited Trinidad in 2001 and (I quote from a note on the last page of this book) “undertook research with Father Anthony de Verteuil”.

Newsday readers can find The Black Earth of South Naparima by Anthony de Verteuil CSSp with Chris Arthur Wilde at RIK bookstores, the Metropolitan Book Suppliers Ltd on Frederick Street and at other booksellers nationwide.