Achieving Economic Success and Social Mobility: The Chinese Community in Trinidad, British Caribbean before 1949

Abstract

This study discusses upward social mobility in the Chinese community in Port of Spain of Trinidad, a British colony in the Caribbean, in the first half of the twentieth century. It examines how the Chinese there attempted to be socially successful by showcasing or downplaying their Chinese heritage depending on the social and historical conditions. The upward social movement of the Chinese in Trinidad occurred considerably earlier than in other communities in the Americas. The Chinese accomplished this by using British colonial conditions as early as the 1910s through economic success in colonial commercialism, through the acquisition of highly skilled jobs thanks to their British education, and through creolization resulting from interracial marriages. The Sino-Japanese War of 1937 afforded another channel for Chinese upward social movement in Trinidad. The Chinese community in Port of Spain was at its peak of population growth and social development in the 1920–30s, and the layered community structure was developed through difference in language, generation, class, and political access to the British colonial or Chinese authorities. During the pre-war period, Chinese residents embedded in this community pluralism experienced a unique integration into Trinidadian upper-middle class society. The news pieces in the Chinese news section of the Trinidad Guardian highlight their Westernization, middle-class status, and their origins in China, which made them allies of the British. The documents studied in this article also demonstrate that the Chinese Nationalist Party (kmt) strove to strengthen its ties with Chinese residents of Trinidad in the early twentieth century.