Ethnic anxiety and competing citizenships in Trinidad and Tobago

Abstract

ABSTRACT From the start of its history at the end of the eighteenth century, Trinidad and Tobago has been comprised of a number of competing ethnic groups. At the turn of the nineteenth century it was called Creole Society, and comprised of European, White, African, and Mixed-race free and enslaved persons. In this tableau, European culture was dominant. The introduction of Indian indentured immigrants from 1845 provided a group outside this wide agglomeration of Black and White, free and enslaved, French and British. From the start, the Indians' appearance, religion, habits, and manners were interpreted as Orientalist – mystical, impenetrable, and incompatible with Western society. Their labour was viewed as a necessary evil. As more Indians chose to stay, rather than return to India, Creole society assessed them as a political threat, and began a campaign to negate their political potential. This campaign started in the late nineteenth century, and involved discursive, political, and cultural conflict. These conflicts between Black and Indian political parties peaked as colonialism was ending in 1962 and later, in 1995, when an Indo-based political party acquired political power. This paper examines the dynamics of this conflict, and the ethnic anxiety which fuels it, and which it generates.