Brinsley Samaroo: A brief memoir

THE EDITOR: With Professor Brinsley Samaroo’s passing, TT and the region have lost one of our most dedicated and thorough historians. You cannot properly understand the present unless you have a good understanding of the past; you cannot plan confidently for the future unless you have a good understanding of the present. Our Caribbean has tended to prefer the superficialities of the moment, and people like Brinsley laboured hard, though without wide success, to give us the relevant focus.

He and I had known each other since the time of the NAR administration (he was a minister in the Robinson Cabinet, I merely the permanent secretary to the prime minister), but our paths had hardly ever crossed since. It was two events that brought us together in recent years.

First, in a chance meeting at the Alma Jordan Library in St Augustine, he was good enough to suggest I read a UK report on Indian indenture so as better to inform a book I told him I was writing on my time as TT high commissioner to India. (The book is long finished, though not yet published. But may I say this now: I still regard India as a leader of the so-called “Third World,” and a beacon to other parts of the world as well, where self-reliant development is concerned. It was the far-sighted Jawaharlal Nehru who set the course still followed by Narendra Modi. Yet Caricom hasn’t, so far as I know, met with India since their first, and only, summit almost four years ago.)

Second, Brinsley had some time ago agreed to a request from Erica Williams-Connell, daughter of our first prime minister, to edit into publishable form the nearly eleven hundred pages – yes, eleven hundred – of single-space typescript left by her father, representing his research work between 1973 and 1980. Brinsley faced this mammoth hurdle and overcame it. The book, less than 250 pages in length, was published last year and is available in TT bookshops.

The title is The Blackest Thing in Slavery Was Not the Black Man. These are neither Williams’s words nor Samaroo’s. Rather, they come from José de la Luz y Caballero, a 19th century Cuban philosopher, a white man uncompromisingly opposed to African slavery, who was ostracised in his country for his belief.

Nor does the book, from which I learned a lot, deal only with the transatlantic African slave trade. Williams looks also at Jewish slavery in Europe, Amerindian slavery in this hemisphere, and Indian indenture in various countries.

In early May, at Williams-Connell’s request, I interviewed Brinsley on the book. The interview – as with others I have done and will be doing, again at Erica’s request – will form part of the archives of the Eric Williams Memorial Collection. The interviews are not meant to praise Williams but to elicit views of him as politician and person. Positive and negative opinions of him are expressed.

Brinsley Samaroo was a solid man, principled, a detailed researcher. He didn’t speak much, but was always ready to be of assistance to others. He was a formidable chronicler of our social history, and the vacuum he has left will be difficult to fill.

He deserves to rest in peace.

REGINALD DUMAS

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