CARNIVAL IS “WE THING” - PART 5

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Carnival and Society in Trinidad and Tobago

     Spanish-speaking Europeans controlled our island from 1498 until 1799[VERIFY `97], when the British conquered it. It suited the British not to interfere with the arrangements set up by the Cédula and so the flow from the French controlled islands continued unabated. Under the Spanish, Trinidad had been just a thinly populated way station in the journey to the South American Main. With the influx of huge numbers of French-speaking Africans and Europeans, social life developed in the island.

     One of the most important cultural features of the newly developed society was Carnival. There was no Carnival in Trinidad before the nineteenth century, because there was no real social life on the island. It just so happened that the development of a structured society coincided with the arrival of large numbers of Africans and Europeans from the French controlled islands.

     Let us take the case of Columbia, a South American nation located on the rimland of the Caribbean Sea. This nation was conquered by Spain during the same period in which Trinidad was overrun. Unlike Trinidad, Colombia was not a mere way station, rather it was a center of population. Consequently, Carnival became an important feature of the cultural life of the colony. If Trinidad had been a center of population and not a mere way station, Carnival would have been developed from the very beginning of the period of Conquest.

     Carnival developed in Trinidad when Africans and Europeans from French controlled islands took up permanent residence. Carnival developed in Colombia when Spanish conquerors took possession of the land and introduced vast numbers of enslaved Africans. There were Spaniards in Trinidad for three centuries, but there were no Africans. The Africans only came after the Cédula, and Carnival only developed after the Africans came. It makes no sense to conclude from this set of data that the development of Carnival was triggered by the arrival of French-speaking Europeans. It makes much more sense to conclude that without an African intervention there would not have been a Carnival in Trinidad.

TO BE CONTINUED