In this study of the development of a colonial Caribbean territory in the late nineteenth century the diverse peoples of Trinidad - Europeans, white Creoles of French, Spanish and English descent, Africans, Creole blacks, Venezuelans, Chinese and Indian immigrants - occupy the centre stage. They formed a society deeply divided along lines of race, skin colour, economic position and educational level. Dr Brereton looks at how the white elite, both European and Creole, was able to control the society,...

This work is a biographical study of Sir John Gorrie, a Scottish lawyer born in 1797, who served as a judge and as chief justice in several multi-racial British colonies (Mauritius, Fiji, the Leeward Islands, Trinidad and Tobago) in the second half of the nineteenth century. Holding radical political and social views, especially a conviction that persons of all ethnic and class backgrounds should enjoy equal justice under the British Crown, he was a controversial jurist who inspired both bitter...