KemetLeads
Eric Williams
He made abolition an accounting question, then governed for twenty-five unbroken years.
The rise
Born in Port of Spain on 25 September 1911, a scholarship boy out of Queen's Royal College, he took a first in history at Oxford and a doctorate in 1938 on the economics of abolition, taught at Howard University in Washington, and came home in 1948 to the Caribbean Commission, which he left for politics.
What they did
'Capitalism and Slavery' (1944) argued that Caribbean slavery financed Britain's industrial revolution and that abolition followed economic interest as much as conscience. He founded the People's National Movement in 1956, taught crowds in what he renamed the University of Woodford Square, took it to independence on 31 August 1962 as prime minister, and to a republic in 1976.
The full picture
Twenty-five unbroken years made the government personal and deaf: the 1965 Industrial Stabilisation Act curbed strikes, and he met the 1970 Black Power uprising and army mutiny with a state of emergency on 21 April. The West Indies Federation collapsed after he withdrew Trinidad in 1962. The 1944 thesis is still contested.
Why it matters
He turned his own research into a national programme, and 'Capitalism and Slavery' remains the most argued-over work of history a Caribbean author has written.
“Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery.”