Eric Williams and Capitalism and Slavery: A Biographical and Historiographical Essay

Summary

We are met here to honor the achievements of the late Dr. Eric Williams and to discuss current research on outstanding issues in British West Indian history. In recent months I have reread much of Capitalism and Slavery, together with Williams's other books and articles, critiques of his work, and especially his autobiography, Inward Hunger: The Education of a Prime Minister. In this essay I will attempt to present a biographical and historiographical study of Williams, including a sketch of the man and his time and how he was influenced by different schools of historiography. I plan to look at his sources, methods, and findings, and, in greater detail, to show how his work has been assessed by historians and others. In short, I intend to show how various conditioning circumstances helped to mold the historical mind and work of Eric Williams, and how scholars in both the First and Third Worlds have reacted to Capitalism and Slavery. More attention will be given to the reactions of British scholars than their counterparts in the West Indies, Africa, and the United States.

Eric Eustace Williams was born in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, September 25, 1911, the oldest of twelve children of Thomas Henry Williams, a clerk in the Port-of-Spain post office, and Eliza (Boissiere) Williams. He was a precocious child, taking to his studies with exceptional talent and determination under the encouragement and guidance of his father, but not to the exclusion of active participation in sports and part-time help with his mother's bakery business. He was educated in Port-of-Spain at Tranquillity Intermediate School and Queen's Royal College, where he held a government scholarship, graduated with honors, and won the Island Scholarship in 1931.