Thanks Kwaku - I had not heard of this before - its not to say it didn't happen, but it seems kind of unlikely.
1) These are historical books - and critiquing British / European colonialists / capitalists primarily - why would the
US Empire feel any real need to put pressure on Williams to suppress them (apart from the fact they are implicitly anti-capitalist in a general sense), given they were unlikely to have had a mass readership at any time (and those who wanted them could probably still find them in libraries).
2) I am not a scholar of Williams as such, but what I have read of him suggests his own egotism (for want of a
better word) would stop him suppressing any of his own books in the manner you suggest, even if it was a demand of the US Empire.
3) The only book I know about that Williams did 'suppress' was CLR James's 1960 lecture series 'Modern Politics' - which may have been as a result of pressure from the US government, but was probably more about personal vindictiveness on
William's part after his split with CLR James. Williams briefly put James under house arrest in 1965 as well.
4) Williams did I think block scholars accessing much of the research collections that he had used himself or built up himself to write his histories of the Caribbean for a period - this might be what people are referring to - as maybe individual copies of these books were part of the library / collection that for a period was out of bounds to all but Williams himself. Again though, my sense is that this was more about personal issues of authoritarian control freakery rather than pressure from the US Empire as such.
However, I am not an expert on this period of Trinidad's history - and these are just primarily educated guesses - and there are plenty of others who know more about this than me so am happy to stand corrected.
Cheers
Christian
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2015 05:51:45 -0700
From:
[log in to unmask]Subject: Re: Did Eric Williams ban 'Capitalism & Slavery'?
To:
[log in to unmask]Banned, suppressed, withdrawn from circulation in Trinidad only
This is what I heard, hence my query
K
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Did Eric Williams ban 'Capitalism & Slavery'?
From: Kathleen Chater <
[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, October 01, 2015 1:43 pm
To:
[log in to unmask] How do you mean ban? Do you mean suppress? If so, seems unlikely as both are still available and have been in print since their first publication. Where did you hear this - is it written anywhere or is it just a vague conspiracy theory?
Kathy
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2015 06:11:11 +0100
From:
[log in to unmask]Subject: Did Eric Williams ban 'Capitalism & Slavery'?
To:
[log in to unmask]I've heard a couple of people claim that as Trinidadian PM, Eric Williams banned his own book "Capitalism & Slavery" (and Walter Rodney's "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" due to alleged pressure from US govt
Is this true? If so, any corroborative sources?
Kwaku
BBM/BMC
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