Portal:Trinidad and Tobago/Selected article/1

Eric Williams was educated at Queen's Royal College in Port of Spain.He won an island scholarship in 1932 which allowed him to attend St Catherine's Society, Oxford. He was ranked first in the First Class of Oxford students in 1935 and was graduating in History. On January 15, 1956 he established his own political party, the People's National Movement. At the Federation time, Williams famous speech declared that one from ten leaves nought. In 1961 the PNM had introduced the Representation of the People Bill. He was known as the Father of the Nation. Mr Williams made Trinidad and Tobago as an Independent Nation in 1962, was ceed from the United Kingdom and also the First Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago until his death in 1981.

Williams specialised in the study of slavery. Many Western academics focus on his chapter on the abolition of the slave trade, but that is just a small part of his work. In 1944 his book Capitalism and Slavery argued that the British abolition of their Atlantic slave trade in 1807 was motivated primarily by economics—rather than by altruism or humanitarianism. By extension, so was the emancipation of the slaves and the fight against the trading in slaves by other nations. As industrial capitalism and wage labour began to expand, eliminating the competition from slavery became economically advantageous.