By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 24, 2009
www.trinidadandtobagonews.com

In an interesting article, “The ‘Glorious Revolution’ of August 1, 1838” (Express, August 2nd 2009), Selwyn Ryan presents William Hardin Burnley (1780-1850), the largest slaveholder in Trinidad and Tobago, as one of the “more forward-looking” planters in terms of human resource management strategy. He suggests that after the emancipation of the enslaved Africans Burnley felt that “the extinction of slavery has created a mighty revolution, in that, in this island, the master was now the slave and the former slave the master.” He quotes Burnley as saying that “God and nature were conspiring to render the island of Trinidad ‘a little Terrestrial Paradise for the African race.’ He insisted that he was not guilty of hyperbole when he said that the African was like the ‘Midas of Greek Mythology.'”
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