Title: The Life of Captain Cipriani: An account of British government in the West Indies, with the pamphlet “The Case for Indian Self-Government” by C.L.R. James
Abstract: Reviewed by: The Life of Captain Cipriani: An account of British government in the West Indies, with the pamphlet “The Case for Indian Self-Government” by C.L.R. James Anuja Bose The Life of Captain Cipriani: An account of British government in the West Indies, with the pamphlet “The Case for Indian Self-Government” By C.L.R. James. With an introductionby Bridget Brereton. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2014. C.L.R. James is well known for writing political biographies that explore the drama and complexity of a political event through the lives of influential leaders in political movements. James wrote his renowned history of the Haitian revolution, The Black Jacobins, in 1939, chronicling the events that led to the Haitian Revolution of 1791 by examining the role of Toussaint L’Ouverture in steering the direction of the revolution in San Domingo. His first experiments with the genre of political biography began in 1932 with The Life of Captain Cipriani and continued in 1933 with the publication of the pamphlet The Case for West-Indian Self Government. Both of these texts are compiled in this new edition from the C.L.R James archives. Together they provide a rich sociological and political account of the society and politics of Trinidad while exploring the impact that Captain Cipriani had on the advocacy for political independence in Trinidad. The Life of Captain Cipriani begins with a detailed portrait of the context and characters of Trinidadian society, setting the stage for James’ narrative of how Captain Cipriani fit into the social and political milieu of the early twentieth century in the British West Indies. The subsequent chapters provide a sketch of Captain Cipriani’s early life, which are then followed by an analysis of his speeches and letters. These early chapters are lengthy and at times disjointed. The analysis that seeks to organize and structure these chapters is thin, and careful reading is required to parse out the perspective that James is advancing about Cipriani’s early politicization as commander of the British West Indies Regiment. Captain Cipriani’s deep commitment and patriotism for Trinidad are revealed in the early chapters (1–3), expressed most powerfully in the letters he wrote as the commander of the British West Indies Regiment during World War I. James is advancing a character assessment of great leaders in these chapters, and he suggests that certain fundamental traits make up the personality of leaders: “It is said that the War made Captain Cipriani. So in one sense it did, in that it gave him an opportunity. But the essential Cipriani was always there” (68). We find this line of argument throughout James’ political biographies on Toussaint, Lenin, Trotsky and Nkrumah, which is that the seeds of a strong character are present in individuals from an early age and they are simply activated through the circumstances in which they find themselves. The Life of Captain Cipriani is an early formulation of this argument, which is much more thoroughly worked out in the rest of James’ oeuvre. The remaining chapters (4–8) focus on the Captain Cipriani’s activities in the Legislative Council of Trinidad and his career as the president of the Trinidad Workingmen’s Association. James draws a vivid portrait of how Cipriani organized and acted within civil society through his participation in labor unions, and through the astute and uncompromising ways in which he navigated the structures of formal politics in Port of Spain. The description provided in these chapters of the legislative process and the difficulty of organizing a working class with a nascent political consciousness is unsparing in detail and at times long-winded. It will be of interest to scholars studying early twentieth-century colonial history of the British West Indies, in particular those with a focus on early political independence movements in the Caribbean. James’ political biography of Captain Cipriani is at its core a window into a Caribbean society that was readying itself for self-government and political autonomy from Britain. The second part of the book presents the pamphlet The Case for West-Indian Self Government, which is in some parts a reproduction of The Life of Captain...
Publication Year: 2016
Publication Date: 2016-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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