Trinidad and Tobago / All works
Essay
Free Mulatto
Jean-Baptiste Philippe · 1824
Synopsis
An address to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, signed “a free mulatto of the island”, which claims for the free people of colour of Trinidad the same civil and political rights as Whites. The author traces the repressive laws that followed the English conquest, curfew, permission for dances, proofs of emancipation, and the everyday vexations: forbidden marriages, scorned doctors, separate churches, unequal punishments. He welcomes the easing of the slaves' lot, without calling for abolition.
Context
The author had himself carried to London the petition of his peers, which he had printed in 1824 without his name. Lord Bathurst afterwards disavowed Governor Woodford, but the decision came too late for the author. The text, which some say remained almost unknown until its reissue in Trinidad in 1987, was reissued in 1996 with an introduction by Selwyn R. Cudjoe; historians see in it an early political writing, and a complaint that leaves the slaves outside.
Who it is for
A legal plea in English, methodical, for those interested in the colonial society of Trinidad and in the origins of the debate on civil rights in the West Indies.
Prizes and reception
The Secretary of State sided with the petitioner, in what has been called the first civil rights case of the New World.