Many thanks to Jorge Luis Giovanetti for sharing news of this collection of essays on the work and legacy of Indian-born, Trinidad and Tobago-based historian Bridget Brereton. History Matters: Reassembling the Fragments of a Contested Past—In Honour of Bridget Brereton (University of the West Indies Press, 2025) was edited by Heather Cateau, Rita Pemberton and Ronald Noel. This book, along with Reordering Caribbean Futures in the Fires of Global Change (UWI Press, 2025), has been named among the finalists for the 2025 INDIES Book of the Year Awards.
Contributions include exceptional essays by (in alphabetical order) John A. Aarons, Hilary McD. Beckles, Marcia Burrowes, Mary Chamberlain, Humberto García-Muñiz, Juan González-Mendoza, Richard A. Goodridge, Gad Heuman, Rosemarijn Hoefte, Gelien Matthews, Bernard Moitt, Dane Morton-Gittens, Rita Pemberton, Fiona Ann Rajkumar, Rhoda Reddock, James Rose, Brinsley Samaroo, Gail Saunders, Michael Toussaint, and Pedro L. V. Welch.
Description: The most consequential Caribbean historian of her generation, Bridget Brereton has produced a string of innovative and path-breaking studies that have had a profound influence on the ways we have come to understand many of the major events in the area’s history. This work tips its hat to her contributions, as well as suggests ways to expand on the research agenda she has set.
Taking its cue from Brereton, the essays are generally reader friendly in their exploration of the economic, social, political and cultural history of the area. Brereton’s work is always “balanced.” So too are the contributions to this anthology. Complex societies, Brereton insists, demand complex histories. These essays do exactly that. Like her work, this collection also breaks through old historiographical boundaries. To its credit, the geographical and thematic coverage is comprehensive although, not surprisingly, Trinidad and Tobago attracts a plurality of interest.
Its range and mix make this work one of a kind. There are other anthologies that cover aspects of the area’s history, but nothing as comprehensive in its historical and thematic reach. It brings to mind Gordon Lewis’s, The Growth of the Modern West Indies (1968) which for years was basic fare of graduate seminars. Lewis identified what he called Caribbean “characteristics.” It was a house divided against itself in which parochial governing elites butted heads against outside liberal influences before and after emancipation, a place where status was symbolized by skin colour and an area, which with the collapse of King Sugar and emancipation, became a back water until World War II. This work expands on many of the same themes reaching beyond Lewis to cover all language areas.
Heather Cateau is a senior lecturer in Caribbean History at The University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus. She has held the positions of Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education, Head of the Department of History and University Dean.
Rita Pemberton is a former senior lecturer, Head of the Department of History and Deputy Dean, Student Affairs in the Faculty of Humanities and Education at The University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus.
Ronald Noel lectures in the Department of History at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus. He came into academia after a career in industry which spanned three decades.
For more information, see https://www.uwipress.com/9789766409869/history-matters/
Many thanks to Jorge Luis Giovanetti for sharing news of this collection of essays on the work and legacy of Indian-born, Trinidad and Tobago-based historian Bridget Brereton. History Matters: Reassembling the Fragments of a Contested Past—In Honour of Bridget Brereton (University of the West Indies Press, 2025) was edited by Heather Cateau, Rita Pemberton and Ronald Noel. This book,
