In 1776 Joseph Étienne Maingot, a young bourgeois boy from Bordeaux, traveled to the French island of Martinique to join his father. In 1786 he left for Trinidad, a Spanish island (barely) governed from Caracas. What brought him to this "isla inutil" (useless island) ignored for over 200 years while other European powers battled continuously to possess even the smallest island in the Caribbean?A Royal Cédula in 1783 had signaled a change in Spain's colonization policy offering generous land grants to White and Free Colored Catholics. Led by Roume de St. Laurent, a visionary Grenadian creole, Joseph Étienne Maingot and many other French settlers with their slaves began to develop the formerly abandoned island. They were enormously successful. In 1797 the English conquered and struggled to deal with a polyglot population, originally growing sugar and then cocoa, and a French culture tinged with West African influences. The many clashes over language, religion and education, gave rise to a French Creole identity known for its congenial life style, its music, cuisine and piquant sense of humor. So was Carnival and Calypso born. The permanence and love of the Island by the many male and female descendants of Joseph Etienne Maingot, through the best and worst of times, has earned them the honorific: "sons of the soil."
About the Author: Anthony P. Maingot lives with his wife Consuelo in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Their son, Anthony Edward is a Federal Judge in Miami and their daughter Michèle Maingot Cabral is a teacher and author in Maine. He was born in Trinidad and Tobago, educated there, in Costa Rica, and Curaçao, and spent long summers in Venezuela. Upon receiving his PhD at the University of Florida, Gainesville, he was awarded a post-doctoral in history at Yale University where he was promoted to Assistant Professor of History and Sociology and was Director of the Antilles Research Program. In 1971, Maingot was appointed to the Constitutional Reform Commission (The Wooding Commission) of Trinidad and Tobago. In 1972 he joined the faculty building the new State University in Miami, Florida International University. He retired in 2004 as a Professor Emeritus and Founding Professor and was awarded the University's Medal for Distinguished Service. Among his published writings are The United States and the Caribbean, Co-Author of A Short History of the West Indies (4th ed.), Miami, A Cultural History, and Race and Ideology: The Decline of Caribbean Marxism.