The loss of El Dorado : a colonial history
Naipaul, V. S. (, 1932-)
The loss of El Dorado : a colonial history / V.S. Naipaul - New York : Vintage Books , 2003. - xiv, 376 p. : maps ; 21 cm.
Includes index.
The history of Trinidad begins with a delusion: the belief that somewhere nearby on the South American mainland lay El Dorado, the mythical kingdom of gold. In this extraordinary and often gripping book, V. S. Naipaul-himself a native of Trinidad-shows how that delusion drew a small island into the vortex of world events, making it the object of Spanish and English colonial designs and a mecca for treasure-seekers, slave-traders, and revolutionaries. Amid massacres and poisonings, plunder and multinational intrigue, two themes emerge: the grinding down of the Aborigines during the long rivalries of the El Dorado quest and, two hundred years later, the man-made horror of slavery. An accumulation of casual, awful detail takes us as close as we can get to day-to-day life in the slave colony, where, in spite of various titles of nobility, only an opportunistic, near-lawless community exists, always fearful of slave suicide or poison, of African sorcery and revolt.
9781400030767
2002066182
El Dorado
Trinidad----History
F2120 / .N3 2003
LAS 972.98 NAI
The loss of El Dorado : a colonial history / V.S. Naipaul - New York : Vintage Books , 2003. - xiv, 376 p. : maps ; 21 cm.
Includes index.
The history of Trinidad begins with a delusion: the belief that somewhere nearby on the South American mainland lay El Dorado, the mythical kingdom of gold. In this extraordinary and often gripping book, V. S. Naipaul-himself a native of Trinidad-shows how that delusion drew a small island into the vortex of world events, making it the object of Spanish and English colonial designs and a mecca for treasure-seekers, slave-traders, and revolutionaries. Amid massacres and poisonings, plunder and multinational intrigue, two themes emerge: the grinding down of the Aborigines during the long rivalries of the El Dorado quest and, two hundred years later, the man-made horror of slavery. An accumulation of casual, awful detail takes us as close as we can get to day-to-day life in the slave colony, where, in spite of various titles of nobility, only an opportunistic, near-lawless community exists, always fearful of slave suicide or poison, of African sorcery and revolt.
9781400030767
2002066182
El Dorado
Trinidad----History
F2120 / .N3 2003
LAS 972.98 NAI
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