The history of Trinidad begins with a delusion: the belief thatsomewhere nearby on the South American mainland lay El Dorado, themythical kingdom of gold. In this extraordinary and often grippingbook, V. S. Naipaul–himself a native of Trinidad–shows how thatdelusion drew a small island into the vortex of world events,making it the object of Spanish and English colonial designs and amecca for treasure-seekers, slave-traders, andrevolutionaries. Amid massacres and poisonings, plunder and multinational intrigue,two themes emerge: the grinding down of the Aborigines during thelong rivalries of the El Dorado quest and, two hundred years later,the man-made horror of slavery. An accumulation of casual, awfuldetail takes us as close as we can get to day-to-day life in theslave colony, where, in spite of various titles of nobility, onlyan opportunistic, near-lawless community exists, always fearful ofslave suicide or poison, of African sorcery and revolt. Naipaultells this labyrinthine story with assurance, withering irony, andlively sympathy. The result is historical writing at its highestlevel. --Ce texte fait référence à l’édition Broché .
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