The Canboulay Riots | Trinidad, 1881: Carnival, Police, and Resistance

Why did Hurricane María produce such a catastrophic humanitarian crisis, and why did official death estimates change so dramatically? Sources: George Washington University, Ascertainment of the Estimated Excess Mortality from Hurricane María; Puerto Rico Commission for the Comprehensive Study of the Impact of Hurricane María; FEMA after-action reports; Puerto Rico government mortality records; National Hurricane Center reports

How did disputed electoral procedures and ethnic polarization shape Guyana’s post-independence political order? Sources: Guyana 1968 election results and official reports; Guyana National Assembly debates; Commonwealth observer and diplomatic records; British Foreign and Commonwealth Office files; Walter Rodney, A History of the Guyanese Working People

What happened when an enslaved population organized resistance that became the only successful large-scale slave revolution and created an independent state? Sources: Haitian Declaration of Independence, 1804; French colonial correspondence in the Archives nationales d'outre-mer; C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins; Library of Congress, Haiti country studies; Digital Library of the Caribbean

Why did a protest over poverty, land and justice become a colonial crisis that ended with hundreds dead and a governor recalled? Sources: Jamaica Royal Commission Report, 1866; House of Commons Parliamentary Papers on Jamaica; George William Gordon trial records; National Library of Jamaica; The National Archives, Colonial Office records

What caused police to fire on Muslim Hosay processions, killing and wounding participants in one of Trinidad’s defining colonial confrontations? Sources: Trinidad colonial Blue Books; Colonial Office correspondence on the 1884 disturbances; Contemporary newspapers including the Trinidad Chronicle; National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago; Historical scholarship on Indo-Caribbean religious traditions