The Impact of the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis on Trinidad, 1934-1937

Abstract

The Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the sole surviving independent black nation (Haiti and Liberia notwithstanding), created a new wave of Ethiopianism - a sense of fraternity, of racial brotherhood, of a common history of oppression and exploitation among all people of African descent - among Afro-Trinidadians who identified Ethiopia as the symbol of black nationhood. Thus, in response to the war, new race organizations were formed and the black working class and petit-bourgeoisie gave both material and moral support to the Ethiopian resistance against Italian aggression. Under the impact of the Depression, moreover, the war provided both an international context and stimulus to the ideological and organizational struggles of the blacks against colonial exploitation; Afro-Trinidadian responses to the war became interwoven with the existing economic and political grievances of the black working class and petit bourgeoisie, and Ethiopianism became a vehicle for working-class politicization and radicalization which was manifested in strikes, demonstrations and mass violence in June 1937.