In the years just before and after full emancipation, there was a great deal of debate about the great experiment in social engineering that was taking place. For many, a new world was being born while for others, the end of the world was upon them. Every group had its own narrative, myths, and angles of vision in respect of what was happening. The previously enslaved and their supporers wanted to demonstrate that free labour could be as economically productive and civilising as slave labour was said to be, and that Africans were not "childlike sub-human creatures" who were incapable of self-improvement without having to be whipped.

The planters and their allies also had their narratives. The shadow of Haiti loomed large. Many were desperately afraid that abolition would lead to a "march back to barbarism". They were concerned not only about economic survival, but also about the viability and sustainability of their privileged way of life. The ultras insisted that the Africans would have to be "taught a lesson". They had to be forced to be "truly free", a condition which required that they continue to work on the plantations, and not as craftsmen and clerks.

The debate over what Thomas Carlyle called the "Nigger Question" was given its sharpness in Trinidad because of the economic circumstances which prevailed. Given the fact that it was late in becoming a "plantation" society, it offered possibilities for individuals who were prepared to grasp the opportunities which the circumstances of the economy offered. It was a low density island in which labour was in great demand.

Many entered the service sector as craftsmen or as petty vendors selling commodities that were imported from the United Kingdom, Venezuela,or the United States. Entrepreneurial activity, the search for new opportunities to exploit, or new ways to do old things, was not limited to trade. Artisans and craftsmen were in demand to construct cottages and other facilities for individuals, churches, estates and for the state.

William Sewell, an American journalist who made an extended tour of the islands in 1859, refuted arguments that Africans and creoles were lazy. As he wrote in his classic, The Ordeal of Free Labour (1862), the blacks simply did what most rational persons would do given the structures with which they were faced, and the opportunities available to them. As he tells us, "the freed labourers made every exertion to bring up their children as traders or mechanics, and the consequences are that today, these professions in Trinidad are almost entirely supplied from the coloured population. Trade seems to be the destiny of the Trinidadian creoles, for the position they once occupied as tillers was held by another race."

Charles Day, a noted English negrophobe, believed that it was a mistake to have sold Africans so much land. According to him, an eventual takeover by an emergent African peasantry was always in the cards. As he wrote in 1852, in language usually employed to describe the economic behaviour of other ethnic groups,"the negro saves money and invests it in land. All negroes can save money. In fact, he becomes a small proprietor, and being his own, he cultivates his land very carefully, living on half the produce and finding a ready market for the rest. He gives no credit, and has no bad debts. He wants no tea or coffee, and makes no disbursements like the whites…. Thus by small degrees, he hems in large plantations and becomes a large landed proprietor. This is taking place all over the island. The negro hates the white man and anticipates with glee the time when, sooner or later, the colony must belong to the coloured people… This the negro knows very well, and watching his opportunity, he with ready money, pounces on as much of the spoils as he can get. All this might have been avoided by preventing the negro from holding land."

Day observed that women were very much involved in the haggling business. "Every third negress in Trinidad kept a little shop selling ale, beef, plantains, salt fish and other goods, while female vendors walked the streets selling food and drinks. Others travelled on foot with their baskets or trays deep into the country, over roads impassable by carts, wagons or even horses, bringing within the reach of the labouring population, necessities and luxuries." Some women even kept little shops on the estates. Some travelled from estate to estate with "dry goods."

Others like Charles Kingsley (1889) and AC Carmichael (1969) also lamented the impact of black freedom on the lifestyle of the planters. Kingsley complained that there was an oversupply of artisans and seamstresses, and that they were in competition with "genuine craftsmen" and constituted a nuisance to their creditors and suppliers" (ibid.). Carmichael complained of the poor work habits of the African women. As she wrote, "more than once in Trinidad, talking to freed Negroes, and asking them if they were better off now than when they were slaves, they allowed that they were not richer, but always ended up by saying, but "misses you know, now we vorck if we like, and we no vorck if we not like, and we never rise [early] in the morning". They no longer had to respond to a ringing bell.

Another contemporary observer, Sir Louis De Verteuil, scion of the French creole aristocracy, complained that the trading activities of the Africans and free coloureds had a negative impact on the business activities of other bonafide businessmen in the society, the whites, the Chinese and the Indian community. Clearly, in his mind, Africans had no business being in business. As he opined, "the number of shopkeepers, tailors, carpenters etc was out of proportion compared with the requirements of the country, and almost every small tenement in towns and villages was occupied by some retailer of fruit and charcoal, etc…. The competition now existing must be a ruinous one to the bonafide grocer who otherwise might be better stocked, and could more extensively and cheaply meet the demands of customers who were protected against the idle and dishonest swarm which generally form the bulk of undersellers in the country districts."

By 1876, De Verteuil had a partial change of heart. As he wrote: "I could say with some reason in the year 1856 that few individuals among the emancipated had sensibly progressed; but I can now record that a marked change has been worked since….I gladly recognise that for the last twenty years the emancipated, as a class, have progressed most satisfactorily. The descendants of the emancipated, and young men of colour in general, manifest a strong desire to gain public estimation, and look anxiously to social advancement. They are ambitious of success, and have proved that they can attain it. Not a few occupy respectable positions in the public service. They are particularly anxious to become enlisted in the liberal professions; and the white creoles should look to them as not unworthy antagonists in the field of competition.

De Verteuil complained that his fellow French Creoles were themselves not very industrious. "In the mass, they were by no means exempt from the censure that I have attached to the emancipated class – improvident, fickle."

It is thus a big myth to say that the Peoples of African origin (PAO) were lazy and not enterprising. The big question that has to be answered is why was the entrepreneurial thrust that was so evident in the years after emancipation not sustained and carried forward into the future. That is a longer and more complex story. Later.