Carnival in Trinidad—and elsewhere—has always been a site for conflict: conflicts between different class and ethnic groups about how the festival should be celebrated and what it meant, socially, culturally and even spiritually

This was especially true in the later 1800s, when conflict between the colonial authorities and the African-Trinidadian masses often focused on Carnival and other aspects of popular culture. Most people have heard of the 1881 riots when Captain Baker, head of the local police force, was soundly thrashed along with his men when they tried to stop the Canboulay. In recent years scripted re-enactments of this event have taken place, organised mainly by Eintou Springer.

The Canboulay (now often spelled Kambule/Kanbule because it's been suggested it may derive from a Koongo (Congo) word, rather than from the French "cannes brulées", burnt canes) was a torchlight procession which took place from midnight on Carnival Sunday. Though it apparently happened in several towns and villages, it was most visible in Port of Spain. By the 1870s hundreds of men, carrying lighted flambeau and sticks, some drunk, most of them masked, marched around the streets of the capital. There was drumming, hooting, singing, shouting, and fights between rival bands.

Of course the authorities didn't like this at all. It seemed too wild, too disorderly, too out of control. The drumming, singing and stick fighting were altogether too "African". The bands of working-class men and women ("jamettes") who came out at Carnival time were threatening to the respectable folk. The lighted torches, in a town with largely wooden buildings, was a fire hazard—at least that was a good justification for closing it down.

So by the end of the 1870s, Baker was ready to confront the Canboulay. Various laws enacted between 1868 and 1879 gave him the legal authority to move against the marchers. At the 1880 Canboulay, he called on them to surrender their sticks, drums and torches. Probably taken by surprise—Baker hadn't announced his plan—they did so without resistance, and the Carnival passed off quietly.

But they were more than ready for him at the Canboulay of 1881, which marked the climax of the hostilities between the police and the city maskers. A full-scale fight ensued—involving sticks, batons, stones and fists, NOT guns—in which 38 out of the 150 policemen present were injured. The Borough Council, fearing civil disorder, persuaded the governor to confine the police to barracks for the rest of Carnival Monday and all Tuesday. An effigy of Baker was burnt outside the police barracks but otherwise the two days passed peacefully.

Of course this was a big, though temporary, defeat for Baker and the anti-Canboulay, anti-Carnival section of the local elites. Interestingly, though, not all of the upper and middle classes sided with Baker. The editors of all four of the local newspapers condemned his actions as high-handed and provocative, and commended the governor for his concessions to the maskers.

Though the editors, and the people they spoke for, generally disliked many features of the "jamette carnival", including Canboulay, they strongly resented any attempt by the colonial government to interfere by force. This was especially the view of the French Creole elite and the mixed-race Creoles, who recognised that Carnival, with all its perceived objectionable elements, was a core expression of Trinidad's "creoleness".

After the events of 1881, the next two Carnivals were the cause of much official anxiety. Canboulay was not prohibited in 1882—in fact it was specifically authorised by a proclamation. British naval ships, however, were stationed in the harbour; the troops, volunteers and fire brigade were on full alert; a steam launch was poised to evacuate the governor; government officials armed themselves; and surgeons were ready to cope with the wounded. In the event, all passed peacefully. The band leaders and maskers were determined to be on their best behaviour, to justify the confidence the governor had shown in them in 1881.

But the Carnival of 1883 was quite as disorderly as before the 1881 riots, with large-scale band fights, stoning of private houses, and brawls between individual maskers. This of course strengthened the hand of the anti-Canboulay group within the government, led by Baker. The decision was made to put down the Canboulay once and for all, through the "Peace Preservation Ordinance", enacted just before the 1884 Carnival, which authorised the banning of torchlight processions and large street bands.

Surprisingly, Port of Spain was quiet during the 1884 Carnival, and no attempt was made to stage the Canboulay. But there was a riot in San Fernando on the Monday morning, an "affray" in Couva, and resistance by over 500 persons to the attempt to prevent the Canboulay in Princes Town led to police firing and two deaths. One newspaper speculated that "ringleaders of some of the most desperate bands" from town had gone South to try to stage their Canboulay.

Despite the bloodshed in the South, the colonial authorities had succeeded in ending the Canboulay, which was not revived after 1884, and the large stick bands and the inter-band fighting were brought under police control in the following years. (Only to reappear, of course, with the steelbands in the 1940s).

Bridget Brereton is Emerita Professor of History at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, and has studied and written about the

history of Trinidad and Tobago, and the Caribbean, for many decades