The Loss of El Dorado: A Colonial History

I think it's fair to say V.S. Naipaul is one of the finer writers of our time. Here his compressed, simple sentence structure, matched with fascinating details and copious research, works nearly as well for history as it does for his works of fiction.Turning his attention to his homeland, Trinidad, Naipaul reveals a lost history of Spanish, French and English colonialism, all fueled by the frantic, bloody search for El Dorado.Naipaul's three-part structure makes sense and is filled with remarkable anecdotes of greed, folly, slavery, barbarity, and one or two glimpses of decency and humanity.I had trouble putting this one down.

In The Loss of El Dorado (1969), V.S. Naipaul traces the history of his homeland of Trinidad from its days under the Spanish to it takeover by the British in the 18th century and the years immediately following. It is a history dominated by a succession of dominant personalities and reads best as a kind of short story cycle. The island, located at the mouth of the Orinoco River off the coast of Venezuela, was perfectly positioned as a landing stage for expeditions to the interior of South America, especially for those seeking the legendary city of gold, El Dorado. Trinidad itself, however was basically seen as a backwater in this period, a dead-end assignment for governors unfortunate enough to be assigned there by the Spanish and then English monarchies.

This was the first book by Naipaul that I read, decades ago, and I fell in love with it. A beautiful book about a truly terrible subject. Nothing else by Naipaul quite lives up to this amazing book.

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V.S. Naipaul has always attracted me because he is a Trinidadian, like I am. I've read quite a few of his books, and he is undoubtedly one of the best. The Loss of El Dorado, I am pleased to say, shows off his skills.The book is original because it dwells on Trinidadian history preceding the arrival of indentured servants from India. Specifically, Naipaul explores two events in which this small island attracted national headlines: the first recounts the frantic but fruitless quest for the mythical city of El Dorado by Ralegh, Berrio, and others; the second story relates the illegal torture of a young girl named Luisa Calderon and the accompanying scandal surrounding the culprit General Thomas Picton. Neither of these are mainstream stories. In Trinidad schools today, they are not even taught or included in textbooks. Thus, I give Naipaul credit. The research and care that went into this book's development was substantial and undoubtedly exhausting.He says in the Foreword that this story "ends in 1813. Indians from India began to arrival in 1845; but the colony was created long before that." This quote is, essentially, the thesis of the book. Most Trinidadian historians focus on the arrival of indentured servants from India, but Naipaul here says that the colony was created before that. In Naipaul's thinking, the stories played a bigger role in the development of Trinidad than the Indians from India did. Naipaul's book is then mandatory reading for all Trinidadians interested in their history.The story tellingly contains some depressing lines or occurrences to shape the perception of Trinidad. Antonio de Berrio pursued El Dorado with zest, but by age 75, he was insane and lonely after his failure to achieve the goal. He would die in obscurity, as the tale of El Dorado became Raleigh's. At the end of the first section, the book declares that the El Dorado propaganda had died and that consequently, "No one would look at Trinidad ... with the eye of Raleigh, Dudley, or Wyatt ever again." In other words, no one placed value on the island ever again. Indeed, later on the book relates the difficulties of trying to place a governor of Trinidad -- no one wanted the job. The final section, the Epilogue, states outright: "Port of Spain dropped out of history." As a Trinidadian, such statements made me a little sad. The country comes off as unimportant, negligible, and expendable. To overcome these depressing sentiments, just remember the Foreword, which explains the importance, relevance, and worth of these people and their deeds.The second section, the Luisa Calderon portion, goes heavily into law. People get arrested every few pages, and trials are given utmost attention. At times, I felt like I was studying for law school, which I enjoyed! Naipaul, indeed, got the material here by investigating court records, as he says in appendix.The writing is quality, as all of Naipaul's prose is, but know that at times he will get deeply poetical or ornate. Some passages (ie. - the one about Robinson Crusoe in the first chapters) will puzzle you and force you to think hard just to understand it. Basically, you get good writing that is also hard writing.Overall, I recommend this book, especially for Trinidadians but also for anyone who loves good, provocative writing.

This is the historical counterpart to Naipaul's "A Way in the World", even though it was written more than two decades earlier - these books should ideally be read back-to-back. It provides a history of Trinidad from the original discovery by the Spaniards until the early nineteenth century. The canvas covered is vast - the early Spanish attempts at colonisation, Raleigh's poorly-organised and squalid search for an El Dorado on the Orinoco, the arrival of French refugees escaping from the slave-uprisings on Haiti and the establishment of British control, with a leading but hardly-creditable role being played by Sir Thomas Picton, later a hero of the Peninsula and Waterloo, and the use of the island as a springboard for fomenting revolution in Latin America. It is from beginning to end a ghastly story, dominated by greed, cowardice and cruelty. There is hardly a single character who emerges with credit and at times the reader is all but overwhelmed by the catalogue of mean-minded exploitation, atrocities and treachery. As always in his non-fiction writing, Naipaul uses a novelist's eye to bring colour and life to the narrative - adding not just to the immediacy but also to the horror of much of the material. This work goes beyond historical narrative however and presents simultaneously an extended meditation on the nature of power at its most basic level. It is a terrible and disturbing work - but a great one.

Not up to Naipaul's standard.

Surprisingly bad book, boring,