Four historians to co-author comprehensive text on history of SVG

The Government has commissioned the writing of a textbook to assist with the teaching of history in secondary and post secondary educational institutions in St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG).

Delivering the University of the West Indies (UWI) Open Campus SVG 2019 Independence lecture on October 24, Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves announced that he was “happy” that a team of Vincentian historians had agreed to work on the book.

He said Dr Garrey Michael Dennie, Dr Adrian Fraser, Dr Cleve Scott and Dr Arnold Thomas will work together on “a comprehensive book which the government is funding – the research, everything; the writing, the publication, so that we would have a standard text in the schools, so that we would be able to teach our history properly.”

Dr Adrian Fraser, who is the former Head of the UWI Open Campus told SEARCHLIGHT on Saturday that the team is finalizing a proposal on the book’s contents, including what period of history will be covered, to be sent to the Government.

Another of the writers, Dr Garrey Dennie, who is an Associate Professor of History at St Mary’s College of Maryland in the United States, told SEARCHLIGHT that the idea is for different authors to cover different periods of the nation’s history.

The other co-authors are Dr Cleve Scott, a lecturer in history at the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies and Dr Arnold Thomas, a former diplomat and the international coordinator for the Caribbean for the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin International (GOPIO-SVG).