Elsa V. Goveia: A premier Caribbean historian

Elsa Goveia’s 1956 publication, “A Study on the Historiography of the British West Indies to the End of the Nineteenth Century” is considered the “first substantial work” to study the writing of Caribbean history.

She is celebrated as a pioneering Caribbean history research and teaching individual, and acclaimed for her “sensitivity to the racism of the time”: writing to provide a balanced appraisal of historical studies once usually conducted by whites only.

Elsa Vesta Goveia was born April 12, 1925 in the former British Guiana, one of two daughters. Mixed with African and Portuguese heritage, she was described then as “coloured”.

At the time when only a minority of non-whites of the former colony could benefit from anything higher than an elementary education, Elsa won a scholarship to St Joseph’s High School, Convent of Mercy, in Georgetown, and matriculated with her Higher Level Certificate.

She became the first woman to win the prestigious and much coveted British Guiana Scholarship in 1944, (there were only two such awards available in the colony) and arrived in Britain to study history at University College and the Institute of Historical Research in London.

She later won the Pollard Prize for English history while earning her BA First Class honours in 1948, the first West Indian to do so.

While working for her PhD, she was appointed lecturer in 1950 at the University College of the West Indies (now known as UWI), and earned her doctorate in 1952. Her thesis, “Slave Society in the British Leeward Islands at the End of the Eighteenth Century”, was eventually published in 1965.

She rose to prominence as Professor of West Indian history in 1961 when she taught until her death.

Mary Chamberlain, author of ‘Elsa Goveia: History and Nation’, writes that Sister Mary Noel Menezes (who was once a fellow student of Goveia) in her presentation, ‘The Intellectual Legacies of Elsa Goveia’, Proceedings of a Commemorative Symposium in Honour of Professors Elsa Goveia and Walter Rodney, 15 May 1985, University of Guyana, Turkeyen, Guyana. (History Gazette 66, March 1994, pp. 9–12) recalled Goveia “staggering under a large pile of books, as she passed our classroom en route to solitary study in the Sister Superior’s office. It was unusual for a girl to be swotting for Higher Levels and even more unusual for her to be reading history.”

A chapter by Franklin W. Knight entitled, “A Caribbean quest for the muse of history” in the book “Becoming Historians”, edited by James M. Banner, Jr. and John R. Gillis, (University of Chicago Press, 2009) states that she was the first female professor in the history of British higher education. She was also the first female and West Indian to be awarded a chair, it adds.

Goveia is described in the chapter by Knight, who was a former student of hers, as an “extraordinarily rigorous scholar, as well as an original thinker…” with “a beautifully modulated voice generously infused with equal proportions of contagious charm, engaging wit, and matchless erudition…”

Goveia’s eventual publications include “A Study on the Historiography of the British West Indies to the End of the Nineteenth Century” (1956, reprinted 1980), which is considered a “landmark study in this field related to the West Indies.”; “Slave Society in the British Leeward Islands at the End of the Eighteenth” (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965) pp. xii, 370, “The West Indian slave laws of the 18th century” (1970) with C. J. Bartlett and “An introduction to the Federation Day exhibition on aspects of the history of the West Indies”.

Goveia’s historiography is considered a comprehensive survey and commentary of important pre-1900 books on the British West Indies, located at the University College of the West Indies and the Institute of Jamaica.

In 1961 she began suffering from a “debilitating illness” that is said to have “severely limited her scholarly input”, resulting in no more publications after 1965, though her reputation as a renown historian and challenging teacher did not suffer. The illness would remain for the rest of her life.

Elsa Goveia died March 18, 1980 in Jamaica at the age of 55.

The Association of Caribbean Historians today sponsors the ‘Elsa Goveia Book Prize’, which is awarded every two years in recognition of research excellence in the field of Caribbean history.

The University of West Indies also has a student prize in Goveia’s name for the best result in courses related to Caribbean history, and conducts an annual Elsa Goveia Memorial Lecture by the UWI Department of History, Mona Campus. April 7, 2015 marked its 31st annual presentation.