Dr. Williams was born on 25 September 1911. His father Thomas Henry Williams was a minor civil servant, and his mother Eliza Frances Boissiere (13 April 1888 – 1969) was a descendant of the mixed French Creole elite. He saw his first school years at Tranquillity Boys\' Intermediate Government School and he was later educated at Queen\'s Royal College in Port of Spain, where he excelled at academics and football. A football injury at QRC led to a hearing problem which he wore a hearing aid to correct. He won an island scholarship in 1932, which allowed him to attend St Catherine\'s Society, Oxford (which subsequently became St Catherine\'s College, Oxford). In 1935, he received first-class honours for his B.A in history and was ranked in first place among University of Oxford students graduating in History in 1935. He also represented the university at football. In 1938 he went on to obtain his doctorate (see section below). In Inward Hunger, his autobiography, he described his experience of racism in Great Britain, and the impact on him of his travels in Germany after the Nazi seizure of power.\n', '

In Inward Hunger, Williams recounts that in the period following his graduation: "I was severely handicapped in my research by my lack of money.... I was turned down everywhere I tried ... and could not ignore the racial factor involved". However, in 1936, thanks to a recommendation made by Sir Alfred Claud Hollis (Governor of Trinidad and Tobago, 1930–36), the Leathersellers\' Company awarded him a £50 grant to continue his advanced research in history at Oxford. He completed the D.Phil in 1938 under the supervision of Vincent Harlow. His doctoral thesis was titled The Economic Aspects of the Abolition of the Slave Trade and West Indian Slavery, and was published as Capitalism and Slavery in 1944. It was both a direct attack on the idea that moral and humanitarian motives were the key facts in the victory of British abolitionism, and a covert critique of the idea common in the 1930s, emanating in particular from the pen of Oxford Professor Reginald Coupland, that British imperialism was essentially propelled by humanitarian and benevolent impulses. Williams\'s argument owed much to the influence of C. L. R. James, whose The Black Jacobins, also completed in 1938, also offered an economic and geostrategic explanation for the rise of British abolitionism.\n', '

Gad Heuman states:\n', '

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