Continuity, change and contradictions in late steel‐based industrialization: The “global color line” in Trinidad and Tobago's postcolonial economy

Abstract

This paper offers an alternative explanation of the performance of the steel industry in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T). The steel industry emerged due to social mobilizations demanding changes to the colonial economy by investing natural resources in state-led industrialization and welfare improvement. This investigation contends that the "resource curse" account that describes so-called intrinsic social pathologies whereby postcolonial actors interfere with market freedom is misguided. A "resource curse" fundamentally offers a racialized conception of state corruption and incompetence within peripheralized economies. This study challenges this explanation showing how postcolonial arrangements reflect persistent colonial entanglements and contradictions, as resource dependence emerges from a long history of colonial exploitation and racialized subjugation within a global market predicated on a "global color line". The T&T government's industrial effort was circumvented by both domestic and international economic and political pressures revealing a racial hierarchy and power asymmetries. Anti-competitive sanctions from the (colonial) global economic powers United States and Europe, structural adjustment that maintained this system and improper dealing by foreign players were among these discriminatory practices. Similarly, elite behavior and political decisions reflecting (neo)-colonial

On and In Their Bodies

“…No longer the producers of enslaved property, they now emerged as the progenitors of the new nation responsible for choosing, raising, and supporting "good" men (even as they remained men's possession)-men who could spur development, counter established notions of black inferiority, and prove the ability of formerly colonized people to self-rule. However, as the postcolonial economy, based on hydrocarbon energy and associated petrochemical exports (heavily reliant on foreign investment, highly sensitive to global economic shifts, and plagued by a racial hierarchal organization of labor) now constricts, working-class labor power weakens, and social investment declines with neoliberal reform, levels of unemployment, underemployment, and informal labor rise in Trinidad (Perry 2022). 7 This increasing economic precarity, fueled by both local and global colonial economic relations, continues to hinder the performance of the productive masculinity and femininity the nation-state dictates.…”

“…7.7.As Keston Perry (2022) states, in the late nineteenth century, Trinidad and Tobago's large petroleum reserves were discovered, and in the early twentieth century, the British colonial government started extracting them in service of its empire. Given hydrocarbon resources, following independence, the Trinidadian government sought to develop industrial production and managed to rely less on tourism than other Caribbean islands.…”

“Power to the People!”: The Catalytic Role of the Black Power Movement in Trinidad and Tobago’s Industrialization

“…In answering the call to address these weaknesses, more recent scholarship looks beyond the relationship between political elites and the capitalist class and shows that the relationship between political elites and the masses has been consequential to state structures and policies. Working class movements (Edwards 2017, 2018; Perry 2018, 2022; Teichman 2019) and “restive popular sectors” (Doner et al 2005) have pushed state elites to alter industrial policy and construct more developmental institutions. How elites respond to each other (such as alliances or fragmentation) and to challenges from mass movements also determines the degree of state cohesion (Vu 2010) and durability of authoritarian regimes (Slater 2010).…”

“…Evident challenges have arisen over time in industrial policies. The retreat of foreign capital and reduced access to US markets rendered public firms unable to grow in metropolitan markets and generate increasing returns from public capital (Barclay 2004; Perry 2022). With some success, certain manufacturing and sectoral interests grew and later undermined government action.…”

“…Our focus on Trinidad and Tobago helps excavate lessons about state intervention and the formulation of industrial policy within the context of a vibrant anti-imperial resistance and relatively less privileged access to US markets and capital (see Perry 2022). It takes an expanded view of the DST as a sine qua non of late industrialization focusing on state-society relations, in particular, the catalytic role of social movements, in a natural resource rich country.…”