Master's Oral Exam - Aaron Barcant, Individualized Program (INDI)

"The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago: From Crown Colony to National Security State"

This thesis examines how Trinidad & Tobago's (T&T) national security state emerged in the context of decolonization, during the period between 1946 and 1978, when the country achieved internal self-government, independence, and, finally, became a republic. Focusing on the career of historian and statesman Eric Williams and the work of the New World Group of radical economists, this thesis shows how the T&T national security state developed from its roots in Crown Colony rule.

The concept of “the national security state” emerged in the US in the immediate post-WWII period. US “national security” rested on an ideological dogma of anti-communism and the forceful US-led promotion of Western capitalism as the universal measure of freedom. This thesis extends the concept to “the national security state” in T&T, in the southern Caribbean, as rooted in the aftermath of plantation slavery and Crown Colony rule by the British Empire and the rise of the US as the unquestioned Imperial power of the western hemisphere and the world.

The main parameters of a T&T national security state existed in Crown Colony governance: a centralized state characterized by (i) a high degree of executive control over essential institutions that bypass any civil checks, (ii) an overall military and internal security emphasis resulting in a suppressed and divided population, (iii) policies openly oriented to and represented by private/corporate capital, (iv) executive control over the movement of people, goods, and communications, and (v) governance of the state and economy in service of the wider imperial interests. The national security aspects of the T&T’s Crown Colony constitution remained fundamentally unchanged despite the proclamation of independence in 1962 and republic status in 1976.

This analysis traces the persistence of US imperialism, and to the Anglo-American bond that shaped the post WWII international order. This bond grew with the US military bases in Trinidad and the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission (AACC), during and after the war. Eric Williams, the well known anti-colonial historian, attempted and failed to reconcile the contradictions between T&T decolonization and national security. An author of Capitalism and Slavery (1944), Williams participated in organizations such as the AACC and, as T&T’s first Prime Minister, bolstered the national security state.

The national security state in T&T undermined independent thought—exemplified by the New World Group—that sought to build an alternative mode of social and economic organization articulated on the Caribbean people’s terms. This history helps to explain why the process of independence left the region so ill-prepared to stabilize against the neoliberal market hegemony that would take off in T&T post-1990.