This paper examines decolonization in Trinidad and Tobago, focusing on how middle-class-led political parties – primarily divided along African and Indian lines – displaced the labor movement and assumed control of the post-colonial state. The Gramscian concept of passive revolution highlights how middle-class elites demobilize labor and preserve racialized capitalist relations and foreign economic dominance. Drawing on studies of the role of colonial states in decolonization, this paper argues that, in addition to nationalist elites, colonial state officials were central to this process of conservative modernization. In Trinidad and Tobago, the British colonial state actively shaped the passive revolution through strategies of cooptation, incorporation, and manipulation of electoral systems and constitutional structures to protect imperial interests. The findings demonstrate that the passive revolution concept must be “stretched,” as Frantz Fanon suggests, to account for the dynamics of the colonial context.
AbrahamsenR (1997) The victory of popular forces or passive revolution? A neo-Gramscian perspective on democratisation. The Journal of Modern African Studies35(1): 129–152.
2.
AhlmanJ (2017) Living with Nkrumahism: Nation, State and Pan-Africanism. Ohio University Press.
3.
AllaharA (2004) False consciousness, class consciousness and nationalism. Social and Economic Studies53(1): 95–123.
4.
AminzadeR (2013) Race, Nation, and Citizenship in Postcolonial Africa: The Case of Tanzania. Cambridge University Press.
5.
AustinG (2010) The Political Economy of the Transition from Colonialism to Independence in Africa. Economic History Review.
6.
BayartJ (1993) The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly. Longman.
7.
BedasseM (2017) Jah Kingdom: Rastafarians, Tanzania, and Pan-Africanism in the Age of Decolonization. University of North Carolina Press.
8.
BollandON (2001) The Politics of Labour in the British Caribbean: The Social Origins of Authoritarianism and Democracy in the Labour Movement. Markus Wiener Publishers.
9.
BraithwaiteL (1953) Social stratification in Trinidad: a preliminary analysis. Social and Economic Studies16: 5–175.
10.
BranchD (2006) Loyalists, Mau Mau, and elections in Kenya: the first triumph of the system, 1957–1958. Africa Today53(2): 27–50.
11.
BranchD (2011) Kenya: Between Hope and Despair, 1963–2011. Yale University Press.
12.
BreretonB (1981) A History of Modern Trinidad, 1783–1962. Heinemann Educational Books.
13.
BreretonB (2002) Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad 1870–1900. Cambridge University Press.
14.
BunkerSCiccantellP (2005) Globalization and the Race for Resources. Johns Hopkins University Press.
15.
BurawoyM (2003) For a sociological Marxism: the complementary convergence of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi. Politics & Society31(2): 193–261.
16.
BurawoyM (2021) Return to Fanon. Contexts20(1): 70–73.
17.
CabralA (1966) The weapon of theory – Address delivered to the first Tricontinental Conference of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America held in Havana in January 1966. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/cabral/1966/weapon-theory.htm (accessed 1 November 2022).
18.
CampbellH (2015) Imperialism and anti-imperialism in Africa. Monthly Review67(3): 98–113.
19.
ChatterjeeP (1986) Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse. University of Minnesota Press.
20.
CheesemanN (2015) Democracy in Africa: Successes, Failures, and the Struggle for Political Reform. Cambridge University Press.
21.
CooperF (2002) Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present. Cambridge University Press.
22.
De LeonCDesaiMTuğalC (2009) Political articulation: parties and the constitution of cleavages in the United States, India, and Turkey. Sociological Theory27(3): 193–219.
23.
DiamondL (1988) Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria: The Failure of the First Republic. Syracuse University Press.
24.
DioufM (1998) The French Colonial Policy of Assimilation and the Elections of 1945 in Senegal. Indiana University Press.
25.
EdwardsZ (2025) Fueling Development: How Black Radical Trade Unionism Transformed Trinidad and Tobago. Duke University Press.
26.
FanonF ([1961] 2004) The Wretched of the Earth. Grove Press.
27.
FigueiraD (2007) Tubal Uriah Butler of Trinidad and Tobago Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana: The Road to Independence 6th March 1957–31st August 1962. iUniverse.
28.
GomesA (1974) Through a Maze of Colour. Key Caribbean Ltd.
29.
GrayK (2014) Labour and Development in East Asia: Social Forces and Passive Revolution. Taylor & Francis Group.
30.
GrayS (2023) Colonial continuities in independent Mauritius: parliamentary democracy, the British Crown, and state repression. Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies7(1): 36–58.
31.
HartG (2014) Rethinking the South African Crisis: Nationalism, Populism, Hegemony. University of Georgia Press.
32.
HartR (1998) From Occupation to Independence: A Short History of the Peoples of the English-Speaking Caribbean Region. Canoe Press/University of the West Indies.
33.
HartR (1999) Towards Decolonization: Political, Labour and Economic Developments in Jamaica 1938–1945. Canoe Press/University of the West Indies.
34.
HintzenP (1989) The Costs of Regime Survival: Racial Mobilization, Elite Domination, and Control of the State in Guyana and Trinidad. Cambridge University Press.
35.
HintzenP (2022) Reproducing Domination: On the Caribbean Postcolonial State. University Press of Mississippi.
36.
HoareQNowell-SmithG (2005) Selections from Prison Notebooks. Lawrence & Wishart.
37.
HuiESI (2016) Putting the Chinese state in its place: a march from passive revolution to hegemony. Journal of Contemporary Asia47(1): 66–92.
38.
InceB (1966) Politics before the People’s National Movement: A study of parties and elections in British Trinidad. Ph.D. Diss. New York University.
39.
JacobsR (ed.) (1976) Butler versus the King: Riots and Sedition in 1937. Key Caribbean Publications.
40.
JaganC (1954) Forbidden Freedom: The Story of British Guiana. International Publishers.
41.
JansenJJürgen OsterhammelJ (2017) Decolonization: A Short History. Princeton University Press.
42.
JamesCLR ([1932] 2014) The Life of Captain Cipriani: An Account of the British Government in the West Indies. Duke University Press.
43.
JamesCLR ([1962] 1984) Party Politics in the West Indies. Inprint Caribbean.
44.
JamesCLR ([1962] 2013) The West Indian middle classes. In: KamugishaA (ed.) Caribbean Political Thought: Theories of the Post-Colonial State. Ian Randle Publishers, pp.249–256.
45.
JohnsonH (1984) The United States and the establishment of the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission. The Journal of Caribbean History19(1): 26–47.
46.
LalP (2015) African Socialism in Postcolonial Tanzania: Between the Village and the World. Cambridge University Press.
47.
LauA (2012) Decolonization and the Cold War in Singapore, 1955–9. In: LauA (ed.) Southeast Asia and the Cold War. Routledge, pp.43–66.
48.
LeeAPaineJ (2024) Colonial Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship. Cambridge University Press.
49.
LewisG (1968) The Growth of the Modern West Indies. Monthly Review Press.
50.
LotshwaoK (2021) The British and the transfer of power in the Bechuanaland Protectorate: neo-colonialism or passive revolution?Capital & Class45(4): 561–578.
51.
McDougallJ (2017) A History of Algeria. Cambridge University Press.
52.
Mc LetchieA (2013) The parasitic oligarchy? The elites in Trinidad and Tobago. Ph.D. Diss., University of South Carolina.
53.
MortonA (2010) Reflections on uneven development: Mexican revolution, primitive accumulation, passive revolution. Latin American Perspectives37(1): 7–34.
54.
MortonA (2012) Traveling with Gramsci. In: EkersMHartGKipferS, et al (eds) Gramsci: Space, Nature, Politics. Wiley, pp.47–64.
55.
MunroeT (1972) The Politics of Constitutional Decolonization: Jamaica 1944–62. Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies.
56.
NkrumahK (1965) Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. Heinemann Educational Books.
57.
PalmerC (2006) Eric Williams and the Making of the Modern Caribbean. University of North Carolina Press.
58.
ParetM (2022) Resistance within South Africa’s passive revolution: from racial inclusion to fractured militancy. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society35(4): 567–589.
59.
PostK (1978) Arise Ye Starvelings: The Jamaican Labour Rebellion of 1938 and Its Aftermath. Martinus Nijhoff.
60.
RabeSG (2006) US Intervention in British Guiana: A Cold War Story. University of North Carolina Press.
61.
RaftopoulosB (2013) The global political agreement as a ‘passive revolution’: notes on contemporary politics in Zimbabwe. In: ChangSRankaP (eds) Zimbabwe Since the Unity Government. Routledge, pp.105–118.
62.
ReddockR (1980) Industrialisation and the Rise of the Petty Bourgeoisie in Trinidad and Tobago. Doctoral Dissertation, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands.
63.
ReddockR (1988) Elma Francois: The NWCSA and the Workers’ Struggle for Change in the Caribbean. New Beacon Books.
64.
ReddockR (1994) Women, Labour & Politics in Trinidad & Tobago: A History. Ian Randle.
65.
ReedM (1987) Gabon: a neo-colonial enclave of enduring French interest. The Journal of Modern African Studies25(2): 283–320.
66.
RennieB (1973) The History of the Working-Class in the 20th Century (1919–1956): The Trinidad and Tobago Experience. New Beginning Movement.
67.
RileyDDesaiM (2007) The passive revolutionary route to the modern world: Italy and India in comparative perspective. Comparative Studies in Society and History49(4): 815–847.
68.
RobertsP (2015) Passive revolution in Brazil: struggles over hegemony, religion and development 1964–2007. Third World Quarterly36(9): 1663–1681.
69.
RodneyW (1972) Problems of third world development. Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies3(2): 27–47.
RodneyW ([1975] 2013) Contemporary political trends in the English-speaking Caribbean. In: KamugishaA (ed.) Caribbean Political Thought: Theories of the Post-Colonial State. Ian Randle Publishers, pp.1–8.
RodneyW ([1972] 2018). How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Verso.
74.
RoseE (2002) Dependency and Socialism in the Modern Caribbean: Superpower Intervention in Guyana, Jamaica, and Grenada, 1970–1985. Lexington Books.
75.
RyanS (1972) Race and Nationalism in Trinidad and Tobago. University of Toronto Press.
76.
SalemS (2020) Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt: The Politics of Hegemony. Cambridge University Press.
77.
SamarooB (2014). The February Revolution (1970) as a catalyst for change in Trinidad and Tobago. In: QuinnK (ed.) Black Power in the Caribbean. University Press of Florida, pp.97–116.
78.
SamarooBGirvanC (1972) The Trinidad Workingmen’s Association and the origins of popular protest in a crown colony. Social and Economic Studies21(2): 205–222.
79.
SatgarV (2008) Neoliberalized South Africa: labour and the roots of passive revolution. Travail, Capital et Société [Labour, Capital and Society]41(2): 38–69.
80.
SchmidtE (2005) Top down or bottom up? Nationalist mobilization reconsidered, with special reference to Guinea (French West Africa). The American Historical Review110(4): 975–1014.
81.
SchmidtE (2007) Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea, 1946–1958. Ohio University Press.
82.
Sekyi-OtuA (2021) Fanon’s Dialectic of Experience. Harvard University Press.
83.
SilleryJ (1996) Salvaging democracy? The United States and Britain in British Guiana 1961–1964. PhD dissertation. Queens College.
84.
SilverB (2003) Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization since 1870. Cambridge University Press.
85.
SinghK (1994) Race and Class Struggles in a Colonial State: Trinidad 1917–1945. University of Calgary Press.
86.
SinghK (1996) Conflict and collaboration: tradition and modernizing Indo-Trinidadian elites (1917–56). New West Indian Guide70(3/4): 229–253.
87.
SklarR (1963) Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an Emergent African Nation. Princeton University Press.
88.
SudamaT (1983) Class, race, and the state in Trinidad and Tobago. Latin American Perspectives 10(4): 75–96.
89.
Suret-CanaleJ (1971) French Colonialism in Tropical Africa 1900–1945. Pica Press.
90.
TeelucksinghJ (2014) The Black Power Movement in Trinidad and Tobago. Black Diaspora Review4(1): 157–186.
91.
TeelucksinghJ (2015) Labour and the Decolonization Struggle in Trinidad and Tobago. Palgrave Macmillan.
92.
ThameM (2011) Reading violence and postcolonial decolonization through Fanon: the case of Jamaica. Journal of Pan African Studies4(7): 75–93.
93.
ThomasR (1989) The Development of Labour Law in Trinidad and Tobago. Calaloux Publications.
94.
TuğalC (2009) Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism. Stanford University Press.
95.
Van WalravenK (2009) Decolonization by referendum: the anomaly of Niger and the fall of Sawaba, 1958–1959. The Journal of African History50(2): 269–292.
96.
VertovecS (2009) The Hindu Diaspora: Comparative Patterns. Routledge.
97.
WeilerP (1984) Forming responsible trade unions: the colonial office, colonial labor, and the Trades Union Congress. Radical History Review1(28–30): 367–392.
