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

Abstract

AbstractThis 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 tendencies also undercut the sector's long‐term development. Together, these configurations reveal continuities, changes and contradictions within the island's postcolonial economic structure.