Colonial states and passive revolutions: The case of Trinidad and Tobago

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.