Abstract

This thesis examines the manifestation of a national security state in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) that 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. The T&T national security state developed from its roots in British Crown Colony rule, however the concept of the “national security state” was originally derived from an analysis of Unites States (US) in the immediate post-WWII period.
US “national security” rested on an ideological dogma of anti-communism and the forceful, interventionist, US-led promotion of Western capitalism as the universal measure of freedom. This thesis extends the concept of the “national security state” to the case of T&T, in the Southern Caribbean. From this circumstance an appropriate redefinition is derived, where the “national security state” is rooted in the aftermath of plantation slavery and British Crown Colony rule, coupled with the rise of the US as the unquestioned imperial power of the Western Hemisphere and the world in the 20th Century.
The core aspects of T&T’s Crown Colony constitution remained fundamentally intact despite the proclamation of independence in 1962 and republic status in 1976. Eric Williams, author of Capitalism and Slavery (1944), became T&T’s first Prime Minister and oversaw the consolidation of the national security state that targeted the efforts of the New World Group in their work to foster decolonization and sovereignty of the in the Caribbean.