TY  - CHAP
AB  - Abstract In the periods, following the First and Second World Wars, colonial states across the British empire underwent waves of reforms that were geared toward improving human well-being, from enhancing social conditions, such as health and education, to expanding opportunities for economic and political engagement. The literature on the colonial state typically traces these state-building efforts to the agency of European colonial officials. However, evidence from a historical analysis of Trinidad and Tobago reveals a different agent driving state reform: the colonized. A local labor movement during colonialism forced the colonial state to construct a number of state agencies to ameliorate the economic, political, and social conditions in the colony, thereby resulting in an increase in state capacity. This study, therefore, provides critical intervention into the colonial state literature by showing that the agency of the colonized, as opposed to just the colonizers, is key to state-building, and specifying the mechanisms by which the subaltern constrained colonial officials and forced them to enact policies that improved colonial state capacity.
VL  - 33
SN  - 978-1-78714-655-6, 978-1-78714-654-9/0198-8719
DO  - 10.1108/S0198-871920170000033008
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1108/S0198-871920170000033008
AU  - Edwards Zophia
PY  - 2017
Y1  - 2017/01/01
TI  - Resistance and Reforms: The Role of Subaltern Agency in Colonial State Development
T2  - Rethinking the Colonial State
T3  - Political Power and Social Theory
PB  - Emerald Publishing Limited
SP  - 175
EP  - 201
Y2  - 2024/09/20
ER  -