Imperialism and the professions: the education and certification of accountants in Trinidad and Tobago

Abstract

By locating professionalisation within the wider context of imperialism, this paper seeks to understand and explain the dominance of the British-based Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) in the education and certification of professional accountants in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) — an erstwhile British colony. The paper illustrates how the interests of a UK-based accountancy institution intermeshed with those of the local accounting elite to subvert the nationalistic goal of indigenizing accountancy training in T&T. This intermeshing of the indigenous and the external constitutes the ‘internal logic of imperialism’ [Galtung, J. (1971). A structural theory of imperialism. Journal of Peace Research, 81–117] and is the source of its perpetuation after empire.