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| Title: | Colonialism and Natural Economy: The Eritrean Case |
| Author: | Araya, Mesfin |
| Year: | 1991 |
| Periodical: | Northeast African Studies |
| Volume: | 13 |
| Issue: | 2-3 |
| Pages: | 165-190 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Eritrea Italy |
| Subjects: | colonialism subsistence economy economic development History and Exploration Economics and Trade |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/43660096 |
| Abstract: | This essay examines the impact of European colonialism on Eritrea's traditional economy. The Eritrean nationalists and a number of writers and commentators claim that the capitalist transformation of Eritrea occurred under European colonial rule. The present essay challenges this interpretation. Eritrea was never a settler colony. There was neither large-scale land expropriation nor a large-scale proletarianization process. The region was treated mainly as a trading centre and entrepot. Merchant capital, the agent of metropolitan industrial capital, was the chief mechanism of Eritrea's integration into the world market. Merchant capital related to the Eritrean rural economy mainly at the level of exchange. While the circulation of money grew significantly, capitalist relations of production did not develop significantly. The author argues that colonial rule in Eritrea produced what may be called a 'peasant mode of production', marked by the growth of commodity trade. The central problem in the argument in favour of a capitalist transformation of the Eritrean society under European colonial rule seems to be the tendency to confuse trade and the circulation of money with capitalism. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |
