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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The Italian Background of Capitalist Farming in Ethiopia: The Case of Cotton
Author:Larebo, Haile M.ISNI
Year:1995
Periodical:Northeast African Studies
Volume:2
Issue:1
Pages:31-60
Language:English
Geographic terms:Ethiopia
Italy
Subjects:farmers
colonialism
cotton
History and Exploration
Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment
Economics and Trade
External link:http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/northeast_african_studies/v002/2.1.larebo.pdf
Abstract:This paper examines the reasons for the implementation and failure of one particularly important Italian government intervention in Ethiopia's agriculture in the late 1930s, namely the development of cotton farming. It traces the history of Italian cotton production in Ethiopia from the creation of the Italian African Cotton Company (ECAI) in 1937 onward. The expressed intent of the Italian cotton companies was to raise the welfare level of the Ethiopian peasantry without involving any serious disruption of the existing agricultural structure. However, peasants were generally reluctant to produce the goods required by the companies. Cotton competed with their subsistence crops and it could not be raised without disrupting food production. Peasant resistance was subtle, local, passive and constant. In practice it became increasingly clear that the primary purpose of the cotton scheme was forcibly to extract the Ethiopian rural agricultural and labour surplus in order to meet pressing domestic needs in the Italian homeland. Notes, ref.
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