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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Eritrean Workers' Organization and Early Nationalist Mobilization: 1948-1958 |
Author: | Killion, Tom |
Year: | 1997 |
Periodical: | Eritrean Studies Review (ISSN 1086-9174) |
Volume: | 2 |
Issue: | 1 |
Period: | Spring |
Pages: | 1-58 |
Language: | English |
Notes: | biblio. refs. |
Geographic terms: | Eritrea Northeast Africa |
Subjects: | nationalism labour history Labor and Employment History and Exploration politics national liberation movements Workers' organizations Labor movements history Political development |
Abstract: | Based on interviews with Eritrean participants, supplemented by data from official archives, the author traces the development of an Eritrean national labour movement during the decade 1948-1958, which represents the first broad-based popular organization in the history of early Eritrean nationalist mobilization. He focuses on the relationship between the changing politico-economic context and the mobilization of Eritrean urban workers around economic and political issues. Eritrean workers built a national organization that achieved some economic and legal gains, but that was unsuccessful in its attempts to prevent their erosion by an antagonistic Ethiopian State in the period 1953-1958. After the armed suppression of the 1958 General Strike the nationalist movement, including its most militant labour elements, moved towards a new strategy of armed struggle. Although this early Eritrean labour history has been idealized by nationalist-oriented writers, key elements do ring true: 1) the economic structures developed by Italian colonialism did provide the basis for a shared Eritrean national identity at the beginning of the Ethio-Eritrean Federation; 2) the gains made by workers under the liberalized legal structure developed in 1951-1952 did attach workers to the defence of the autonomous Eritrean State, whose symbolic existence in turn increased their sense of national identity; and 3) the labour movement in Eritrea was linked to the later nationalist movement. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |