Go to AfricaBib home

Go to AfricaBib home AfricaBib Go to database home

bibliographic database
Line
Previous page New search

The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here

Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Eritrean Workers' Organization and Early Nationalist Mobilization: 1948-1958
Author:Killion, TomISNI
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.
Views