Comprador

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Concept.png CompradorRdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png

A comprador or compradore is a "person who acts as an agent for foreign organizations engaged in investment, trade, or economic or political exploitation".[1] A comprador is a native manager for a European business house in East and South East Asia, and, by extension, social groups that play broadly similar roles in other parts of the world.

In Marxism, the term comprador bourgeoisie[2][3][4][5] usually refers to the segment of the bourgeoisie of an oppressed nation that has material interests in common with the imperialist bourgeoisie. This is in contrast to the national bourgeoisie, who can at times play a progressive role in national liberation. These class divisions speak to the inconsistent nature of the bourgeoisie of an oppressed nation: in some instances, material interests align with the imperialists and continued colonial/neocolonial relations, while in other instances, material interests align with that o the proletariat, petty bourgeoisie, and peasants, i.e. independence, national liberation and a break from an imperialist relation.

Etymology

The term comprador, a Portuguese word that means buyer, derives from the Latin comprare, which means to procure.[6] The original usage of the word in East Asia meant a native servant in European households in Guangzhou in southern China or the neighboring Portuguese colony at Macao that went to market to barter their employers' wares.[7][8] The term then evolved to mean the native contract suppliers who worked for foreign companies in East Asia or the native managers of firms in East Asia.[9][10][11][12] Li & Fung partly functioned as a Canton comprador in its early stages.

With the emergence or the re-emergence of globalization, the term "comprador" has reentered the lexicon to denote trading groups and classes in the developing world in subordinate but mutually-advantageous relationships with metropolitan capital. The Egyptian Marxist Samir Amin has discussed the role of compradors in the contemporary global economy in his recent work.[13] In addition, the Indian economist Ashok Mitra has accused the owners and managers of firms attached to the Indian software industry of being compradors.[14] Growing identification of the software industry in India with comprador "qualities" has led to the labeling of certain persons associated with the industry as "dot.compradors."[15][16]


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References

  1. name="Oxford">cite web|title=comprador|url=https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/comprador%7Cwebsite=oxforddictionaries.com%7Cpublisher=OXford University Press|access-date=28 January 2017
  2. Mao Zedong; Michael Y. M. Kau, John K. Leung (eds.) The Writings of Mao Zedong - Volume II 1949-1976: January 1956-December 1957. M.E. Sharpe, 1992, p. 136
  3. Mao Zedong. "Analysis if the classes in Chinese Society". Marxists.org.
  4. Slobodan Antonić: Компрадори
  5. Cite book |title=History of the Russian Revolution|author=Trotsky, Leon|author-link=Leon Trotsky|url=https://www.marxists.org/ebooks/trotsky/history-of-the-russian-revolution/ebook-history-of-the-russian-revolution-v1.pdf%7Cisbn=978-1931859-45-5%7Cyear=2008%7Cpages=13–14
  6. name=1911brit>Cite EB1911|wstitle=Comprador|volume=6
  7. name=1911brit
  8. name=Bergere>cite book |last= Bergere |first= Marie-Clarie |title= The Golden Age of the Chinese Bourgeoisie 1911-1937 |year= 1989 |publisher= Cambridge University Press |location= Cambridge |id= 0521320542 |pages= 38–39 |isbn= 978-0521320542 |url= https://archive.org/details/goldenageofchine0000berg/page/38
  9. name=1911brit
  10. name=Bergere/> Compradors held important positions in southern China buying and selling tea, silk, cotton and yarn for foreign corporations and working in foreign-owned banks.
  11. name=Bergere/> Robert Hotung, a late-nineteenth-century compradore of the British-owned trading conglomerate Jardine, Matheson & Co. was believed to be the richest man in Hong Kong by the age of 35.
  12. Cite book |title=A Modern History of Hong Kong|first1=Steve|last1=Tsang|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7JC856mG72EC&q=Tsang%2C+Steve+%282007%29.+A+Modern+History+of+Hong+Kong.%7Cpublisher=I. B. Taurus & Company|isbn=978-1-84511-419-0|year=2007
  13. Amin, Samir (2011). Maldevelopment: Anatomy of a Global Failure, Pambazuka Press, Oxford. ISBN|1906387796.
  14. Mitra, Ashok. " Hour of the Comprador. The Telegraph, Kolkata, 27 April 2007.
  15. Saraswati, Jyoti (2012). Dot.compradors: Power and Policy in the Development of the Indian Software Industry, Pluto Press, London. ISBN|9780745332659.
  16. Cite book|title=The Emergence Of A Chinese Elite In Hong Kong|author=Carl Smith|author-link=Carl T. Smith|url=https://www.hkupress.hku.hk/pro/con/107.pdf%7Cisbn=978-962-209-688-2%7Cyear=2005%7Cpages=1%7Caccess-date=2018-09-11%7Carchive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180911081841/https://www.hkupress.hku.hk/pro/con/107.pdf%7Carchive-date=2018-09-11%7Curl-status=dead
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