The political economy of pre-colonial production: Ishan cotton in the cloth manufacture of Esan people, Edo State, Nigeria

Abstract

This article examines the role played by an indigenous agricultural product, Ishan cotton in the pre-colonial cloth industry of Esan people, Edo State, Nigeria. As primary raw material, Ishan cotton was essentially produced by female farmers who were not only culturally protected from male competition but had also developed strong comparative advantage in cloth manufacture. The growth of the Ishan cotton and locally manufactured cloth during the pre-colonial era has causal interrelationship with the transformation of the quantitative skill resources of the people thus accountable in the pre-capitalist socialisation of labour. Therefore, this article seeks to partly analyse the character of the historical socio-economic structure of the pre-colonial Esan economy. The revealed knowledge of the pre-colonial mode of production could serve to interrogate and explicate the distortion imposed by the subsequent capitalist mode of production, instituted by colonialism.