comprador

{{Short description|Person who acts as an agent for certain foreign organizations}}

{{Infobox Chinese

| title = comprador

| t = 買辦

| s = 买办

| p = mǎibàn

| j = maai5 baan6

| t2 = 江擺渡

| s2 = 江摆渡

| p2 = jiāngbǎidù

| j2 = gong1 baai2 dou6

| c3 = 康白度

| p3 = kāngbǎidù

| j3 = hong1 baak6 dou6

}}

A comprador or compradore ({{IPAc-en|lang|k|ɒ|m|p|r|ə|ˈ|d|ɔr}}) is a "person who acts as an agent for foreign organizations engaged in investment, trade, or economic or political exploitation."{{cite web|title=comprador|url=https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/comprador|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170202052703/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/comprador|url-status=dead|archive-date=February 2, 2017|website=oxforddictionaries.com|publisher=OXford University Press|access-date=28 January 2017}} An example of a comprador would be 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.

Etymology and usage

The term comprador, a Portuguese word that means buyer, derives from the Latin comparare, which means to procure.{{Cite EB1911|wstitle=Comprador|volume=6|page=813}} The original usage of the word in East Asia referred to a native servant in European households in Guangzhou in southern China or in the neighboring Portuguese colony at Macao - such persons went to market to barter their employers' wares.{{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= [https://archive.org/details/goldenageofchine0000berg/page/38 38–39] |isbn= 978-0521320542 |url= https://archive.org/details/goldenageofchine0000berg/page/38 }} 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. Compradors held important positions in southern China - buying and selling tea, silk, cotton and yarn for foreign corporations and working in foreign-owned banks. Robert Hotung (1862–1956), who worked in the late-nineteenth century as a comprador of the trading conglomerate Jardine, Matheson & Co., allegedly became the richest man in Hong Kong by the age of 35.{{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.|publisher= I. B. Taurus & Company|isbn= 978-1-84511-419-0|year= 2007}}{{page needed|date=September 2023}} The Hong Kong firm of Li & Fung, founded in 1906, partly functioned as a Canton comprador in its early stages.{{citation needed|date=January 2021}}

Marxist theoreticians in the 20th century applied the term comprador bourgeoisie to similar trading-classes in regions outside East Asia.Mao Zedong; Michael Y. M. Kau, John K. Leung (eds.) [https://books.google.com/books?id=ftv7ks-Ehq0C&pg=PA136 The Writings of Mao Zedong - Volume II 1949–1976: January 1956-December 1957]. M.E. Sharpe, 1992, p. 136Mao Zedong. [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_1.htm "Analysis if the classes in Chinese Society"]. Marxists.org.Slobodan Antonić: [http://www.nspm.rs/politicki-zivot/kompradori.html Компрадори] 10 April 2010{{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|isbn=978-1931859-45-5|year=2008|pages=13–14|publisher= Haymarket Books}}

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 (1931–2018) discussed the role of compradors in the contemporary global economy in his work.Amin, Samir (2011). [https://unu.edu/publications/books/maldevelopment-anatomy-of-a-global-failure.html Maldevelopment: Anatomy of a Global Failure] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210910020910/https://unu.edu/publications/books/maldevelopment-anatomy-of-a-global-failure.html |date=2021-09-10 }}, Pambazuka Press, Oxford. {{ISBN|1906387796}}. In addition, the Indian economist Ashok Mitra (1928–2018) labelled the owners and managers of firms attached to the Indian software industry as compradors.Mitra, Ashok. [https://web.archive.org/web/20080106224741/http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070427/asp/opinion/story_7700976.asp "Hour of the Comprador"]. The Telegraph, Kolkata, 27 April 2007– "The tribe who were boot-lickers of the British — compradors par excellence — had got totally eclipsed in India amidst the fervour and frenzy of the freedom movement. Circumstances are however forcing a re-recognition of Arnold Toynbee: history is a victim of the virus of circularity. The country is creeping back to a comprador climate. The new generation of information technology barons, spawned by the surge of outsourcing, is determined to transform the land into impeccable comprador territory." 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".Saraswati, Jyoti (2012). [https://www.amazon.com/Dot-compradors-Development-Software-Political-Paperback/dp/074533265X Dot.compradors: Power and Policy in the Development of the Indian Software Industry], Pluto Press, London. {{ISBN|9780745332659}}.{{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|isbn= 978-962-209-688-2|year= 2005|pages= 1|publisher= Hong Kong University Press|access-date= 2018-09-11|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20180911081841/https://www.hkupress.hku.hk/pro/con/107.pdf|archive-date= 2018-09-11|url-status=dead}}{{failed verification|date=September 2023}}

Marxist terminology counterposes a comprador bourgeoisie, perceived as the serving the interests of foreign imperial powers, to a national bourgeoisie, which is considered as opposing foreign imperialism and promoting the independence of its own country and, as such, could be, under some circumstances, a short-term ally of socialist revolutionaries.

Mikhail Delyagin has characterised the 21st-century Russian state as in itself a comprador in a system of comprador capitalism.{{cite web

|last1 = Delyagin

|first1 = Mikhail Gennadyevich

|author-link1 = Mikhail Delyagin

|title = В России установился компрадорский капитализм

|trans-title = Compador capitalism has established itself in Russia

|url = http://delyagin.livejournal.com/893713.html

|date = 2013-02-18

|accessdate = 2023-09-04

|archive-date = 2017-04-27

|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170427194036/http://delyagin.livejournal.com/893713.html

|url-status = live

|quote = У нас парадокс в том, что компрадорскую политику проводит само государство. [We have a paradox in that the state itself operates comprador politics.]

}}

Irish historian Dr. Conor McCabe, building on analyses present in the writings of early 20th Century Irish socialists like James Connolly, Peadar O'Donnell and Brian O'Neill, has used the concept of "comprador capitalism" to help explain the development of the Irish financial sector and the Irish economy more broadly.{{Cite book |last=McCabe |first=Conor |url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12338582-sins-of-the-fathers |title=Sins of the father: tracing the decisions that shaped the Irish economy |date=2011 |publisher=The History Press Ireland |isbn=978-1-84588-693-6 |location=Dublin, Ireland}}{{Cite book |last=McCabe |first=Conor |url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43514685-money |title=Money |date=2018 |publisher=Cork University Press |isbn=978-1-78205-283-8 |series=Sireacht |location=Cork}}