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

Introduction

The pre-colonial cloth industry of the Esan people was detailed and complex, and the Ishan cotton, an indigenous crop in the former Ishan division of the colonial Benin province now Edo State of Nigeria, ¹ played a decisive role as the primary raw material. In the indigenous language, the cotton is called olulu but typologised in international cotton literature as Ishan cotton. It is of two species, the naturally brown in colour or khaki cotton and the white variety that ‘had the long and strong lint that was durable for weaving’ (Butcher 1981: xix). In other words, the two variety of Ishan cotton comprises ‘one [that] has excellent colour and an average staple of about one inch, and a brown variety, which resembles the Nankin of Cyprus’ (Journal of the Textile Institute Proceedings 1924: 536). ² Purseglove (1991) identified the cotton as extensively in use in Esan area long before the 15th century. As Roche (1994) also reported, the specie of ‘Ishan cotton of Nigeria, a perennial G. baradense was the source of the perennial cotton introduced into Egypt in 1820 by Jumel; when crossed with Sea Island cotton about 1850, it developed into modern Egyptian cotton’ (p. 56). Although it is now largely grown outside of its original habitat, still ‘Ishan cotton produces longer, silkier and better quality lint than Meko variety and it needs relatively less rainfall’ (Johnson 2012).

Earlier studies in the economic history of the Esan area identified cloth manufacturing as extensive (Ulsheimer and Werg 1971; Welsh 1972 [1904]). The studies associated the cloth industry with Benin, the place known to the outside world at the time although the autochthonous source of the cloth was Esan, which supplied the locally manufactured cloth that represented one of the major commodities of international trade (Hakluyt 1589) between Benin and Europeans (Ryder 1969). It was this export cloth that was noted by Samuel Brun (1614) as beautiful and its production widely diffused as the French trader, Landolphe confirmed in the 18th century, that ‘a few houses are to be seen without cotton spinning machines or a frame for making admirable cotton or straw rugs’ (Vogt 1975: 648). More recent studies captured the general essentiality of Ishan cotton in class identification (Okoduwa and Odigie 2008) as a wealthy Esan man had large stocks of the best ododo and agbo clothes. This surplus value appropriation was revealed in the studies of Ryder (1969), as well. Thus, the class contents in the Ishan cotton cloth were well expressed by the pre-colonial Esan affluent class that measured wealth in the varieties and quantities of the finished products of Ishan cotton.

The use value of Ishan cotton cloth still clearly resonates during feasts, and numerous songs waxed in praise of cotton and cloth like the ukele tune typifying the multifarious use value of cloth and its cotton source. ³ Consequently, the Ishan cotton products occupied critical place in the socio-economic life of the people. In fact, Windham Fosberry found when he visited ‘Ishan country in 1902’, some years before colonial rule, ‘[that] the quality of the cloth made from the Ishan cotton specie was “of strong durable texture”’. ⁴ There was also noticeable high labour productivity in Ishan cotton production in the pre-colonial economy. The British Consul, Burton found in the 1860s that given their cloth manufacturing capacity, the ‘people would not be disturbed by English trade embargo, being independent of Manchester textile mills’ (Roth 2006: 142). This may have informed the empirical argument of Okoduwa and Odigie (2008) that the cloth output was high, estimated at

thousands of cloths manufactured for internal use in Esan by the 15th century … A European visitor James Welsh who visited the area in 1588 observed that wrappers were tied by women above their breasts to cover them up to their knees. Thus, the … approximate total number of loin cloth that was produced to meet domestic needs in Uromi [e.g.] with a population of about 4,967 males and 4,854 females by 1460AD, was 39,284 per annum. (p. 31)

Variety of Ishan cloth

In the production of the clothing needs of the people, the two varieties, brown and white Ishan cotton, featured in the cloth production as evidenced in the assortment of dresses and modal features. The products of the brown variety of cotton were mainly undyed such as obeniku (loin clothes), asiso (work cloth), adeogho (evening cover wear) and so on. The white cotton cloth products were often dyed in various colours to yield products like anoko (dark blue coloured cloth, which also served ritual purpose as mourning attire). Anoko was similar in colour to the ‘typically Nigerian export cotton cloth dyed blue (also the colour of akori)’ reported by Fage (1962: 344). It is significant that the likeness derived from the nature of the dyeing substances as the sources were as different as the regions of production were far apart.

Anyhow, other modal multicoloured selections resulted in ukpon ododo, the colourful luxurious, multi-patterned social wears and ukpon non-gian (the royal red cloth), which is popular in the literature as the Benin red cloth. The ododo-dyed red clothes associated with the Benin royal court, originally supplied by Esan producers, were some of the early products of international trade between Benin and Portugal (Ryder 1969). The popular mis-identification of the origin of the exported cloth notwithstanding, it goes without saying that the cotton cloth was a store of value and form of exchange, which served the purpose of effective monetary unit of measure for its non-perishable nature.

Despite the intense arguments in cotton literature, no economic interchange has yet been established between Ishan cotton production and similar undertakings in the Yoruba areas. Nevertheless, the 1927 survey of the factors affecting the development of different indigenous varieties of cotton drew comparison between Ishan and Ilorin or Kabba varieties (Golding 1928). The survey appears overly macro-comparative of the national insects and fungoid incidences. As a result, it seems only coincidental as it concentrated on the best practices to control the insect and fungoid attack on cotton plants. The lack of any other empirical evidence of pre-colonial commercial or competitive interface between the Yoruba and Ishan cotton producers would appear to derive from the significant fact that the historical external market of Ishan cotton cloth was apparently restricted to Benin and Agbor (Okoduwa 2008). In other words, the Ishan cotton production and the cloth manufacture was within the confines of landlocked territorial economy. This robbed it of the distinct exogenous advantages enjoyed in the Trans-Sahara trade that afforded the Kano cotton industry an extensive spatial reach (Candotti 2009). Also, that the ritual practices of the Yoruba territories enhanced cotton production not only in Iseyin but also as far afield as Egba where adire (tie and dye) textile still commands ceremonial relevance (Saheed 2013) seem to also challenge the lack of similar benefits accruing to the Esan experience. The explanatory point could be that the ritual essence associated with the Ishan cotton cloth was comparatively limited. Even at that, Esan native cloth was in considerable decline. Currently, it is the social and class import of the indigenous cloth that enable it to still enjoy important albeit partial elite patronage.

Colouration in Ishan cotton cloth production

The production of the various modal features involved colouration of the white cotton with the application of alo (dyes of various hues), ododo (indigofera) or other red dyes, anumenlen (black dyes) and a mixture of colours to produce the blue variety. (Ododo also features in hairdo of women in their early reproductive circle). The alo dyes were externally sourced, but ododo and anumenlen were derived from local plants. In the early years of colonial rule, in 1923, ‘excellent specimens of Ishan cloth were sent to the British Empire exhibition where it attracted many admirers’ (Butcher 1981: xix).

Organisation of labour in the pre-colonial Ishan cotton economy

In the pre-colonial mode of production, the primary producers of Ishan cotton were mostly women who inter-planted it between food crops since both classes of crops were grown together in the same plots despite the fundamental distinction between food and cash crops. There was apparent indigenous knowledge of control of insect and fungoid incidence in the need to inter-plant Ishan cotton with other crops. As Golding (1928: 17) reported, Ishan cotton planted in the same block as yams was less severely attacked than the same variety planted in neighbouring plots or grown alone. In any case, the food crops were considered male-centred occupation, which largely featured the various species of yam tubers while the female-centred crops were more wide ranging, including cocoyam, oil beans, vegetables, melon, cotton and so on.

This is notwithstanding that the tending of all the crops up to harvesting was undertaken as part of regular farming activities and involved all members of the household, including children, domestic hands or slaves. ⁵ But in the specific instance of Ishan cotton production, it was historically, mainly women and children that tended to manage the cotton farms. In the post-harvest of food crops and in the following farming seasons, they pruned the trees, tended and harvested the crops.

The broad instances of the male work gangs formed with other farmers were to assist with weeding and common farming activities. The work gang was a cooperative practice but generally based on rotational principles with no remuneration paid. Each recipient of such assistance had the corresponding obligation to feed the work gang and partake in the farm work of other members of the work group. The harvesting of cotton like other female-centred crops was undertaken by women and adolescent members and female work gangs when necessary. The child and slave labour as well as the work gang practices could fit into corvee labour relations.

The processing of cotton by spinning into thread yarns involved middle-aged women who were not necessarily active farmers or the original producers. As there was a domestic market for surplus cotton, a trade relationship existed but did not fit into classical definition of cash crop markets made up of professional buyers and middlemen sellers consciously exchanging primary commodities. Specifically, the pre-colonial trade in cotton was a by-product of the necessity to dispose of what was not needed by the household, which also applied to surplus spun thread yarns, traded in the same domestic market. In similar agrarian contexts, where ‘there existed a mercantile sector as well’ (Sanderson 1999: 125), the distinction between cash and food crops production significantly defined the fundamental activities in social reproduction. The important point in this petty commodity production was that there were no professional cotton growers but voluntary producers. It is also significant that the gender division of labour entailed that male farmers were by social practice primarily concerned with food crops to feed the household, which accorded women

independent sources of income [through] their vital role in productive sectors, such as craft production, [that] provided them the basis on which they effectively competed with men in trading activities. Their strong economic base was enhanced by the existing sexual division of labour, reinforced by societal taboos that prevented men from encroaching on such industries as soap making, cloth weaving, and pottery making. (House-Midamba & Ekechi 1995: 18)

As Coquery-Vidrovitch (1976) explained this pre-capitalist mode of production, the ‘exchange [in the petty commodity production] reflected the internal organisation of the society and result of the organisation of the production rather than the cause’ (p. 94).

Political economy of Ishan cotton cloth production

The quantity and range of the clothes varied from limited home needs to surplus for sale to other users, including export as the cotton cloth is an undying, non-perishable commodity and had an exchange value denominated by the advantage of preservation. In the early years of colonial rule, in 1923, ‘excellent specimens of Ishan cloth were sent to the British Empire exhibition where it attracted many admirers’ (Butcher 1981: xix). The Ishan cloth industry was household based, and the instruments of labour were looms and shuttles; the local looms were constructed in situ the living rooms of women or specially placed in the courtyards. This production context of Ishan cotton cloth was, in comparison with modern textile production, small scale albeit beyond subsistence given its extensive presence in the economy. Although the noticeable deficiency in scale and manufacturing capacity implied that the local cloth manufacture could only have favourably competed with mass produced foreign textiles introduced in the colonial era with expansion and modernisation of capacity, there is the other fact that well-structured and better-financed companies undertook the textile trade, which alarmed the colonial district officer to raise issues with the incidence of the dumping of cheaper and mass produced fabrics (Butcher 1981). While this may not fully explain why the Ishan cotton cloth industry unlike the cotton industries elsewhere lost to cheaper foreign fabrics, the combination of factors could also have conjugated with transaction costs, the preferential granting of trade credits to foreign textile traders and so on.

Ishan cotton in pre-colonial international vent for surplus production

The Ishan cotton featured in vent for surplus production as apparent in the smuggling of Ishan cotton species into Egypt in 1820 by Jumel. This was the process that enabled its application in international vent for surplus production. It seems that the existence of suitable climes and social structures for extensive cash crop production validated the reasons proffered for the transplantation. The Duke of Newcastle made this point that there existed ‘districts [in Egypt] where there was an adequate supply of labour to allow cotton to be produced at a remunerative price’ (Hansard of the House of Lords 1861: 151). This suggests that the apparent limitations imposed by the absence of free and abundant supply of cheap labour for commercial cotton production and hence less unrestrictive social structures in Esan could explain the non-transformation of Ishan cotton production. However, the counter argument is equally valid that the Ishan cotton production despite its high quality, diffusion and labour productivity in cloth manufacture remained in unaltered state, inadequate to meet capitalist production models. All these had reasonable implications.

When ‘crossed with Sea Island cotton about 1850, it [Ishan cotton] developed into modern Egyptian cotton’ (Roche 1994: 26). The strategic significance in the surplus value residue of the Ishan cotton could as well have led to its widespread introduction across climes. We can also extrapolate from the facts of the detailed and elaborate experiments in Ishan cotton that it seriously featured in the US cotton programme of 1900 through its major offshoot, the new Egyptian cotton

planted, experimentally, in the USA. The first plantings, in South Carolina, were unsuccessful but in the Salt River Valley of Arizona, in Texas, and in the Imperial Valley of California a number of hybrids were made of different varieties of Egyptian, Sea Island and American upland cotton. (Roche 1994: 56)

It goes without saying that the successful modifications of the Ishan cotton over climes, maximised the opportunities for the socialisation of labour and development of the productive forces in the transplanted societies. It is, however, significant that the necessary policy options were not applied in its original habitat despite the broad backdrop that

in the Salt River Valley of Arizona, in Texas, and in the Imperial Valley of California a number of hybrids were made of different varieties of Egyptian [derivatives of Ishan] cotton, Sea Island and American upland cotton. [In] 1911 the first commercial crops of thirty bales of hybrid labelled Yuma was sold at a high premium … [the new variety] … crossed with Pima, resulted in S x P, an extra-long staple cotton deemed a strategic material for military purposes. (Roche 1994: 56)

Ishan cotton in the pre-capitalist mode of production

The pre-colonial Ishan cotton production and cloth manufacture processes had characteristics of an indigenous mode of production, which generally seems to deny the basis for overt exploitation of producers or emergence of gross antagonistic class contradictions. This was not because the pre-colonial society was structurally deficient or not strictly feudal or without its own internal conflicts. The lack of demonstrable class antagonisms could seem to have essentially derived from other reasons, including the absence of the third unit of the triad of capitalist development, that is, alienated labour and private expropriation. The second plausible explanation seems to interrelate with the embedded features of varied forms of monetised relations commingling with dualism in the socio-economic formation, a moderating influence that has survived colonialism and is still prevalent in relation to land tenure. As observed by scholars of Esan land tenure system, ‘the dead and countless yet unborn owned the land … Esan people are communal in nature … This means that their hopes, aspirations and relationships are perceived in communalistic terms … Land ownership in Esan has a communal foundation’ (Ukhun & Inegbedion 2007: 16). These communal relations in the economic structure being concurrently determined by dualism and forms of monetary compensation reveal some epistemic contents in the pre-colonial socio-economic system. At least, they could go to confirm that non-capitalist modes of production are not all uniform (Coquery-Vidrovitch 1976). It could also help to explain that there are varied possibilities in some pre-capitalist economic systems; while some exhibit overt characteristics of exploitative relations, others had inherent balancing mechanisms which minimised the intensity of conflict. In the instant case of Ishan cotton production, the social and class structures were subsumed in the larger framework of the specific pre-capitalist socio-economic system. It is conceivable that these properties moderating the economic systems have other attributes, which denied the full interaction of exploitative conditions and that these resilient properties successfully survived the contradictions later introduced into the socio-economic system. An example is the continued prevalence of communal relations in land. A more detailed interrogation of this hypothesis of moderating properties is possible but out of the remit of this article.

Ishan cotton under colonialism

The Ishan cotton was also attended by the policy of transformation of indigenous agricultural products into commodities of colonial trade, which exerted greater implication than the trite objective of raw materials extraction. This was clear in the statement of J. Arthur Hutton (1915) of the British Cotton Growing Association (BCGA) who eloquently reported to an international congress on tropical agriculture in 1914 that in

most parts of the Eastern Province of Nigeria the rainfall is far too heavy for cotton, and had it not been for the excellent quality of the Ishan cotton the best grown in British West Africa. (p. 150)

This pattern of commodification of Ishan cotton under colonialism through home-based vent for surplus production not only fulfilled the needs for local extraction of indigenous resources for metropolitan production and creation of consumer markets abroad for the finished products but also served the deeper purpose of expending

European brains, capital and energy … in developing the resources of Africa not from motives of pure philanthropy… for the mutual benefit of industrial classes and the native races in their progress to a higher plane that the benefit can be made reciprocal, and it is the aim and desire of civilised administration to fulfil this dual mandate. (Lugard 1977 [1926]: 18–19)

The commodification of Ishan cotton under colonialism seem to have not only incorporated the Esan people into spawned dependency on external markets for finished cotton products, underdeveloped the pre-colonial cloth industry, but also cost the people their qualitative skills resource base and robbed them of the strong comparative advantage in local cloth manufacture. This consequential outcome of colonial rule in Esan could be accountable for the lack of reciprocal benefits but instead skewed the dual mandate in favour of colonialism. Also, the commodification appears to have resulted in both the underdevelopment of the naturally coloured Ishan cotton and distortion of its central character in the pre-colonial production, especially the cloth manufacture of the Esan people.

Naturally coloured Ishan cotton

The transformation of Ishan cotton from its local use as well resulted in fundamental underdevelopment as the example of colonial neglect of the naturally brown coloured variant of Ishan cotton showed. While it featured side by side with the white coloured species in pre-colonial production, but in the series of improvements and cross breeding of the white coloured cotton, the naturally coloured brown variety of Ishan cotton was not similarly developed. In fact, loin clothes such as obeniku; work clothes, called asiso in the local language; and adeogho, warm evening cover wear, highly valuable during the cold evenings of the harmattan season; and so on considerably suffered neglect as the resources for production had diminished.

One fundamental underpinning of the non-propagation of the brown coloured Ishan cotton pari pasu may have been the disadvantages of its short-lint staple as the ‘extra long staple cotton can be spun into finer, stronger yarns than medium cotton’ (Roche 1994: 56). This argument could be similarly extended to cover the selection and hybridisation involving G barbadense types of cotton, in which the length and uniformity of length of fibre was emphasised (Chaudhry 2016). Consequently, the poor outcome of the naturally coloured Ishan cotton may have dovetailed into similar experiences of other indigenous crops considered of little export value. This seems inherent in the point Dickerson et al. (1999) made in their graphic detailed accounts with specific evidence of other naturally coloured cottons that

have been cultivated and used in native textile products by indigenous populations, because of low yields, the inability of the fibre to be machine spun, and the availability of inexpensive dye-stuffs, naturally coloured cottons have not been utilized for commercial textile production. (p. 56)

This finding mutatis mutandis the non-improvement or lack of extensive propagation of the khaki variant of Ishan cotton and its absence in colonial cotton trade and the transaction economics of textile production generally was despite that dyeing component constitutes high cost in fabric finishing. The policy of non-propagation of the naturally coloured cottons may also have conceivably been for commercially sensible reasons but in perspective, it was short sighted for naturally coloured cottons represent effective cost-savings in textile production. Indeed, the usefulness of the naturally coloured brown Ishan cotton was emphatic as the elimination of dyeing generally means cost-effectiveness in the manufacturing of fabrics and also alleviates the negative environmental impact of the disposal of toxic dye waste. Moreover, naturally coloured cottons are more resilient and reportedly do not fade in laundering as is typical of most conventionally dyed cottons. The two points relevant to the naturally brown Ishan cotton are that it suffered poor experimental fortune despite the repeated improvement of its white counterpart. This was not for lack of use value, but it seems more likely that it was for the reason of the exaggerated emphasis on the white lint variety in the international cotton market. The second point could be that the bounded rationality in the historical character of capitalism (Wallerstein 1989) also affected the long-term strategic prospects of the naturally coloured Ishan cotton; hence, it was opportunistically subordinated to the immediacy of profits maximisation in the white coloured variety.

Discussion

The analysis of the pre-capitalist mode of production highlights some inherent contradictions. The juridical characteristics of communal land ownership partly elucidated some aspects of the superstructural manifestations with revealed knowledge to illuminate the capacity, resilience or weakness of the pre-colonial mode of production. This could be evinced in the relations between the pre-colonial state and the landed peasantry and also the significant connection between agricultural producers and communal custodians of land in the pre-capitalist formation. Earlier studies of the pre-capitalist modes of production and pre-colonial political economy in Africa (Crummey & Stewart 1981; Hindess & Hirst 1975) although do not seem to have adequately characterised the system and its specific place in the relations of production, nonetheless, alluded to these fundamental ontological foundations of communal land ownership. The sociologico-anthropological explorations of Van Binsbergen and Geschiere (1985) and Grinker et al. (2010) indicated areas of further theoretical explorations of the pre-colonial African modes of production. However, it may as well be relevant to enquire into the contents and interconnectedness in the juridical relations of the pre-capitalist economic system either to dissociate or to combine the properties to determine their impact and place in the pre-colonial socio-economy. This is important against the backdrop of the non-transformation of Ishan cotton and the associated cloth manufacture from petty commodity production, even during colonialism, to stimulate the internal prospects for large-scale textile production.

The economic character of the pre-colonial mode of production was not completely unexploitative given the noticeable casual employment of unremunerated labour of members of the household and group, including child and slave labour from the stage of farm work to the processing of the cotton into thread. Rather, there was lack of structural or systemic coercion in the non-monetisation of the labour aspects of the production process, which holds the important revelation that it was not a feudal mode of production. Moreover, the third unit of the triad of capitalist development – alienated labour and private expropriation – was absent despite that the economic structure featured transformative forms of monetised relations. Therefore, the fundamental contradiction between the social nature of production and private mode of appropriation of proceeds was not inherent in the pre-capitalist Ishan cotton production and cloth manufacture processes.

Conclusion and recommendations

The Ishan cotton was not primarily cultivated as export crops in the pre-colonial economy despite that the agricultural structure in Esan was not production for use, per se. The fundamental distortions of the character of social reproduction and alteration of the essence of Ishan cotton, therefore, conjugated with the non-improvement of the pre-capitalist production relations during colonialism and the poor technological base that stifled the possibility of deeper socialisation of labour. This confirms similar findings in Togo where

the colonial state was unable to capture or recast the African agricultural productive process, and hence no significant transformation of technology or relations of production occurred, nor any demonstrable reinvestment of financial benefits regarding cotton. (Maier 1995: 73)

In other words, the inherent productivity value of Ishan cotton cloth industry in the petty commodity formation had good prospects for the economic transformation of the local environment vis-à-vis similar conditions in the northern hemisphere in which the introduction of technology and reform of relations of production enabled textile production to accelerate the industrial revolution. In short, the non-improvement of the pre-colonial mode of production was incongruent with the trajectory and logical models of progressive capitalism within the contemplation of sustainable agricultural development. As a result of the non-development and modernisation of the pre-colonial economic structures, Ishan cotton is now largely grown outside of its original habitat. The result of the series of experiments with the white species in the 19th century through the 20th century enabled the propagation of the improved Ishan cotton in other parts of southern provinces of Nigeria to replace the American lint that failed in northern Nigeria (Garba 1989). It is reasonable to infer that the absence of vigorous propagation and application of technological innovation in the Ishan cotton production underdeveloped the autochthonous base and exerted negative impact in the original habitat. Therefore, we can safely draw the deduction that the effective denial of the good prospects reaped with Ishan cotton transplanted elsewhere had impact upon and largely accountable for the lack of economic takeoff in Esan, based on the cotton production.

This is supported by Headrick (2012) on the impact of technological innovation in similar production contexts to clarify the motive forces of the later regime of colonial economic advancement. Contextually, it is also safe to deduce that the absence of technological application in production fluently argues that technology is not an ideology neuter; it serves a definitive purpose of advantage to its historical possessor. Despite the inherent utilitarian value of technology, it is still not open to unfettered adaptation by borrowers to reorganise their economies for social independence. The failure to leverage Ishan cotton to advance the economy of the original habitat could amply also demonstrate that technology is not transferred or made available for deployment towards independent economic ends.

In the final analysis, the necessary condition for overcoming drawbacks to rapid development in developing countries such as Nigeria requires the benchmarking of the inherited pre-colonial models rather than the characteristic perpetuation of the colonial patterns of production. This is partly to restate the cri de coeur that the socio-economic development of countries such as Nigeria is amenable to enhancement with the development of cash crops such as cotton for backward integration to animate the spirit of local enterprise (Anjorin 1980: 127). It is indeed in this context that the Ishan cotton still plays both functional and class roles. Although, the ritual essence associated with the indigenous cotton cloth may have declined but that fact has not affected its social and class import. Hence, it remains a thriving means of income generation for the women still engaged in it. For instance, in contemporary social functions, the native cloth products are regarded as symbols of high cultural taste. It is in this profoundly fulfilling ritualistic sense that the native cloth is relatively more expensive that mass produced textile materials. Indeed, such Ishan cotton products, such as the igbulu ododo worn by men during marriage ceremonies – father of bride and the prospective groom himself, and shawl and head-ties worn by women – mothers of the bride and groom, respectively – enable the native cloth products to still enjoy reasonable patronage. Among the prominent current producers of the native Ishan cotton cloth are assumedly self-sustaining local products-focused initiatives such as the Catholic Congregation of the Sisters of Sacred Heart in Atani, Uromi. Many other culturally centred indigenous female cloth producers in many parts of the Esan area also enjoy huge patronage of their products for social ritualistic purposes.

This goes to suggest that the prospects of endogenous development strategies are not in the perfunctory theorisation of the development conundrum as useful modernisation templates seem to advise the development of the sustainable, inherited pre-capitalist economic structures. They may still be in micro, undeveloped state but with requisite efforts could be developed to eventually serve large-scale economic production purposes. In other words, the characteristics of indigenous, pre-capitalist economies, although multifaceted, still harbour definite possibilities to leverage for competitive advantage. Accordingly, it is worthwhile to learn valuable lessons of the strong comparative advantages of the pre-colonial past to mediate extant economic policies so that development may become about people. This is the experiential and more rational development framework advised by the story of Ishan cotton production.