Meaning & use
comprador
Last updated
A local agent employed by a foreign company to manage business in that person's own country, especially in a colonial or historical trade context.
See it in a sentence
The comprador class in nineteenth-century Shanghai grew wealthy brokering deals for foreign trading houses.
Historians debate how much power the comprador merchants actually held over colonial trade policy.
A note on using this word
From the Portuguese comprador, 'buyer'; the term is now also used more broadly and critically in political theory to describe local elites who serve foreign economic interests.
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