Remittances, Welfare Solidarity, and Monetarization: The Interaction between Personal and Economic Relations in Cape Verde during the Colonial Period

This article proposes a reading of the colonial monetary phenomenon in Cape Verde through the interaction of personal relations and formal economic relations. It begins by analyzing the genesis of colonial money and its affirmation as an autonomous institutional phenomenon, as well as the impacts of emigration on the archipelago’s economy, in order to consider the effects of remittances as an instrument of welfare solidarity, monetarization, and the stabilization of Cape Verdean money. The combination of these effects generated a complex whole of personal and economic relations, whose interaction supported the expansion of money and its social acknowledgment as a universal measure of value. There was, therefore, a degree of complementarity between personal relations and formal economic relations, which was synthesized through Cape Verdean money.