Europeans misread different gift economies as evidence natives had no economic system at all.

Evidence

What the Europeans found difficult to comprehend was that the exchange of gifts was part of a highly complex, but different, set of social practices—the practices of reciprocity—which only had meaning within a certain cultural context. Caribbean practices were different from, though as intricate in their social meaning and effects as, the norms and practices of European exchange and commerce. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 627

Categorization

• DEFINE: The passage defines ‘practices of reciprocity’ as a distinct, complex social system of exchange that Europeans misconceived as its absence — a useful mechanism for later readings on how colonizers systematically misread indigenous social orders as lack.