Review of Walter Rodney's 'How Europe Underdeveloped Africa'

Benue State University Press, 2019

The book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is written by Walter Rodney. It is a book that examines the historical processes in comparative economies of Europe and Africa, Latin America and Asia. It's a masterpiece and groundbreaking in economic analysis of the supposed 'developed' nations in comparison with the underdeveloped nations predicated on deliberate exploitation of the underdeveloped nations through trade, power tussle, technological disadvantages, which led to colonialism with its attendant cost effects.

Africa Update.Vol. XXVI, Issue 3 (Summer 2019) How Europe Underdeveloped Africa: A Tribute to Walter Rodney, 2019

Europe Underdeveloped Africa. It is demonstrated that Rodney's ideas are usually presented in distorted forms and the criticisms against them lack a valid foundation. Rodney was not a person rigidly bound to some idea. He was a scholar who applied Marxist theory in a creative fashion to the African condition. In addition to the economic exploitation of the African people, Rodney also dealt with the anti-imperialist and anti-racist political struggles in Africa. In the process of critiquing the works of some influential African scholars of today who ignore basic economic factors and focus on legal and cultural issues, Hirji presents a strong case for the continued relevance of Rodney and his major work. He notes that the predictions implied by How Europe Underdeveloped Africa as to the economic domination of Africa today are 'stunningly accurate.' Rodney's method of social analysis which combined theory with practice is essential for analyzing the African and global societies. Some critics accuse Rodney of overemphasizing external forces and neglecting the agency of Africans. Hirji points out that such criticisms are flawed because Rodney's analysis integrated external and internal factors. And the core role that imperialism plays in the underdevelopment of Africa cannot be overemphasized. The liberation of Africa from the clutches of imperialism has to be led by Africans. African masses have to take control of state power in order to halt the underdevelopment of Africa by the West and their African class allies. The apologists of neo-liberalism say Rodney was too polemical and mixed the role of the scholar with that of an activist. Yet, it is a misguided view since history abounds with cases of exemplary scholars and scientists who were also prominent activists in their days. In sum, Rodney does not offer a simple binary choice between hope and struggle to Africans and others but an integrated emphasis on hope and struggle. Walter Rodney was assassinated by local reactionary forces working in conjunction with imperialism in 1980 in his home country, Guyana. Yet, his legacy as a revolutionary and public intellectual survives. Despite the concrete and ideological reversals since his times and the erasure of anti-capitalist texts from syllabi in Africa, Australia, Asia, Europe and America, some prominent scholars continue to refer to How Europe Underdeveloped Africa as a foundational text. His major book still commands a global audience. In this special issue of Africa Update, we have invited eminent scholars to evaluate the continuing relevance of Walter Rodney to Africa and the rest of the world in line with the Enduring Relevance thesis of Hirji and in accordance with the Postscript to the original publication by Rodney written by A.M. Babu. We are fortunate to include the piece by Kimani Nehusi, The Walter Rodney Professor of History, University of Guyana and Professor of Africology at Temple University. He updates the relevance of Rodney by indicating the attention paid to his work today by top theorists and by popular musicians alike and concludes that the themes of unequal exchange that Rodney theorized in the dialectical relationships between Europe and Africa persists today. Also included is a piece by the editor of this special issue of Africa Update, Biko Agozino, Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Virginia Tech, with a focus on the enduring relevance of the analysis of education for underdevelopment and education for development in Africa by Walter Rodney. Finally, Nigel Westmaas, Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Hamilton College, completes the special issue with an overview of the contemporary relevance of Walter Rodney's popular education work against imperialist domination and to Marxist historiography, innovation of world system analysis and the application of dependency theory to Africa.

It was written by Walter Rodney, with an economic analysis of how Europe engaged in an unequal relationship with Africa and subsequently exploited the continent country and specifically how this form of colonialism differed from other parts of the world. Rodney posits that Europe and Africa had a dialectical relationship where Europe's development was dependent upon the underdevelopment of Africa. He argues there was an intimate and causal relationship between Europe's growth and Africa's decline or at best, stagnation in terms of development. Thus, Europe's capitalist growth can only be correctly and fully understood with the concomitant exploitation of Africa and colonialism. This book is an economic analysis of how Europe engaged in an unequal relationship with Africa and subsequently exploited the continent country and specifically how this form of colonialism differed from other parts of the world. Rodney posits that Europe and Africa had a dialectical relationship where Europe's development was dependent upon the underdevelopment of Africa. He argues there is an intimate and causal relationship between Europe's growth and Africa's decline or at best, stagnation in terms of development. Thus, Europe's capitalist growth can only be correctly and fully understood with the concomitant exploitation of Africa and colonialism.

American Historical Review, 2022

Scholars of capitalism have been debating the connection between mercantilism, colonialism, slavery, the slave trade, and capitalism for several decades.1 Much attention has been devoted to the plantation economy, industrialization, financial risks, and markets, mostly focusing on the Anglo-American world. Most studies only refer to societies in the Global South, particularly African societies, as arenas for the global expansion of capitalism.2 African markets and the credit system continue to be ignored in capitalism studies despite their efficient, profitable, and dynamic natures.

The Demise of Socialism, the Triumph of New Capitalist Social Order and Modern Slavery in Africa By Muhammadu Mustapha Gwadabe Department of History Ahmadu Bello University Abstract The trade in slaves around the world has a very long history, but the arrival of the Europeans on the West Coast of Africa marked a new phase in the African slave trade. First in search of the land of gold along the shores of Africa, the Portuguese before the middle of the 15th century graduated into the export of African captives back to Lisbon where they were sold into slavery. The establishment in the New World of European plantations for the large-scale production of sugar, cotton and tobacco, and the enormous profit derived from it necessitated the continued search and trade in slaves, which for year’s dawn negatively and disastrously on the economy and society of the people of Africa. Through the efforts of the religious and humanitarian groups in Western Europe and the Americas the trade in slaves was challenged as inhuman and iniquitous, which forced the British Parliament in 1807 declared the trade illegal for British subjects. Yet, it took long before the trade came to an end among the French, Americas, Spanish and the Portuguese slavers. It took the British the posting of its military Preventive Squadron (Navy) that rescued about three thousand slaves on a yearly basis, to check other European countries interested in continuing with the trade. It was this effort also that checked the activities of the African coastal chieftains who were accustomed to the ready profit of the slave, and were reluctant to abandon the sale of their own people. It is the view in this paper that the British effort at the abolition of the slave trade was in view of the revolution they attained in the science and technology of production, which made the use of human labour in production of limited relevance. It is going to be shown also that it was the attainment of similar state of economic development by other European countries that made the abolition of the trade practicable, and marked the commencement of the colonisation of Africa and other parts of the world. Soon, a new challenge developed which produced forces against colonisation; for socialism and western democracy. Close to the end of the twentieth century the socialist world was challenged to collapse and disintegration, which marked the end of the cold war politics of bipolarity. Since then the international environment became preoccupied by forces of western democracy and capitalism, globalisation, and economic crisis especially in most Third World countries. In most parts of Africa this development was followed by varying attempts to make ends meet, including trafficking of young girls, and other forms of modern slavery. This paper is going to argue that there is a relationship between modern slavery in Africa, and the collapse of Socialism and the triumph of Capitalist new Social Order.

This paper colores the history of slave trade with its true colors, instead of the colors that were applied by colonial rulers. Paper tries to travel through time in search of true colors of slave trade. However the paper arrives to the conclusion that slave trade is an ugly blot of paint in the picture of history.

The Journal of Economic History

I use newly-developed data on Africa to estimate the effects of the international slave trades (circa 1500–1850) on the institutional structures of African economies and societies (circa 1900). I find that: (1) societies in slave catchment zones adopted slavery to defend against further enslavement; (2) slave trades spread slavery and polygyny together; (3) politically centralized aristocratic slave regimes emerge in West Africa and family-based accumulations of slave wealth in East Africa. I discuss implications for literatures on long-term legacies in African political and economic development.

Review of African Political Economy, 2003

The profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilisation lies unveiled before our eyes, moving from its home, where it assumes respectable form, to the colonies, where it goes naked (Karl Marx in Engels & Marx 1979).