In his magnum opus, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Rodney incisively argues that grasping "the great divergence" between the west and the rest can only be explained as the exploitation of the latter by the former. “The most convincing evidence as to the superficiality of the talk about colonialism having ‘modernized’ Africa is the fact that the vast majority of Africans went into colonialism with a hoe and came out with a hoe.”. The figure which is most frequently provided is that of 10 million Africans; 10 million people who were ripped from their homes and converted into someone else’s property, transported across the Atlantic and condemned to a life of inhuman brutalisation which beggars belief. © Marx & Philosophy Society 2020 Rodney and four others (known as the Referendum Five) faced charges of arson, but without proof, and scrutiny from international supporters, the government was forced to drop the charges. If anything it’s a by-product of it, its (in)direct consequence. The Enduring Relevance of Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Walter Anthony Rodney was born in Georgetown, Guyana on March 23, 1942. Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free. Giovanni Vimercati is currently completing a master’s in Media Studies at the American University of Beirut. Rodney combined his scholarship with activism and became a voice for the under-represented and disenfranchised a distinction from his academic colleagues. Even when tackling the ancillary apparatuses of colonial rule such as culture and education, the relation between white supremacy and the exploitation of resources is always brought to the fore. The structural dependency that came to characterize the political and economic relation between Africa and Europe is to be traced back to a foundational moment for the modern history of the African continent: slavery. It is a highly systematic analysis of a place which most of all shows that in terms of its sociological character and the sheer diversity of various societies from the most backward to the most advanced – Africa was not greatly removed from the medieval Europe of the day and was everywhere embroiled in active, vibrant historical developments. It is precisely in this regard that Rodney’s analysis remains as relevant as it was when first published — a call to arms in the class struggle for racial equality. So, for example, ‘after the Kenya highlands had been declared “Crown land,” the British handed over to Lord Delamere 100,000 acres of the best land at cost of a penny per acre.’ (182) These sorts of appropriations, which amounted to little more than naked robbery, were supplemented by the most incredible exploitation of African labour. As Rodney goes on to argue, development presupposes ‘a capacity for self-sustaining growth’ (119) and it was this which the transatlantic slave trade truncated. (179). Once more, the colonists were aided by some level of local cooperation. Once again Rodney insists on linking the brutality of slavery to its financial rationale by quoting the English commercial expert Malachy Postlethwayt, who in 1745 enthused, “British trade is a magnificent superstructure […] on an African foundation.” The comparative analysis of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa does not exclusively focus on its titular assumption, but on its reverse deduction too. (119). You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in settings. Top subscription boxes – right to your door, © 1996-2020, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. Save $10 when you subscribe for a whole year! In this classic book, Rodney makes the unflinching case that African “mal-development” is not a natural feature of geography, but a direct product of imperial extraction from the continent, a practice that continues up into the present. Secondly, Rodney is, in the current writer’s view, far too uncritical about the Stalinist states of the USSR, China and North Korea which he repeatedly lauds as genuinely socialist. But also in terms of ships. Some involved a basic division of labour and were profoundly communal in character: the Khoisan hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari Desert, for instance, or the Kaffa cultivators, the Galla pastoralists, as well as the communities of Bozo fisherman or the nomadic Fulani herdsmen.
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