How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa Reviews

• 
  Huyen

  Despite some naïve visions of the success of communism in the Soviet Union and China that might sound very silly to us (considering the book was written in 1972), this book still has some very persuasive points that explain African underdevelopment. The main theme of the book is that underdevelopment was made possible by positive feedback loops starting with the uneven development in earlier centuries enforced by European constant exploitation of raw materials and human labor from Africa. It traces the root of underdevelopment Africa back to the pre-colonial period. The “natural” path of development from communalism to feudalism and capitalism in Africa was messed up by the European slave trade. The trade in slave was facilitated by African rulers’ greed for luxury goods and European products. The effect of this trade was devastating in that it caused considerable dislocation and disruption in the local economy, caused internal conflict as a result of slave raiding and a huge loss of African labor. (Rodney ignored the Arab slave trade, which caused an equivalent loss of human beings, but over a longer period and at slower rate). This process did not enter the productive process and did not contribute to generating wealth in Africa. Africa started to be highly dependent on export of raw materials and lost its spirit of technological innovation.
  The intrusion of European capitalists did not mean the transmission of technology, ideas or knowledge. During the colonial period, Europe further hindered Africa’s development by expatriating surplus from all production activities and cash crop farming. Africans were reduced to basic labor jobs which never stimulated technological advances or improved means of production. The claims made by Europeans colonialists to have “civilized” and modernized the Africans was convincingly refuted by the notoriously modest amount of investment in social welfares in all colonies and the racial discrimination in access to these services between the whites and the natives. Many African "capitalists" were discouraged to own assets or were not allowed to emerge, so they did not have enough capital to invest. Industrialization was blocked by colonial governments and no modern skills or technical know-how were transmitted to the local people. Education was very limited and basically did not go beyond the primary level.
  Walter Rodney challenges the concept of tribalism widely used in European journalism which means Africans have a basic loyalty to tribes rather than nations and retain fundamental hatred among themselves. He argues that the African states during the 19th century were multi-ethnic and no major wars due to ethnic differences occurred at that time (still true today). Europeans’ policies of divide and rule were the cause of the animosity among different peoples and blocked the evolution of national solidarity that happened elsewhere in Asia. the failure of Africa was mainly due to its political weakness and a low level of consciousness among the peoples of different tribes with no common social purpose (do most people have a COMMON social purpose at all? I doubt that).
  Walter Rodney also points out some interesting effects of colonialism which I myself never thought of such as the detrimental impacts on the Africans as a physical species due to chronic hunger and malnutrition, starvation in villages because able-bodies males were taken to the plantations and the role of education in instilling a sense of racial inferiority and subordination among the African people.
  The book could be much more convincing if it made comparisons between Africa and Asia/ Latin America. But bear in mind, this is 1972, where all the colonies were still embroiled in all sorts of conflicts, it was harder to predict the outcome of all that process in the following decades.
  Often when i read this book, I reflected upon Guns Germs and Steel and think probably the combination of both is a pretty good explanation for Africa’s underdevelopment. However, that’s up to 1972. From then on, the question is still open to more investigation.
  
• 
  Zanna

  The first three chapters, on development in general, and development in Africa before the arrival of Europeans, and development in Europe, were quite dull, though the second has many fascinating snippets of information, it was too brief a tour to give the subject the kind of attention that would make it enjoyable rather than necessary, and I wasn't convinced that measuring social conditions in the various African societies against a very Eurocentric model of so-called development was actually needed or even appropriate. Nonetheless, the book became much better, in my opinion, when it arrived at the main subject, the exploitation of Africa and Africans by Europeans.
  
  The last three chapters cover the period of slavery, the period of colonialism, independence, and "the supposed benefits of colonialism for Africa". These chapters are full of excellent material that remains highly relevant given that Europeans continue to assert that colonialism was beneficial and to exploit African countries and other regions. Like many texts, this one makes clear how Europeans gained our wealth through plunder and exploitation.
  
  Among the many things pointed out by Rodney that I hadn't known or realised the importance of before, or just found especially salient, were:
  
  - The effect of depopulation by the European slave trade, which removed able-bodied adults from Africa. It seems obvious that this would cause economic problems for the preyed-on region, but I had never thought of this, because I had not grasped the sheer scale of that slave trade.
  
  - The effect of European monopolies and trade rules on technology and innovation in Africa, and, relatedly, the huge benefits of trading internally and locally. Globalization of capitalism == neo-colonial exploitation, and to fight it, ditch oppressive trade treaties, support local industries, trade with your neighbours.
  
  - "Throughout the colonial period the [difference between the prices of exported raw materials and imported manufactured goods] got worse [in Europe's favour]. In 1939, with the same quantity of primary goods colonies could buy only 60% of manufactured goods which they bough in the decade 1870-80 before colonial rule. By 1960, the amount of European manufactured goods purchasable by the same quantity of African raw materials had fallen still further. There was no objective economic law which determined that primary produce should be worth so little. Indeed, the developed countries sold certain raw materials like timber and wheat at much higher prices than a colony could command. The explanation is that the unequal exchange was forced upon Africa by the political and military supremacy of the colonizers, just as in the sphere of international relations unequal treaties were forced on small states in the dependencies, like those in Latin America"
  
  - Colonies were taxed. Africans paid for "the upkeep of the governors and police who oppressed them and served as watchdogs for private capitalists... taxes and customs duties were levied in the nineteeth century with the aim of allowing the colonial powers to recover the costs of the armed forces which they dispatched to conquer Africa. In effect, therefore, the colonial governments never put a penny into the colonies."
  
  - "Finally, when all else failed, colonial powers resorted widely to the physical coercion of labor - backed up of course by legal sanctions, since anything which the colonial government chose to do was 'legal.' [...] the simplest form of forced labour was that which colonial governments exacted to carry out "public works." Labor for a given number of days per year had to be given free for these "public works" - building castles for governors, prisons for Africans, barracks for troops, and bungalows for colonial officials. A great deal of this forced labor went into the construction of roads, railways and ports to provide the infrastructure for private capitalist investment and to facilitate the export of cash crops. Taking only one example from the British colony of Sierra Leone, one finds that the railway which started at the end of the nineteenth century required forced labour from thousands of peasants driven from the villages. The hard work and appalling conditions led to the death of a large number of those engaged in work on the railway. In British territories, this kind of forced labor (including juvenile labor) was widespread enough to call forth in 1923 a "Native Authority Ordinance" restricting the use of compulsory labor for porterage, railway and road building. More often than not, means were found of circumventing this legislation. An international Forced Labor Convention was signed by all colonial powers in 1930, but again it was flouted in practice."
  
  In the last chapter, Rodney dismisses the still popular argument that colonialism somehow benefited the colonies. "The argument suggests that, on one hand, there was exploitation and oppression, but on the other hand, colonial governments did much for the benefit of Africans and they developed Africa. It is our contention that this is completely false. Colonialism had only one hand - it was a one-armed bandit. What did colonial governments do in the interest of Africans? Supposedly, they built railroads, schools, hospitals and the like. The sum total of these services was amazingly small."
  
  First, he points out the paltriness of the total expenditure on social services in the colonies, then he shows how the vast majority of these services were provided for white settlers and expatriates:
  
  "it is well known that whites created an infrastructure to afford themselves leisured and enjoyable lives"
  
  "Ibadan, one of the most heavily populated cities in Africa, had only about 50 Europeans before the last war. For those chosen few, the British colonial government maintained a segregated hospital service of 11 beds in well-furnished surroundings. There were 34 beds for the half-million blacks [...] altogether the 4,000 Europeans in the country in the 1930s had 12 modern hospitals, while the African population of at least 40 million had 52 hospitals."
  
  Rodney goes on to discuss how exploited workers in unhealthy industries, such as miners, had no access to health care, and rural areas which produced cash crops had no social services at all. Social services to which Africans did have access were provided solely to facilitate exploitation.
  
  "[Roads and railways] had a clear geographical distribution according to which particular regions needed to be opened up to import-export activities. Where exports were not available, roads and railways had no place. The only slight exception is that certain roads and railways were built to move troops and make conquest and oppression easier"
  
  "Apologists for colonialism are quick to say that the money for schools, hospitals, and such services in Africa was provided by the British, French or Belgian taxpayer [...] It defies logic to admit that the profits from a given colony in a given year totalled several million dollars and to affirm nevertheless that the few thousand dollars allocated to social services in that colony was the money of European taxpayers!"
  
  I will leave out huge swathes of material on areas like banking, agriculture (the disastrous creation of monocultures, for example) and industry, and discussion of the negative economic, political and social effects of colonialism in this chapter, including on the status of women. Colonialism created the conditions for neo-colonial exploitation and dependence. But the one thing I found most interesting and impressive about Rodney's work is his discussion of education.
  
  Pre-colonial education in Africa was outstandingly relevant, he explains, in contrast to colonial education, the main purpose of which "was to train Africans to help man the local administration at the lowest ranks and staff the private capitalist firms staffed by Europeans. In effect, that meant selecting a few Africans to participate in the domination and exploitation of the continent as a whole [...] it sought to instill a sense of deference towards all that was European and capitalist. Education in Europe was dominated by the capitalist class. The same class bias was automatically transferred to Africa; and to make matters worse the racism and cultural boastfulness harboured by capitalism were also included in the package of colonial education. Colonial schooling was education for subordination, exploitation, the creation of mental confusion, and the development of underdevelopment."
  
  Rodney quotes statistics showing the small number of school places. The levels of secondary education were low, and higher education almost non-existent. What education there was included generous doses of propaganda. The more education a person received, the more alienated and separated from their culture they became. Abdou Moumini is quoted: "colonial education corrupted the thinking and sensibilities of the African and filled him with abnormal complexes". The church played its part: "[its] role was primarily to preserve the social relations of colonialism [...] therefore, [it] stressed humility, docility, and acceptance."
  
  Despite this (and this is the exciting part), Africans struggled hard to gain education, and the fruit of that struggle, ultimately, in combination with other aspects of liberation struggle, was independence.
  
  "The educated played a role in African independence struggles far out of proportion to their numbers, because they took it upon themselves and were called upon to articulate the interests of all Africans."
  
  "If there is anything glorious about the history of African colonial education, it lies not in the crumbs which were dropped by European exploiters, but in the tremendous vigor displayed by Africans in mastering the principles of the system that had mastered them. In most colonies, there was an initial period of indifference towards school education, but once it was understood that schooling represented one of the few avenues of advance within colonial society, it became a question of African clamoring and pushing the colonialists much further than they intended to go."
  
  Africans everywhere put their money (often savings were hard won through self-denial) into building schools, and put pressure on colonial institutions to provide schooling. Administrations were unwilling to comply. The Beecher report on education in Kenya:

  Illiterates with the right attitude to manual employment are preferable to products of the schools who are not readily disposed to enter manual employment

  Kenya had two independent school associations (as mentioned by
  Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, although I forget in which book), which were immediately closed when the Mau Mau war for liberation broke out.
  
  "it was not really necessary to get the idea of freedom from a European book. What the educated African extracted from European schooling was a particular formation of the concept of political freedom. But, it did not take much to elicit a response from their own instinctive tendency for freedom [...] that universal tendency to seek freedom manifested itself among Africans even when the most careful steps were taken to extinguish it [...] Teachers were supposed to have been steeped in the culture of domination [...] but in the end, many of them stood in the vanguard of national liberation movements."
  
  The chapter ends by emphasising that the mass of the people were involved in winning independence, but a detail account of the process would require a long text for each state, so it is not given. The post-independence (or postcolonial) situation and neo-colonial exploitation is left for other books to address.
• 
  Randall Wallace

  Africa, under communalism, had no classes and had equality in distribution. Carthage flourished from 1200 to 200 B.C. By 732 A.D, Europe stopped the Muslim advance, when African forces were already deep into France. Imagine white teachers telling their students that while non-whites were happily enjoying baths in Maghreb (later Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia), white people in Oxford, England considered that washing oneself was “a dangerous act”. Few whites understand that trans-Saharan trade “was as great an achievement as crossing the ocean.” It brought in trade and literate Islamic culture, however iron tools came to Africa later than they came to Europe, so, technology and skills were more limited. When Cecil Rhodes went in Zimbabwe and saw its ruins, they assumed they had to have been built by white people. Slavery was not a “mode of production” until the whites came. Europeans arriving in Africa were often impressed by what they saw: clean straight streets some 120 feet wide, pillars encased in copper, palaces, and galleries. Communalist Africa meets the fledgling capitalist nations of Europe. Africa gets tapped for slaves when the indigenous of the Americas prove either unwilling to slave for the white invaders, or too susceptible to smallpox. The English currency, the guinea, was once made from gold taken from Guinea. Queen Elizabeth I enjoyed the slave trade and gave a ship strangely named Jesus to go to Africa to steal more slaves. When Elizabeth gave John Hawkins a knighthood for stealing blacks from Africa at gunpoint, John made his own coat of arms from an image of blacks in chains. Barclays Bank was set up by two slavers needing a place to put their tainted profits. James Watt got his steam engine financing from slavers. In the 18th century, France was getting 20% of its income from theft and slavery. “In the 1830’s slave-grown cotton accounted for about half the value of all the exports from the United States.” Slavery does not allow for industrial development which is why the U.S. North developed industry while the South did not.
  
  When France prattled on about “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” you can be sure they were not discussing their enslaved blacks around the world. Rational Americans were upset to learn about My Lai in Vietnam, but few connected the violent dots to past U.S. slavery and brutal settler-colonialism against the Native Americans. Trade at the time was in the interest of European Capitalism and nothing else. Funny how Europeans had no religious problem seeing the theft of human beings “through warfare, trickery, banditry and kidnapping” as “trade”. Did anyone of us get taught in school that 15 to 20% of all slaves died on the journey across the Atlantic? Or of the countless slave deaths after capture before they arrived bound at the African coast? Do whites think about how many blacks also died in those pointless African wars for yet more captives? How many were killed or injured in those wars to produce the captives? Such an outflow of society could only claw at the remaining African social fabric. During this time, raiding other people’s captives had become more lucrative than gold mining. How do you develop your country through harnessing or working with nature under such circumstances? How do you even grow your food, let alone develop industry?
  
  Did you know the British forced Africans to sing: Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves, Britons never never shall be slaves”? How developed would Britons be now, if they were forced instead to be some else’s slaves for centuries? Then there were all the shitty consumer goods Europe dumped on Africa, intentionally undercutting African industry and products. As a result, “people forgot even the simple techniques of the forefathers”. Basic technological regression. No one mentions that Italians should be grateful to China for spaghetti after Marco Polo introduced them to the noodle. But many mention that Africans should be grateful to Europe for the corn and the cassava. Japan was the only non-white country to be spared. Look how England destroyed India’s vibrant cloth industry but not that of Japan. Walter tells us “it would not have been in the interest of capitalism to develop Africa” which is why state-capitalist countries of the 60’s and 70’s instead stepped in to work with Africa like China, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union. During the slave trade, one horse brought to Africa was worth 15 captives. The Portuguese basically were restricted to along the coast where their cannons were effective. Slave trading for Africans had an extra cost because whites didn’t always show up each year to buy them, due to their own wars and revolutions. African leaders were reduced to being “middlemen for European trade” during the colonial period. For Walter, “modern imperialism is inseparable from capitalism.” Arabs only exploited African labor in a “feudal context”. Liberia became a de facto colony for the U.S. because of the rubber. Firestone’s profits through buying one million acres of land at six cents an acre there, made Firestone. In fact, Firestone took 160 million dollars of rubber out of Liberia, while the Liberian government received only 8 million dollars in return.
  
  Colonel Grogan says of the Kikuyu, “We have stolen his land. Now we must steal his limbs. Compulsory labor is the corollary of our occupation of the country.” The French banned the Mandja people from hunting because it interfered with cotton cultivation for export. Europeans bought African resources like palm oil and ground nuts at crazy prices far below market value. Cadbury’s job was exploiting African cocoa workers. Lobbyists like Cadbury controlled their own government as well – a nice trick. Think Africa has always been poor? In 1952, Guinea “earned France about 5.6 million dollars (bauxite, coffee, bananas) in foreign exchange.” The U.S. got its uranium for its first atomic bomb from the Belgian Congo. Africa had plenty of Manganese, Chrome, Columbite and Copper taken also to keep western capitalism going. Soap companies like Lever began making margarine because they required the same materials: oils and fats. Donald Trump probably has enough oils and fats in him to create a whole vat of I Can’t Believe it’s not Butter.
  
  All roads and railways created by colonists, not surprisingly, led down to the sea. These were built at great human cost – no payment, just lashes. No cranes, no earth movers, just black humans forced at gunpoint by whites. How civilized. Europe’s capital accumulation comes from overseas – now we can see better how moral that was. As Walter says, Africans came into colonization with a hoe, and left with a hoe. See Africa forced to become have destructive monocultures instead of food security – Sudan & Uganda = cotton, Tanzania = sisal, Senegal & Gambia = groundnuts, Liberia = rubber, Dahomey and Nigeria = palm oil, and “two African colonies were told to grow nothing but peanuts.” When Oxfam says, save the starving children of Africa, they won’t tell you those kids are starving because of the effects of colonialism and capitalism. Kenyans didn’t have tooth decay until they were forced to adopt a western diet. Throughout Africa, the church taught the colonized the “value” of docility, humility and acceptance – the church preserved “the social relations of colonialism”. When the Mau Mau Rebellion broke out in Kenya, Britain leapt into action – they closed all the schools, because they could no longer control Kenyan minds. Think of Africa as three centuries of slavery with a chaser of one century of colonialism. “Foreign investment is the cause, not a solution to our economic backwardness. What is colonialism if it is not a system of ‘foreign investment’?” In terms of lack of development, think of Africans as needing more protein, doctors, engineers, agriculturalists, lawyers, administrators and even welders. For Africa importing experts is very expensive. Also, note that socialist countries had no part in the theft of Africa. In 1980, this book’s author Walter is assassinated by a car bomb; some clearly did not like what he had to say on behalf of the people of Africa. An amazing important book I’m super glad I finally read.
  
• 
  Justin Goodman

  Brilliantly straightforward. Rodney managed to contextualize a broad array of African histories, rebut the various racisms and imperialist chauvinisms - that are still with us today - and collate all this within a clear theory of historical patterns/trends towards African independence. Maybe my favorite choice is each chapter concluding not with a tsunami of end notes to cross check, but with further reading suggestions. It's here you see the populist spirit of the work itself. Despite being nearly half a century old at this point it's staying power is a testament to this spirit, Rodney's unpampering style, and, tragically, to how his generation's most radical were successfully suppressed by neo-colonial/neo-liberal forces (Rodney himself was killed by a car bomb 8 years after publication, in 1980).
  
  I've often seen this book paired with Eduardo Galleano's
  Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent in being a primer for its respective continent. I would recommend it if you haven't read it, though expect a very different style from Rodney's.
  
  I'm still trying to educate myself on African history and politics, so I can't recommend much there. This
  stream from the Vijay Prashad's Progressive International marking the 60th anniversary of Patrice Lumumba's assassination (the 17th) was incredibly informative for me though and I would recommend it.
• 
  Sunny

  Every single person needs to read this !!!!!!!!! Especially colonized peoples in the fight for liberation and colonizers who must be obligated to learn about the full extent of their oppressive histories
• 
  Imane

  What's there to say about this classic of post-colonial theory except that it should be mandatory reading for everyone? Although the first two chapters of the book (which counts 6) were a bit *tedious* to get through, they do the necessary job to set the scene for the range of diverse modes of life pre-triangular trade and pre-colonial capitalist exploitation in Africa. Europe and the USA didn't fill their coffers by picking up money from trees; the riches that were appropriated were done on African soil by exploited African labour under brutal conditions. Rodney does the necessary task to thoroughly outline the trajectories taken by colonial projects in Africa and how they manifested themselves over many centuries to both contribute to the capitalist system in Europe and the USA as well as its expansion as a system of oppression and extraction in Africa. Rodney also has a somewhat biting tone at times, which was very à propos (he made fun of Portugal so much that if I was the country I'd just hide in shame lmao). MANDATORY READING!
• 
  Kab

  DNF 12% Excruciatingly of another era. Starts from false premises, does not question that man must dominate nature and that progress follows a single inexorable path from hunting communalism to slave-owning states to feudalism to capitalisn to socialism. Permanent growth and producing for an anonymous market remain the aim while the summit of development is when the state accumulates the surplus. Among alarming postulations:
  
  

  However morally indefensible slavery may have been, it did serve for a while to open up the mines and agricultural plantations in large parts of Europe and notably within the Roman Empire.
• 
  Rashida

  Just read this for class. It is a political/economic commentary on capitalism from the perspective of a socialist. If you care or wonder about the socioeconomic conditions of African nations and why it is the way it is read this book- a little bit at a time.
• 
  Jerald Andrew

  First I had bought and read this book as a teenager, then I had to read it in college. Now - I found it and wanted to read it again just for myself. Changed my thinking. I am going to re-read the mis-education of the negro.
• 
  kripsoo

  في هذا الكتاب القيم يروي مؤلفه والتر رودني قصة تخلف إفريقيا عن ركب التقدم ومساهمة أوروبا الفاعلة والكبيرة في هذه النتيجة التي باتت ظاهرة للعيان ويريد والتر من وراء سرد قصة دور أوروبا في تخلف إفريقيا أن يشرح دور إفريقيا في الشؤون الدولية وذلك عن طريق الرجوع لماضيها منذ أول مملكة حتى وصلنا إلى الاستعمار الغربي الأوروبي ويريد المؤلف أن يربط بين هذا التاريخ وهذا الماضي وما يجري اليوم في إفريقيا وحالتها على الصعيد الدولي غير أنه لا بد من التنويه إلى أن المنهجية التي يوظفها والتر تنطلق من وجهة نظر اشتراكية كانت سائدة في مناطق كثيرة من العالم إبان صدور كتابه إذن الكتاب لم يخرج عن سياق النظرة الاشتراكية في التطور والتنمية فالمؤلف نادى بشكل واضح منذ بداية الكتاب بفكرة أن تنمية إفريقيا وتطورها مرهونة بالانفكاك من النظام الرأسمالي الدولي الذي كان السبب الرئيس لتخلف إفريقيا لقرون خمسة متواصلة وأكثر من ذلك كما يبين الكتاب في مقدمته وكان يأمل والتر رودني أن يصل هذا الكتاب إلى أيادي الأفارقة خاصة الذين يريدون تفحص طبيعة الاستغلال التي مورست ضدهم وضد أجدادهم وهو يعرف بشكل مطول مفهوم التخلف الذي يشكل حجز الزاوية لفهم بقية الكتاب ويتميز مفهوم التخلف بعدد من الصفات: هنا يركز رودني على نوع من المقارنة لفهم مفهوم التنمية فمناطق إفريقيا وآسيا وأمريكا اللاتينية متخلفة قياسا بأوروبا وشمال أمريكا وعدد قليل من الدول الصناعية في العالم ثانيا يتضمن مفهوم التخلف ليس فقط عدم المساواة الاقتصادية النسبي بين عدد من الدول والقارات وإنما يتضمن إضافة إلى ذلك مسألة في غاية الأهمية وهي علاقات الاستغلال الاقتصادي بين دولتين أو أكثر و في هذه الحالة يصبح المستغل (بكسر الغين) متطورا وناميا في حين يكون فيه المستغل (بفتح الغين) متخلفا وهنا يشير والتر إلى أن التخلف في دول قارة إفريقيا وآسيا وأمريكا اللاتينية واضح من خلال عدد من المؤشرات من ضمنها: كمية الفولاذ المستخدمة (وهو مؤشر لمستوى التصنيع والصناعة) الإنتاج الزراعي، معدل الوفيات بين الأطفال، سوء التغذية، وجود الأمراض التي في الغالب لا توجد في الدول المتطورة صناعيا وانتشار الأمية ويقول والتر إن من ضمن صفات التخلف الأخرى ما يمكن اعتباره عدم القدرة على التركيز على قطاعات من الاقتصاد التي يمكن لها أن تحقق نسب نمو عالية كما أن العلاقات بين مختلف القطاعات الاقتصادية هي إما غير موجودة وإما موجودة لكنها ضعيفة، ورافق ذلك تلاش للتوفير المتراكم بعد هذا التقديم المفاهيمي لمصطلح التخلف ينتقل والتر لتقديم نظرة عامة لما كان عليه حال المجتمع الإفريقي النقي والمجتمعات الإفريقية المعقدة التي كانت موجودة قبل قدوم الأوروبيين بشكل عام يكمن القول إن العائلة ورابطة الدم والقرابة هي العوامل المحددة لملكية الأرض وفي استجلاب العمال للعمل في الأرض وفي توزيع مخرجات العمل وهذا لا يتطابق على الإطلاق ونظام الإقطاع أو الرأسمالي الذي يعمل فيه عبيد الأرض أو العمال المأجورون وهم في العادة من خارج عائلة سيد الأرض أو صاحب المصنع كما يشير الكتاب في فصله الثاني إلى مظاهر أخرى في الثقافة الإفريقية قبل عام 1445 وهي الموسيقى والرقص والفن والدين ثم الدين هنا انتشر في الحياة الإفريقية كما هو الحال في مجتمعات ما قبل الإقطاع الأخرى مثل أستراليا وأفغانستان ومثل الفايكونج في الدول الإسكندنافية ويقول والتر إنه وعلى الرغم من أن إفريقيا أظهرت قدرا كبيرا من التشكيلات الاجتماعية (مثل جماعات الصيد والإقطاع والمشاعية) غير أن أغلبية المجتمعات الإفريقية قبل قدوم الأوروبيين كانت في مرحلة انتقالية من ممارسة الزراعة والصيد والرعي في مجتمعات العائلة إلى ممارسة الأنشطة نفسها في نطاق دول ومجتمعات مشابهة للإقطاع وهنا يقدم والتر عددا من الأمثلة ليوضح هذه النقطة على وجه التحديد مثل القدماء المصريين وأمثلة أخرى ولم يتردد والتر في توجيه النقد لما وصفه بأخطاء الباحثين التقليديين التي كانت تصف بروز الحضارة الأوروبية الحديثة كشيء حققه الأوروبيون بأنفسهم منفردين دون الاعتماد على أحد وبدلا من ذلك يجادل والتر في أن التجارة مع الأمم غير الأوروبية كانت المفتاح الرئيس لتحقيق الهيمنة الأوروبية فقد انخرطت أوروبا في تجارة الرقيق والعبيد منذ القرن الخامس عشر وصاعدا وكان لذلك أثر كبير في صعود الحضارة الأوروبية فقد تم توظيف العبيد في مناجم الذهب والفضة في الولايات المتحدة وإفريقيا والذهب والفضة كانا في غاية الأهمية لصناعة النقد في الاقتصاد الأوروبي المتنامي وكان لهذه الفرص الجديدة أثر كبير أيضا في فرص الاستكشاف وتراكم الثروة فالكثير من مناحي المجتمع الأوروبي والاقتصاد كان متأثرا بتجارة العبيد وهنا نشير إلى صناعة السفن والتأمين وإقامة الشركات والزراعة الرأسمالية والتكنولوجيا وإنتاج الآلات وإقامة العلاقات التجارية في أوروبا ونتيجة لهذا النوع من التجارة فقد نشأت مدن موانئ مثل ليفربول في إنجلترا وإشبيلية في إسبانيا وهي مدن أقيمت نتيجة لتجارة العبيد وارتبطت هذه المدن لاحقا بعضها ببعض وصادف ذلك بروز مراكز التصنيع وبداية الثورة الصناعية في بريطانيا ويرى والتر أن إحدى النتائج السلبية التي صاحبت تجارة العبيد هي نمو العنصرية البيضاء تجاه الأفارقة وجاء ذلك بشكل كبير كطريقة لعقلنة استغلال عمل العبيد التي اعتمدت عليه أوروبا بشكل متزايد وبالتالي جاءت فترة الاستعمار التي دفعت فيها إفريقيا أيضا ثمنا باهظا ولعبت فيه إفريقيا دورا كبيرا في تنمية وتطوير أوروبا والنظام الرأسمالي الدولي وخلال هذه الفترة الاستعمارية تورط الكثير من القطاعات الاقتصادية الأوروبية في استغلال الموارد والمصادر الإفريقية ومن ضمنها خدمات السفن والنقل والبنوك وسمح النظام الكولونيالي أيضا بنمو سريع للتكنولوجيا والمهارات في القطاعات الرئيسة الاقتصادية في مراكز الإمبرياليات الأوروبية والاستعمار منح الرأسمالية عمرا أطول وبقاء أطول في أوروبا الغربية ومثالا على التطورات التكنولوجية يمكن الإشارة إلى التطورات في المعدات الحربية لأن التنافس على المستعمرات شجع نوعا من الطرق الجديدة لشن الحروب (المدمرات والغواصات) وفي البحث العلمي وفي الشحن (الثلاجات وحاملات النفط وأنواع جديدة من التجهيزات الخاصة بالموانئ) ونتيجة لكل ذلك كان هناك تقاسم في العمل على المستوى الدولي إذ اقتصر عمل الأفارقة في المناجم ما يعني ��مان النمو والتوظيف والمهارات في الأمم الأوروبية وهناك فوائد أخرى للاستعمار تجلت في الحصول على الفن الإفريقي القيم واستخدام الجنود الأفارقة للحرب نيابة عن الشعب الأبيض على أرض إفريقيا وفي مواقع أخرى من العالم وكان للسلوك الأوروبي تجاه الأفارقة أثر كبير في تطور بل لنقل تخلف إفريقيا بشكل عام فالأثر المباشر لتجارة العبيد كانت عندما كانوا يرسلون عبر المحيط الأطلسي ما أدى إلى تراجع في المواليد ونمو السكان وهذا بدوره أثر في توافر العمل والعمال في الأسواق الإفريقية أما ما تبقى من أفارقة فقد كان الكثير منهم منهمكا في اصطياد العبيد والحصول على بضائع كان يرغب فيها الأوروبيون وهو الأمر الذي أدى إلى إهمال الصناعات المحلية سواء الزراعية أو التكنولوجية كما يجب أن ننوه إلى أن شراء التكنولوجيا الذي يعتبر طريقة أخرى لإحداث النمو في المجتمع كان غائبا في هذه الفترة بسبب طبيعة الاتصال بين الأوروبيين والأفارقة وهي طريقة لم تكن تساعد على نشر الأفكار الإيجابية والتكنولوجيا من أوروبا المتحضرة إلى إفريقيا المتخلفة و غير أن أحد أهم الآثار للتوسع في تجارة الرقيق هو تدمير الروابط الداخلية التي أقيمت في إفريقيا قبل أن تدهمهم تجارة الرقيق ويشير والتر هنا إلى أنه قبل قدوم الاستعمار كان الأفارقة يصنعون تاريخهم وتطورهم بشكل مناسب ويمكن تفسير ذلك بأن التأثير الأوروبي بقي محصورا في المناطق الساحلية وبالتالي تأثرت المنظومة الأيديولوجية والسياسية والعسكرية بشكل قليل ويعطي أمثلة كثيرة على مجتمعات بقيت تنمو بشكل مستقل مثل رواندا فكثير من هذه المجتمعات أثبتت أنها قوية ويحسب لها حساب غير أنه خلال فترة الاستعمار كانت الآلية الأساسية لعدم تطور إفريقيا هي مصادرة الفائض المنتج من قبل العامل الإفريقي وكذلك الموارد الطبيعية وإضافة إلى ذلك فإن الاستعمار كان يعني الإزالة الافتراضية للقوة السياسية الإفريقية وإعاقة مزيد من التطور والتضامن الوطني وإهمال الصناعات المحلية وعدم كفاية المرافق الصحية والفرص التعليمية وكل هذه الأمور بعضها مع بعض تسهم وأسهمت في التخلف باختصار لقد حقق رودني والتر مبتغاه في الكتاب عندما أثبت أن التدخل الأوروبي أسهم بشكل كبير فيما وصلت إليه إفريقيا اليوم فما من أمة أوروبية دخلت في إفريقيا إلا وتذوقت طعم الربح والرخاء ولكن المشكلة الرئيسة في مقاربة رودني والتر هي تأكيده الزائد على الحد المنظور الاشتراكي بخاصة بعد أن ركز على النجاحات السوفياتية التي تبدو الآن ضربا من الماضي ومستغربا كما قلل من شأن عوامل التخلف الداخلية التي تستند إلى الطريقة التي ينظم بها المجتمع نفسه ومع ذلك نقول إن الكتاب ممتاز وكتب بطريقة سهلة القراءة ومساهمة مهمة في فهم كيف آلت الأوضاع في افريقيا وكيف كان للعامل الخارجي أثر كبير في هذه الدينامية التاريخية
• 
  laurel [the suspected bibliophile]

  A must-read, although parts of it have aged (this book was written 50 years ago), some has still very much (depressingly) remained the same.
• 
  Irene

  The next time I hear someone wonder why we haven't been visited by advanced alien civilisations I'm just going to stare into their eyes and slowly hand them this book without saying anything.
  
  Brilliantly structured and detailed, Rodney paints a vivid picture of pre-colonial Africa from a cultural, political and economic perspective, with an emphasis on the pre-capitalist economic structures that existed, followed by the arrival of Europeans and the absolute horror than ensued. If you're interested in anti-racist literature, this will give you some much needed context for how the world works and why it got that way.
• 
  T S

  This is rightfully considered a classic.
  
  Walter Rodney's examination of African underdevelopment, and the resultant development of Europe, is extremely well-done and very convincing. Crucially, he explores the fact that Africa was on a developmental trajectory of its own, both prior to the period of the slave trade and to colonization. This is a radical argument in itself, considering the vast attempts colonialists went to in order to paint Africa as "the dark continent" where history did not take place. He also expertly refutes some of the, sadly still extant, arguments that apologists for imperialism sometimes make.
  
  There were times when I wished that Rodney had included footnotes and more quotations considering how impactful it was when he would refer to government reports and quotes, especially in the last chapter. I also felt that the book could maybe have been broken up into more chapters, as it clocks in at 6 chapters for about 350 pages.
  
  At the same time, however, when I look back at the book I'm astonished at just how much ground Rodney covers. The economic, cultural, political, and intellectual aspects of underdevelopment are all explored in great detail and Rodney's examination of the looting of Africa is multi-faceted. I also have to say I was really impressed at how simply and effectively he communicates concepts like the means of production, superstructures, Lenin's theory of imperialism, class stratification, etc. I'm hard pressed to think about where I've seen historical materialism done this well, too. It really is impressive being able to communicate sophisticated arguments like that, and I expect the accessibility of the text is part of why it is so famous.
  
  I do also have to note that the Verso Books Edition that I read was completely littered with errors and it became really distracting (and kind of frustrating), especially in the middle of the book. There were spelling mistakes, missing periods, nonsensical comma placement, etc. and I checked it against other copies of the book which didn't have those problems.
  
  In sum, a great book. Despite the gravity of the crimes perpetrated against Africa both before and after formal colonization, Rodney manages to end on an optimistic note. When the peoples of Africa came together to win their independence, they had once more stepped onto the stage of history. Despite neo-colonialism and the continued deprivations on the continent, this presented a significant step forward and, he argues, is the prelude to making a new future.
• 
  kripsoo

  A historiographical approach to the detriment of African plight and continued exploitation Very relevant today and good for anyone searching for suppressed historical truths A Book for all who seek to know the truth about African nations oppression and subjugation by the Secret government behind the Western powers Europe and other developed nations of the Western world are handgloves through which the globalist operate to keep nations impoverished and in debt Africa was the experiment and now the same power is now turning around to under develop the rest of the civilized world so as to usher in the One World government
• 
  T

  Such a shame that this book is edited so poorly. Please do not buy the Verso print edition of this classic ...
• 
  Grace

  This is probably the most important book I've ever read and possibly ever will. It was recommended to me by a colleague who said that one of his college professors gave it to him and it changed his life—I can definitely see why. I'm so thankful to have colleagues who are willing to share their ideas with me.
  
  
  Walter Rodney was a Guyanese activist and academic who was assassinated by the Guyanese government in 1980. In this incredible work, he provides an in-depth analysis of the African continent before, during, and slightly after colonialism. His claim is that not only did the colonial capitalist powers strangle development in Africa, but they also reversed the trajectory of African development AND, in doing so, directly transferred significant wealth and progress to Europe. In other words, this is a zero-sum game in which Western powers have benefitted as much as African countries and people have suffered losses.
  
  Dense and academic, it took me a while to get through it but worth every line given how much I learned. It was my first time to read about pre-colonial African history. The short section on Rwanda shed so much light on current social and cultural norms in the country, leaving me with a sense of awe at this small, homogenous country with such a closely shared history.
  
  The spread and depth of the horrors of pre-colonial slavery and trade domination, colonialism itself, and its contemporary manifestations were both enlightening and overwhelming. There was/is so much I didn’t truly understand or grasp or grasp the intensity and expanse of. A lot of the operations by colonial/super powers that Rodney mentioned are ongoing today; neocolonialism is very much alive. This book illustrates how the present is entirely and exactly an accumulation of the past.
  
  A lot of discussions were sparked with friends in Kigali while I was reading and since, and to those who have engaged with and/or pushed back against me, I am very grateful.
  
  In some quarters, it has often been thought wise to substitute the term "developing" for "underdeveloped." One of the reasons for so doing is to avoid any unpleasantness which may be attached to the second term, which might be interpreted as meaning underdeveloped mentally, physically, morally, or in any other respect. Actually, if "underdevelopment" were related to anything other than comparing economies, then the most underdeveloped country in the world would be the U.S.A., which practices external oppression on a massive scale, while internally there is a blend of exploitation, brutality, and psychiatric disorder.
  
  In the short run, European racism seemed to have done Europeans no harms, and they used those erroneous ideas to justify their further domination of non-European people in the colonial epoch. But the international proliferation of bigoted and unscientific racists ideas was bound to have its negative consequences in the long run. When Europeans put millions of their brothers (Jews) into ovens under the Nazis, the chickens were coming home to roost. Such behavior inside of the "democratic" Europe was not as strange as it is sometimes made out to be. There was always a contradiction between the elaboration of democratic ideas inside Europe and the elaboration of authoritarian and thuggish practices by Europeans with respect to Africans. When the French Revolution was made in the name of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," it did not extend to black Africans who were enslaved by France in the West Indies and the Indian Ocean. Indeed, France fought against the efforts of those people to emancipate themselves, and the leaders of their bourgeois revolution said plainly that they did not make it on behalf of black humanity.
  
  So long as there is political power, so long as people can be mobilized to use weapons, and so long as a society has the opportunity to define its own ideology and culture, then the people of that society have some control over their destinies, in spite of constraints such as those imposed as the African continent slipped into orbit as a satellite of capitalist Europe. After all, although historical development is inseparable from material conditions and the state of technology, it is also partially controlled by a people's consciousness at various stages.
  
  "We have been oppressed a great deal, we have been exploited a great deal, and we have been disregarded a great deal." — The Arusha Declaration, 1967
• 
  Claire

  3.5 stars. Everyone with a Western-centric education should consider reading this book. Yes it is dated and flawed in numerous ways, however it meticulously conveys a truth that is unfortunately still often ignored even 50 years later: The riches of the Enlightenment in Europe did not come for free, and they certainly don’t prove any intrinsic superiority of the West. Instead, they were built on the exploitation of a continent (and beyond), both through slavery and colonialism.
  
  Rodney argues (using a Marxist analysis) that Europe was able to exploit Africa because there were slight differences that put Europe in a capitalist phase while Africa was not, so that Africa was not equipped to compete and the differences blew up until the gap was unbridgeable. He is thorough in his analysis and I learned a lot about everything from the internal slave trade within different regions in Africa, up to European soap monopolies that were built on African resources.
  
  It isn’t an easy read. In addition to being dense and technical, the prose is often long-winded and repetitive. Some maps and illustrations would really help (hopefully those will be included in the new edition coming out in October 2018, which will also include an introduction by Angela Davis). I found it useful to refer to Marx and Fanon for context.
  
  The book has numerous flaws. For all its long in-depth analyses, there were also plenty of one sentence asserted comments that seemed very overblown, unsupported, outside Rodney’s scope of knowledge, and/or just generally problematic. To give just a few examples: He erases Native Americans, claims to explain the cause of the Holocaust in terms of colonialism, and gives a one line economic explanation for the Civil War. He also describes the Americas as as having barely emerged from the hunting stage (no mention of e.g. the Mayans or the Aztecs) right after a long chapter combating misconceptions and clarifying the extent of state formation in Africa before colonialism. The list goes on.
  
  As other reviewers have noted, possibly the biggest flaw is Rodney’s uncritical praise of the Soviet Union and communism. I wonder if perhaps information about the atrocities committed by Stalin had not reached him at this time and place.
  
  Despite the flaws, the book has really deepened the way I think about colonialist exploitation and I look forward to the new edition next fall.
• 
  Tariq Mahmood

  The book is invaluable as it is written from a black African's viewpoint without too much resentment. The arguments are well presented and I found them difficult to deny. The only real issue for me the socialist leaning of the author, he seemed to value social systems a lot more than history has demonstrated.
  
  We know that the Nazis were fascists and treated all non-Aryan races with deep contempt, therefore very rightly blamed by history, but why have the European nations gotten off Scot free for their ill treatment of the black African race? Is it because maybe they haven't lost like the Nazis? After all history is written and controlled by the victors, which if true means that the model of subjugation started by enslaving the Africans will continue indefinitely, because if Europe has benefited and developed by following a policy of exploiting poor African states, than why should they change their winning strategy? Unfortunately the opposite is true as well. How can the long suffering African nations break out of this Stockholm syndrome without firstly the accused being penalized followed by long sessions of psychiatric sessions.
• 
  Paige McLoughlin

  I mean it was written in the 1970s shortly after the wave of decolonization and except for changes in the cold war between core rich countries and the rise of China and its investment in Africa not much of the relation between the rich core countries and the periphery (again excluding China) hasn't changed much in Africa except again the Aids crisis and the Debt crisis which has only worked to deteriorate the situation since the shoots of optimism appeared in the decolonization era. The problems described by African underdevelopment and capitalist predatory behavior in Africa remains unchecked and has gotten worse. 40 odd years ago this book was challenging but had optimism the problems are still there but now some rich countries are not so optimistic either. I dunno. We know what needs to be done at least those of us who don't buy the party line of capital do but how to effectively challenge that party line move ahead hasn't gone anywhere for now.
• 
  Jenia

  This was very good. Very matter-of-fact about a dark topic. I listened on audio and feel like I got the gist of all the arguments, but I'd like to reread on paper eventually, to understand the details better.
• 
  Andrew

  It's such a shame to me that too many postcolonial ideas at the present moment are hopelessly romantic and boil everything down to ahistorical notions of a West full of BAD THINGS and a Global South full of INDIGENOUS WISDOM, without considering the complexity and economic conditions that undergird it all – little more than melanin theory with an academic pedigree. If you want to know what honest postcolonial thinking looks like – rooted in Marxist dialectic, showing how the processes of imperialism and colonialism occur within the capitalist order, and how it is the cruel logic of markets, based on a gentleman's agreement between colonial militaries, multinational enterprises, and local compradors that dictates the exploitation of the poorest people. Granted, Rodney was writing in the '70s, and he suffers a bit from an excessive faith in the Leninist project, but that's my only major reservation. The rest is straightforward and devastating.
• 
  Wamuyu Thoithi

  Whew. What a read. It is a must-read for any Africanist. Many have written comprehensive reviews so I will give my high level thoughts only.
  
  Rodney is an excellent dialectical thinker that was way ahead of his time. He begins the book by making the distinction between “developing” countries and “underdeveloped” countries. He does not use the term “developing” to describe Africa, but rather “underdeveloped” because Africa was on its own path of development before interference from capitalist Europe and the USA. He argues, and I agree, that the underdevelopment of Africa is a direct result of the interference of Europe. And the development of Europe a direct result of the exploitation of Africa’s human and natural resources. He also points out that development as we know it, is a capitalist definition.
  
  Rodney examines pre-colonial Africa and slave trade(both transAtlantic and Indian Ocean), colonial Africa and post-colonial Africa to build his argument. He explores agriculture, industrialization, education, the spread of Christianity and Islam, and other issues. He offers various historical facts, examples and analogies to back his points.
  
  My only criticism is that I was left asking “so what?” We know the negative social and economic impact of colonialism, what next? What can we as Africans do to develop our states (that are actually artificial and created by Europeans but it is what it is)? The postscript by A.M. Babu attempted to offer some solutions by mentioning other underdeveloped countries that have developed themselves. Babu makes brief mention of Albania and South Korea having production strategies for internal growth rather than for export and global markets as a solution, but barely scratches the surface. I suppose that is a whole separate book.
  
  All in all, excellent read. Highly recommend.
• 
  Steffi

  So what’s not such a great feeling is when you read a masterpiece and the author was actually younger than you when he wrote it. At least Marx was 50 or so when Capital (Vol I) was published (so get onto it if you haven’t yet 😊 Yeah, so this is what other people do in their free time. I watch Love Island or watch stand-up comedy on YouTube.
  
  On a much less narcissistic note, I should have read this 1972 book ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’ by Walter Rodney about 20 years ago. Every high school student should read this in history class. Every aid worker should receive this upon entering our honourable profession. Thank god VERSO republished the book last year (with a new foreword by Angela Davis) so it entered my radar. Contrary to everything you’ll most likely ever read about poverty and ‘development’, African poverty is not ‘natural’ but a direct product of colonial and imperial extraction from the continent. Duh, I know. But what’s important to remember is that the 500 years of plundering Africa continue to this day. With Ethiopia ‘opening up’ its economy, I can’t event keep track of the western trade delegations with the Volkswagens, General Motors and the lesser known multinationals (last week it was Macron with a bunch of French multinationals) coming to Africa to expatriate largely tax free profits out of Africa. The wondering another ten years down the track, how come the continent is still poor. Yea, my dear Dutch flower farms and textile factories, how come people are still poor when you pay them US$ 27 per month!
  
  I also love Rodney’s language ‘scholar activist’ nowadays most academics are unreadable, sterile and aloof. This book, like Fanon’s, is full of anger and passion (maybe because he was only 29 when he wrote it 😊
  
• 
  Steven Berbec

  This is a history lesson all of us in the West must give ourselves to. The legacy and work that Rodney has left behind is still blazing and still waiting for a people to take up the torch and set ablaze the hearts of men who are still being exploited and caught up in the myths of development. After reading the post-script, I felt responsible and would like to believe I have been making my way toward this responsibility, but ever so slowly—thoroughly.
  
  Considering where I am today, it is of no coincidence that I would be in Tanzania and stumbling upon Dr. Rodney's works. For a moment I felt affirmed in the work we hope to do. But of course, it must always begin first with the welfare of the people. It isn't about my future anymore. It feels as though I have come from the future to warn them there is nothing there worth losing your soul over. And so we return to the beginning, to the people, those we have exploited and left behind to depend on foreign aid. We must rip off the old band aids and begin again sitting with the wounds we have caused. Healing comes with time, not money.
• 
  Whitlaw Tanyanyiwa Mugwiji

  A must read for Africa's leaders and its people. In this book, Walter Rodney, uses historical materialism to explain the nature of Africa's current underdevelopment and economic backwardness.
  
  " To know the present we must look into the past and to know the future we must look into the past and the present". This is the essence of the book and trust me, the analysis is profound and an added advantage is that it is clear and concise.