Visit our partner site: Marx & Philosophy Society, Visit our partner site: Marx & Philosophy Review of Books, https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/16990_how-europe-underdeveloped-africa-by-walter-rodney-reviewed-by-tony-mckenna/, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License, ‘The Jewish Question: History of a Marxist Debate’ by Enzo Traverso reviewed by Igor Shoikhedbrod, ‘Finding Ilyenkov: How a Soviet Philosopher Who Stood Up for Dialectics Continues to Inspire’ by Corinna Lotz reviewed by Dom Taylor, ‘Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts’ by Max Haiven reviewed by John Thompson, ‘Ecology and Revolution: Herbert Marcuse and the Challenge of a New World System Today’ by Charles Reitz reviewed by Javier Sethness. Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2017. © Marx & Philosophy Society 2020    Most importantly of all Rodney’s systematic unfurling of all these processes decisively dispels the enduring myth that – despite its brutalities – colonialism nevertheless yielded a progressive modernisation of the continent. Book review:How Europe underdeveloped Africa: By Walter Rodney 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.

Part of the gold in the Americas would then be used to purchase spices and silks from the Far East. After digesting this one: read a few about China's work in Africa. This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. The true number is certainly far greater. Excellent for students and scholars in African History and relationship that existed between Africa and Europe to present day it's a fascinating read. The consequences were stark.

Therefore there was what can be called “technological arrest” or stagnation or even regression…. Review of Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa Part 3/3 (llco.org) “Capital was constantly in motion from the metropole to some part of the dependencies, from colonies to other colonies (via the metropoles), from one metropole to another, and from colony to metropole. ISBN 9781788731188, Tony is a novelist and philosopher, author of Art, Literature and Culture from a Marxist …, In the first section of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa Walter Rodney treats us to an image of Africa and its peoples before the horror of the transatlantic slave trade was visited upon them. window.dojoRequire(["mojo/signup-forms/Loader"], function(L) { L.start({"baseUrl":"mc.us18.list-manage.com","uuid":"07f75c58e86a14c66be62bd77","lid":"cd8f7aac3b","uniqueMethods":true}) }) But the 10 million figure neither takes into account the number of people (captured slaves) who died on the journey from the inland to the great ports of West Africa and nor does it account for the number of those who died in the slaving wars which were facilitated by European commercial interests. For the … Rodney depicts the process with a combination of historical pathos and trenchant statistical research, peppered with many revealing incidents and examples. Once individual states had been overwhelmed, land and resources were sold off at bargain basement prices. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.

When European powers grew as a result of the profits from trade, they then carved Africa into its current state and entered the continent to force more and more production of things that would increase profit for the western markets. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Verso, New York and London, New edition 2018.

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Many of the Africans who had served in the centuries before as the intermediaries facilitating the import and export of goods to and from Europe, were already fluent in European languages and already tethered to European commercial interests. In any event, Rodney’s description of the great civilisations of old Africa is one which combines high culture, technological innovation, city building, art and education – with glittering powerful elites and ruthless aristocratic dynasties and more often than not the intensive and debilitating exploitation of those at the bottom. 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. Your email address will not be published.

This book left me further convinced in the concept of reparations, not just for slavery, but for the destruction of an entire continent and all the people that came from there in the last 500 years.

The possibilities for the development of technology, the education of the work force, the creation of a modern urban working class, the integration of communities, the development of a welfare state – all failed to transpire: ‘in other words, capitalism in the form of colonialism failed to perform in Africa the tasks which it had performed in Europe in changing social relations and liberating the forces of production.’ (260) The only slight qualification to this exists in the form of those technologies which were integral to transporting goods in and out of the continent. The concept of metropole and dependency automatically came into existence when parts of Africa were caught up in the web of international commerce.’ (87) European traders and merchants were able to ‘bamboozle’ African rulers of a ‘certain status and authority’ with their luxury wares so that the latter provided more and more slaves and ‘even began … to raid outside their societies as well as to exploit internally by victimizing some of their own subjects.’ (91) Thus the success of the transatlantic slave system depended on some level of collaboration between European commercial interests and African elites. His book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa remains a classic that must be carefully studied by activists and scholars today. For European economic development, however, the situation couldn’t have been more different: The African contribution to European capitalist growth extended over such vital sectors as shipping, insurance, the formation of companies, capitalist agriculture, technology, and the manufacture of machinery … the French Saint-Malo fishing industry was revived by the opening up of markets in the French slave plantations; while the Portuguese in Europe depended heavily on dyes like indigo, camwood, Brazil wood, and cochineal brought from Africa and the Americas. 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.

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