How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Although written in 1972 – and the language is somewhat dated – this book seems to hold up very well and still offers a compelling explanation of the relationship between underdeveloped countries and the capitalist countries.
Walter Rodney takes the view that Africa and, by extension, other colonized countries need a radical departure from the international capitalist system to develop in a way that meets their own needs and priorities. While heavily focussed on the economic side of development, he also emphasizes the destruction of the former African social systems, and the need to create new social structures to build a fulfilling egalitarian society.
Helpfully for me, Rodney begins with a historical overview of Africa before show more colonialism, highlighting the continent's transition from communalism to early class-based societies. He explores various regions, such as Egypt, Ethiopia, Nubia and Zimbabwe, and describes their varied societal structures and economic activities. In his description, Africa's pre-contact state was generally transitional, moving towards more advanced class-based societies.
In looking at the impact of European contact, Rodney shows a variety of uneven consequences on political, military and ideological spheres. He describes in detail the economic and social consequences of slave capturing and trading, and how it came to an end when the needs of modernized industry required compliant, not forced, workers.
The end of the slave trade, however, marked a shift in focus to the exploitation of Africa's resources and a new form of colonialism. Rodney argues that European economic growth and dominance relied heavily on resources extracted from Africa, perpetuating a cycle of exploitation.
The late 19th century period of colonization facilitated the export of surplus profits to Europe, leading to the expropriation of African land and minerals. The colonial period saw the establishment, aided by African intermediaries, of monopolies, extractive practices and the integration of African economies into a global capitalist system for the benefit of Europe and North America.
Rodney identifies many impacts of colonialism, including the destruction of traditional states, the undermining of women's roles, ethnic divisions, monoculture and a limited and exploitative education system. He argues that colonial development hindered Africa's progress by preventing the formation of local industries and perpetuating dependency on Western markets. He also rejects the argument that Africa benefited by colonialization through development, pointing out that education, transportation, financial structures and other developments focused solely on creating conditions for profitable development by the colonizing countries. These systems inhibited the building of vigorous indigenous societies.
In the postscript, Rodney underscores the need for Africa's true development to focus on internal needs rather than conforming to the exploitative relationships of the international capitalist market. Rodney says that Africa needs to reject Western-centric approaches in order to address its own internal priorities for genuine progress. “[Exceptional leaders] were those who either completely rejected the worldview of capitalism, or at least stuck honestly to those idealistic tenets of bourgeois ideology, such as individual freedom – and, through experience, they could come to realize that the ideals remained myths in a society based on the exploitation of man by man.”
This book gave me a much clearer view of how international development works under capitalism, with plenty of concrete examples and statements of principles. While it is based in a particular history and a Marxist analysis, it seems to apply well to contemporary situations, including the colonialism of settlers in North America. The forms of (under)development available to Indigenous peoples here in Canada continue to benefit the colonizers and small numbers of leaders who are willing to continue under capitalist economic development. As in Africa, American Indigenous peoples need to identify their own priorities. show less

Very interesting and informative analysis of the processes through which capitalism generated colonialism, and that in turn manufactured underdevelopment in Africa.

This is a very dense, and at times slightly scattered read, so it requires a lot of undivided attention (which I didn't necessarily always have while listening to the audiobook). The book is also a bit dated now, so some points would need updating.

Still, an illuminating read.

Sadly my copy of this is corrupted so unreadable after page 99. The first hundred pages or so indicate that this is a very important book, albeit one delivered in quite dry prose. Worth coming back to.

If you’re interested in the history of African colonization, you should definitely include this book in your reading list. It follows the resurgence in African history in the 1960s (“resurgence” meaning it was finally taken more seriously by academia) and the recent African independence movement in the 20th century. I’m fairly familiar with African Francophone history but am not an expert in 20th century world history, even so there are a couple of points I don’t think hold up.

The general thesis of the book I think is spot on: colonialism was fueled by capitalism, and capitalism was fueled by colonialism, especially colonialism in Africa. Capitalism was just a budding concept when colonialism began, so it is impossible to say show more how one might have developed without the other. That being said, I don’t think socialist and communist countries are innocent parties in colonialism. Dr. Rodney mentions that North Korea should be an example to newly independent countries, and though I don’t know much about North Korea in the 70s, and even if North Korea is significantly less colonialist than more capitalist countries, it certainly fails any test of humanitarianism today. Similarly, Dr. Rodney praises China’s lack of exploitation of Africa. I’m not sure if that was true in the 70s, but today’s Belt and Road Initiative makes clear that even socialist China is more than willing to exploit developing countries to make a profit.

Even if you agree with socialist ideas, I think the book goes a little far in glorifying socialism as anti-colonialism. I think Dr. Rodney is dead on right that capitalism is inherently linked in many ways to exploitation and colonialism (either in flag or economics), and the book is worth ready even only as a historic work in itself. This laid a lot of groundwork for future studies of colonialism and the impact it continues to have on modern Africa. show less

I didn't notice this was such an old book when I added it to my list, but reading the history of the author beforehand made me want to read it even more. I think we can pretty much grasp what this book is about from the title, but this goes into great detail about the specific ways European countries exploited the labor and resources of African countries to leave them forever developing, or underdeveloped. The histories of different regions of Africa where families, tribes, and governments were doing their own form of economics and politics was fascinating. But if you aren't already doing capitalism that leaves you open to be exploited by the capitalists who have more resources than you. I would love to read a follow-up from the last show more fifty years now. show less

The Guyanan intellectual Walter Rodney wrote this book directly after the 1960s wave of African independence declarations, to show why Africa was so underdeveloped compared to the 'First World', and who was to blame for this. A consistently intelligent and politically involved Marxist thinker, Rodney was one of the second generation of black socialists to write about African issues, after the tradition of CLR James and Eric Williams, the former of whom tutored Rodney. "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" is probably Rodney's magnum opus of popular science, aimed at a general public, and very accessible and informative.

Rodney describes in chronological sequence the development of Africa as a continent and the way in which the Europeans show more interfered with it. Going from the earliest African empires and states and their social relations, via the first wave of slave-trading, to full-blown colonialism, Rodney shows us how Europeans consistently attacked, pillaged, exploited, suppressed, enslaved, divided and discriminated against Africans, and the enormous impact the various stages of slavery and colonialism had in destroying the indigenous opportunities for coming out of feudalism into capitalist and industrialized societies. It is truly remarkable, given how short a time Africa has had to develop on its own as a modern society, how quickly African states have been able to modernize, and how strong the resilience of the various African peoples is to the enormous destruction they have had to endure. Rodney shows us all this with excellent writing and sensible use of 'bourgeois' sources, allowing the interested layman to gain all the necessary broad background information on the history of European involvement in Africa.

Of necessity, the book is sometimes rather annoyingly concise and vague about the specifics of colonial policies, destruction of early indigenous development etc., things about which one would want to know more. Rodney provides a reading list for more information at the end of every chapter, but since this book is from the 1960s, it is dubious whether such lists are still useful considering the improvements made in radical scholarship on Africa since. The timing of the book also makes it such that there is practically nothing on African states since independence, as most independence declarations had happened only shortly before its publication. Moreover, Rodney is very saccharine about the influence of the 'socialist' states such as the USSR and China on Africa, which he exclusively paints in positive terms. Certainly the Leninists have had a vastly better influence on African development than any Western nation ever has, but the USSR and China had their own interests to defend in Africa as well, and were not there purely for humanitarian purposes, as Rodney sometimes makes it seem. Nonetheless, this is a good general book on the legacy of European destruction in Africa, and it thoroughly refutes all the common arguments in defense of colonialism in that continent. show less

An extremely well-researched text detailing the effects on African people and societies of their asymmetrical relationship with European states and capitalists starting in the 16th century.

So much so, that it was somewhat hard for me to read. There were a lot of numbers, figures, and specific anecdotes which clearly were important for backing up his argument, but slowed down my reading of the book. Regardless, I took a lot out of it. I feel like I can explain how Western European states and investors contributed to the suffering of Africans and the relative poverty they face now compared to wealthier societies and more powerful states.

All that said, the author is a Marxist-Leninist. This might just be the first book I've read that show more speaks positively of East Germany. show less