How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Development in human society is a many-sided process..." (more)
Key Phrases: interlacustrine zone, economic partition, capitalist metropoles, West Africa, East Africa, South Africa (more...)

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Howard University Press; Revised edition (November 1981)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0882580965
• ISBN-13: 978-0882580968
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #146,401 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Essential to Understanding the Creation of the 3rd World, December 25, 2003

By	doc peterson (Portland, Oregon USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

In _How Europe Underdeveloped Africa_, Walter Rodney convincingly argues that much of the "Third World" is a product of European Imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Several points are made in his agrument. Among them are the arbitrary borders established by the colonial powers for their convience, with utter disregard for the indigenous people, their histories or past animosities. (The result? Violence in places like Rwanda, for example.) Rodney also points out that with the European conquest of Africa, the vast natural resources of the continent were - and still are being - plundered, from West African oil, to South African diamonds, to mineals like bauxite and copper on the interior. With this in mind, the infrasructures the European created (roads, ports, cities, transportation and power grids) were designed exclusively for the removal of these resources in as quick and efficient manner as possible.

For me the most significant agrument Rodney made, however, was the political legacy of European colonialism - that Africans, after nearly 100 years of economic exploitation and political repression (they had no say in the political dealings of their homeland, mind you), the Europeans up and left with little preparation or training for the maitainance of the economic and political infrastructure. No wonder there is so much political unrest, economic uncertainty, wide spread poverty and disease.

I give it 4 stars because of the strength and obvilious passion Rodney had for his subject matter, and for making an excellent argument. I cannot give it 5, however, because the book is not without its flaws. For example, the Africans are not held accountable for THEIR role in the continuing underdevelopment of the continent - Africa remains tremendously rich in resources; only now are the Africans beginning to manage and control the export of these to their advantage. Still, a highly recommended book.

37 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Horrible slander in FIVE REVIEWS!!!, November 26, 2004

By	Chike "Chike" (Chicago, IL/Toronto, ON) - See all my reviews

I beg of you, Amazon.com shopper, in deciding whether or not to get this book, pay attention to the reviews where it is implied that Brother Rodney blew himself up (there are five in total).

That's right - I said "pay attention", as opposed to ignore. You will see the depraved way in which some people oppose anyone whose beliefs tend toward Marxism and communism.

If you buy this extremely important book, it is true that you will be struck by Rodney's misplaced optimism about socialist countries and the way the world would develop in the future. Of course, that doesn't take away from the book's importance as far as exposing the historical effect of European imperialism.

But back to the horribly disrespectful slander - Rodney, who worked in his homeland (Guyana) against the forces that would keep people divided by race, was assassinated and it is thought that the government was behind it. He was picking up a walkie-talkie from a person who infiltrated the progressive political party he had started, and it was a bomb - so when he tested it out, it blew up. His brother was in the car with him but survived.

Walter Rodney is an inspiration to anyone who wants to see more justice and freedom in the world. He is a role model for intellectuals, activists, and people of all walks of life. His memory is important to many people around the world who know his true significance. Regardless of whether or not you agree with him ideologically, it is next to impossible to disagree with his goals (truth and freedom).

It should disgust you like it disgusts me that people would spread slanderous and cold-hearted misinformation about one of the most tragic events in Caribbean political history: the killing of Walter Rodney.

52 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Classic for all time, February 25, 2000

By	A. A Agbali "Attah" (Missouri, United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The late Guyanese writer, Walter Rodney had left us his great insights regarding the reasons for the underdevelopment of the African continent. His work finds equal footing with those of Frantz Fanon and to an extent that of the late Brazilian author and social activist, Paulo Freire in attempting to provide a critical insight, and a gainful analysis to the situation and reasons for the poverty on the African continent. This analysis, whether one agrees with its conclusions or not provides a means towards looking at the stalk realities of African underdevelopment. Rodney thesis that the trans-atlantic slave trade diminished the African manpower to attain development cannot be easily pushed under the carpet. Development is how a people within the means available to them, within their eco-context utilize their knowledge for the good of the totality.When their people is afflicted with disease or mass uprooting there is bound to be both a biological and social ripple effects that would affect both the pace and nature of development. It is here that we realize that Rodney's proposition underlines a crucial factor in explaining the reasons for the African state. The comparative examples used from various societies within Africa and beyond to support forcefully and assertively his thereotical claim shows a well researched critical mind at work. The book relates that the reality of underdevelopment can only be tied to two events, namely European colonialism and the capitalist orgy for profit, through the use of cheap labor (slavery) and through capitalist exploitation of the labor through the marketing and importation of African cash crop resources to Europe and the New World. Critically, there are areas of Rodney's thesis that could be radically challenged but given his own family and personal orientation towards the Marxist worldview and workers movement, one cannot deny him of his place in history as a critical scholar, simply because his reasoning might differ from our own.We must also realize that since 1972 when the book was first published a lot has changed globally. Yet we cannot negate the fact that the reactionary agents of colonial extension have reduced Africa to the state which would please their bourgeois self-interests and those of their Western mentors and patrons. There are still strifes and crises that only goes to reproduce the situation Rodney described within a circumvented form. In this way Rodney's legacy is eternal. What else can one say of a man who remained faithful to the ideal of freedom for the poor- mainly those of African descents both at home and in the diaspora- denigrated by colonial and neo-colonial establishments. For this he dearly paid for it with his life, following his bombardment by the government's reactionary forces of Guyana. It is his life testimony to the freedom of all oppressed people that gives a validity to his writings. His legacy remains with us to this day as one of the classic text explaining the causal relationship between of what happens in abstraction to what does happen in fact. A number of times we can be wrong but the insight is never lost.But that we are right and Rodney is wrong is not even the matter. We can only take a stand when we pick the book the shelf and knows exactly what he was talking about. It is a book for all, just pick one today and peruse it critically.Rodney lives eternally in this books as his other books, and in this way his spirit haunts the violent forces that create poverty and fear in the minds of the public without succeeding to halt the peoples' struggles. Aluta continua, Bon voyage!