How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

by Walter Rodney

Book Overview

The classic work of political, economic, and historical analysis, powerfully introduced by Angela Davis

In his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading movements in North America, South America, the African continent, and the Caribbean. In each locale, Rodney found himself a lightning rod for working class Black Power. His deportation...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1788731182
• ISBN13: 9781788731188
• Release Date: November 2018
• Publisher: Verso
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Few Better Books on Africa's Colonial Experience

Colonialism f@#*ed up Africa, big time, and this legacy keeps Africa f@#*ed up to this day. This is Rodney's bottom line in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, which is essential reading providing historical perspective for understanding the power relationships imbedded in the current international economic architecture. With meticulous precision, Rodney examines economic development in pre-colonial African society, and its demise under European colonists' rape of the continent. Parts of the book are rather dry, but it is rich in detail and analysis.

A masterpiece

An exceptionally well-written account of facts and historic events that contibutes validity to Walter Rodney's case. Clearly an enormous amount of research was done for this analysis to be as clear cut and decisive as it illustrated. A fantastic piece of armor for any student or intellectual of African/World History. We were so captivated by this book that we have made it a point to relay its information to all that we know and have even given it as a gift to many of our friends and family menbers world wide.

a powerful, vital and essential book

There just is not any other book that will tell you what Rodney does in this one. No European historian is willing to admit to all the outrages Europe has inflicted upon Africa over the past 500 years. No capitalist historian either. So here is Walter Rodney, a Guianese Marxist to tell this agonizing history while holding nothing back. He really makes you feel it, this is a very intense book, you don't want to read it before bedtime or you will not get to sleep. I think you need to buy it, because you can not read it fast straight through, not if you care about Africa and Africans, and if colonial exploitation and slavery get you mad. You're going to be gnashing your teeth with rage all the way through this infuriating recitation of rape, pillage, robbery, slavery and every kind of imaginable injustice. In the end you might want to say oh that Rodney what do you expect from a Marxist. OK try it. But now you have to tell us what he said that's not true. And you can't. It really was and is that bad. And everyone who is a part of European/ Western civilization needs to know it.