RODNEY, Walter
How Europe
Underdeveloped Africa
Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, London &
Dar-es-Salaam 1972
CONTENTS
Preface.
I. Some Questions on Development.
What
is Development.
What
is Underdevelopment.
II. How Africa Developed before the Coming of
the Europeans, up to the Fifteenth Century.
A
General Overview. Some Concrete Examples. Conclusions.
III. Africa's Contribution to European
Capitalist Development — The Pre-Colonial Period.
How
Europe Became the Dominant Section of a World-Wide Trade System.
Africa's
Contribution to the Economy & Beliefs of Early Capitalist Europe.
IV. Europe and the Roots of African
Underdevelopment to 1865.
The
European Slave Trade as a Basic Factor in African Underdevelopment.
Technical
Stagnation & Distortion of the African Economy in the Pre-Colonial Epoch.
Continuing
Politico-Military Developments in Africa, 1550 to 1585.
The
Coming of Imperialism and Colonialism.
V. Africa's Contribution to the Capitalist
Development of Europe — The Colonial Period.
Expatriation
of African Surplus and Colonialism.
The
Strengthening of the Technological & Military Aspects of Colonialism.
VI. Colonialism as a System for Underdeveloping
Africa.
The
Supposed Benefits of Colonialism for Africa.
Negative
Character of the Social, Political and Economic Consequences.
Education
for Underdevelopment.
Development
by Contradiction.
Postscript by A.M. Babu, former Minister of
Economic Affairs and Development Planning (Tanzania).
1. Walter Rodney was a West Indian Marxist
historian from Guyana, assassinated (victim of a bomb) in 1982. He is best
known for How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, a book reprinted twice and
published by three different publishers in U.K., Africa and U.S.A.
respectively.
The book has been widely read by university
teachers and students, especially in Anglophone Africa and no doubt in those
universities of the U.S.A. where African Studies are popular. Rodney spent some
years lecturing in the University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania.
2. The book owes its popularity to its powerful
and eloquent denunciations of the injustices inflicted upon Africa by Europe in
the period 1500 to 1960, that is, from the time of the first regular contacts
of Europeans (the Portuguese and then the Spaniards) with Black Africa until
the end of the colonial period, if not beyond (i.e. the so-called neo-colonial
era). The atrocities committed against Africans during the notorious
trans-Atlantic slave trade (from the early 16th century to the middle of the
19th century) are a major feature of the book, and this trade in human beings
is given a Marxist interpretation, that is, presented as part of the
development of international capitalism (emerging from feudalism), in
accordance with Lenin's view that imperialism is the highest stage of
capitalism.
3. Rodney denounces both European capitalism
and European racialism, accusing the European exploiters of Africa of
deliberately interfering with and impeding the natural development of Africa so
as to gain control of the continent's natural resources both human and
non-human. He includes in his denunciations those Africans who collaborated
with the Europeans whether during the slave trade or in neo-colonial
times —, for they too belong to the bourgeois or comprador
exploiting class.
4. The hero of the book is the
long-suffering working class (both peasants and urban workers), the
silent and voiceless millions whom first the European capitalists and
then international capitalism together with the African ruling class have
consistently prevented from "making their own history".
5. A further reason for the book's appeal is
the author's considerable knowledge of African history and his skill in using
this knowledge to discredit those many European writers of the past who
considered Africans primitive and who echoed the notorious statement of Hugh
Trevor-Roper (an Oxford University historian) that "Africa has no
history". (1948)
6. Rodney's earlier works include West
Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade (East African Publishing House,
Dar-es-Salaam, 1967) and The History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800
(Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1970), while later he published History of the
Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905 (Heinemann, London, 1981) which won the
1982 prize of the American Historical Association for the best book on the
U.S.A., Latin America and the Caribbean.
7. Rodney was strongly influenced by an earlier
generation of West Indian or Afro-American anti-colonial and Pan-African
writers, e.g. Edward Blyden, George Padmore, W.E.B. du Bois, C.L.R. James and
Franz Fanon, the last two of whom made considerable use of Marxist ideas,
notably Fanon. Common to all was the concern to restore the lost dignity of the
African race in the face of European racialism. James (cfr. The Black
Jacobins) and Fanon (cfr. The Wretched of the Earth) were in
addition strongly hostile to Christianity which they saw as a tool of the
exploiting colonialists.
8. Rodney's most serious academic work — in
fact his refurbished doctoral thesis — The History of the Upper
Guinea Coast, 1545-1800 — is considerably more restrained than How
Europe Underdeveloped Africa, no doubt due to the demanding conditions of a
British university doctorate. On the positive side the book may be said to be a
good attempt — on the basis of a considerable variety of documents — to
understand from an African viewpoint the nature of indigenous Upper Guinea
society both just before contact with the Europeans and as it came to be
affected by European influence during the period under study. The book reveals
the devastating effect of the trans-Atlantic slave trade on African communities
and the shameful participation or acquiescence in the trade of a variety of
Europeans supposed to be Christian and — in the case of the Portuguese and
Spaniards — also Catholic. Rodney does quote a number of Catholic missionaries
(e.g. Capuchins and also two bishops of Cape Verde) who protested against the
slave trade, but on the whole he is highly critical of what he regards as the
hypocritical behaviour of the European Christians, including the Sacred
Congregation of the Propaganda Fide. This last body — according to Rodney,
making use of some documents of 1685-1686 found in the Archivio di Propaganda
Fide, Rome — replied to the protesters that "slavery was inevitable if the
plantations were to survive" (Rodney's words). Rodney concludes: "The
question was posed: What price profits? and the answer was that no moral
price or human suffering was too high to pay for the monetary gain from the
trade in slaves and from the extension of capitalist production into the New
World" (p.121).
9. This last sentence is indicative not only of
Rodney's sense of moral indignation — common to all his writings — but also of
the Marxist framework within which he interprets events. For him economic
factors are always paramount, as also is the factor of class. He makes a point,
for instance, of saying that in the 16th century amongst all the peoples of the
Upper Guinea Coast "the regime of private property is firmly established"
and that "as with the ownership of land, so with the distribution of the
products — there was manifest inequality" (p.35). Furthermore, "what
prevailed on the Upper Guinea Coast, and was to prove more significant than the
tribal divisions, was the class differentiation, based on the distinction
between those who had the power and authority within the state and those who
did not" (pp. 33-34) Later on Rodney asserts: "The Atlantic slave
trade was deliberately selective in its impact on the society of the Upper
Guinea Coast, with the ruling class protecting itself, while helping the
Europeans to exploit the common people. This is of course the widespread
pattern of modern neo-colonialism; and by the same token the period of slave
trading in West Africa should be regarded as protocolonial" (p. 117).
Another manifestation of Marxist influence on
Rodney is his statement at the end of the Preface: "... I have sought to
ensure that the integrity of the evidence was respected at all times, for this
has always to be demanded from those who practise the writing of history. Beyond
that, the interpreter is himself nothing but a spokesman for historical
forces" (p.ix). Similarly in the Preface to How Europe... Rodney
rejects the custom of the author assuming responsibility for "all the
mistakes and shortcomings" in his book on the grounds that this is
"sheer bourgeois subjectivism" and that "responsibility in
matters of these sorts is always collective..." (p.8).
10. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is
a much less scholarly and much more ideological work. Rodney openly professes
his materialist conception of history and his debt to Marx and Engels, not to
mention to contemporary Marxist writers such as Fanon and Che Guevara. (In fact
he gives a short recommended reading list at the end of each chapter, always
including some Marxist works.)
Particularly blatant is his stereotyped Marxist
interpretation of the history of Europe in which he misses no opportunity of
comparing unfavourably the capitalist with the socialist countries.
The following quotations can indicate better than any commentary to what an
extent Rodney subordinates historical truth to the requirements of Marxist
ideology:
a) In Europe "The peasantry had been
brutally destroyed and the labour of men, women and children was ruthlessly
exploited. Those were the great social evils of the capitalist system... Inside
of the British, French and German economies, the polarisation of wealth was
between the capitalists on the one hand and the workers and a few peasants on
the other" (p. 149).
b) Fascism, which is "a deformity of
capitalism... extols authoritarianism and the reactionary union of the church
with the state. In Portugal and Spain, it was the Catholic Church — in South
Africa, it was the Dutch Reformed Church" (p. 216). Rodney of course makes
no mention at all of the persecutions of the Church by the State in Italy under
Mussolini in the 1920's and 1930's, or in Germany under Hitler in the 1930's,
or in Spain likewise in the 1930's.
c) "Meanwhile (i.e. 1890-1960), Socialism
was inaugurated, lifting semi-feudal semi-capitalist Russia to a level of
sustained economic growth higher than ever experienced in a capitalist country.
Socialism did the same for China and North Korea — guaranteeing the well-being
and independence of the state as well as reorganising the internal social
arrangements in a far more just manner than ever before" (p. 245).
11. Rodney's distortions of history are not
confined to Europe, Russia and the Far East. He also distorts African history, especially
when Christianity is involved. Talking of Christian Nubia in the 9th to 11th
centuries Rodney refers to "the ruins of large red-brick churches and
monasteries which had murals and frescoes of fine quality". He comments:
"Several conclusions can be drawn from that material evidence. In the
first place, a great deal of labour was required to build these churches along
with the stone fortifications which often surrounded them. As with the pyramids
of Egypt or the feudal castles of Europe, the common builders were intensely
exploited and probably coerced" (p. 61). This is a truly insidious piece
of propaganda writing: the material evidence obviously cannot of itself
indicate either the existence of exploitation or the lack of it, nor is there
any reason why the building of these churches in Nubia at that time should
necessarily resemble the building of castles in medieval Europe or pyramids in
ancient Egypt, even assuming there was exploitation in the two latter cases.
12. Any possible doubt as to Rodney's hostility
to the Catholic religion is dispelled two pages later (p. 63) when he discusses
the Maghreb (after Carthaginian times): "The region had subsequently been
an important section of the Roman and Byzantine empires; and before becoming
Muslim the Maghreb had actually distinguished itself as a centre of
non-conformist Christianity which went under the name of Donatism". Rodney
studiously avoids mentioning the far more famous and historically significant
contributions made to the history of the Maghreb — and to the world — at that
time by Tertullian, St. Cyprian, and especially St. Augustine — an equally
African contribution. (See Christopher Dawson, "St. Augustine & His
Age" in A Monument to St. Augustine, Sheed & Ward, London,
1930).
13. Such prejudice is of course not surprising,
given Rodney's Marxist attitude to religion: "Religion is an aspect of the
superstructure of a society, deriving ultimately from the degree of control and
understanding of the material world" (p. 42).
14. Indeed Rodney prepares the ground in a
subtle way in his opening chapter for his materialist interpretation of
history. In "Some Questions on Development" he tells the reader:
"In historical terms, man the worker was every bit as important as man the
thinker, because the work with tools liberated men from sheer physical
necessity, so that he could impose himself upon other more powerful species and
upon nature itself" (p. 10). "Through very careful study, it is
possible to comprehend some of the very complicated links between the changes
in the economic base and changes in the rest of the superstructure of the
society" (p. 12). "In the natural sciences, it is well known that in
many instances quantitative change becomes qualitative after a certain
period... Similarly in human society it has always been the case that the
expansion of the economy leads eventually to a change in the form of social
relations. Karl Marx was the first writer to appreciate this, and he
distinguished within European history several stages of development..." (p.
13).
Rodney bends over backwards to avoid any
suggestion that what specifically differentiates man from the other animals is
his possession of the spiritual faculties of intellect and will. One wonders
how Rodney imagines man could have invented tools by which to dominate nature
unless he possessed intelligence. Marx' materialist explanation of human
progress is in fact a very crude theory, not least because it ignores or
grossly underestimates the objective religious factor in human life as exemplified
in the history of every known human culture, however primitive it might seem in
its material aspect. (For a very balanced and profound treatment of the
different factors that go to make up a culture and explain cultural change, see
the works of Christopher Dawson, especially The Age of the Gods and Progress
and Religion, Sheed & Ward, London, 1928 & 1930 respectively).
Starting from such standard Marxist premises
(i.e. historical and dialectical materialism) it is in no way surprising that
Rodney consistently attributes every event in history to the operation of blind
material forces mediated by the necessarily selfish actions of a given social
class. It is easy, of course, to put the European capitalists and slave
traders into playing such a role, since undoubtedly many Europeans and
European nations did at one moment or the other exploit others, particularly
Africans, for material advantages. But there was nothing inevitable about it:
they were not obeying any historical force, but rather letting their
lower passions gain control of their will and intellect. Nor was it simply a class
affair: to some extent the slave trade cut across class differences, and indeed
— as the two world wars clearly showed — national and ethnic loyalties are
usually more important historical factors than social class. Men are always
free to do either good or evil — terms which, incidentally, Rodney hardly ever
uses. Furthermore, Rodney never gets to grips with the meaning of poverty,
preferring rather to hide behind vague expressions such as "human social
development" while accusing the capitalists of impeding this
development. He accuses the "bourgeois scholars" of making "no
mention...of the exploitation of the majority which underlay all development
prior to socialism" (p. 20) and tells that "majority" that
"to advance, they must overthrow capitalism" which "at the
moment stands in the path of further human social development" (p.17).
Nowhere of course does Rodney explain to the
reader why socialism can succeed better than capitalism, that is,
on the theoretical level, and he carefully avoids going into any detail about
the actual history of modern socialist states. One does not have to be a
capitalist to know that in their efforts to impose socialism,
that is, Marxist socialism, countries like the U.S.S.R., several Eastern
European countries, China, and right now Ethiopia — to mention but a few — have
trampled ruthlessly not only on the rights but also on the very lives of
thousands and even millions of their own citizens. The writings of Alexander
Sozhenitsyn give a good insight into the real conditions of living in Russia
during the last 50 years under Marxist-Leninist communism — a writer just as
critical of capitalism. One could mention his small book The Mortal Danger
subtitled "How Misconceptions about Russia imperil America". A very
sophisticated book on Marxist-Leninist ideology is that of Alain Besançon
called Les origines intellectuelles du Léninisme translated into English
under the title The Rise of the Gulag. This work also gives a deep
insight into the realities of the Soviet system as it has developed in the last
two centuries. As for modern China, one might mention the recent book of one of
the world's leading Sinologists, J.K. Fairbank, entitled The Great Chinese
Revolution, 1800-1985. If Rodney had shown one tenth of the academic
seriousness of the above writers in discussing the modern history of Russia and
China, one would be more inclined to take him seriously. As it is, he shows
himself to be as naïve as he was biased.
Some other works which can also be recommended
are A. de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, Vol. I, Part 2, chapter
10, which deals with the situation of the black race in the U.S. in the early
19th century, as well as Rusia y el Oriente de Europa by Bohdan Chudoba
(Rialp, Madrid, 1980) which deals with U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe, especially
in chapters 4 & 5. Understanding Europe, by Christopher Dawson
(Sheed & Ward, London, 1952) also deals with Russia and Eastern Europe,
especially chapters 5 & 6.
15. An intelligent and open-minded reader will
not be deceived by Rodney's Marxist ideology. Nevertheless since many objective
historical facts are woven into Rodney's analysis and the entire work is fired
through by an intense feeling of moral indignation, many readers, especially
young people, will naturally be very impressed and not notice the grave lacunae
— no mention at all of God or of transcendental values, for instance, and
travesty of many historical facts.
However, some 25 years after Independence few
Africans are likely to accept in an unqualified manner so sweeping a statement
as: "The most profound reasons for the economic backwardness of a given
African nation are not to be found inside that nation. All that we can find
inside are the symptoms of underdevelopment and the secondary factors that make
for poverty" (p. 30). Apart from many other considerations — such as the
great variety and complexity of the situations of the different African nations
of today—, there is also the fact that some peoples, e.g. the Cattle Fulani of
Nigeria and the Masai of Kenya and Tanzania, are simply not interested in the
kind of development and modernity popular in Western countries
and in modernised Africa: they prefer their own traditional style of life
and to be left alone.
16. Conclusion: This is a dangerous book —
perhaps more so than the more philosophical type of Marxist work — since it
propounds Marxist ideas in the context of the presentation of concrete
historical events, and events which are obviously taken very seriously by a
great many people, especially Africans and Black Americans. It has the
attraction of simplifying a great mass of historical detail and of appealing to
the reader's moral indignation. In this respect Rodney very much resembles Marx
and Engels who a century earlier made so much capital out of the injustices
being suffered by many working people during the English Industrial Revolution.
But like Marx and Engels too, Rodney seems to propose no solution to the
problems he discusses except violence and hatred.
J.W. (1981)
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