How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Rating:
Summary: Ignore Covert Racist Reviews of the Excellent Book
Review: By the way, I am a white Irish-American reader and a voter who casts my ballots as neither conservative nor liberal but as an independent. To think that a reasoned critique of the problems of racist economic hierarchies would be disallowed by white so called patriotic reviewers below is an extreme form of covert racism. The knee-jerk dismissals of Dr. Rodney's excellent exegesis by the reviewers below is precisely the kind of conceptual horror that Dr. Rodney's book so cogently examines--and with much logical presentation of arguments and evidence. Far from "blaming whitey" as the simpleton reviewer noted below (and I do mean below), Dr. Rodney shows the systemic imperialism of profit-making European interventions on the continent of Africa. As his book was written prior to the African dictatorships that the reviewer cites below, Dr. Rodney can surely not be blamed for those dictatorships. (Logic: Hello! ...and you blame Dr. Rodney for supposed poor argumentation!) But the real problem is these reviewers insist on ignoring colonialism's European interventions and responsibilities. They are so quick to bring up everything else and not to discuss at length the glaring European responsibility that the transatlantic slave trade and the "owning" of African nations before their independence had on the socioeconomic underdevelopment of the African continent as Dr. Rodney brilliantly makes clear. Some people will NEVER take stock of their own racism--be it overt or covert. In a nation founded by white racist slave-holders, these reviewers need to look carefully at HISTORY.

Rating:
Summary: Essential to Understanding the Creation of the 3rd World
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: a great man a great book
Review: Rodney explain the beginings of many major companies and how they capitilized off Africans.

Rating:
Summary: a powerful, vital and essential book
Review: 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.