Skip Navigation
Remote View
theory @hexbear.net
SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him] @hexbear.net

Imperialism Reading Group - How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, by Walter Rodney - Week 4

This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. Last week's thread is here.

The book we are currently reading through is How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group, or if you no longer wish to be pinged.

This week, we will be reading all of Chapter 3: Africa's Contribution to European Capitalist Development - The Pre-Colonial Period.

Next week, we will be reading the first two sections, "The European Slave Trade as a Basic Factor in African Underdevelopment" and "Technical Stagnation and Distortion of the African Economy in the Pre-Colonial Epoch" of Chapter 4: Europe and the Roots of African Underdevelopment - To 1885.

11 comments

  • Call me ignorant if you want, but I did not know the Barclays bank was founded by literal slavers. Not surprising in hindsight but definitely something I'll keep in mind. Always thought finance was a sophisticated way of enslaving people (especially after reading Debt), but this makes it even more obvious.

  • European economists of the nineteenth century certainly had no illusions about the interconnections between their national economies and the world at large. J. S. Mill, as spokesman for British capitalism, said that as far as England was concerned, "the trade of the West Indies is hardly to be considered as external trade, but more resembles the traffic between town and country." By the phrase "trade of the West Indies," **Mill meant the commerce between Africa, England, and the West Indies, because without African labor, the West Indies were valueless. **

  • The more things change, the more we can see the same processes of expropriation carried out every second of every day. Unbelievable evil with the rise of the slave trade, and we are only on the pre-colonial era. Rodney's writing is also really good at gripping you and forcing you to witness.

11 comments