How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Rodney’s walk-through Africa’s poorly understood past is a well needed antidote for colonial chauvinist attitudes that are still rife in Britain today. By taking the reader through a historical materialist analysis of the history that was robbed by both the slave trade and colonialism of the ‘Scramble for Africa’, we are shown an Africa that was beaten to the punch in development by Europe and suffered heavily for it. Fragments of my schooling in Wales were brought to the fore; with my history and geography lessons covering Kenya in particular: a former British colony whose status as a colony I’m not sure was mentioned during my secondary schooling (or if it was it certainly wasn’t stressed), as well as a more thoroughgoing analysis of the slave trade that we certainly had at least one module on during school.
Structure and Contents
Rodney’s first chapter sets a solid framework on the question of development and underdevelopment in the Marxist sense and would be a great inclusion alone in any new Marxist’s study diet.
The second chapter covers the history of Africa before the coming of the Europeans, laying out a rich history from the fragmented written accounts available that show the stages of development reached by various African nations (and proto-nations).
The third chapter sets out the interstitial period of history when Europeans came to Africa, developing trade links that spanned the globe and setting the seeds for a burgeoning slave market. Here, Rodney makes clear that Europeans certainly weren’t more advanced overall than Africans but had developed key technologies that let them begin and win their struggle for dominance of the region, like boats suitable for sea and ocean fare, development in literacy and organisational skills, advanced weaponry like cannons, and simple but highly useful practical utensils like pots and pans.
In the fourth chapter, Rodney covers the impact of the slave trade and its development into the driving force behind Europe’s colonial endeavours across the globe, how this stagnated development and drove slaving to be a key market within Africa that strangled the human resources of the continent, and how European nations went about ensuring the African nations were starved of the trade of knowledge that would help them develop out of the vicious cycle they had been placed in.
The fifth chapter covers the transition to colonialism, when the ‘Scramble for Africa’ saw the European nations fighting out over supremacy in the African continent for labour and material resources.
The sixth and final chapter describes how, contrary to bourgeois belief, the ‘scorecard of colonialism’ did not present any real wins for Africans on the basis of colonialism alone, and instead how the creation of colonial relations created new contradictions, in particular that of national liberation and the formation of a proletariat, that drove development in the African nations. The slow going proletarianization of Africans saw a fight, in one example given by Rodney, for the development of schooling above that which was planned by the colonialists, and eventually this amongst other developments on the continent allowed the Africans to go about the process of self-emancipation following World War 2. Rodney is not so naïve as to suggest national liberation struggles in Africa signal the end of all struggles, identifying the compradors and winners of the shift to neo-colonial relations, and of the hopes that even this “flag independence” would help bring to the African nations.
Key Points for the Struggle in Britain
Of note on first read for British socialists, trade unionists, and communists are the following pertinent sections. They include the effects of colonialism on the development of capitalism in Europe, the effects on the European proletariat via the underdevelopment of the African labouring classes, the role of British trade unions in the upholding of colonial relations, and chauvinistic attitudes that must be crushed within Britain. It should be noted here that those quotes selected are certainly not exhaustive on these issues, and merely some of the many points brought up throughout the work that I wanted to highlight.
“…capitalist nations were desperately falling back on colonies to save them vis-à-vis socialism and even from the competition of the United States. Mr. Bevin, a noted labour leader turned traitor to his class and spokesman for British capitalism, made the observation that ‘the other two World powers, the United States and Soviet Russia, have tremendous resources. If Western Europe is to achieve its balance of payments and to get a world equilibrium, it is essential that [African] resources should be developed, and made available.’ Any close study of the operations of CD&W [Colonial Development and Welfare] and FIDES reveals clearly that they had nothing to do with African development but a great deal to do with the welfare of capitalist Europe.”
Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), Pg 257
Edition: Verso (2018)
Rodney quotes Labour politician and former Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, showing our political class’s understanding of the role of Africa in the development and protection of the capitalist system in Europe. Earlier in the book, he asserts that the ebbs and flows of capitalism, the rough edges from boom and bust, were sanded off by means of extraction of resource from Africa:
“Over the last few decades of colonialism, colonial possessions served capitalism as a safety valve in times of crisis. The first major occasion when this was displayed was during the great economic depression of 1929-34. During that period, forced labour was increased in Africa and the prices paid to Africans for their crop were reduced. Workers were paid less and imported goods cost a great deal more. That was a time when workers in the metropolitan countries also suffered terribly, but the colonialists did the best they could to transfer the burdens of the depression away from Europe and on to the colonies.”
Ibid, Pg 236-237
The extent to which the western proletariat benefited from this colonial extraction is here that though they “suffered greatly,” the absolute worst was avoided through this increase in exploitation of Africa.
Rodney also covers the bourgeoisie’s common assertion that colonialism was a matter of importance for all British citizens, which too is discussed in Lenin’s Imperialism. Here, he uses Barclays Bank’s chairman as an example:
“Barclays Bank was one of the first to seize the opportunity of lending to colonial regimes to supplement the CD&W grants. That bank set up a special Overseas Development Corporation to ‘assist’ Africa, the chairman of the bank assuring all that ‘the development of the colonial empire and the well-being of its inhabitants is a matter that concerns every citizen of [Britain].’ That was the language of public relations, which fitted in very well with the sordid hypocrisy practiced by white men ever since they started killing and enslaving in the name of civilization and Christianity.”
Ibid, Pg 259
In a discussion of the development of capitalist social relations within Africa, Rodney discusses the unwillingness of the colonialists to create a proletariat, of teaching industrial skills to Africans.
“That European capitalism should have failed to create African capitalists is perhaps not so striking as its inability to create a working class and to diffuse industrial skills throughout Africa. By its very nature, colonialism was prejudiced against the establishment of industries in Africa, outside of agriculture and the extractive spheres of mining and timber felling. Whenever internal forces seemed to push in the direction of African industrialisation, they were deliberately blocked by the colonial governments acting on behalf of the metropolitan industrialists. Groundnut-oil mills were set up in Senegal in 1927 and began exports to France. They were soon placed under restrictions because of protests of oil-millers in France.”
Ibid, Pg 261
He then goes on to discuss how the presence of industry in Europe “fostered and multiplied scientific techniques” (pg. 262). But how in Africa, the refusal to develop industry meant skill generation was stifled, allowing skilled western proles to do the work instead of Africans.
“Even in the mining industry, it was arranged that the most valuable labour should be done outside Africa. It is sometimes forgotten that it is labour which adds value to commodities through the transformation of natural products. For instance, although gem diamonds have a value far above their practical usefulness, the value is not simply a question of their being rare. Work had to be done to locate the diamonds. That is the skilled task of a geologist, and the geologists were of course Europeans. Work had to be done to dig the diamonds out, which involves mainly physical labour. Only in that phase were Africans… brought into the picture.”
Ibid, Pg 262
Specifically using the labour-process to illustrate the differences in wages between unskilled African workers and skilled European workers, Rodney analyses cotton farming by peasants from Chad vs. cotton weaving by French textile workers.
“It has been observed that one hour of work of a cotton peasant in Chad was equivalent to less than one centimetre of cotton cloth, and he needed to work fifty days to earn what was needed to buy three meters of cloth made from his own cotton in France. Yet, the French textile worker (using modern spindles) ran off three meters of cloth in a matter of minutes! … there must be factors in the capitalist colonialist system, which permitted the great disparity in the relative value of labour in Chad and France. In the first place, the Chad peasant was defrauded through trade so that he sold cheap and bought dear, and therefore received a minute proportion of the value that he created with his labour. This was possible not because of mysterious “market forces,” as bourgeois economists would like us to believe, but because of political power being vested entirely in the hands of colonialists. It was a consequence of monopolistic domination, both economically and politically. Secondly, the quantity of time spent by the Chad peasant was longer because colonialism did not permit him to acquire the tools to shorten the hours required to produce a given quantity of raw cotton.”
Ibid, Pg 266-267
This gives some level of credence to one of the formations of the idea of a ‘labour aristocracy’. That in the imperial core through the development of their nations’ industrial forces, the western proletariat, relative to the global labouring classes, are advantaged (though still in an incredibly precarious situation when it comes to crises of capitalism).
Covered toward the end of the work is the role that the Trade Union Council (TUC) played in the attempted beheading of the link between the oppression of the newly formed proletariat in Africa and the political struggle for socialism and the national struggle for liberation. This highlights the role in which communists must play in defeating chauvinist attitudes within our trade unions at home, to ensure that we do not play into the hands of the bourgeoisie when interacting and showing solidarity with the international proletariat.
“The British [TUC] sponsored a number of African trade unions, and tried to get them to accept a rigid separation between industrial matters (such as wages and working hours) and political matters. But the TUC was in that context acting on behalf of the British bourgeoisie, and they did not succeed in holding back the working class in Africa. African workers were able to appreciate the there was no difference between the private employers and the colonial administration. Indeed, the colonial administration was itself one of the biggest employers, against whom workers had many charges.”
Ibid, Pg 340
More widely, combatting the chauvinistic idea that many Britons may still hold today that our government was benevolent in its ceding of its colonies to the African people, denying the role of the Africans in their own emancipation, Rodney had this to say:
“The British make much of the fact that they conceded the idea of self-government immediately after the last war, but self-government was a long cry from independence, and the notion of training people for independence was nothing but a political gimmick. Lady Margery Perham, a true voice of patronising colonialism, admitted that the Colonial Office’s timetable for independence had to be scrapped in the face of the mobilised African people. For that matter, even African leaders never hoped to achieve national sovereignty as rapidly as they did, until the mass parties began to roll like boulders down a hillside.”
Ibid, Pg 343
Closing Remarks
I would describe this work as an essential piece of reading for all communists, especially those within the western nations that colonialised and imperialised Africa. It is key to understanding the role our bourgeoisie had in the underdevelopment of Africa, and how the social relations of colonialism have had wide reaching effects for our own development as a proletariat in the imperial core. Without understanding this, our analysis will always end up emaciated and will produce tendencies to chauvinistic attitudes toward the international proletariat. Our own bourgeoisie still maintain gripping neo-colonial relations with Africa, and our overthrowal of them is part of the key to the emancipation of the international proletariat. In this way we can also see that the victories of the African proletariat in their struggle weaken our ruling class and provide chinks in their armour that we can and should be taking advantage of to deal a final killing blow to their supremacy. If the struggle in Africa grows, we can be sure to see it reflected in even further outgrowths of nasty colonial attitudes in racism and violence towards our own black populations, in order to secure the means and licensing for increased aggression against the African continent. We must fight these attitudes at all costs, and stand always in solidarity with our black colleagues, friends and family within Britain in the fight against racism and the capitalists that stoke its flames.
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