Imperialism Reading Group - How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, by Walter Rodney - Week 3 (hexbear.net)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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 the second section, "Some Concrete Examples", of Chapter 2: How Africans Developed Before The Coming Of The Europeans - Up To The Fifteenth Century.

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

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[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

Imperialism Reading Group Ping!

Onto the second half of Chapter 2, where Rodney discusses the specific examples of Egypt, Ethiopia, Nubia, the Maghreb, Western Sudan, the Interlacustrine Zone, and Zimbabwe.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

I always love when authors get into specific examples. It's easy to talk in broad strokes about African or Europe or Asian continental and national histories and the grand development of feudalism to capitalism but there's a lot of very interesting case studies that get glossed over (understandably, or the books would be three times as long). Seeing how individual societies dealt with general trends and the contradictions that came with early feudalism in their own specific ways is fascinating.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

In the Zimbabwe section: "Even today there is a tendency to consider the achievements with a sense of wonder rather than with the calm acceptance that it was a perfectly logical outgrowth of human social development within Africa [...]"

Even today you see this sort of thing when Westerners analyze other countries. I remember those mocking China's train lines to nowhere and then later being astounded when the stars just magically aligned and they decided to build a city there afterwards, as if this isn't just the result of human long-term planning.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

To share an anecdote from the book:

As one index to the standard of social life, it has been pointed out that public baths were common in the cities of Maghreb at a time when in Oxford the doctrine was still being propounded that the washing of the body was a dangerous act.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Lol I love Rodney's backhanded remarks to Europe. They scratch a good itch

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

You got that right!

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

It's not just fascinating getting into the specific examples, it's essential for his argument of the chapter that Africa was not one monolith of scattered tribes, but a vibrant continent of peoples at different stages of development.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Very good chapter, debunks a lot of myths and demystifies African culture and history at a very high level. It's also super interesting reading about these different societies and cultures, what made them tick, and how they have changed over time.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Agree, it's also compelling how much Rodney bases his arguments in material culture. This was written in the late 70s and the techniques and theories of archeology have exploded in breath and depth since then. I would have loved to see Rodney work with modern anthropological evidence, especially since he had read against the grain of dated and racist European sources.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

I'm a medievalist guy so I love reading about any pre modern history. This section shows a great geographic and social variety of polities. Particularly interesting to me was the interlacustrine (new word for me) section and the discussion of cultural synthesis from a migrant ruling population.

To continue my comment from last week, I'm intrigued onto Rodney's line of thinking about Africa having many maturing economies which the Europeans will tap into. Slavery in particular began in the hands of militaristic Africans, but as he said it was a trickle compared to the later flows.

An interesting perspective from the conclusion was how it's hard to discuss Africa without using European comparisons for clarity. I myself appreciate them because I've read much about medieval Europe, however it reveals the deep level of colonization culture. I think more modern Africanists stray away from these direct comparisons, but like Rodney said, when he was writing the field wasn't developed enough. I should really look into modern literature on the subject later.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Hey! I'm a bit late because I couldn't get to reading because of heavy workload and being sent to another country. I've finally read chapter 1 today so I'll leave my thoughts here.

I liked the analysis of the first chapter, it's patently Marxist and materialist, which is wonderful. It reads easily and clearly and doesn't fall into pompous or overly technical language, which is also great for someone like me who isn't a native speaker. Even the title is great, using the word "underdeveloped" not as an adjective but as a verb which has an actor (Europe) and an object (Africa). I think I'll make it a point to be explicit about using "underdeveloped" as a verb in that way more often.

I admit I normally fall into the purely economical analysis when it comes to discussing "development", but the first pages do a wonderful job of explaining that it's also in many more spheres which are comparably important.

It's also wonderful that it doesn't fall into the so-common pitfalls of the dominant neoliberal economics. Even when it talks of inequality in African nations and how a handful of bureaucrats reap most of the tax income, it makes it a point to explicit that it isn't taxes that develop a country, but labour and the generated surplus value. This is entirely compatible with a more MMT understanding of economics and state financing, in which levying taxes isn't a tool to "raise money" because most states create that very money at their own discretion. Just one more way in which MMT and Marxism give different explanations for a similar phenomenon, and both arrive to the correct answer from different points. Blew my mind a bit, never thought of it this way, and the book is from like the 70s!

I also found it very ideologically powerful that even in the introduction, on the section of "defining underdevelopment", it talks about a comparison of industrialized vs unindustrialized nations, and it makes it a point to separate right from this beginning the socialist nations from the camp of imperialist nations within the industrialized category. It's brilliant seeing how it's painfully obvious that socialist nations such as China and USSR at the time were simply not exerting imperialism in Africa by not engaging in market relations based on one-sided price setting and unequal exchange. This is super compatible with the idea that I had formed by reading "Is the Red Flag Flying" by Albert Szymanski, in the chapter in which he examines commercial relations between USSR and underdeveloped nations and reaches the exact same conclusion.

On the one hand, seeing how much I'm learning from a 50-year-old book makes me realize how dire the situation is regarding the knowledge of imperialism by westerners like me, and the fact that many of the relations briefly explained in the first chapter hold up today, makes me sad about the situation of ideology and imperialism. On the other hand, I'm stoked to be really engaged on the book, on the way it's written, and to really be able to examine imperialism in Africa over the past century from a Marxist perspective. Thanks to whoever recommended the book and made a reading club, can't wait to freaking dunk on the Trots at my org, who pretend to care about imperialism but decry every socialist country who either didn't engage in it or outright fought against it.

this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2025

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