If anyone else is reading the Verso Books version of this (the one that this post has a photo of), are you noticing a bunch of basic spelling errors throughout? It's a little frustrating. Did they not proofread?

Both are witty too. I laughed out loud at "Presumably, the only comment which one can make on that is ‘Amen’ " in the last chapter.

I am halfway through this section right now, and appreciating Rodney's objective approach to the topic of development in Africa prior to European arrival. The treatment of the continent as a monolith is far too common an attitude even amongst those who are approaching the topic in good faith; Rodney reminds us that it's absurd to think of one singular "African civilisation", and that development across the continent varied across time and space as much as anywhere else in the world. His point about the need to break from the dogmatic "Marxist" conception of "Asiatic" and "African" modes of production is an important one.

Another observation I really appreciate is that non-durable evidence of development will mostly appear in the historical record as no evidence, with detailed wooden sculptures and the craftmanship that goes into them being an example he gives. It's vital to remember how our understanding of ancient civilisations is entirely shaped by the archaeological tools at our disposal. As another example, the Indus River Valley civilisation was only really discovered in the 1920s, and its nature is still the subject of intense debate, long after the popular western historical narrative of ancient civilisation based on the Fertile Crescent that continues to dominate today had already been established. That's partially because many scholars can't divorce their thinking from that narrative, that in turn came about only because Mesopotamia is a far more obvious example in archaology and the written record (no written accounts survive, either from the Indus Valley itself or from outsiders). I feel like we must have barely scratched the surface of many societies that existed in the African past with the tools at our disposal and the work that's been done.

I'd make a comparison to WW1 and the war propaganda that was spread around at the time - portraying the Germans as vicious apes, theremoved of Belgium, that kind of thing. The German army absolutely engaged in war crimes during their advance - so did basically every army during that war. Does that justify the murder of millions of people and the ruination of entire generations? Of course not, particularly when you consider that every participant in the war was a colonial empire. The same, essentially, is true of the war in Europe today. We should not be sacrificing hundreds of thousands, millions of people to this horrific war just because NATO and Russia, both neoliberal capitalist entities with imperial ambitions, are in a dick-measuring contest where the prize is the right to exploit Ukraine's resources.

one of the many great "up and to the right" graphs that neoliberalism has brought us

Chosun Ilbo

I wouldn't trust them to tell you a thing about what the DPRK is doing

East Africa can't even federate after literally decades of multiple stable states trying, how would a confederation of three juntas who are losing land to jihadists constantly be able to do it lmao

The way that many people i follow/know uncritically repeat these ridiculous, fake "news" stories has really shattered my faith in the ability of most of us to discern reality. Same shit with those garbage IRAN MILITARY NEWS accounts that popped up during the war in June and would announce "F-35 DOWNED!!!!" three times a day. I get that it was annoying back when people would bombard you with "source? source?" as a stand-in for a workable argument, but maybe we need to go back to that.

they should get rid of all those little states and probably combine some of the big western ones too. having more states makes the game slower.

game is alright now, they're slowly reworking every single system to make it more granular and involve more gameplay than "press the button", unfortunately the war system is still dogshit ass awful and statebuilding v boring so maybe wait another year or two

you should post it on the subreddit or the forums