How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

A work of political theory and history examining European colonialism in Africa. Walter Rodney, a Guyanese intellectual and anticolonial activist, argues that the economic divergence between the West and other regions resulted from the exploitation of the latter by the former. The book presents a meticulously researched analysis of how European colonialism shaped Africa's development. Rodney was a leading figure in anticolonial movements across North America, South America, Africa, and the Caribbean. His deportation from Jamaica triggered the 1968 Rodney riots, one of the country's most significant 20th-century rebellions. He was assassinated in 1980 at age 38, shortly after founding the Working People's Alliance in Guyana. This work is considered alongside C.L.R. James' Black Jacobins, Eric Williams' Capitalism & Slavery, and W.E.B. Dubois' Black Reconstruction. The book has informed decades of scholarship and activism on colonialism and global inequality.