Review of Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa Part 2/3
(llco.org)
In order to understand why Africa is so impoverished and powerless today, one
has to examine the history of power and economy. Development,
underdevelopment and power are intertwined. Africa today is a product of its
past, just as the imperialist world is also a product of its past. Walter Rodney’s
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is a classic work on the political economy of
Africa. Even fifty years after it was written, it, for the most part, stands the test
of time. Rodney’s work is a proto-Leading Light Communist one that describes in
great detail how Africa’s poverty and underdevelopment is a result of imperialism.
The slave trade… Africa loses
The slave trade played a huge role in the development of Europe and the United
States. It also played a role in the underdevelopment of Africa. Even though the
transatlantic slave trade ended in the nineteenth century, its effects are still with
us. It is not enough to understand the slave trade as morally reprehensible.
Similarly, moral indignation is not enough to understand global exploitation and
inequality today. Humanism is not enough, then or now. It is necessary to
understand these things scientifically. There are sharp dividing lines. There were
real winners and losers in the transatlantic slave trade. Europe, the United
States, and their African compradors were the winners, the African peoples were
the losers. According to Rodney:
“When one tries to measure the effect of European slave trading on the African
continent, it is essential to realize that one is measuring the effect of social
violence rather than trade in any normal sense of the word. “ (95)
Millions of Africans were turned into slaves, most going to the New World. It was
one of history’s greatest human catastrophes. Millions of deaths were a direct
consequence of the trade in Africans. Deaths during the middle passage ranged
from 15 to 20 percent, according to Rodney. (96) According to Rodney, no
reliable estimates exist for the total number of those enslaved. Rodney does
provide a telling table for world population (in millions) at the time:
A quick look at the chart shows the impact of slavery on the African continent.
The rest of the world’s population grew by leaps and bounds, while Africa’s
population, in comparison, was relatively stagnant due to slavery. “[O]n every
other continent from the fifteenth century onwards, the population showed
constant and sometimes spectacular natural increase; while it is striking that the
same did not apply to Africa.” (97) Around the same time, population growth had
played a role in the development of Europe; population growth was a key factor in
creating the workforce for early capitalism. In Africa, the loss of population due to
the slave trade hindered healthy socioeconomic development, both directly and
indirectly.
Slavery resulted in a massive loss of both labor power and brain power. The
African labor force was robbed of able-bodied and thinking men and women. (96)
This loss of people tends to snowball over time because Africa did not simply lose
a person when a slave was transferred to the Americas, Africa lost their
descendants also — descendants today who are no longer African in any real
sense. Out of this exodus, the Black nation would be formed in North America.
Nonetheless, this exodus of people also represents a snuffing out of brain power
in Africa. Millions of people taken from a population equates to less technological
innovation and discovery. Slavery not only stole African muscle, but also
represented a brain-drain of epic proportions. By contrast, Europe was leaving
the medieval period behind, entering the post-Renaissance and entering the
industrial revolution. Europe was advancing, Africa declining.
“The connection between Africa and Europe from the fifteenth century onwards
served to block this spirit of technological innovation [in Africa] both directly
and indirectly.” (105)
“The European slave trade was a direct block, in removing millions of youth and
young adults who are the human agents from whom inventiveness springs.
Those who remained in areas badly hit by slave capturing were preoccupied
about their freedom rather than with improvements in production.” (105)
“[E]enslavement was causing these people to lose their battle to tame and
harness nature.” (98)
The slave trade also resulted in the loss of traditional social cohesion. Slavery
spread social violence within Africa, European violence and African violence.
More often it took the forms of kidnappings and raids, rather than regular
warfare. It undermined traditional cohesion between African societies and within
African society. Stability was undermined. Chaos snowballed as the violence of
slavery penetrated deep into African society:
“A chain reaction was started by European demand for slaves (and only slaves)
and by their offer of consumer goods — this process being connected with
divisions within African society.” (79)
Europe remade Africa according to Europe’s design:
“One the other hand, there were European countries who decided on the role to
be played by the African economy; and on the other hand, Africa formed an
extension to the European capitalist market.” (76)
Integration of African economies into the European system through the slave
trade did not help Africa develop local industries or develop technology. Europe
flooded the African market with finished goods. The trade goods that Africa
received in exchange for slaves destroyed local industry. (101) Prior to the slave
trade, Africa had booming industries, sometimes even exporting products to the
Arab world. For example, with the introduction of the slave trade, Africa ceased
exporting cloth.
“When European cloth became dominant on the African market, it meant that
African producers were cut off from the increasing demand. The craft
producers either abandoned their tasks in the face of cheap available European
cloth… or they continued their tasks in the face of cheap available European
cloth, or they continued on the same small hand-worked instruments to create
styles and pieces for localized markets. Therefore, there was what can be called
‘technological arrest’ or stagnation, and in some instances actual regression,
since people forgot even the simple techniques of their forefathers. The
abandonment of traditional iron smelting in most parts of Africa is probably the
most important instance of technological regression.” (104-105)
Even today, Western charities have destroyed indigenous textile manufacture by
dumping used clothing on Africa. Local manufactures are put out of business. The
access to European finished goods became a kind of crutch. Africa ceased
producing for herself. This resulted in further technological stagnation. There was
no impetus for industrial development since Europe was providing finished goods
to Africa. Instead, what little capital existed was redirected toward plunder, the
capturing of humans for trade, or toward resource extraction. J. S. Mill
commented on the relation of England to her colonies: “the trade of the West
Indies is hardly to be considered external trade, but more resembles the traffic
between town and country.” (82)
It was not just the coastal areas that were affected. All of Africa suffered. Not only
did social violence stretch inland, but economies of the interior were reconfigured
to serve the slave economy. (100)
“European trade goods percolated into the deepest interior, and (more
significantly) the orientation of large areas of the continent towards human
exports meant that other positive interactions were thereby ruled out.” (100)
Rodney quotes another researcher:
“‘What would have been Britain’s level of development had millions of them
been put to work as slaves outside of their homelands over a period of four
centuries?’ Furthermore… one could speculate further on the probable effects
on their development had continental Europe been enslaved. Had that been the
case, its nearest neighbors would have been removed from the ambit of fruitful
trade with Britain.” (101)
Few aspects of African society were untouched by slavery. The effects of slavery
were profound and far reaching. There were many African attempts to resist the
institution and its effects. Even though many African leaders saw the terrible
effects of slavery, they were unable to resist as individual states:
“Once trade in slaves had been started in any given part of Africa, it soon
became clear that it was beyond the capacity of any single African state to
change the situation. In Angola, the Portuguese employed an unusual number
of their own troops and tried to seize political power from Africans. The
Angolan state of Matamba on the river Kwango was founded around 1630 as a
direct reaction against the Portuguese. With Queen Nzinga at its head,
Matamba tried to coordinate resistance against the Portuguese in Angola.
However, Portugal gained the upper hand in 1648, and this left Matamba
isolated. Matamba could not forever stand aside. So long as it opposed trade
with the Portuguese, it was an object of hostility from neighboring African
states which had compromised with Europeans and slave trading. So in 1656,
Queen Nzinga resumed business with the Portuguese — a major concession to
the decision-making role of Europeans within the Angolan economy.” (80)
In isolation, it was virtually impossible for any regime to resist the slavers and
their allies. Isolated According to Rodney, African societies did not have the
ability to take on the imperialists and their allies. This is why many African
revolutionaries to this day push for pan-African or regional strategies against
imperialism. This isn’t to reject “socialism in one country,” as the Trotskyists do.
One can embrace a pan-African strategy while still recognizing that the liberation
of the whole of Africa will happen in steps. Some countries will be liberated
before others. To expect Africa to be liberated at one time would be a utopian and
Trotskyist dream, not material reality. Nonetheless, there is much to recommend
scientific, stageist, regional or pan-African strategy.
The slave trade… Europe and the United States win
Africa lost out from her interaction with Europe and the United States. The
imperialists reaped tremendous benefits from the trade in humans. There were
very direct benefits from the slave trade. Cheap labor in the Americas was one.
Africa became a market for European consumer goods. The great English sea
ports rose as part of the trade. Twenty percent of French trade was based on the
slave economy of the West Indies. (85) Even more importantly, the slave trade
sped up the rise of capitalism in Europe and the United States. (86) Value from
the slave trade was injected into early capitalism and the early industrial
revolution. Thus capitalism began to fan out from Europe. Rodney describes how
slavery was key:
“American economic development up to mid-nineteenth century rested squarely
on foreign commerce, of which slavery was a pivot. In the 1830s, slave-grown
cotton accounted for about half the value of all exports from the United States
of America. Furthermore, in the case of the American colonies of the eighteenth
century, it can again be observed that Africa contributed in a variety of ways —
one thing leading to another. For instance, New England trade with Africa,
Europe, and the West Indies in slaves and slave-grown products supplied cargo
for their merchant marine, stimulated the growth of their shipbuilding industry,
built up their towns and their cities, and enabled them to utilize their forests,
fisheries, and soil more effectively. Finally, it was the carrying trade between
the West Indies slave colonies and Europe which lay behind the emancipation of
the American colonies from British rule, and it was no accident that the
struggle for American independence started in the leading New England town
of Boston. In the nineteenth century, the connection with Africa continued to
play an important role in American political growth. In the first place, profits
from the slave activities went into the coffers of political parties, and even more
important the African stimulation and black labor played a vital role in
extending European control over the present territory of the United States —
notably in the South, but including also the ‘Wild West,” where black cowboys
were active.” (87-88)
Even though slavery was a boost for early capitalism, it eventually became a
fetter, according to Rodney:
“Slavery is useful for early accumulation of capital, but it is too rigid for
industrial development. Slaves had to be given crude non-breakable tools which
held back the capitalist development of agriculture and industry. That explains
the fact the northern portions of the U.S.A. gained far more industrial benefits
from slavery than the South, which actually had slave institutions on its soil;
and ultimately the stage was reached during the American Civil War when
Northern capitalists fought to end slavery within the boundaries of the U.S.A.
so that country as a whole could advance to a higher level of capitalism.
In effect, one can say that within the U.S.A. the slave relations in the South had
by the second half of the nineteenth century come into conflict with the further
expansion of the productive base inside the U.S.A. as a whole, and a violent
clash ensued before capitalist relations of legally free labor became
generalized… even in Europe there came a moment when the leading capitalist
states found that the trade in slaves and the use of slave labor in the Americas
was no longer in the interests of their development. Britain made the decision
early in the nineteenth century, to be followed later by France.” (87-88)
Although Rodney does not hold the old Communist Party, USA position that the
American Civil War was a conflict between a feudal Southern order and capitalist
Northern one, he sees it though a similar prism. According to Rodney, the conflict
is one over the organization of production, a conflict between a lower and higher
kind of capitalism. His view is a kind of return to the teleological productionism
that is critiqued in the earlier part of this review. By contrast, Andre Gunder
Frank sees the war as a conflict between an American production-oriented system
and a European export system, a conflict repeated throughout the Americas. J.
Sakai sees the conflict as the clash between two types of settler empires, two
ways of organizing national oppression. Such interpretations need not necessarily
contradict each other. Any complex social phenomena like the American Civil War
will be over-determined. Any complete explanation will be complex and somewhat
open-ended. Regardless, Rodney is spot on: slavery greased the wheels of early
capitalism, even though capitalism later abandoned it.
Slavery is not ancient history
“Development means a capacity for self-sustaining growth. It means that an
economy must register advances which in turn will promote further progress.
The loss of industry and skill in Africa was extremely small, if we measure it
from the viewpoint of modern scientific achievements or even by standards of
England in the late eighteenth century. However, it must be borne in mind that
to be held back at one stage means that it is impossible to go on to a further
stage. When a person was forced to leave school after only two years of primary
school education, it is no reflection on him that he is academically and
intellectually less developed then someone who had the opportunity to be
schooled right through to university level. When Africa experienced in the early
centuries of trade was precisely a loss of development opportunity, and this is
of the greatest importance.” (105)
“[T]he European slave trade was economically totally irrational from the
viewpoint of African development.” (100)
Slavery’s effects are still with us. The slave trade pushed Europe and America
forward. And it held Africa back. Slavery helped shape global power. Slavery
contributed to the great global divide that we see today between the poor and
wealthy countries, between the Third and First World, between the exploiter and
exploited nations. This global divide is the principal contradiction. Africa is a
giant in waiting. A whole continent of brutally oppressed and exploited peoples.
Our revolution will come from the darkest places. When Africa wakes, when she
picks up the banner of the Leading Light Communism, we will see a storm. As
comrade Lin Biao said, the whole cause of world revolution hinges on the Asian,
African and Latin American populations who make up the vast majority of
humanity.
Sources
Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Washington, D.C.: Harvard
University Press, 1981.