How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

In his short life, the Guyanese thinker Walter Rodney emerged as one of the most prominent thinkers and activists of the anti-colonial revolution, leading movements in North America, South America, the African continent and the Caribbean.Everywhere, Rodney found himself a symbol of the black power movement of the working class. His deportation spurred Jamaica's most important uprising of the 20th century, the Rodney riots of 1968, and his studies helped train an entire generation in political thinking on an international scale. In 1980, shortly after the founding of the Guiana Working People's Alliance, Rodney was assassinated at the age of 38.In his groundbreaking book, How Europe Led to Africa's Underdevelopment, Rodney argues sharply that understanding the “great disparity” between the West and the rest of the world can only be explained by the West's exploitation of the rest of the world. This rigorous, highly researched analysis of the lasting effects of European colonialism on the continent of Africa has not only enriched decades of scholarly research and activism but remains an indispensable study for understanding global inequality today.