Editorial commentary
Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) has continued to be read across the more than five decades since first publication. The discussion circle considers what the book's analytical framework offers for contemporary engagement with the African political-economic situation, what aspects have been substantially refined by subsequent scholarship, and what new analytical questions the contemporary period poses that Rodney's framework was not constructed to address.
Walter Rodney (1942-1980) was a Guyanese historian and political organizer. He completed his doctorate at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London in 1966, taught at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica until banned from returning in 1968, taught at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania for most of the 1970s, returned to Guyana in 1974, and was assassinated in Georgetown in 1980 at the age of thirty-eight. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) is the central text of his work.
Rodney's central analytical category — 'underdevelopment' as an actively produced position rather than as the natural starting position from which development proceeds — has remained a reference point in the contemporary African political-economy scholarship. The category's specific application to the African case has been refined by subsequent work — Thandika Mkandawire's work on African developmental states, Bonny Ibhawoh's work on African human rights — but the broader analytical move has continued to operate.
The circle's discussion engages three specific questions. First, what does the 'underdevelopment' category capture about the contemporary African political-economic situation and what does it miss? Second, how should the framework be received in the context of the substantial variation in political-economic trajectories across the contemporary African states? Third, what is the relationship between Rodney's framework and the broader contemporary scholarship on the global political economy of development?
Preparation for the circle: read the full text of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (the 2018 Verso edition is the standard contemporary printing). Optional supplementary reading includes the contemporary African political-economy scholarship, including Thandika Mkandawire's African Intellectuals and Nationalism (2005) and Mahmood Mamdani's Citizen and Subject (1996).
This entry sits within the archive's broader catalogue of primary-source documents, book reviews, audio essays, and discussion circles. Readers approaching the material for the first time will find suggested reading paths in the curated bundles in the shop section; readers with prior background in the tradition will find adjacent material via the Read Alongside links at the foot of each detail page. The archive's editorial policy is to reproduce public-domain texts in full, to excerpt in-copyright material under fair-use conventions with attribution to canonical sources, and to cite living scholars by name where their work is engaged. Provenance fields on each document record the source, the year of first publication, and the canonical digital edition used as the basis for the version on this site.
Editorial commentary
Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) has continued to be read across the more than five decades since first publication. The discussion circle considers what the book's analytical framework offers for contemporary engagement with the African political-economic situation, what aspects have been substantially refined by subsequent scholarship, and what new analytical questions the contemporary period poses that Rodney's framework was not constructed to address.
Walter Rodney (1942-1980) was a Guyanese historian and political organizer. He completed his doctorate at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London in 1966, taught at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica until banned from returning in 1968, taught at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania for most of the 1970s, returned to Guyana in 1974, and was assassinated in Georgetown in 1980 at the age of thirty-eight. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) is the central text of his work.
Rodney's central analytical category — 'underdevelopment' as an actively produced position rather than as the natural starting position from which development proceeds — has remained a reference point in the contemporary African political-economy scholarship. The category's specific application to the African case has been refined by subsequent work — Thandika Mkandawire's work on African developmental states, Bonny Ibhawoh's work on African human rights — but the broader analytical move has continued to operate.
The circle's discussion engages three specific questions. First, what does the 'underdevelopment' category capture about the contemporary African political-economic situation and what does it miss? Second, how should the framework be received in the context of the substantial variation in political-economic trajectories across the contemporary African states? Third, what is the relationship between Rodney's framework and the broader contemporary scholarship on the global political economy of development?
Preparation for the circle: read the full text of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (the 2018 Verso edition is the standard contemporary printing). Optional supplementary reading includes the contemporary African political-economy scholarship, including Thandika Mkandawire's African Intellectuals and Nationalism (2005) and Mahmood Mamdani's Citizen and Subject (1996).
This entry sits within the archive's broader catalogue of primary-source documents, book reviews, audio essays, and discussion circles. Readers approaching the material for the first time will find suggested reading paths in the curated bundles in the shop section; readers with prior background in the tradition will find adjacent material via the Read Alongside links at the foot of each detail page. The archive's editorial policy is to reproduce public-domain texts in full, to excerpt in-copyright material under fair-use conventions with attribution to canonical sources, and to cite living scholars by name where their work is engaged. Provenance fields on each document record the source, the year of first publication, and the canonical digital edition used as the basis for the version on this site.