walter rodney book how europe underdeveloped africa

Some involved a basic division of labour and were profoundly communal in character: the Khoisan hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari Desert, for instance, or the Kaffa cultivators, the Galla pastoralists, as well as the communities of Bozo fisherman or the nomadic Fulani herdsmen. He shows us a rich and complex patchwork quilt of interlocking societies and civilisations. The statistics show that Europe and Asia’s populations grew by a multiple of around four from 1650 to 1900.In the first section of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa Walter Rodney treats us to an image of Africa and its peoples before the horror of the transatlantic slave trade was visited upon them. Rodney provides a table comparing Africa’s population growth to that of Europe and Asia.

However, on every other continent from the fifteenth century onwards, the population showed constant and sometimes spectacular natural increase it is striking that the same did not apply to Africa (109). No one has been able to come up with a figure representing total losses to the African population sustained through the extraction of slave labor from all areas to all destinations over the many centuries that slave trade existed. Comparisons with other continents, however, suggest it had a dramatic effect: The precise impact of the slave trade on Africa’s population remains unknown. Europeans especially preferred young, able-bodied men in their early 20s, which shrank Africa’s work force and curtailed its birth rate.

This does not account for the captives who died before and during the Atlantic crossing. Although the evidence is scant, low estimates suggest that 10 million enslaved Africans arrived in the Americas through warfare, trickery, banditry, and kidnapping. Rodney begins with a discussion of the slave trade. Chapter 4 focuses on Europe’s role in underdeveloping Africa up to 1885.

Walter rodney book how europe underdeveloped africa