How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

How Europe Became the Dominant Section of a World-Trade System

Chapter 3 addresses the exploitative relationship between Europe and Africa. Rodney argues that, from the 15th century onward, Africa developed Europe in the same proportion as Europe underdeveloped Africa. He begins by explaining how Europe came to dominate global trade. By the late-15th century, Europe had established trade relations with Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Europe instigated and actively pursued global trade to support its interests. Europe owned and operated most of the world’s sea-faring ships, financed long-distance trade, and monopolized knowledge about the international exchange system. Europeans capitalized on their superior fleets and weapons to control the world’s waterways and capture strategic ports. Rodney uses the example of Portugal and Spain to explain the world’s increasingly complex trade networks. By the 17th century, the Portuguese and Spanish commanded global trade, buying cloth in India to exchange for enslaved Africans who toiled in gold mines in Central and South America. Gold from the Americas was then used to purchase spices and silks from Asia.

The growth of global trade turned Africa into an extension of Europe’s capitalist market and created dependency in Africa, which relied on what Europe was prepared to buy and sell. Europe’s power rested primarily on its economic prowess rather than on its military:

Europeans found it impossible to conquer Africans during the early centuries of trade, except in isolated spots on the coast. European power resided in their system of production […] European society was leaving feudalism and was moving towards capitalism; African society was then entering a phase comparable to feudalism (89).

Europe exported locally produced goods to Africa, notably Dutch linens and Spanish iron. It also exported goods that were technologically out of date or unsellable in Europe. International law was nothing more than European law, designed by Europeans to benefit Europe. Europe determined what Africa could export based on European needs. Gold was highly sought after because Europe needed coins for its rapidly expanding monetary economy. Forced labor was also important because it was needed to develop the Americas. Some African rulers supported slavery by exchanging prisoners of war for European goods. This led to internecine conflicts fought for the sole purpose of capturing and selling forced laborers. The African economy grew increasingly dependent on the slave trade, with Europeans exploiting existing political and class divisions within Africa to support their growing demand for forced labor. Europeans stamped out African resistance through military force and isolation or by depriving rebel societies of European imports.

One of Rodney’s primary contributions to African studies is his emphasis on African development. Most of the scholarship on Africa before Rodney’s time was Eurocentric. Scholars minimized or ignored early African development to support the racist claim that Europe developed Africa. As Rodney argues, however, Africa did not lack development before engaging in trade with Europe. Rather, it lacked development in relevant areas:

African canoes on the river Nile and the Senegal coast were of a high standard, but the relevant sphere of operations was the ocean, where European ships could take command. West Africans had developed metal casting to a fine artistic perfection in many parts of Nigeria, but when it came to the meeting with Europe, beautiful bronzes were far less relevant than the crudest cannon. African wooden utensils were sometimes works of great beauty, but Europe produced pots and pans that had many practical advantages. Literacy, organizational experience, and the capacity to produce on an ever-expanding scale also counted in the European favor (90).

The strength of Rodney’s book lies not just with his vast knowledge of African history, but also with his critical approach to the scholarship. He summarizes key arguments about African development before systematically dismantling them. Using clear, direct language, for example, he calls out scholars who suggest that the slave trade was not financially profitable for Europeans:

They would have us believe that the same entrepreneurs whom they praise in other contexts as the heroes of capitalist development were so dumb with regard to slavery and slave trade that for centuries they absorbed themselves in a non-profit venture! (96).

Rodney’s engagement with the scholarly literature serves three functions: (1) It demonstrates his depth of knowledge, (2) it serves as a foil for his arguments, and (3) it underscores the distortions of what he calls “white bourgeois scholarship” (96), which promotes racist ideas.

Africa’s Contribution to the Economy and Beliefs of Early Capitalist Europe

The second part of Chapter 3 focuses on Africa’s contributions to the development of early capitalist Europe. Like other Marxist scholars, Rodney stresses the economic ties between Europe, Africa, the West Indies, and Latin America, pointing out that Europe’s development depended on the exploitation of Africa. African labor supported and stimulated European economic growth in several ways. Africans worked in Africa’s gold and silver mines to feed Europe’s growing demand for coinage. It was the slave trade, however, that had the biggest impact on Europe’s development. Enslaved Africans supported Europe’s shipping and insurance industries, promoted the formation of companies, contributed to technological and manufacturing growth, and helped expand capitalist agriculture. Despite fluctuations over time, slavery was profitable enough for Europeans to continue the trade for centuries. Commerce made possible by African labor also strengthened the European economy. A salient example is produce, especially sugar cane from the Caribbean and cotton from America, both of which were exported to Europe. European seaport towns, such as Bristol, Bordeaux, and Seville flourished because of trade with Africa. This, in turn, gave rise to manufacturing centers and ultimately led to the Industrial Revolution. Slavery was not just a productive force, however. Just as the slave trade drove European capitalism, it also stunted African development. What Rodney describes is a dialectical relationship between development and underdevelopment. In other words, rather than simply being comparative terms, development and underdevelopment help produce one another through interaction.

Rodney’s broad approach to development is one of the most distinctive features of his book. Unlike his predecessors, who focused narrowly on the economic aspects of development, Rodney studies the impact of economic growth on the European superstructure. His discussion of the relationship between European capitalism and racism is particularly illuminating, as it remains relevant today. Rodney argues that the capitalist mode of production gave rise to widespread racism and racial violence because it relied on the institution of slavery: “no people can enslave another for centuries without coming out with a notion of superiority, and when the color and other physical traits of those peoples were quite different, it was inevitable that the prejudice should take a racist form” (102). The racism that helped justify slavery and drive capitalism continued long after the slave trade ended. Although white racism did not harm Europeans in the short run, the situation soon shifted: “When Europeans put millions of their brothers (Jews) into ovens under the Nazis, the chickens were coming home to roost” (104).

Redressing imbalances in the scholarship on Africa is one of Rodney’s most important contributions to development studies. His emphasis on Africa’s role in developing Europe is key in this regard. Most writers before Rodney approached European development from nationalistic, often racist perspectives. For example, scholars wrote about the Industrial Revolution in England without referencing the role of slavery in the primary accumulation of capital. Karl Marx stressed sources of overseas capital accumulation in his writings on capitalism, but Marxist scholars focused on the evolution of capitalism from within Europe, with only passing mention of the exploitation of Africans, Asians, and Native Americans. Rodney’s attentiveness to the external forces driving capitalistic development, and to the impact of capitalism on less developed societies, influenced generations of progressive scholars, including members of the Dar es Salaam School of African History who studied the connections between Africa’s past and its present in the mid-1900s.