The classic work of political, economic, and historical analysis,
powerfully introduced by Angela Davis
In his short life,
the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading
thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading
movements in North America, South America, the African continent, and
the Caribbean. In each locale, Rodney found himself a lightning rod
for working class Black Power. His deportation catalyzed 20th century
Jamaica's most significant rebellion, the 1968 Rodney riots, and his
scholarship trained a generation how to think politics at an
international scale. In 1980, shortly after founding of the Working
People's Alliance in Guyana, the 38-year-old Rodney would be
assassinated.
In his magnum opus,
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Rodney incisively argues
that grasping "the great divergence" between the west and
the rest can only be explained as the exploitation of the latter by
the former. This meticulously researched analysis of the abiding
repercussions of European colonialism on the continent of Africa has
not only informed decades of scholarship and activism, it remains an
indispensable study for grasping global inequality today.