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Rodney - How Europe Underdeveloped Africa 

The European Slave Trade as a Basic Factor in African Underdevelopment

  • Africans only became slaves when they reached a society where they worked as a slave

  • Shipments were all by Europeans to markets controlled by Europeans, and this was in the interest of European capitalism

  • Process by which captives were obtained on African soil wasn’t trade; it was through warfare, trickery, banditry, and kidnapping → social violence

  • General picture of destructiveness

  • Mortality in transshipment: 15-20%

  • Massive loss to the African labour force was critical because it was composed of able-bodied young men and young women who were healthy

  • Fewer babies were born

  • Regarding population, Africa had an abnormal record of stagnation due to the trade in slaves

  • Population loss

  • Population growth played a major role in European development in providing labour, markets, and the pressures which led to further advance

  • Social violence

  • The consequences of slaving on agricultural activities in Africa were negative

    • Famines

    • When able-bodied men left their homes as migrant labourers, that upset the farming routine in the home districts and often caused famines

  • Slaving prevented the remaining population from effectively engaging in agriculture and industry, and it employed professional slave hunters and warriors to destroy rather than build

  • Parts of Africa left free by export trends in captives were affected by the tremendous dislocation

  • Several European imports were competing with and strangling African products

  • The majority of the imports were of the worst quality even as consumer goods

Technical Stagnation and Distortion of the African Economy in the Pre-Colonial Epoch

  • Technological advances in Europe vs. stagnation of technology in Africa

    • Technological stagnation because people forgot even the simple techniques of their forefathers

  • Europe benefitted technologically from its external trade contacts, while Africa either failed to benefit or actually lost

  • European traders succeeded in putting an end to the expansion of African cloth manufacture

    • African producers were cut off from the increasing demand for cloth

  • Loss of development opportunity

  • The slave trade was a direct block, removing millions of youth who are the human agents from whom inventiveness springs

    • Those who remained were preoccupied about their freedom rather than with improvements in production

  • The nature of Afro-European trade was highly unfavorable to the movement of positive ideas and techniques from the European capitalist system to the African pre-capitalist system of production

  • There had to be both willingness on the part of Europeans to transfer technology and African socio-economic structures capable of making use of that technology and internalizing it

  • Europeans deliberately ignore those African requests that Europe should place certain skills and techniques at their disposal

  • Capitalism has always discouraged technological evolution in Africa and blocked Africa’s access to its own technology

  • In Africa, there was disruption and disintegration at the local level

  • Dependent on Western Europe

  • Markets of manufactured goods

  • There was a decrease in the capacity to achieve economic independence and self-sustaining social progress

Rodney - How Europe Underdeveloped Africa 

The European Slave Trade as a Basic Factor in African Underdevelopment

  • Africans only became slaves when they reached a society where they worked as a slave

  • Shipments were all by Europeans to markets controlled by Europeans, and this was in the interest of European capitalism

  • Process by which captives were obtained on African soil wasn’t trade; it was through warfare, trickery, banditry, and kidnapping → social violence

  • General picture of destructiveness

  • Mortality in transshipment: 15-20%

  • Massive loss to the African labour force was critical because it was composed of able-bodied young men and young women who were healthy

  • Fewer babies were born

  • Regarding population, Africa had an abnormal record of stagnation due to the trade in slaves

  • Population loss

  • Population growth played a major role in European development in providing labour, markets, and the pressures which led to further advance

  • Social violence

  • The consequences of slaving on agricultural activities in Africa were negative

    • Famines

    • When able-bodied men left their homes as migrant labourers, that upset the farming routine in the home districts and often caused famines

  • Slaving prevented the remaining population from effectively engaging in agriculture and industry, and it employed professional slave hunters and warriors to destroy rather than build

  • Parts of Africa left free by export trends in captives were affected by the tremendous dislocation

  • Several European imports were competing with and strangling African products

  • The majority of the imports were of the worst quality even as consumer goods

Technical Stagnation and Distortion of the African Economy in the Pre-Colonial Epoch

  • Technological advances in Europe vs. stagnation of technology in Africa

    • Technological stagnation because people forgot even the simple techniques of their forefathers

  • Europe benefitted technologically from its external trade contacts, while Africa either failed to benefit or actually lost

  • European traders succeeded in putting an end to the expansion of African cloth manufacture

    • African producers were cut off from the increasing demand for cloth

  • Loss of development opportunity

  • The slave trade was a direct block, removing millions of youth who are the human agents from whom inventiveness springs

    • Those who remained were preoccupied about their freedom rather than with improvements in production

  • The nature of Afro-European trade was highly unfavorable to the movement of positive ideas and techniques from the European capitalist system to the African pre-capitalist system of production

  • There had to be both willingness on the part of Europeans to transfer technology and African socio-economic structures capable of making use of that technology and internalizing it

  • Europeans deliberately ignore those African requests that Europe should place certain skills and techniques at their disposal

  • Capitalism has always discouraged technological evolution in Africa and blocked Africa’s access to its own technology

  • In Africa, there was disruption and disintegration at the local level

  • Dependent on Western Europe

  • Markets of manufactured goods

  • There was a decrease in the capacity to achieve economic independence and self-sustaining social progress

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