Walter Rodney Biography PDF

## Walter Rodney ### The Caribbean Biography Series The Caribbean Biography Series from the University of the West Indies Press celebrates and memorializes the architects of Caribbean culture. The series aims to introduce general readers to those individuals who have made sterling contributions to...

## Walter Rodney ### The Caribbean Biography Series The Caribbean Biography Series from the University of the West Indies Press celebrates and memorializes the architects of Caribbean culture. The series aims to introduce general readers to those individuals who have made sterling contributions to the region in their chosen field - literature, the arts, politics, sports - and are the shapers and bearers of Caribbean identity. Series Editor: Funso Aiyejina Other Titles in This Series * Earl Lovelace, by Funso Aiyejina * Derek Walcott, by Edward Baugh * Marcus Garvey, by Rupert Lewis * Beryl McBurnie, by Judy Raymond * Una Marson, by Lisa Tomlinson * Stuart Hall, by Annie Paul * Lucille Mathurin Mair, by Verene Shepherd * Aimé Césaire, by Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw ### Walter Rodney Rupert Lewis ### Contents * Introduction / vii * One / 1 * Two / 10 * Three / 28 * Four / 45 * Notes / 71 * Bibliography / 77 * Acknowledgements / 81 ### Introduction Among the critical questions that Rodney dealt with, whether he was in Tanzania, Jamaica or his native Guyana (formerly British Guiana) was the character of the postcolonial state and its relationship with the working people. It is his engagement with politics which guided his research into African and Caribbean history. In the post-Second World War era, the colonial powers had regrouped and were rebuilding Europe with the strong financial and political support of the capitalist United States. The Soviet Union, one of the victors over German fascism, was the other power on the world scene. It was communist and engaged in a Cold War with the United States, the dominant global power. China under Mao Tse Tung was the other communist state, with a huge rural population, much poverty and a low level of industrialization that had emerged after the 1949 revolution. Capitalist and socialist powers vied for the hearts and minds of the peoples of Asia, Africa and the Caribbean who were shaking off the shackles of colonialism. Latin American countries which had achieved their political independence in the nineteenth century were caught up in this nationalist surge as they battled with neocolonialism. They battled with Spain their colonial overlord and with the United States, which regarded Latin America and the Caribbean as its backyard and intervened as it saw fit to pursue its strategic military, political and economic goals. The Garvey and labour movements of the 1920s and 1930s in the Caribbean as well as communist and national liberation movements in the twentieth century helped to shape Walter Rodney's political awareness. His parents' generation was actively involved in the anti-colonial movement in British Guiana in the 1940s and 1950s; and in the 1960s and 1970s, Rodney himself helped to shape the ideas around African and Caribbean decolonization, Pan-Africanism and Marxism. To understand his political world, one must know the varieties of movements in which he was engaged in Africa and the Caribbean, his support for Black Power in the United States and Europe and his advocacy for socialist movements. The 1960s and 1970s saw the emergence of social and political movements in the region, covering a wide range of social, economic, cultural and political ideas. Walter Rodney represented the revolutionary wing of decolonization. He contributed to the development of Marxist theory in the 1960s and 1970s by applying this tool of analysis to the history of Africa and the Caribbean. He was a leader in transformative teaching methods and political work in Tanzania and in the Caribbean, especially in Guyana from 1974 to 1980. His contribution to political education occurred in communities of working people through study groups organized in schools, churches, work sites and universities. ### One Rodney grew up in the context of the struggles of the people of British Guiana to free their country from colonial rule. His parents were supporters of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) led by Dr Cheddi Jagan, an Indian dentist, and for a brief period until the British occupation of 1953, the possibility loomed of a political movement uniting both Africans and Indians in a political struggle for freedom. Dr Cheddi Jagan's People's Progressive Party (PPP) won eighteen of the twenty-four seats to the Legislative Council. Cheddi Jagan's administration included the African Forbes Burnham, minister of education, and Sydney King, minister of communications and works. But after 133 days, the British brought in the warships and suspended the constitution, thereby staging a coup d'état against a democratically elected government. With the support of the United States, the British alleged that this new government was a communist regime led by Dr Jagan. The British thus fractured the political compact that underlay the attempt at racial unity in the anti-colonial struggle. This fracture has ever since been at the heart of the racial polarity in the politics of Guyana. Walter Rodney was among those political activists in the 1970s committed to bringing about political co-operation among working people across racial lines. As a young boy, Rodney recalled distributing the manifesto of the PPP. He therefore was politically socialized in the radical anti-colonial politics of the 1950s. Walter Rodney's father was Edward Percival Rodney, a tailor, and his mother, Pauline, a homemaker. Walter was the second child. It was a humble Afro-Guyanese household in the capital city, Georgetown. The population comprised descendants of enslaved Africans and Indian indentured labourers. Indentureship had only ended in 1917. Slavery had been abolished in 1838. Other components of the population included the marginalized indigenous Amerindians, in addition to Portuguese and Chinese. All these peoples were ruled by British colonial officials. A plantation economy dominated this British colony in South America, with a large sugar plantation working class. But mining in bauxite, gold and diamonds provided alternative occupations for the working class, in addition to peasant farming. Political tensions within the PPP arose between Forbes Burnham and Cheddi Jagan over political leadership, with the British and Americans opposed to Jagan and his American-born wife, Janet, because of their left-wing views. Janet Jagan was herself general secretary of the PPP and editor of the party monthly, Thunder. An American white woman born to Jewish parents, her maiden name was Rosenberg. Forbes Burnham, whose base was the African-Guyanese population, had the support of the United States and Britain because he was assessed as someone they could collaborate with. Burnham emerged as a leader of the predominantly African-based Peoples’ National Congress and would lead Guyana to independence in 1966 and make Guyana a Cooperative Republic in 1970. He would rig elections to stay in power. Burnham became prime minister in 1966 when Guyana got independence from Britain and in 1980 became president until his death in 1985. As a schoolboy in the 1950s, Rodney recognized that “there was a whole generation of already adult young Guyanese - the Martin Carters and so on - who were participating in the political events of 1953, and who were extremely creative and extremely revolutionary at the same time”. Carter’s revolutionary poetry and journalism reflected the radical age of Caribbean anti-colonialism. Carter’s Poems of Resistance was written in his early twenties after the 1953 actions by the British. Sydney King, who later adopted the name Eusi Kwayana, would, in the 1970s, become a mentor to Walter Rodney and encourage him to return to Guyana from Tanzania. Kwayana, a teacher and political activist, along with young intellectuals such as Rupert Roopnarine, filmmaker and literary critic, and Andaiye, who would emerge as a formidable Caribbean feminist activist and thinker, would co-lead the Working People’s Alliance. Andaiye, originally Sandra Williams, whose political evolution paralleled Walter’s, explained: Each stage of my political life started with a sense of being discriminated against in a particular place – as a citizen of a colony, for instance, or as a person of African descent; and my politics were informed first by a kind of Guyanese/West Indian nationalism, later of ideas of the Black Power movement, then by Marxism. What was consistent throughout this journey was a search for explanations of how power worked and, increasingly.. of how each power relation worked in interaction with others. Rodney attended Queen’s College, the premier boys’ high school in British Guiana, from 1953 to 1960. Robert ‘Bobby’ Moore, his history teacher, used the lectures of Dr Elsa Goveia at UCWI (University College of the West Indies, then attached to the University of London), Jamaica, to teach West Indian history, thus breaking from the traditional history of the British Empire offered in the high school programme. Rodney's brilliance as a debater, and his superb analytical skills were evident, so he was among a group of bright boys who excelled academically. A generation before, Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham had both graduated from Queen’s College. As such, the teachers and students in this colonial school were at the time preparing a Guyanese intellectual and political leadership group that would succeed the British. But the thinking among some graduates was geared towards decolonization, not the continuation of British colonialism. Among the graduates of Rodney's generation were Rupert Roopnarine, who was a Guyanese scholar to Cambridge University, and who became co-leader of the Working People’s Alliance. Another was Ewart Thomas, a gifted mathematician and University of the West Indies (UWI) graduate who went on to a career as a professor at Stanford University and who wrote the preface to the first edition of Groundings with My Brothers. Yet another close fiend was Gordon Rohlehr who attended the UWI, Mona, Jamaica, and the University of Birmingham, England, and lectured at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine campus in Trinidad, becoming a creative assessor of Caribbean postcolonial literature and calypso, contributing essays in this vein to radical publications such as Moko, founded by James Millette, and Tapia, later renamed Trinidad and Tobago Review, founded by Lloyd Best. Queen’s College thus laid the foundation for Rodney’s intellectual formation as a radical thinker, sharp-witted debater and writer. His years at UWI added value to his research capabilities and honed his writing and debating skills. At UWI from 1960 to 1963, he studied history under Elsa Goveia, Roy Augier and Douglas Hall. But he also was actively involved in the campaign for the West Indian Federation in 1961, when Jamaica voted to abandon the Federation. He also visited Cuba and attended a student conference in the Soviet Union. These visits brought him to the attention of Special Branch in Kingston, Jamaica, and his name was added to the list of subversive radicals. At the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, he gained a first-class honours bachelor of arts degree in history in 1963. He won a scholarship to do his PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London in 1966 and completed his thesis “A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800” at twenty-four years old. He then taught at the University of Dar es Salaam in 1966 during the period of radical political and agrarian reform in Tanzania, under the leadership of President Julius Nyerere. Tanzania was the headquarters of the Organization of African Unity’s Liberation Committee. Dar es Salaam therefore became the base for the exiled liberation movements of Southern Africa. Among these organizations were the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa, FRELIMO of Mozambique and MPLA of Angola. In this atmosphere, Rodney developed his Pan-African perspectives along Marxist lines and sided with Southern Africa’s left-wing activists. When he returned to Jamaica to teach at the University of the West Indies in 1968, he not only had expert knowledge on West African history but had also studied East African history. In addition, he had a good grasp of the economic, ethnic as well as the social and cultural developmental challenges facing Africa. With his academic credentials in African history and his knowledge of contemporary Africa, he established a reputation as a lecturer and speaker not only on the campus of UWI but also in the wider community. Rodney was both a Marxist and Black Power advocate, with links to communities of the poor and young Rastafarians. But the neocolonial state in Jamaica was fearful of the potential for grass-roots mobilization inspired by the black consciousness that Rastafari activists had done so much to stimulate. Rodney’s association with Rastafarians and the Black Power movement in Jamaica led to Prime Minister Hugh Shearer imposing a ban on him from re-entering Jamaica, after he attended a Black Writers’ conference in Montreal, Canada, on 15 October 1968. On 16 October 1968, a demonstration of university students together with Kingston’s urban youth against this ban marked a watershed in Jamaica’s political development, as the scale of mass action in Rodney’s support surprised the Jamaican regime. In addition, there were protests throughout the Caribbean, in Tanzania, in Canada and London; and Rodney’s reputation as a scholar-activist of the 1960s and 1970s who had developed a substantial critique of Jamaican, Caribbean and African post-colonial elites was firmly established. In the ten months in 1968 that Walter Rodney had spent in Jamaica, he not only taught on campus but also spoke to groups in the marginalized urban communities of Kingston and in the rural areas. He had an extraordinary ability to speak with and listen to working people and unemployed youth, explaining the significance of Africa to Caribbean history and the importance of the struggles against the racial and social legacies of slavery and colonialism. His articles and speeches embodying these positions were published in the book Groundings with my Brothers. Rodney’s intellectual moorings are rooted in a radical black intellectual and activist tradition. C.L.R. James eloquently pointed this out when he wrote: Now I, Aimé Césaire, George Padmore, Dr DuBois, and others were faced with a particular challenge. As we grew up and went along, we had to fight the doctrines of the imperialist powers in order to establish some Caribbean foundation or foundations for the underdeveloped peoples. Walter did not have to do that…. Walter grew up in an atmosphere where for the first time a generation of West Indian intellectuals was able not only to study the revolutionary and creative works that had been created in Europe but also to benefit from and be master of what had been done in the same tradition in direct reference to the Caribbean. Rodney learnt from James the application of historical materialism so brilliantly applied in James’s classic work on the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins. However, Rodney’s significance went beyond the older generation of Marxists and radical thinkers in two ways. First was his research and understanding of West African history, which gave him a huge intellectual advantage not only over his predecessors but also over all his Marxist contemporaries in the English-speaking Caribbean. He filled in the blanks in our understanding of Africa before the transatlantic trade and plantation slavery. Second, he closely observed the daily activities, lifestyle and cultural expression of Caribbean people and so was attuned to their thinking, practices and life rhythms. Hence, he drew from them in ways that deepened his understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. As such, he was able to assess their capabilities in the struggle for decolonization. Marxism was an intellectual too; it was the scaffolding for his practical and intellectual labours. His academic research, teaching and activism in the 1960s and 1970s were geared towards decolonization and transformation of the lives of the mass of the population. Decolonization was occurring in an international context shaped by the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. Meanwhile, the Chinese Revolution that had taken place under Mao Tse Tung was still finding its own way towards economic growth. It did so through trial and painful errors committed, especially in the cultural revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. The coincidence of the Cold War and the movement towards decolonization marked an ideological battleground of ideas about capitalism and socialism. Meanwhile, the United States was waging wars against liberation movements in Vietnam, Angola and Mozambique in Southern Africa and was a bastion of support for the apartheid regime in South Africa. Like the United States, which had built its capitalist economy on the enslavement of Africans, the colonial powers of Britain, France, Holland, Portugal, Denmark and others had also built strong capitalist economies based on slavery and the development of global plantation systems, which contributed significantly to the rapid industrial development of their metropolitan domestic economies. The United States through the Marshall Plan, a massive investment project, enabled Western Europe to rebuild after the Second World War. No such assistance was forthcoming from European powers for their former colonies when political decolonization occurred in the mid to late twentieth century. ### Two Africa had been subjected to colonial and racially based political systems controlled from metropolitan capitals in Britain, France, Holland, Germany and Belgium and had been assigned a specific role in the global capitalist order as cheap labour and raw material exporters. The partitioning of Africa that occurred in the 1880s had been contested by African resistance, but as with the opposition to the grave trade, superior technology in weaponry made a decisive difference in favour of Europe. Two European wars of 1914-18 and 1939-45, in which several million Africans, African American and Caribbean people fought for democracy in Europe, forced colonials to realize that these doctrines of freedom and democracy were denied them while they were dying for these values in Europe. Nationalist movements developed in Africa and the Caribbean while the struggle by African Americans for civil liberties continued apace. These movements mutually enriched each other. It is out of this ferment, influenced by radical movements in India and China, that leaders emerged in Africa and the Caribbean and gained constitutional power. These leaders faced enormous challenges for social, cultural and economic development demanded by their populations. Julius Nyerere’s Arusha Declaration of 1967 saw Tanzania defining itself as a socialist state, with the intention not only of overhauling the institutions of the state but also initiating a programme of collectives in agriculture designed as ujamaa villages. President Nyerere defined his mission not only to take on these challenges but also provide financial and logistical support for liberation movements fighting for freedom in Southern Africa. Tanzania, therefore, hosted liberation movements from Southern Africa, which included the African National Congress (ANC), Front for the Liberation Mozambique (FRELIMO) and Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). Radical students and staff were among those who took the lead in developing their response to this initiative. As such, Walter Rodney, during his sojourns in Dar es Salaam 1966-67 and 1969-74, was an active participant in the critical debates around these policy shifts. His years in Tanzania from 1969 to 1974, Pat Rodney described as the best years in the life of the family. The family was at home in Dar es Salaam, and Pat appreciated the civility of the people she worked with as a public health nurse in the Dar es Salaam City Council. She thus developed her connections with working people, wherever lived, enabling her to make significant contributions to public health education in the Caribbean and in the United States. Her book, The Caribbean State – Health Care and Women – An Analysis of Barbados and Grenada undertook a comparative study of public health systems during 1979-83, the years of the revolution in Grenada. She later directed the Master of Public Health Program, Morehouse School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia. She had identified with the Tanzanian people and was frequently mistaken as a native. “Tanzania was our first ‘family home’, and it was a magnet for friends and colleagues from Tanzania, and other African countries, North America and Europe, with whom we met for food, music, conversation and discussions about the socio-political changes in East Africa and throughout the region. The children were loved, and this was also Walter’s most creative period in which he expanded his reach in African history from West Africa to East and Southern Africa. Rodney saw African nationalism as a progressive and historically necessary force and sought to develop a dialogue between nationalist theories and Marxism. His speculative essay, “Tanzanian Ujamaa and Scientific Socialism”, is a good example of this dialogue. He argued that the modes of production that Marx developed for Europe were not a universal sequence, and conditions in Asia needed to be analysed to discover new directions for socialism. So that while Marx speculates about the Asiatic mode of production, Rodney proposed there could be an African mode of production. He advanced that: “The word ‘Ujamaa’ had been popularized in two contexts: first, as referring to the extended family of African communalism; and second, regarding the creation of agricultural collectives known as Ujamaa villages. The relation between the two is that the Ujamaa villages seek to recapture the principles of joint production, egalitarian distribution and the universal obligation to work which were found within African communalism." Rodney differentiates Nyerere’s Ujamaa from the African socialism promoted by Leopold Senghor and Tom Mboya, arguing that “When ‘African Socialism’ was in vogue early in the 1960s, it comprised a variety of interpretations ranging from a wish to see a socialist society in Africa to a desire to maintain the status quo of neo-colonialism.” Nyerere’s approach was more critical of capitalism and certainly of imperialism. But Nyerere was not a Marxist. In advocating Ujamaa as a route to socialism, Rodney wrote, “The most important requirements were: first, that the ‘traditional’ forms should exist in real life and have some social vitality; and second, that international conditions should be favorable owing to a socialist breakthrough in some part of the world. For Africa, the fulfilment or non-fulfilment of these conditions needs to be examined.” Rodney’s search for a different way to socialism faced the formidable strength of the international capitalist system, as neither China nor the Soviet Union was economically strong enough to provide the support required by so many post-colonial countries in Africa and Asia. The idea of disengagement from the Western capitalist system discussed in the work of the Egyptian economist, Samir Amin, was not a viable option because the international options were too weak. This political option would only result in political authoritarian rule in the face of Western economic, political and military policies. Moreover, the internal struggle within the ruling party in Tanzania caused the country to go in a different direction from Rodney’s hopes; and the allies he had in the leadership, such as Abdulrahman Babu, who served as minister of planning, were later imprisoned by Nyerere. But Rodney’s point concerns thinking about Marxism in conditions of Africa’s historical development and rejecting the imposition of Europe’s developmental stages on Africa. To some extent he was seeking a non-capitalist path to socialism. Rodney quotes Amilcar Cabral to support his position. Amilcar Cabral put his finger on these points and explains lucidly that the possibility of such a jump in the historical process arises mainly, in the economic field, from the power of the means available to man at the time for dominating nature, and, in the political field, from the new event which has radically changed the face of the world and the development of history, the creation of socialist states." These are big historical perspectives that assume a global change in the world order coupled with technological changes that make it possible for leaps development occur. I refer to Rodney’s essay speculative, as he was not advancing a policy position but theorizing about the possible futures of the African revolution. In these reasonings, his standpoint that “Masses of people have enter into an epistemology and methodology different from those which they have been accustomed. Colonial and racist epistemologies had be destroyed. In examining the leadership of independence struggles, Rodney saw the emergence of a petty-bourgeoisie that had no wealth of its own, had no history of production, was educated in the colonial paradigms and worked teaching, a limited range of professions, theology – both Moslem and Christian, and public administration and who rose power in the nationalist movement. When the change-over of power occurred, the state became the source of enrichment through access public resources and contracts. This stratum functioned through political parties or through the military when civilian power was overthrown. Rodney describes the petty-bourgeoisie as “a local social stratum that lives in privileged manner in colonial or post-colonial society." Amilcar Cabral in his famous lecture “The Weapon of Theory” spoke of the petty-bourgeoisie in the following way: By virtue of its objective and subjective position (higher standard of living than that of the masses, more frequent humiliation, higher grade of education and political culture, etc.), it is the stratum that soonest becomes aware of the need to rid itself of foreign domination. This historical responsibility is assumed by the sector of the petty bourgeoisie that, in the colonial context, one might call revolutionary, while the other sectors retain the characteristic hesitation of this class or ally themselves to the colonialist to defend, albeit illusorily, their social position. Following Cabral's lead, Rodney saw this stratum as one with various possibilities – from support for revolutionary change to lukewarm and hostile attitudes. There is therefore always struggle within this stratum over the direction of society in the struggle against colonialism and after the constitutional handover of authority. Drawing on Cabral’s notion of class suicide, the hope was that in revolutionary struggle for a new society these aspirations could be suppressed or frustrated. While this idea of class suicide could function in the bush luring armed struggle where the rules of revolutionary combat and self-discipline could be enforced, sometimes brutally, against comrades who fell afoul of political and moral standards, they could not be sustained over the long haul of economic development. In other words, class evolution and development could not be restrained solely by politics, laws and ethics. Rodney’s educational work to develop radical consciousness was informed by the fact that the students he taught in Dar es Salaam in classes and study groups would become the political, administrative and business leaders in Africa. They would presumably lean towards post-colonial transformation and not shift into new class positions of privilege and use social status as leverage for enrichment in collaboration with Western imperialism. Issa Shivji recalls Rodney’s activism and the Sunday ideological classes he led during a period of “intense debates and struggles and intellectual ferment" concerning Tanzania's development. His activism was not confined to the campus as he went out to work in Ujamaa villages in the rural areas.14 John Saul describes the left at the University of Dar es Salaam as "[comprising] the most active members of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) Youth League and the University Students' African Revolutionary Front (USARF)". 25 The chairman USARF was Yoweri Museveni, later president of Uganda. Rodney wrote for Cheche, the student revolutionary journal. But neither USARF nor Cheche lasted because of opposition in the Nyerere government to their left-wing position. A paper Rodney wrote and presented to the Second Seminar of East and Central Africa Youth in December 1969, "The Ideology of the African Revolution", got 1 stern response in editorial published in The Nationalist, the organ of TANU, Tanganyika African National Union, the ruling party, for its advocacy revolutionary violence. The editorial warned, "Both Tanzanians and non-Tanzanians in this country must accept two things. The subversion of our constitution, and use of Tanzanian facilities to attack other African states, are both equally unacceptable here. Surrounding them with revolutionary jargon, and the use of words like 'imperialist', 'neo-colonialists', and ‘capitalists’, does not alter their unacceptability. Those who insist upon indulging in such practices will have to accept the consequences of their indulgence.”16 These threatening words were directed at Walter Rodney and, according Shivji, were penned by Mwalimu Nyerere. In his response, Rodney accepted the idea of non-interference, arguing that “it is not meaningful to call for or work for revolution in countries where one does not live, work or struggle. That is the prerogative of the people involved, who have the necessary social experience of the particular countries.” When Shivji suggested to Rodney that he should apply for Tanzanian citizenship, he paraphrased Rodney's response, “Comrade I don’t know the idiom of the people here. I cannot immerse in the people and struggle with them. I have to go back to the people with whom I can communicate and be part of.”18 The years Tanzania were very productive, as he was immersed in dynamic developmental discussion over agrarian reforms. Rodney was excellent teacher and started a development studies programme at the University of Dar es Salaam. In 1972, he published his best-known work, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. This work brings together historical scholarship and development theory argue that the transatlantic slave trade and Western capitalist slavery did severe damage Africa in depriving Africa millions its young people during the sixteenth nineteenth centuries. It was also devastatingly critical the impact colonialism on retarding the development the continent. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa begins by defining the concepts development, underdevelopment and law uneven development. He establishes dialectical relationship between development and underdevelopment in the trade relations between Africa and Europe after fifteenth century and points uneven economic technological development between Europe and Africa. But uneven development also relates internal economic development on the continent, which had different modes production – from hunter-gatherers farmers manufacturing using metals and developing textile production. Rodney's focus uneven development is term that encompasses inequality and is especially relevant today's era global uneven development. The theoretical rigour How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, which establishes interconnectivity between the rise capitalism Europe and Africa's assignment as pool enslaved labour service and resources, is what holds together this historical work covering more than five hundred years human history on continent Africa and in Americas and Europe. In period political independence, question underdevelopment, poverty, inequality, low levels literacy, small numbers engineers, health personnel, entrepreneurs, weak infrastructural development governmental institutions came the fore national international policy discussions. The state, according Kwame Nkrumah, would be instrument transformation Ghana and vehicle Pan-Africanism. President Julius Nyerere also saw the state this way. Comparisons were naturally being made with more economically developed economies, many which had derived substantial wealth through transatlantic slave trade, colonialism, and exploitation their own working classes. Western economies led the United States the post-Second World War years structured financial and trading systems ways that benefited them disadvantaged newly independent states. The Soviet Union was not economically strong enough its history be economic competitor the West or provide viable options newly independent countries though made considerable efforts give military and educational support national liberation struggles Asia and Africa during years the Cold War as part the global geo-political struggle. This context, there was struggle between power elites Washington and Moscow influence leaders newly independent states Asia, Africa and Caribbean choices between capitalism and socialism and the role the state and private capital. The term "Cold War" suggests sharp ideological conflict but not military confrontation among the big powers. There were no wars Europe or the United States, but NATO countries and United States fought wars and overthrew governments Asia, Africa, Latin America and Caribbean which millions died. Hence, era the Cold War must be seen time "Hot Wars" for rest the world. The Soviet Union and China were also involved the opposing sides these conflicts. In era Hot Wars, developing states were being encouraged different directions, some towards state-led socialist development and others towards capitalist development. The two major players the global stage, Soviet Union and United States, were ideological trendsetters, but Tanzania chose non-alignment and followed its own path. Here, the challenge faced by newly independent governments was broadly speaking how transform economy and choice what policies were necessary develop wide range capabilities the public private sectors meet urgent needs the population for health care, education, security, housing and essentials living. In How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Rodney decided not start with that mid-twentieth century political dichotomy but focused on Africa's human development before transatlantic trade and colonialism as lead-up the period Western imperial domination. He illustrates universality development, starting from initial stages human society. At basis the process development is labour humans – the first basic requisite all human life and development tools which facilitate man’s productive activity each system production relations. The dominant activity Africa prior the intervention the Europeans the fifteenth century was agriculture; and he emphasizes advanced methods such terracing, crop rotation, manuring, mixed farming, and regulated swamp farming. Furthermore, iron tools such the axe and hoe had evolved. But he suggests that persistence communalism Africa was itself regressive factor the development production since it checked emergence class system. The class system, as evolved from communal forms, saw contradictory development. On the one hand, expansion productive forces using more complex tools that raised output. On other hand, it led the appropriation the surplus by owners the means production. These were ideas that came out the economic theories Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Some nations had also been making progress manufacturing, for example, rise tailoring guilds Timbuktu, of glass and leather industries northern Nigeria; extensive development trade and monetary relations North Africa, Ethiopia and Congo.19 Rodney's exploration African history and development was crucial, as average Caribbean citizen was as ignorant African history, and still is, as Africans are Caribbean history, and still are. While considerable new research and publications have developed since Rodney's time the 1960s and 1970s, this body work has not had required impact educational systems Africa and Diaspora. For instance, while there much written about resistance slavery the African Diaspora, particularly Haitian Revolution, which brought end slavery, insufficient attention has been paid 1 resistance the slave trade the continent. Rodney's thesis the Upper Guinea Coast documents both African resistance and collaboration as transatlantic trade became central profit-making industry for Western European capitalism. West and Central Africa had many small competing states, which made it possible for European states play one state against another. And those larger states that resisted, over time, were subordinated by military and economic strength the Europeans. Rodney wrote: In Congo, slave trade did not get under way without grave doubts and opposition from Africans who had established contact with Europeans. King the state Kongo clearly defined nature his expectations from Europe. He asked for masons, priests, clerks, physicians, and like; but instead he was overwhelmed slave ships sent by Catholic brothers Portugal, vicious trade was opened up exploiting contradictions within loosely structured Kongo kingdom. 20 With Angola, Queen Nzinga's resistance the Portuguese Angola was followed by her subordination evidenced the change her name Dona Ana Sousa, which symbolized shift cultural identity that legitimized control Portugal over Angola. 21 Africans fought alien political rule, yet some Africans opposed abolition slavery because it constituted significant part their economic activities. Rodney concluded that "For most European capitalist states, enslavement Africans had served its purpose by middle the nineteenth century, but those Africans who dealt captives the abrupt termination the trade any given point was crisis the greatest magnitude."22 In his essay, "Labour as Conceptual Framework for Pan-African Studies" Rodney writes Europe's Africa contact in the fifteenth century, "West Africa the fifteenth century boasted skills brass casting and plastic arts, advanced techniques canoe-building and river travel, and notions agriculture relevant tropical forests, savannahs, and swamps. Europe, the other hand, had superiority some extent arms technology and overwhelming extent shipbuilding, navigation, administration, and accounting."23 What then the skills that Africans brought with them the centuries transatlantic trade? Several the people Senegambia who were victims the slave trade were experienced pastoralists and familiar with open-pit mining gold and iron ore. Crops such cotton, indigo and rice were produced the American colonies and the Caribbean by Africans who were already growing those same crops their own societies. It could hardly mere coincidence that rice production was successfully launched the Brazilian state Maranhão the mid-eighteenth century just the moment when African labour was being brought in the traditional rice-farming sector Upper Guinea.24 So African skills contributed significantly the plantation capitalist economies the Americas. In his essay "Historical Roots African Underdevelopment", he points out internationalization trade that developed the fifteenth century which Europe systematically repositioned Africa as suppliers human beings. "They owned and directed great majority the world's ocean-going vessels, and they controlled financing trade between four continents. Africans had little clue the tri-continental linkages between Africa, Europe, and Americas."25 Rodney makes clear items traded by Africans were limited. They included, "things such as civet perfume, ambergris, indigo, monkeys and feathers; but, course, those were mere curiosities. The economically significant commodities were few and were chosen by Europeans accordance with European needs".26 In fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Europe surged past Africa because the rapid development navigational and military technology. This launch led it the global trade Africans that was foundation the plantation economies the Americas and the Caribbean sugar, cotton and other exports. Rodney shows how slave trade boosted international financial system so much so that David Alexander Barclay, leading eighteenth-century slave traders, later used loot set Barclays Bank. The same applies Lloyds Bank and insurance houses Britain, which were major investors the slave trade. During late 1800s, colonial period worsened economic and social underdevelopment Africa. The continent was dragooned international trade, mainly controlled by Europe. This trade focused extracting raw materials, often using slave labour. For example, early 1900s, Belgians exploited the Congo through such practices. From time the slave trade the era independence, various African states, nations and leaders played role enabling this exploitative process. Writing the years political independence, Rodney contended sarcastically, "Any diagnosis underdevelopment Africa will reveal not just low per capita income and protein deficiencies, but also gentlemen who dance Abidjan, Accra, and Kinshasa when music played Paris, London, and New York.”? In thinking about global trade, Rodney argued for conditional support socialist countries trading with Africa, "Africa also diversifying its trade by dealing with socialist countries, and if that trade proves disadvantageous the African economy, then developed socialist countries will also have joined the ranks the exploiters Africa." Rodney also voiced several ripostes the racialized assumptions underlying British historiography on Africa and the Caribbean. His essay, "The British Colonialist School African Historiography and Question African Independence", classic Walter Rodney demolition several colonial arguments. Among these that Britain prepared its colonies for independence. Rodney dismantled positions a British journalist, John Hatch, Sunday morning seminar the University the West Indies 1968. This same polemic repeated later publication where he posited that "Governors like Arden-Clarke (Gold Coast), Renison (Kenya), Turnbull (Tanganyika) and Hugh Foot (Jamaica) presided over dissolution