Walter Rodney, Guyanese Historian and Political Figure

Dr. Walter Rodney (March 23, 1942 - June 13, 1980) was a Guyanese graduate of the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. In 1963, he entered the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, and in 1966 he was awarded his PhD for his research into the history of the upper Guinea Coast. This scholar and activist was tragically killed during the summer of 1980 amidst political turmoil in Guyana.

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
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Paperback: 312 pages
Publisher: Howard University Press; Revised edition (November 1981)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0882580965
ISBN-13: 978-0882580968
Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1 inches

Africa, the second largest continent on earth, is among the least developed. In a penetrating and perceptive analysis, Walter Rodney examines this phenomenon in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, delving into the European and African past showing how the present came into being, and what the trends are for the near future.

In simple language, the author illuminates the concept of development and underdevelopment; shows us the growth of Africa before the coming of the Europeans(using concrete examples); then illustrates how Africa contributed to European capitalist development, both in the pre-colonial and colonial periods.

The author avoids the pitfall of treating a continent as a monolithic structure; thus the reader can perceive the varying rates of development in Africa from region to region, and even within regions. Rodney also touches on the subject of the European slave trade, and shows how it was a factor in African underdevelopment and technical stagnation.

Walter Rodney Speaks: The Making of an African Intellectual
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Paperback: 122 pages
Publisher: Africa World Press (August 1990)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0865430721
ISBN-13: 978-0865430723
Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches

The following is excepted from a Review by Rupert Lewis

This is not a collection of speeches. It is a narrative based on interviews with Rodney done on April 30 and May 1, 1975 at a round-table discussion held at the University of Massachusetts with African-American scholars Vincent Harding, William Strickland, Howard Dodson and the Jamaican scholar Robert Hill who were active in the Atlanta-based Institute of the Black World.

It is a sustained piece of reflection by Rodney about his early life in Guyana, his University education in Jamaica and at the School for Oriental and African Studies in London where he gained his Ph.d. at 24, his important years in Tanzania, his assessment of the situation in Africa, the Caribbean and the United States, his dissecting of the dynamic interaction of race and class, his incisive and clear exposition of the role of the black intellectual and academic and his exploration of his formation as a Marxist.

When Rodney did these interviews he had just turned thirty-three and had five more years to live. So this text is of necessity five important years short. However his reflections on this latter period are scattered in a number of archives on casettes, videotapes and in published speeches but it is unlikely that the quality of enquiry into Rodney's intellectual life which marks this book exists in any of these sources.

The Groundings With My Brothers
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Paperback: 68 pages
Publisher: Frontline Distribution International
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0948390026
ISBN-13: 978-0948390029
Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5 x 0.3 inches

A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905 (Johns Hopkins Studies in Atlantic History and Culture)
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Paperback: 312 pages
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (September 1, 1981)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0801824478
ISBN-13: 978-0801824470
Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches

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