Around the World in 80 Books discussion

What are you thinking as you read this book and/or the short excerpts from Chadian authors (courtesy of Sylvia!) posted the other thread?

So I am *almost* done with How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, and it is a really difficult read. Not in the sense of A Woman in the Crossfire last year, which was emotionally difficult, but in the sense that I've fallen asleep reading it maaaany times *ashamed face*.

Thoughts:
1) Over and over and over, I keep thinking how *ridiculous* it is that he has to make these arguments or present this evidence at all. It's very well researched, obviously, but why on earth does he have to make an argument that slavery didn't benefit Africa or the Africans who were kidnapped and sold into slavery??? Why does he have to enumerate the reasons that Europe & America didn't 'civilize' Africa through colonialism??? I come from a science background and I get that sometimes you have to prove very obvious things just to get a foundation (and that sometimes you're wrong about very obvious things), but there is a difference between that and this entire book which essentially is just someone being forced to prove *not* their humanity (which would still be very messed up, obviously), but the dollars and cents.

--Mostly this book makes sense and I can understand and agree with what he says, so I don't want it to seem like the following points are all I got out of the book. It's just that, per thought #1 above, most of it seems obvious and inarguable (although I didn't know the nitty gritty the book has), so these other points stand out.--

2) Seriously, I keep falling asleep reading this. There are so many details, and such a broad scope, and so many acronyms. This is not a bash on the book, but more of a woooooooow I am out of 'reading shape' for this kind of book.

3) The author *sort of* needs to stay in his lane. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is a huge topic in itself, but he does a great job researching, thinking critically, and explaining it. But when he talks about other peoples and places, not so much. If he can't address other peoples thoroughly (and he can't, because it's outside the scope of the book!), he shouldn't add throwaway glib sentences about them. Specifically, when he talks about Native Americans I want to be like 'shhhhhhhh'. He's obviously not wrong about the fact that the United States enacted / is still enacting genocide on Native Americans, but he also buys into the erasure of Native Americans, acting as though they're all gone, and also acting as though they are pieces of *history* and not living people. Near the end of the book he says "Indian reservations in North America are living museums to be visited by white tourists who purchase curious". I know this was written in 1970-something but NOPE. Reservations are definitely forced into stagnation because of United States policies, but they are not / were not museums, or little history centers where people act out life as it was in the 1800s. There are real, modern people on them, despite how messed up our treatment of those sovereign nations is. I felt kind of the same way the way he touched on Latin American and Asian countries, but didn't have as much experience to rile me up about it.

4) It's impossible not to give the things he says about North Korea, the Soviet Union, and China some side-eye. I agree with his capitalism critiques, but those communist regimes - because they were definitely regimes - were not good to the people in them. We obviously just read about North Korea, but also at the time he was writing, the Cultural Revolution was happening in China and they don't even have an accurate death count for those years - minimum 400,000, most people think, which isn't even counting those who were tortured, persecuted, etc. Granted, the abuses of the people under that regime were hidden at the time of this writing, but almost fifty years later we can see that while capitalism and colonialism did incredible damage, simply saying you're not capitalist or a colonial power doesn't mean you're for the people either.

Also, 5) Reading about all these recognizable companies - Unilver, etc. - that got to be mega-successful because of colonialism (and in some cases, because of slave trading, or because they absorbed companies that became successful slave-trading) is an eye-opener. Not because I didn't know companies were profiting off colonialism, but because of the products we use every day with that past - like Firestone tires, etc. A similar feeling to when I read "What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland" and noted all the different horrible people we've named everything in Minnesota after. I started to realize that it's a pretty safe bet that every time a thing in Minnesota is named after a person (unless it's pretty recent), that person was probably terrible, because it's not that our 'fore-fathers' *happened* to do terrible things and also accomplish a lot, they 'accomplished' a lot *because* of the very intentional terrible things they did to remove Dakota and Ojibwe people from the land. Similarly, if a company is that huge and successful, it is probably successful *because* of colonialism (although not necessarily African colonialism) or something similarly exploitative.

Complete tangent, but I found this article about the collective society in Tlaxcallan (in modern Mexico) really interesting to read in conjunction with the first half of this book.

I just finished! I think Cait is spot on with her comments, I agree with them all. This was also a really tough read for me (makes me wish I had better internalized Marx and Fanon in college!). I felt this book was particularly repetitive and long-winded beyond being quite technical/dense with facts and analysis (which were harder to parse without any maps to keep track of the various African states and colonies). It’s the kind of book that would be good to have on your shelf since I certainly didn’t absorb everything the first time through.

I did find it especially frustrating how Rodney would frequently alternate between long in-depth analysis that completely nailed down a point, followed by some one sentence asserted comment that seemed way overblown or outside his scope of knowledge, and that I didn’t really buy at least without further analysis (this is essentially Cait’s point #3). I agree with what you say Cait about erasing Native Americans; I understand what he’s getting at in the beginning at least in terms of needing to bring in extra labor from outside, but he definitely didn’t phrase it well especially with that outrageous sentence you quote from the end. Other comments like this that stood out to me: That the Holocaust resulted from racism developed through colonialism. That the Civil War resulted from differences in stages of capitalism between the North and South (I could buy that this was a factor, but I think the causes are complex and not something you can really summarize so definitively in one sentence). I was surprised at how he described the Americas as having barely emerged from the hunting stage (what about the Mayans or the Aztecs?) right after a long chapter combating misconceptions and clarifying the extent of state formation in Africa before colonialism. And yes, he’s so uncritical about communism! 1970 seems too late to be this cozy with the Soviet Union. (I checked and the Gulag Archipelago came out in English in 1973. I’m no expert but it seems word must have gotten out about the atrocities committed under Stalin well before then.) I think that by leaving out this relevant information he really weakens the strength of the book overall which is a pity, since the portions about Africa/colonialism are great and don’t rely on this.

Despite the flaws, I can understand why this book is so celebrated. He really compellingly makes the case that Africa was exploited in many different ways by Europe and the US (and even Japan), and not because it was inferior in the first place but because there were slight differences that put Europe in a capitalist phase while Africa was not, and thus Africa was not equipped to compete and the differences blew up until the gap was unbridgeable. Honestly, while this seems obvious in retrospect I hadn’t really thought of it in quite this way, and so despite the challenge of getting through it I’m very glad I made the effort. Reading the full analysis has really deepened the way I think about these issues — one sign of a great book. I also certainly learned a lot along the way thanks to the many details Rodney provides to support his claims. It’s so shocking that this wasn’t spelled out until 1970, and that even to this day it is so common to refer to the advances of Europe as if they were created within a vacuum, without acknowledging the massive exploitation through slavery and colonialism that made these advances possible!

Note: Did you see that there is a new version of this coming out in October 2018 with an introduction by Angela Davis? I admit to having skipped the intro this time, but I’m certainly curious to see what she has to say about the book.

So I'm halfway through and feel like I can start chatting! I agree with many of the above comments. The main thing I keep coming to over and over is that this is 50 years old and a) hasn't really been updated (SO fascinated to hear that there's a new edition this fall Claire, thanks for sharing! I am definitely eager to learn what they have to add) and b) despite the fact that it hasn't been updated it definitely makes a lot of points that we are *still* arguing about today. My African fiancee (who is the reason I heard of this book in the first place) literally walked out of a college class he took less than 10 years ago when a professor taught the students that the civil war was not about slavery on day 1 of class. So there are definitely a lot of people - "educated" people!! - who need to hear this word. Incredibly sad and frustrating, but necessary.

I'm finding it dated, as most of you are, in the political references. As a history major it's reminding me how important it is to place texts in their context and remember that even if some of the atrocities of Communist regimes were somewhat known at the time, this author was writing from Africa and Jamaica in a world that was pre-cell phone or internet, so things that would be easily accessible and obvious now would not necessarily have been easy to find or prove back then with the resources he had. The way I view it, it's a really fascinating look at capitalism from someone who hasn't been educated into our assumption that it's always the best option. That's not to say at all that I am sympathetic with the causes or atrocities of Soviet-era communism, but just to say that capitalism was hardly a perfect system either, and that we haven't really done an honest reckoning of the cost of our capitalism as a nation or a "Western" society. We just assume that it's a good thing, and now we're starting to see some hard conversations about the environmental costs, but we still haven't really had a system-wide chat about the social and personal costs to the laborers, especially when it comes to slaves. I wish Rodney had had a chance to live long enough to see what came to light and how the world changed after the "end" of the Cold War, and if his views would have evolved at all.

I will keep working through the book and update when I'm done! I've connected a lot of dots in African history that I hadn't before which I'm grateful for. I do wish mightily that there were some illustrations, or maps at the very least, to help with this (I hope that's one of the new additions), as a visual would be extremely useful for a lot of this text. And I keep ruminating on the fact that Rodney was killed in a bomb at age 38; regardless of some of his more radical views, it does seem he was on to an idea that others thought should be kept quiet. How different Africa might have been if he had lived and become a leader! There are so many sad political assassinations in this era in Africa and it's just mind boggling to consider how different the continent would look if they hadn't happened.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Becki! That’s a really good point that he was writing from Africa at a time when information was not so easily distributed. I’m also sorry to hear about your fiancee's bad experience in his college class.

A few more things I thought of on my end:

The beginning really reminded me of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. One of the things I really like about that book was that it presented a picture of the slave trade within Africa, something I’ve rarely seen in other fiction books about slavery. I thought she did a really good job driving home the point that this was yet another tool used for exploitation by the Europeans.

I was also thinking a lot throughout about Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche and in particular her “danger of a single story” TED talk. While I think Rodney did a good job trying to be factual about the historical realities within Africa (rather than just present the most dire picture) I do think you could come out of this book with a negative view of Africa. Yes there are very real issues due to this exploitation but it doesn’t mean everything is bad. I’m glad I also had a chance to read Chimamanda’s portrayal of middle class life in Nigeria for balance.

In general I’m also skeptical of taking developed vs. developing as a proxy for good vs. bad. I just got back from Vietnam which is a developing country and while I can’t claim to understand what it’s like to live there from a few days view as an outsider (for an extreme example: tourists in North Korea coming back saying it’s actually nice and not so bad, precisely because they’ve been shown a very curated view of life there), Ho Chi Minh City seemed to have many strengths (e.g. entrepreneurial spirit, work life balance, nice food culture including widely available fresh herbs and real juice). Bangkok is more developed (Thailand was never colonized) but with its big mall complexes seemed to have lost something as well. This is not to discount the struggles of people who are in poverty and hungry, although a quick search shows that the US has a higher percentage of poverty than Vietnam (of course a good portion of the US number is the long term effect of the exploitation of slaves brought here). The percentage of poverty in Africa is much higher than in either Vietnam or the US, and clearly this is connected to the many horrible exploitations Rodney described, but I’m not sure it’s quite the same as “developing” even though one effect of those exploitations was in delaying the development of those countries. I would be curious to hear what you all think about this.

Love this Claire! Totally agree about the connections with Yaa Gyasi and Chimamanda, I was literally thinking the same thing!

I know what you mean about being careful about propagating negative views about Africa. It was such a weird time when he was writing this as countries were still in the baby stages (if at all) of being free from colonialism - so much possibility and so many challenges to face simultaneously. Again, I keep coming back to - would his thoughts be the same now after 50 years? Would he see any progress? It's a really mixed bag for a lot of places I think and I'm so intrigued to see what this updated edition includes this fall.

And I agree about the difference between developed and developing being a real gray area. The struggle of fighting poverty vs. a clean environment vs. equity vs. work / life balance is so real, and it's so complex. My understanding from my fiancee (to paraphrase some of what we've talked about) is that the assumption that Africa is totally undeveloped or underdeveloped is false; there are a lot of amazing modern achievements and highly educated people who live well there. However the distribution of wealth and access to those modern developments is still a huge problem for most of the population. I think that is what you mean in your last point above regarding poverty? If the problem with dictatorship and wealth concentration could be solved in many African countries I think overall it would seem to the outside world like it was a huge leap forward for "progress" and development when really it's just taking what's already there and leveling the playing field so everyone can benefit from it, not just a few government elite. I'm not sure that I'm making sense ... let me know if that's totally off base.

Also I wanted to share this as I thought you would all be interested and I forgot earlier - I found this yesterday and the list is so robust and fascinated me. I think this would be such a rich, interesting class. Just an FYI! http://dh.jmjafrx.com/2018/01/27/blac...

I agree with you Becki but I think I was trying to get at something slightly different. When I think of “developed” what often comes to mind is having cities built up with more skyscrapers, having more things automated and more industrialization — there are major positives to this especially when it comes to improved health care and public facilities (water, sanitation, etc.), but it’s also the case that a higher per capita wealth doesn’t necessarily filter down to those who need it most. And maybe there are other ways of fixing issues by distributing wealth better (as you point out). I guess my confusion depends on the precise definition of “developed” versus not, which is a bit murky (to me) in the first chapter although he seems to settle on an economic definition, even a per capita one on pg. 15 after warning about how this may be misleading if there are vast inequalities in wealth. It just seems like this “development” is not necessarily in one to one correspondence with having the largest percentage of poverty, which I would have thought to be a better measure of societal issues.

Rereading the first chapter it seems that Rodney has a (Marxist) view of society as a progression of different stages of increasing development which lead increasing wealth but also increasing inequality, which finally get evened out in the last stage of socialism when the total wealth is redistributed. But reading it today, this last bit of course seems naive.

Thanks for sharing that syllabus, it looks awesome!

Maybe the confusion is that (as I read it) most of when he's comparing development to me feels really grounded in the past 500ish years ago. Again only halfway through the book so far, but it feels to me up to the point I'm at that a lot of his argument about development is comparing the initial point at which Europeans and Africans crossed paths and less to the modern world. Which are really quite different things and would need different criteria. But yes - per capita wealth and actual distribution of wealth are definitely different things and something to think about for sure!

Just a (very late) line to say that I really appreciated reading this discussion, even though I was lurking! It made me think about a few more things about the book, which was especially helpful with *this* book.

I had a couple more things I was thinking about - one, Claire, you mentioned you wished you remembered more about what you learned about Marxism in college and I wish I had learned *anything* because that would have been so helpful with this book.

Two, Becki, you talked about how your fiance walked out of a college class where the professor spouted nonsense. I'm sorry that happened! It also made me think of a class I took where they said the whole 'African countries are struggling because of the arbitrary borders that were drawn that included tribes that were enemies', which Rodney addresses - it's not just that there were arbitrary borders, but that colonizers specifically stoked antagonism between different tribes and classes to make it easier to rule. Basically, despite the fact that most of this book now seems obvious (although it wasn't when it was written - at least not to Europeans and the U.S.), you reminded me that there are still pieces of it that are "controversial" in that we're just teaching people straight up lies.

Yes Cait, I agree on both points! I have Marx AND Adam Smith's full books on my to-read list because although I took an economics class I never read either directly and I feel so sorely ignorant when it comes to anything beyond the global scope of both theories. It's super frustrating and I wonder how any of us can have real debates about policy in this country when it feels like no one knows what they're *actually* ascribing to when they talk about it. Can't wait to fill that gap in my own learning!

And for #2, I'm so glad I read this for that reason - it just helps make a clear case against all the BS that people try to get away with saying about this history! I find our general knowledge of our own history in the U.S. - particularly the history of slavery and the civil war - SO lacking in this country and it gets even worse when applied to other places. Anything that helps inform us for how to have a place of knowledge to discredit those lies is great! It's just nice to see a measured, thoughtful, interconnected explanation that embraces the complexity of this history. I am really, really intrigued to see what this updated edition says as obviously so much has changed in 50 years. If they have been able to add in some helpful maps and graphics and corrected some of the more hyperbolic statements on other cultures / economic theory I think this could be such a strong educational text. Definitely will be looking out for this!

#1: I was really lucky to have a "great books" curriculum in college that hit a number of such foundational books. But the problem was that we covered each in one class. So we had say 2-3 days to read all of Marx on top of the physics major. Definitely did not do it properly! One of my life goals is to go back and read these books properly. There's a book called "Great Books" by David Denby that (if I remember correctly and have the right book) has some fun descriptions of an alum from Columbia doing just that. I might follow along with it!

#2: It's shocking how poorly these topics are often treated in school, popular books and beyond. I'm reminded of a (very recent) book on the history of Amsterdam I read last year which was built around the thesis "Amsterdam is the most liberal city in the world," and while discussing the golden age only had a couple of lines on slavery and colonialism. Looking back at my review, I see that I noticed this and pointed it out as a criticism (seems important to discuss the contradiction of having a "tolerance" that is built on a foundation of other people's oppression) but I think my response would have been much stronger if I had been writing the review after reading this book. So that's a concrete way that this book had a great impact on my point of view.