The Young Walter Rodney
By Walter J Smith | Africa is a Country
Seminal is a word frequently used to describe How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Walter Rodney’s opus that swiftly extended itself far beyond its academic crucible when published in 1972. Not since Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth had a writer so widely transformed how Africa was seen and researched. Rodney’s gift was his ability to synthesize centuries of history around a truism stated clearly early on in the book: “For the greater part of Africa’s history…the changes have been gradual rather than revolutionary;” the result of centuries of outside exploitation.
Changes in Rodney’s own life were anything but gradual. A gifted scholar born in what was then called British Guiana in 1942, he ascended to the top of a highly competitive school system based on outstanding ability. Even as he developed wide interests, Rodney was always on a course towards an intellectual life. He won a scholarship to the University College of the West Indies (now the University of the West Indies) in Jamaica in 1960.
In a new film I directed, The Past is Not Our Future: Walter Rodney’s Student Years, I explore these early intellectual foundations of Rodney, to eventually produce How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.
Read more at Africa is a Country.
