How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

The European Slave Trade as a Basic Factor in African Underdevelopment

Chapter 4 focuses on Europe’s role in underdeveloping Africa up to 1885. Rodney begins with a discussion of the slave trade. Although the evidence is scant, low estimates suggest that 10 million enslaved Africans arrived in the Americas through warfare, trickery, banditry, and kidnapping. This does not account for the captives who died before and during the Atlantic crossing. Europeans especially preferred young, able-bodied men in their early 20s, which shrank Africa’s work force and curtailed its birth rate. The precise impact of the slave trade on Africa’s population remains unknown. Comparisons with other continents, however, suggest it had a dramatic effect:

No one has been able to come up with a figure representing total losses to the African population sustained through the extraction of slave labor from all areas to all destinations over the many centuries that slave trade existed. However, on every other continent from the fifteenth century onwards, the population showed constant and sometimes spectacular natural increase; it is striking that the same did not apply to Africa (109).

Rodney provides a table comparing Africa’s population growth to that of Europe and Asia. The statistics show that Europe and Asia’s populations grew by a multiple of around four from 1650 to 1900. By contrast, Africa’s population was stagnant from 1650 to 1850 and grew very little in the second half of the 19th century (110). Africa’s stunted population negatively impacted economic development. Rodney cites several examples to support this claim. Some communities abandoned previously developed areas because their population was so small they could no longer combat pests, such as tsetse flies. Other communities no longer had the manpower to tame horses or work the land. By contrast, Europe and Asia’s explosive population growth resulted in rapid development in labor, commerce, and agriculture, which in turn fueled more development.

European powers understood that the slave trade hindered Africa’s economic development. In the 17th century, for instance, the Portuguese and Dutch discouraged the slave trade on the Gold Coast because they recognized that it was incompatible with the gold trade: “Slave raiding and kidnapping made it unsafe to mine and to travel with gold” (111). Despite some efforts to curtail the industry, however, the slave trade became the most expansive and profitable business in Africa by the early 18th century (a position once held by gold mining). The growth of the slave trade led to more wars and greater instability. This, in turn, slowed development in other areas, such as agriculture.

The economic impact of the slave trade reverberated across Africa, not just in the areas where the trade was most active, such as West Africa and East-Central Africa. Economic depression in one area affected other areas. In contrast to other scholars, who argue that the European slave trade was economically beneficial for Africa, Rodney stresses that Africa did not broadly profit from slavery because captives were exported rather than used locally to create wealth from the natural environment. Although some African kingdoms grew wealthier and politically stronger during the trading period with Europe, these developments predate the slave trade. In other words, development occurred in some African regions despite, not because of, the slave trade.

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

Rodney argues that Europe benefited technologically from its trade partners and that European technological development came at the expense of Africa. He supports his argument with several examples, particularly the cloth industry. Important innovations in clothmaking occurred late-18th-century England. These were made possible by reinvesting profits from external trade. Thus, trade with Africa, including the slave trade, helped finance European technological advancement. Using new technologies, England and other European countries increased their production capacity and copied fashionable patterns from Africa and India, which allowed them to monopolize European markets. Europeans also flooded African markets with their cloth, quashing local industries. Africans abandoned their craft because they could not compete with European cloth, which was faster and cheaper to produce. Stagnation and regression occurred, resulting in a loss of development opportunities.

African economies had little room for European skills and advances, save firearms. Nevertheless, some African rulers sought European technology for internal development, only to have their requests ignored or denied. Rodney points to letters from Emperor Lebna Dengel of Ethiopia to kings Manuel I and John the III of Portugal, and to Pope Leo X, which ask for assistance for Ethiopian industry. These direct petitions were largely unsuccessful. Rodney concludes that Europeans intentionally hindered African development because a developed Africa was not in Europe’s economic interest. Europe could only maximize its profits if Africa produced and exported raw materials and imported manufactured goods from Europe. The example of Egypt is informative in this regard. In the first half of the 19th century, Egypt stimulated its economy by manufacturing cotton, glass, paper, and other industrial goods. Taking a cue from Europe, Egypt also established protective tariffs around its infant industries. Egypt’s actions put it in direct conflict with Europe, which wanted Egypt to produce raw cotton for export and to import European manufactured goods. Egypt was strategically important to Europe. European financiers wanted to use it as a source of investment, while European statesmen sought to make it a base for their operations in Arabia and India. The exploitative relationship between Egypt and Europe is well illustrated by the Suez Canal, which was made by Egypt but initially owned by Britain and France.

As Rodney observes, global trade fueled European development and benefited various facets of European life. The opposite was true for Africa. While global trade helped Europe connect different national economies, Africans experienced disruptions at the local level. Moreover, the African economy was diverted from its previous course of development. The Portuguese, for example, interrupted trade links between Benin and the Gold Coast by circumventing interior water routes and establishing direct connections across the open sea. Similar disruptions occurred across Africa, including Western Sudan, Guinea, and the Congo. Europeans curtailed or replaced deeply rooted African commerce and attempts to integrate African economies. They became middlemen in local trade networks, creating dependence and subordination.

Continuing Politico-Military Developments in Africa—1500 to 1885

This section addresses Africa’s political and military development from 1500 to 1885. Rodney organizes the section as a series of case studies that attest to politico-military development on various parts of the African continent. For example, the kingdom of Oyo in Yorubaland, West Africa, concentrated on expanding local production and inland trade, which allowed the kingdom to grow with little interference from Europe. Oyo developed a fearsome military, including a cavalry. It was not until the late-18th century that Oyo became involved in the slave trade, obtaining captives locally and through military campaigns outside its territory. Weakened by the chaos of slaving and other factors, the Oyo kingdom fell, which turned its citizens into refugees. Within a few years, however, the Yoruba rebuilt new political states that were centered on towns surrounded by cultivated land. The Yoruba experimented with various political forms, focusing on military power. The ruling class comprised professional fighters whose protected the land and people. This system contrasts starkly with that of the Oyo kingdom, where the military was subservient to civil power. The militarization of politics brought about sharper class distinctions. With military conflicts came captives, many of whom were sold to Europeans. However, Yorubaland was not just a major supplier of enslaved people; it also retained captives to work locally in agriculture. These former captives were at the bottom of Yorubaland’s stratified society, living in conditions that approximated slavery and serfdom, depending on whether they were first-generation captives.

Rodney’s other case studies show that Africans experimented with different political systems between 1500 and 1885. The Dahomey Kingdom (modern Benin) was a powerful raiding society with a system of military apprenticeship and women warriors, while the eastern Interlacustrine States developed a sophisticated political system headed by a king and district rulers. For its part, Rwanda was governed by a king and appointed chiefs who helped centralize governance. Similarly, the Ama-Zulu in South Africa had a centralized political system that promoted stability. The Ama-Zulu also established highly organized military regiments capable of quick strikes. Zululand became an orderly, safe, and clean place precisely because the Ama-Zulu approached political and military problems as two sides of the same coin, believing “that the centralizing political nucleus should achieve military superiority and demonstrate it to other sectors. That would generally lead to peaceful acceptance of the greater political state, or else the dissidents would be thoroughly crushed” (154). These case studies reveal that various political developments occurred in Africa in the era before colonization despite the disruptions of the slave trade.

The Coming of Imperialism and Colonialism

This section focuses Africa on the eve of colonialism. The development gap that arose in the centuries before colonial rule allowed Europe to dominate Africa politically in the late 19th century, leading to capitalist imperialism. Europeans had already expanded their national economies. The next step was to expand into less developed countries to control raw materials, access new markets, and develop new fields of investment. Africa’s greatest value to Europe lay in palm products, groundnuts, cotton, and rubber, which Europeans needed to operate their increasingly complex machines and satisfy growing urban populations. The so-called Scramble for Africa led Europeans to acquire more land and resources than they needed for immediate exploitation simply to deprive potential competitors.

Technological advances gave Europe unprecedented access to Africa. Historically, Europe focused on controlling the African coast to facilitate the trade in enslaved people, gold, ivory, and other products. European armies were too small to hold the coasts and penetrate the interior of the continent. This changed in the 19th century, when breech-loaded rifles and machine guns gave Europeans the upper hand: “The firearms of the imperialist epoch marked a qualitative leap forward […] European imperialists in Africa boasted that what counted was the fact that they had the Maxim machine gun and Africans did not” (163).

Europeans took an antislavery stance to justify their expansionist ambitions, a reversal that had profound repercussions in Africa, where communities had relied on the trade for centuries. Some African leaders instituted reforms to address European criticisms, only to learn that Europe was simply making excuses to justify its colonial aspirations:

The British took special self-righteous delight in putting an end to Arab slave trading, and in deposing rulers on the grounds that they were slave traders. However, in those very years, the British were crushing political leaders in Nigeria, like Jaja and Nana, who had by then ceased the export of slaves, and were concentrating instead on products like palm oil and rubber (163).

Rodney argues that the period of trade prepared Africa for colonialism. Trade with Europe weakened Africa for centuries. Trade reduced African rulers to middlemen. Moreover, it forced many Africans to serve as economic, political, and cultural agents of European powers. The desire for economic expansion fueled European imperialism, but it was white racism that drove Europeans to establish direct colonial rule over Africa: “Englishmen violently opposed black self-government such as the Fante Confederation on the Gold Coast in the 1860s. They also tried to erode the authority of black Creoles in Sierra Leone” (168). Europeans used educational institutions to promote colonialism. In addition, formerly enslaved people returned to Africa to sway locals. Europeans also capitalized on existing political divisions, recruiting African agents to serve in the armies that eventually conquered Africa.