“How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” is a 1972 book written by Walter Rodney that takes the view that Africa was deliberately exploited and underdeveloped by European colonial regimes. One of his main arguments throughout the book is that Africa developed Europe at the same rate as Europe underdeveloped Africa. “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” is an ambitious masterwork of political economy, detailing the impact of slavery and colonialism on the history of international capitalism. In this classic book, Rodney makes the unflinching case that African “mal-development” is not a natural feature of geography, but a direct product of imperial extraction from the continent, a practice that continues up into the present. 

Meticulously researched, “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” remains a relevant study for understanding the so-called “great divergence” between Africa and Europe, just as it remains a prescient resource for grasping the multiplication of global inequality today. This classic work of political, economic, and historical analysis, is powerfully introduced by Angela Davis

In his magnum opus, ”How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”, Rodney incisively argues that grasping “the great divergence” between the West and the rest can only be explained as the exploitation of the latter by the former. This meticulously researched analysis of the abiding repercussions of European colonialism on the continent of Africa has not only informed decades of scholarship and activism, it remains an indispensable study for grasping global inequality today.

The Guyanan intellectual Walter Rodney wrote this book directly after the 1960s wave of African independence declarations, to show why Africa was so underdeveloped compared to the 'First World', and who was to blame for this. A consistently intelligent and politically involved Marxist thinker, Rodney was one of the second generation of black socialists to write about African issues, after the tradition of CLR James and Eric Williams, the former of whom tutored Rodney. "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" is probably Rodney's magnum opus of popular science, aimed at a general public, and very accessible and informative.

Rodney describes in chronological sequence the development of Africa as a continent and the way in which the Europeans interfered with it. Going from the earliest African empires and states and their social relations, via the first wave of slave-trading, to full-blown colonialism, Rodney shows us how Europeans consistently attacked, pillaged, exploited, suppressed, enslaved, divided and discriminated against Africans, and the enormous impact the various stages of slavery and colonialism had in destroying the indigenous opportunities for coming out of feudalism into capitalist and industrialized societies. 

It is truly remarkable, given how short a time Africa has had to develop on its own as a modern society, how quickly African states have been able to modernize, and how strong the resilience of the various African peoples is to the enormous destruction they have had to endure. Rodney shows us all this with excellent writing and sensible use of 'bourgeois' sources, allowing the interested layman to gain all the necessary broad background information on the history of European involvement in Africa.

Of necessity, the book is sometimes rather annoyingly concise and vague about the specifics of colonial policies, destruction of early indigenous development etc., things about which one would want to know more. Rodney provides a reading list for more information at the end of every chapter, but since this book is from the 1960s, it is dubious whether such lists are still useful considering the improvements made in radical scholarship on Africa since. The timing of the book also makes it such that there is practically nothing on African states since independence, as most independence declarations had happened only shortly before its publication. Moreover, Rodney is very saccharine about the influence of the 'socialist' states such as the USSR and China on Africa, which he exclusively paints in positive terms. 

Certainly the Leninists have had a vastly better influence on African development than any Western nation ever has, but the USSR and China had their own interests to defend in Africa as well, and were not there purely for humanitarian purposes, as Rodney sometimes makes it seem. Nonetheless, this is a good general book on the legacy of European destruction in Africa, and it thoroughly refutes all the common arguments in defense of colonialism in that continent.

"欧洲如何使非洲欠发达》是沃尔特-罗德尼1972年写的一本书，他认为非洲被欧洲殖民政权蓄意剥削和欠发达。他在书中的一个主要论点是，非洲发展欧洲的速度与欧洲发展非洲的速度相同。"欧洲如何欠发达的非洲》是一部雄心勃勃的政治经济学巨作，详细介绍了奴隶制和殖民主义对国际资本主义历史的影响。在这本经典著作中，罗德尼毫不留情地指出，非洲的 "发展不良 "不是地理环境的自然特征，而是帝国从非洲大陆掠夺的直接产物，这种做法一直持续到现在。

经过缜密的研究，《欧洲如何使非洲发展不足》仍然是理解非洲和欧洲之间所谓 "巨大差异 "的相关研究，正如它仍然是把握当今全球不平等现象倍增的前瞻性资源。这部政治、经济和历史分析的经典作品，由安吉拉-戴维斯（Angela Davis）作了有力的介绍。

罗德尼在他的巨著《欧洲如何欠发达的非洲》中精辟地指出，把握西方和其他国家之间的 "巨大差异"，只能解释为前者对后者的剥削。这部对欧洲殖民主义在非洲大陆的持久影响进行了细致研究的分析，不仅为几十年来的学术研究和活动提供了参考，而且仍然是今天把握全球不平等现象的一项不可或缺的研究。

圭亚那知识分子沃尔特-罗德尼（Walter Rodney）在20世纪60年代的非洲独立宣言浪潮之后直接写了这本书，以说明为什么非洲与 "第一世界 "相比如此不发达，以及谁应该对此负责。罗德尼是一位一贯聪明且参与政治的马克思主义思想家，是继CLR詹姆斯和埃里克-威廉姆斯的传统之后，第二代写非洲问题的黑人社会主义者之一，前者是罗德尼的导师。"欧洲是如何使非洲落后的》可能是罗德尼的科普巨作，面向普通大众，非常容易理解，内容丰富。

罗德尼按时间顺序描述了非洲作为一个大陆的发展以及欧洲人对其进行干预的方式。从最早的非洲帝国和国家及其社会关系，通过第一波奴隶贸易，到全面的殖民主义，罗德尼向我们展示了欧洲人如何不断地攻击、掠夺、剥削、压制、奴役、分裂和歧视非洲人，以及各个阶段的奴隶制和殖民主义在破坏本土走出封建主义进入资本主义和工业化社会的机会方面的巨大影响。

考虑到非洲作为一个现代社会自行发展的时间是如此之短，非洲国家能够迅速实现现代化，以及非洲各族人民对他们不得不忍受的巨大破坏所表现出的强大复原力，这确实是了不起的。罗德尼以出色的文笔和对 "资产阶级 "资料的合理使用向我们展示了这一切，使感兴趣的普通人能够获得关于欧洲参与非洲历史的所有必要的广泛背景信息。

不得不说，这本书在殖民政策的具体细节、对早期本土发展的破坏等方面，有时是相当令人讨厌的简洁和模糊的，而这些事情人们都想知道得更多。罗德尼在每一章的末尾都提供了一份阅读清单，以获取更多信息，但由于本书是1960年代的作品，考虑到此后关于非洲的激进学术研究的改进，这种清单是否仍然有用，令人怀疑。这本书的出版时间也使得它几乎没有关于非洲国家独立以来的内容，因为大多数独立宣言都是在本书出版前不久才发生的。此外，罗德尼对苏联和中国等 "社会主义 "国家对非洲的影响非常吝啬，他只用正面的语言来描述。

当然，列宁主义者对非洲发展的影响比任何西方国家都要好得多，但苏联和中国在非洲也有自己的利益需要维护，并不像罗德尼有时说的那样，纯粹是出于人道主义目的。尽管如此，这是一本关于欧洲在非洲的破坏性遗产的好书，它彻底驳斥了所有为该大陆的殖民主义辩护的常见论点。