SX Blog

04.18.2024

Walter Rodney and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Fifty Years Later: A Small Axe Workshop, 10-11 March 2023

15 March 2023
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Walter Rodney's landmark book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa was first published in 1972. Even as it was published it was recognized as a major intervention into debates about African history, Caribbean history, and anticolonial and Pan-African critiques. Fifty years later, the question is: How should it now be read? This 2-day workshop brought together 9 scholars to think together about the contemporary relevance of Rodney's book (and his larger body of work): Richard Drayton, Alissa Trotz, Nigel Westmaas, Natasha Shivji, Adom Getachew, David Austin, Peter Hudson, Michaeline Critchlow, and David Scott. The revised essays will appear in Small Axe 72 (November 2023).