This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. Last week’s thread is here.
The book we are currently reading through is How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group, or if you no longer wish to be pinged.
This week, we will be reading the third and last sections, “Education for Underdevelopment” and “Development by Contradiction” of Chapter 6: Colonialism as a System for Underdeveloping Africa. You can also read the postscript if you wish.
This is the final week of this book! After this week, we will take the next two weeks off for people to catch up and post observations and questions in this thread. This means we will move on to the next book on the week beginning October 20th.
Got a bit behind from being busy with the kids but finally finished! Thought it was a great read and definitely going to recommend it to others.
Are we doing a poll for the next book or has it been decided already?
We’re going ahead on Greg Grandin’s Empire’s Workshop. I may hold a poll on books going forward but I’m unsure of the best way to do that for this particular situation.
For now, I’m trying to ensure that the books we cover are a) fairly generally known to a leftwing audience; b) not known to be particularly controversial; and c) relevant to the present day, so hopefully people are content with the book choices.
Imperialism Reading Group ping!
This is the final week for How Europe Underdeveloped Africa! An excellently written book by Rodney, in my opinion, with both swathes of valuable knowledge and insight on both the broad African situation, as well as the particulars within regions and countries, with great wit sprinkled in too.
After this week, we will then take a two week break for people to catch up, and post observations and questions. We shall resume on October 20th.
Now is the time to post suggestions for the next book! I’m currently interested in Greg Grandin’s 2021 book: Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism, both as an opportunity to shift continents, and especially as Trump’s administration continues the work of Biden’s administration (and dozens of administrations before him) in attempting to dominate the continent for American interests. If you have a better suggestion, or even just a book we could eventually cover, then let me know!
And finally, if you were here only for How Europe Underdeveloped Africa and wish to leave, let me know so I can take you off the list!
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Can you take me off please
Will do!
Thanks for hosting this, again!
For suggestions, I have 3 I would like to see discussed, though they overlap with Rodney’s and Hudson’s work so I am okay with skipping these for now:
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Kwame Nkrumah’s Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism
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Cheng Enfu’s Five Characteristics of Neoimperialism
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J. Sakai’s Settlers
Kwame - well, that was before Rodney so I suppose we see similar things hashed out but it’s fine with me
Cheng - well maybe - seems new to me.
Sakai - this is gonna be a hot one, innit? Very polemical but not without justification - reading about Bacon’s rebellion was a helluva ride; settlers gonna settle
and genocide natives, even their alliesAll would be worthy of discussion, I think. Cheng is closer to Hudson’s analysis, and reading Nkrumah with Rodney in mind may add to our appreciation of each’s work. Sakai is gonna be hot, for sure, but I think even if some of the conclusions may be unpopular the historical thread is worth discussing and diving into.
We may cover Settlers eventually but I am a little nervous about it.
I’ve heard of the first book but not the second. I’ve looked for it online and found an essay/article with that title; is that the extent of it, or is it a wider book?
I think Settlers is important reading. It’s inflammatory, yes, but it holds influence in the leftist canon and is worth discussing. What holds up? What doesn’t? How have conditions changed since it was written, how have they remained the same? I think it’s more valuable in a group discussion than individually read, IMO, which is why I brought it up.
As for the Cheng Enfu work, here it is on Prolewiki. It was published in Monthly Review, but it’s much too long to be a basic article, it could be read over 2-3 weeks I suppose. It’s significant because it was written in 2021, so it’s based on recent conditions. It won’t have the impact of the current trade war, or how the Russo-Ukrainian War or the resistance in Palestine post Al-Aqsa Flood have impacted imperialism, but it touches on a lot of what Hudson laid out decades prior.
Just suggestions, I’m happy with whatever the group or you choose.
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What a fantastic work. Rodney has been stellar the whole way through, and highlighting African resistance and collective action to achieve what they can ends the book on a clear call to action, as all good revolutionary theory should. Loved reading this one!
Speaking of Blowback Season 6: regarding education or generally any development, you would know the Portuguese barely gave a shit, since you have this fact over here, from last chapter:
The Portuguese stand out because they boasted the most and did the least.
At the end of five hundred years - the Portuguese had not managed to train a single African doctor in Mozambique, and the life expectancy in eastern Angola was less than thirty years.
As always, damn the Estado Novo, at least the Carnation Revolution got rid of such reactionary imperial regime
