How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

On the first day that we discussed King Leopold's Ghost in class it was brought up that the European slave trade decimated the African economy by turning all the nations into trade based nations who were dependent on Europe for simple good like clothe and food. It should be looked at that one of the reasons Europeans used to justify turning Africa into a trade entity was to help them become civilized, because capitalism meant they were civilized. However, this was not capitalism, capitalism implies that the African nations would be producing goods to sell to Europe, and by no stretch of anyone's imagination, should people be considered a manufactured good.

Well, when Europe finally had to give their colonies independence they concocted other ingenious ways to keep reaping the benefits of Africa (and the United States hopped on board too). There was always the option of puppet leaders, America liked to go that route in Latin America and that hasn't turned out too well. Eventually, you can't control the people you put in control and assassination is too messy so there has to be a better route. If you can't control the country through puppet leaders then the next logical thing that Western nations did was buy up all the resources in Africa. You spin it like this, you are going to come in and put the equipment in place, high a work force so the people have jobs, build towns, schools, roads and pay taxes. You are an underdeveloped African nation, you have no way of getting the resource out of the ground on your own so it is the best deal going. That is how land gets sold to foreign interests, never mind that you will only follow through with the parts of the deal that aid your company, it was better than when you came in so you were doing a service while robbing them blind.

I was surprised by the trickery of these companies and the governments they controlled. Outlawing the growing of cash crops so the workers had no other choice but to work for the Europeans. That's just unbelievable, even I couldn't think of that!

My, sickly, favorite part of Rodney's article was how much people were paid. Europeans working in Africa were paid 10 times more than their darker skinned counterparts. You might say, why does not anyone say something about this or quit. But the fact of the matter is that if you do, then you get fired and instead of 4 pounds a week you get nothing. To me, it seemed like slavery all over again, this time it actually might be costing less. They had to feed, clothe and keep slaves healthy because they were an investment, but a worker only needs to get paid enough to stay, and if he goes there will be some other poor sap willing and able to do his job. Reminded me of sharecroppers, ending slavery in the South actually made the plantation owners richer than when slavery was going on.

As a history major I love Walter Rodney, he has some spot on research for the 1970's. Take the numbers and information in chapter 4 about the slave trade. Rodney excellently pinpointed that 15-20% of the slaves would often die in journey. Of course, this numbers could have been cooked by captains trying to make themselves look better as slave traders. A few things should e noted, most of the deaths occurred close tot he coast when slaves were required to stay below deck so they wouldn't try and jump overboard and get back to land. Being down below the entire time would create hot conditions that caused dehydration. Dehydration, rather than disease was the killer of the slave trade. Also, later in the slave trade, as sailing technology advanced deaths of slaves sharply dropped because shipbuilders figured out ways to store more water on the ships, making it enough for bot sailors and slaves. If it makes you feel any better, slaves were given water over the sailors because sailors cost money and slaves made money.