How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

How Europe Became the Dominant Section of a World-Trade System

Chapter 3 addresses the exploitative relationship between Europe and Africa. Rodney argues that, from the 15th century onward, Africa developed Europe in the same proportion as Europe underdeveloped Africa. He begins by explaining how Europe came to dominate global trade. By the late-15th century, Europe had established trade relations with Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Europe instigated and actively pursued global trade to support its interests. Europe owned and operated most of the world’s sea-faring ships, financed long-distance trade, and monopolized knowledge about the international exchange system. Europeans capitalized on their superior fleets and weapons to control the world’s waterways and capture strategic ports. Rodney uses the example of Portugal and Spain to explain the world’s increasingly complex trade networks. By the 17th century, the Portuguese and Spanish commanded global trade, buying cloth in India to exchange for enslaved Africans who toiled in gold mines in Central and South America. Gold from the Americas was then used to purchase spices and silks from Asia.

The growth of global trade turned Africa into an extension of Europe’s capitalist market and created dependency in Africa, which relied on what Europe was prepared to buy and sell.