# Quote — Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

> The first four centuries of Afro-European trade in a very real sense represent the roots of African underdevelopment. Colonialism flourished rapidly from a European viewpoint, because several of its features were already rooted in Africa in the preceding period. One of the most decisive features of the colonial system was the presence of Africans serving as economic, political, and cultural agents of the European colonialists. Those agents, or “s,” were already serving European interests in the pre-colonial period. The impact of trade with Europe had reduced many African rulers to the status of middlemen for European trade; it had raised ordinary Africans to that same middleman commercial role; and it had created a new trading group of mixed blood—the children of European or Arab fathers. Those types can all be referred to as “compradors,” and they played a key role in extending European activity from the coast into the hinterland, as soon as Europeans thought of taking over political power.

- Author: [Walter Rodney](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-rodney.md)
- Book: [How Europe Underdeveloped Africa](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-rodney/how-europe-underdeveloped-africa.md)
- Page: 142
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Walter_Rodney#How_Europe_Underdeveloped_Africa_(1972)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-rodney/how-europe-underdeveloped-africa/the-first-four

## More from this book

> The removal from history follows logically from the loss of power which colonialism represented. The power to act independently is the guarantee to participate actively and consciously in history. To be colonized is to be removed from history, except in the most passive sense. A striking illustration of the fact that colonial Africa was a passive object is seen in its attraction for white anthropologists, who came to study "primitive society." Colonialism determined that Africans were no more makers of history than were beetles—objects to be looked at under a microscope and examined for unusual features.

p. 225 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-rodney/how-europe-underdeveloped-africa/the-removal-from.md)

> African independence was greeted with pomp, ceremony, and a resurgence of traditional African music and dance. “A new day has dawned,” “we are on the threshold of a new era,” “we have now entered into the political kingdom”—those were the phrases of the day, and they were repeated until they became clichés.

p. 446 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-rodney/how-europe-underdeveloped-africa/african-independence-was.md)

> Some of the contradictions between the content of colonial education and the reality of Africa were really incongruous. On a hot afternoon in some tropical African school, a class of black shining faces would listen to their geography lesson on the seasons of the year—spring, summer, autumn, and winter. They would learn about the and the river Rhine but nothing about the of or the river . If those students were in a British colony, they would dutifully write that "we defeated the in 1588"—at a time when Hawkins was stealing Africans and being knighted by Queen Elizabeth I for so doing. If they were in a French colony, they would learn that "the , our ancestors, had blue eyes," and they would be convinced that "Napoleon was our greatest general"—the same Napoleon who reinstituted slavery in the Caribbean island of , and was only prevented from doing the same in Haiti because his forces were defeated by an even greater strategist and tactician, the African Toussaint L'Ouverture.

p. 246 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-rodney/how-europe-underdeveloped-africa/some-of-the.md)