Rodney, Walter,
1942–1980, Scholar and revolutionary, b. Georgetown, British Guiana.
Ph.D. School of African and Oriental Studies, 1966. A Pan-Africanist scholar and activist,
Rodney was a globally acclaimed author of multiple scholarly books and
numerous academic articles that documented the effects of slavery and
imperialism in Africa and the Caribbean. He was born in Georgetown, the
capital of then-British Guiana. He grew up during the country's movement
against colonialism and his father was a member of the Marxist-oriented People's Progressive
Party. Rodney earned a doctorate in African History in 1966 at the age of 24
years old. He taught at the University of Dar es Salaam from 1966 to 1967
and again from 1969 to 1974.
Rodney's most influential book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
(1972), examined the historical development of nations and remains a
guidepost for scholars who aim to analyze capitalist societies and the rise
of inequality. According to scholar and activist Bill Fletcher Jr., "It is
difficult to overstate the importance and impact of the 1972 publication of
Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. In this
major contribution, Rodney reaffirmed the centrality and relevance of Africa
in world history; the impact of the rape of Africa in the development and
expansion of European and Euro-American capitalism; and the challenges that
awaited the post-colonial world." Throughout his academic career, Rodney
claimed that developing countries were successors to uneven development and
ethnic imbalance, including continued forms of oppression from developed
capitalist countries and their own local leaders.
Rodney was involved in revolutionary politics in Jamaica, Tanzania, and Guyana.
He helped form the Working People's Alliance (WPA) and was a frequent public
speaker on issues related to African and Caribbean history. He lectured
throughout North America and Europe. In 1974, Rodney returned to Guyana to
accept an appointment as Professor of African History at the University of
Guyana, but the government of Forbes Burnham, then-Prime Minister of
Guyana, rescinded the position. Between 1974–1979, Rodney becamee a
leading figure in the resistance movement against the People's National
Congress (PNC) government.
Rodney was assassinated on June 13, 1980. More than four decades after his death,
in 2021, Guyana's National Assembly accepted the findings of a major
investigative inquiry into the assassination. According to the National
Security Archive at The George Washington University, the Commission of
Inquiry (COI) concluded that the government of Forbes Burnham had organized
the murder.
Rodney's papers are archived at the University of Atlanta’s Woodruff
Center. There is also a Walter A. Rodney Foundation in Atlanta.
See R. C. Lewis, Walter Rodney: 1968 Revisited (2000); A.
Gibbons, The Legacy of Walter Rodney in Guyana and the
Caribbean (2010); C. Chung, Walter A. Rodney: A Promise
of Revolution (2012); S. M. Markle, A Motorcycle on
Hell Run: Tanzania, Black Power, and the Uncertain Future of
Pan-Africanism, 1964–1974 (2017); A. Getachew,
Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of
Self-Determination (2019); L. Zeilig, A Revolutionary
for Our Time: The Walter Rodney Story (2022); D. Featherstone
et al., ed. Revolutionary Lives of the Red and Black Atlantic since
1917 (2022).
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