“A call to arms in the class struggle for racial equity”—the hugely influential work of political theory and history, now powerfully introduced by Angela Davis (Los Angeles Review of Books). This legendary classic on European colonialism in Africa stands alongside C.L.R. James’ Black Jacobins, Eric Williams’ Capitalism & Slavery, and W.E.B. Dubois’ Black Reconstruction. In his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading movements in North America, South America, the African continent, and the Caribbean. In each locale, Rodney found himself a lightning rod for working class Black Power. His deportation catalyzed 20th century Jamaica's most significant rebellion, the 1968 Rodney riots, and his scholarship trained a generation how to think politics at an international scale. In 1980, shortly after founding of the Working People's Alliance in Guyana, the 38-year-old Rodney would be assassinated. In his magnum opus, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Rodney incisively argues that grasping "the great divergence" between the west and the rest can only be explained as the exploitation of the latter by the former. This meticulously researched analysis of the abiding repercussions of European colonialism on the continent of Africa has not only informed decades of scholarship and activism, it remains an indispensable study for grasping global inequality today.

Originally published: Monthly Review Press, 1967.

Presenting both classic pieces and the most up-to-date arguments in the debates about issues of economic growth and inequality, this is a guide to understanding the causes and dynamics of persistent income gap between rich and poor countries, as well as rich and poor within the poor countries.

First published in 1984, this title discusses the emergence of both the orthodox and political economy based approaches to underdevelopment in geography , critically assessing their strengths and weaknesses, and showing the relationship between intellectual developments and changing material conditions. The work is primarily concerned with theories, though it does contain much empirical material drawn from throughout the Third World. The book examines the emergence of theories of development historically and considers the various contemporary theoretical ‘schools’, both Marxist and non-Marxist. It goes on to consider four aspects of development which are of particular interest to geographers, namely the world economy, regional imbalances, the human-nature theme and the analysis of urban space, and concludes by suggesting some directions for future research.