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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The Mystification of African History: A Critique of Rodney's 'How Europe Underdeveloped Africa' |
Author: | Mishambi, G.T. |
Year: | 1977 |
Periodical: | Utafiti |
Volume: | 2 |
Issue: | 2 |
Pages: | 201-228 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Africa |
Subjects: | colonial history sociology historiography |
External link: | https://d.lib.msu.edu/utafiti/46/OBJ/download |
Abstract: | In his book 'How Europe underdeveloped Africa' (1972), Walter Rodney falls into the category of nationalist historians who look at African history from an 'Afro-centric' point of view. However, this kind of approach to African history leads to mystification of reality. Rodney '... is all out to disprove that Africa had no history, culture of civilisation of its own before contact with Europe'. But the result is that 'he reduces history to a balance sheet of the African achievements before contact with Europe' and he lapses into bourgeois moralism and romanticism. What Rodney develops is a 'structural explanation of history' and not an explanation based on historical and dialictical materialism. Notes. |