Rodney defines development as a society's increasing ability to use science and technology to deal with its environment and improve well-being.

Rodney introduces Marx's four stages of European development—communalism, slavery, feudalism, and capitalism—as a framework for comparing societies.

Rodney argues that underdevelopment is not natural but is the direct product of exploitation by capitalist, imperialist, and colonialist systems.

Africa before European contact is described as transitioning slowly from communalism toward feudalism while Europe was already entering capitalism.

Europe establishes dominance over global trade by controlling seafaring fleets, financing long-distance commerce, and monopolizing knowledge of exchange networks.

The slave trade is identified as the most powerful driver of European economic development, supporting shipping, insurance, and capitalist agriculture.

Rodney argues that Africa developed Europe in the same proportion as Europe underdeveloped Africa, establishing a dialectical relationship between the two.

The slave trade devastates Africa's workforce, stunts its population growth, and cripples development in agriculture, mining, and other sectors.

Europe adopts an antislavery stance not out of morality but to provide a pretext for its expansionist colonial ambitions across Africa.

European breech-loaded rifles and Maxim machine guns give colonizers unprecedented military superiority, enabling the Scramble for Africa to succeed.

Nigerian coal miners earning a fraction of European wages expose the systematic labor exploitation at the core of the colonial economy.

France recruits approximately 200,000 soldiers from its African colonies using methods comparable to slave hunting to fight in World War One.

Africa provides military bases and raw materials for Western weapons industries, helping capitalist nations ward off the postwar threat of socialism.

Colonial schools are revealed to be tools of cultural imperialism designed to assimilate Africans into European culture rather than genuinely educate them.

European powers withdraw from Africa as independence movements succeed, but psychological bonds created by education and assimilation outlast formal colonialism.

Rodney opens by defining development and underdevelopment, arguing that the latter is not a natural condition but the direct result of deliberate exploitation. Africa was developing before European contact, but its slower transition toward feudalism left it at a disadvantage when Europe—already entering capitalism—initiated global trade. The slave trade became the engine of European economic growth while simultaneously devastating Africa's population and productive capacity. As the development gap widened, Europe used military superiority and a hypocritical antislavery stance to colonize Africa and extract its labor and resources for profit. Under colonialism, African workers were paid a fraction of European wages, African soldiers fought and died in European wars, and Africa's raw materials helped rebuild capitalist Europe after World War II. Although Africa eventually won independence, the psychological and cultural bonds forged by colonialism and its educational institutions endured long after European powers withdrew.

Europe's exploitation of Africa from the slave trade through colonialism.

Rodney uses China's transition from communalism to feudalism to show that societies develop differently depending on their cultural and political superstructures.

Egypt's development under foreign Arab and Turkish rulers models how external domination ties a society's growth to colonial powers and exports its wealth.

Ethiopia's massive rock-cut churches under the Zagwe kings prove the existence of an exploited labor class and a high level of economic development.

Western Sudan's empire sustains long-distance Saharan trade and develops specialized industries including cloth, leather, and mining across several centuries.

Portugal and Spain command global trade by exchanging enslaved Africans for American gold and Asian spices, creating a three-continent commercial network.

European manufacturers flood African markets with cheap mass-produced cloth, destroying local weaving industries and causing widespread African craft stagnation.

Emperor Lebna Dengel of Ethiopia petitions European rulers and the Pope for industrial assistance for his kingdom, but the requests are largely ignored.

Egypt's attempt to industrialize cotton production and protect infant industries with tariffs puts it in direct conflict with European economic interests.

The Suez Canal, built by Egyptian labor, is taken over by Britain and France, exemplifying Europe's seizure of African-built infrastructure for its own benefit.

The Oyo kingdom builds a powerful cavalry and inland trade network but eventually collapses after being drawn into the destabilizing chaos of the slave trade.

The Ama-Zulu establish a centralized political and military system in South Africa that links demonstrated military superiority to peaceful political consolidation.

Britain declares Kenyan highlands Crown Land and hands vast estates to European lords at one penny per acre, dispossessing Africans of their best land.

Colonial administrations force Africans to work without pay on roads and government buildings, a practice Rodney explicitly equates to chattel slavery.

Rodney reveals that colonial governments spend only two to four percent of the revenue collected from taxing Africans on African education.

Kikuyu peasants, Ga market women, and Kabyle shepherds independently pool their resources to build schools, bypassing chronic colonial neglect of African education.

Rodney draws on comparative case studies to show that Africa had genuine and diverse development before European contact, from Egypt's feudal dynasties to Ethiopia's rock-cut churches and Western Sudan's long-distance trade networks. He then traces how Europe systematically dismantled African economic progress: Portuguese and Spanish traders built global networks that turned Africa into a dependent market, while European manufacturers destroyed African craft industries by flooding them with cheap mass-produced goods. When African rulers like Emperor Lebna Dengel sought European technology for industrial growth, they were refused, as a developing Africa threatened European monopolies. During colonialism, Britain seized African land at negligible prices, colonial administrations imposed forced labor on public works, and corporations extracted profits at every level of commerce. Colonial education budgets were kept absurdly small relative to the profits extracted from African taxation, but Africans responded by building their own schools, demonstrating a demand for self-improvement that colonial powers could never fully suppress.

Case studies of African development and the mechanisms of colonial exploitation.

Rodney presents stark income statistics showing the per-capita wealth gap between the United States and the Congo is nearly seventy-fold.

Africa is revealed to hold the majority share of global production in ten key minerals, exposing the central paradox of underdevelopment amid resource abundance.

Early African societies are shown to have organized land, labor, and the distribution of goods entirely through family and kinship ties rather than markets.

Nubia's transition from communalism toward feudalism is evidenced by brick churches filled with high-quality art and the emergence of distinct class conflict.

Europe's early dominance over Africa is shown to rest on superior production systems and economic power rather than on military force.

Rodney reveals that capitalist reliance on slavery inevitably produces racism, as no people can enslave another for centuries without claiming superiority.

African kingdoms that grew stronger during the trading era are shown to have developed despite the slave trade, not because of it.

Portuguese and Dutch traders actively discourage the slave trade on the Gold Coast after recognizing that slave raiding makes gold mining and travel unsafe.

Europe's antislavery reversal devastates African communities that had restructured their economies around the slave trade, stripping away their primary source of income.

Women in precolonial Africa held significant political and religious authority, including the right to advise incoming kings, all of which is stripped away under colonialism.

Colonialism deliberately intensifies tribal divisions across Africa, blocking Africans from developing the national identities needed to resist European domination.

The colonial introduction of monoculture is identified as a turning point that leaves Africa dependent on single cash crops and newly vulnerable to famine.

Colonial education unintentionally produces an educated African elite that articulates independence demands and leads anticolonial movements far beyond its small numbers.

African workers, students, and church members unite to stage strikes and boycotts, forming the broad social base that ultimately forces European withdrawal.

Egyptian independence triggers a domino effect across the continent, leading to liberation in Sudan and Ghana and wars of independence in Algeria and Kenya.

Rodney opens with striking statistics—Africa holds vast mineral wealth yet its per-capita income is nearly seventy times lower than that of the United States—establishing the central paradox his book sets out to explain. Africa's earliest societies were egalitarian and kinship-based, and the continent was genuinely developing before European contact, as evidenced by Nubia's brick churches and the complex empires of Western Sudan. Europe's initial dominance rested on economic superiority rather than military force, but the slave trade generated an ideology of racism that gave moral cover to centuries of exploitation. Key turning points include Europe's cynical antislavery reversal, which devastated communities that had restructured their economies around the trade, and colonialism's systematic erasure of women's precolonial political power. Colonialism also deliberately intensified tribal divisions and introduced monoculture, deepening African dependency and vulnerability to famine. Paradoxically, the educated elite that colonialism created to serve it became the very social force that articulated African independence, culminating in a continent-wide domino effect of liberation.

Key revelations and turning points in Africa's exploited relationship with Europe.