Imperialism Reading Group ping!

Finishing up Chapter 4! Chapter 5 will have to be similarly divided in half.

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Chapter 4 starts off with the detailing of depopulation as well as transfer of wealth from Africa. A powerful quote from Sékou Turé introduces the concept of a genocide numbering in the 10 million at lowest estimate but even still so significant as to keep the continent’s population stagnant for centuries. This part was painful to read. Read this on a plane. Shoutout to the brother who handed me a further reading suggestion : the destruction of black civilization by Chancellor Williams

In sub-Saharan Africa and especially in West Africa, the export of slaves declined most rapidly where Europeans were prepared to buy other commodities. As soon as inhabitants of any region found that they had a product which Europeans were accepting, in place of the former slave trade, those inhabitants put tremendous effort into organizing the alternatives: namely, ivory, rubber, palm products, groundnuts.

Once more, those efforts demonstrated the determination of a small but decisive proportion of Africans. It was a determination based on the desire to obtain European trade goods, many of which had ceased to be mere curiosities or luxuries, and were regarded instead as necessities.

Wow, it's almost as if these people act and respond to material conditions, with their own local conditions

Nonetheless

Curiously, Europeans often derived the moral justification for imperialism and colonialism from features of the international trade as conducted up to the eve of colonial rule in Africa.

Little did the local people of Africa know, by this time, over 400 years, and the future Imperialists have but softened their African economies and sharpened their blades, through their wide tech-gaps

Look out, periphery, here they go...

This is a really good book to pair with researching all of the different societies Rodney mentions, it really helps put a more complete picture in your mind of what these societies were/are like.