Walter Rodney
1942 – 1980 Guyanese historian, political activist
Guyanese historian and activist, author of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, assassinated in 1980.
- Affiliations
- Working People's Alliance
Walter Rodney was a Guyanese historian whose 1972 book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa argued that European exploitation, not African failure, produced the continent's poverty. He taught in Tanzania and Jamaica, where his activism led the government to bar his return and sparked riots. Back in Guyana he helped build the multiracial Working People's Alliance against the ruling party. He was killed in 1980 by a car bomb; a later inquiry concluded the state was implicated in his assassination.
In the timeline
- 1972 Walter Rodney publishes How Europe Underdeveloped Africa author
- 1972 Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa central figure