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Africa in a Capitalist World*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

Immanuel Wallerstein
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Extract

African studies has gone through three well-known phases as a field of study. Up until 1950 or thereabouts, those studying Africa — they were not yet called Africanists — tended to concentrate almost exclusively on the capturing (or recapturing) of a description of Africa eternal: Launcelot the ethnographer in search of a holy grail of the past that was written in the present tense and was undefiled by contact and uncorrupted by civilization. What was once a myth is now a fairy tale and it would be silly to waste time tellling each other the obvious truth that fairy tales are modes of the social control and the education of children.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Issues , Volume 10 , Issue 1-2 , Spring/Summer 1980 , pp. 21 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1980 

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Footnotes

*

1973 Presidential Address delivered before members of the African Studies Association on November 1 in Syracuse, New York.

References

Footnotes

1 I believe the phrase is that of Leopold-Sedar Senghor, but I cannot locate it. In any case, the sentiment is elaborated in the essay by Kane, Cheikh Hamidou, “Comme si nous nous etions donne rendezvous,” Esprit, n.s., 29, No. 299 (Oct. 1961): 375–387 Google Scholar.

2 Ajayi, J. F., “The Continuity of African Institutions under Colonialism,” in Ranger, T. O., ed.. Emerging Themes of African History (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1968), pp. 189–200 Google Scholar.

2 Ajayi, “Continuity,” p. 200.

4 Ranger, T. O., “Connexions between Primary Resistance’ Movements and Modern Mass Nationalism in East and Central Africa,” in Journal of African History, IX, 3:437–453 Google Scholar: IX, 4:631-641.

5 Denoon, Donald and Kuper, Adam, “Nationalist Historians in Search of a Nation: The ‘New Historiography’ in Dar es Salaam,” African Affairs, 69, 277 (Oct. 1970):348 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (hereafter cited as “Nationalist Historians”).

6 Magubane, Bernard, “A Critical Look at Indices Used in the Study of Social Change in Colonial Africa,” Current Anthropology, XII, 4-5 (Oct,-Dec. 1971 ):419–431 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is followed by “Comments” (pp. 431-439) and a “Reply” (pp.439-445).

7 Magubane, “A Critical Look,” pp. 430-442.

8 Magubane, “A Critical Look,” p. 430.

9 Epstein, “Comments on Magubane, ‘A Critical Look.” p. 432.

10 Mitchell, “Comments on Magubane, ‘A Critical Look,” p. 436.

11 Köbben, “Comments on Magubane, ‘A Critical Look’.” p. 433.

12 Saberwal, “Comments on Magubane, ‘A Critical Look’,” p. 438.

13 Messing, “Comments on Magubane. ‘A Critical Look’.” p. 434.

14 Van den Berghe, “Comments on Magubane, ‘A Critical Look’,” p. 438.

15 Mayer, “Comments on Magubane, ‘A Critical Look’,” p. 433.

16 Magubane, “Reply,” p. 439.

17 Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians.” p. 347.

18 Ranger, Terence, “The New Historiography’ in Dar es Salaam: An Answer,” African Affairs, 70, 278, Jan, 1971, p. 55 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (hereafter cited as “An Answer”).

19 Ranger, “An Answer,” p. 61.

20 Denoon, Donald and Kuper, Adam “The ‘New Historiography’ in Dar es Salaam: A Rejoinder,” African Affairs, 70, 280, July 1971, p. 288 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (hereafter cited as “A Rejoinder”).

21 Tawney, R. H.. “Postscript to the Rise of the Gentry,” in Karus-Wilson, E. N., ed., Essays in Economic History, Volume I (London: Arnold, Edw, 1954), p. 214 Google Scholar.

22 Magubane, “A Critical Look,” p. 419.

23 Magubane, “A Critical Look,” p. 420.

24 Mitchell, “Comments on Magubane, ‘A Critical Look’,” p, 436.

25 Magubane, “Reply,” p. 441.

26 Magubane, “A Critical Look” p. 419.

27 When I say I “assimilate” one man’s position to another, I do not mean that either endorses the arguments of the other in their respective articles but simply that in treating three debates successively, I see the same underlying issue recurring and wish to identify sides A and B in each.

28 Terence Ranger, “Introduction” to Ranger, ed., Emerging Themes of African History, p. xxi, and cited in Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians,” p. 331.

29 Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians,” p. 331.

30 Ranger, “An Answer,” p. 51.

31 Ranger, “An Answer,” p. 52.

32 Kimambo, N. and Temu, A. J., eds., A History of Tanzania (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1969)Google Scholar; Roberts, A. D. ed., Tanzania Before 1900 (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1968)Google Scholar.

33 Cited in Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians,” p. 335.

34 Cited in Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians,” p. 335.

35 Ranger, T., The African Churches of Tanzania, Historical Association of Tanzania Paper No. 5 (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, n.d.), p. 4 Google Scholar. Cited in Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians,” p. 336.

36 Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians,” p. 336.

37 Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians,” p. 337. Ranger responded by talking of “Denoon and Kuper’s fantasies about our lack of interest in mission sources and our contempt for anthropology...” “An Answer,” p. 54.

38 Denoon and Kuper, Nationalist Historians,” p. 341.

39 J. E. G. Sutton, “The Peopling of Tanzania,” in Kimambo and Temu, p. 1, cited in Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians,” p. 342.

40 Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians,” p. 342.

41 Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians,” p. 346.

42 Denoon and Kuper, “Nationalist Historians,” p. 347.

43 Ranger, “An Answer,” p. 59.

44 Fage, J. D., “Slavery and the Slave Trade in West African History,” Journal of African History, X, 3, (1969): 393–404 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (hereafter cited as “Slavery”).

45 Curtin, Philip D., The Dimensions of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969)Google Scholar, cited in Fage, “Slavery,” p. 398.

46 Fage, “Slavery,” p. 403.

47 Fage, “Slavery,” p. 404.

48 “In default of evidence of the relation between the existence of an external demand for slaves and of slavery and an internal trade in slaves for the West African Sudan, we must turn to the Guinea area, where commonly the first truly external traders were the European sea-traders, who first arrived on the coasts in the fifteenth century. The evidence for Upper Guinea, from the Gambia to modern Liberia, has been analysed by Dr. Walter Rodney.” Fage, “Slavery,” p. 395. Fage’s footnote reference is to Rodney, Walter, “African Slavery and Other Forms of Social Oppression on the Upper Guinea Coast in the Context of the Atlantic Slave-Trade,” Journal of African History, VII, 3 (1966): 431–443 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Since Fage’s article appeared, Rodney’s monograph has come out: Rodney, Walter, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970)Google Scholar.

49 Fage, “Slavery,” p. 397.

50 Fage, “Slavery,” p. 397.

51 Fage, “Slavery,” pp. 400, 402.

52 Fage, “Slavery,” p. 403.

53 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 199.

54 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 199.

55 Rodney, walter, West Africa and the Atlantic Slave-Trade, Historical Association of Tanzania Paper No. 2 (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1967), p. 21 Google Scholar.

56 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 118.

57 Wrigley, C. C., “Historicism in Africa: Slavery and State Formation,” African Affairs, 70, 279 (April 1971): 113 (hereafter cited as “Historicism”).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58 Wrigley, “Historicism,” p. 117.

59 Wrigley, “Historicism,” p. 116.

61 Wrigley, “Historicism,” p. 124.

62 Rodney, Walter, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, 1972), p. 80 Google Scholar.

63 Ivan Hrbek, “Towards a Periodisation of African History,” in Ranger, ed.,Emerging Themes of African History, pp. 37-52 (hereafter cited as “Periodisation”).

64 See Hrbek, “Periodisation,” pp. 38-42.

65 Hrbek, “Periodisation,” p. 45.

66 Hrbek, “Periodisation,” p. 48.

67 Hrbek, “Periodisation,” p. 49.

68 Hrbek. “Periodisation,” p. 51.

69 See Amin, Smir, “Sous-développement et dépendance en Afrique noire contemporaine,” Partisans, No. 64, (mars-avril 1972): 3–34 Google Scholar.

70 All the statements in this paragraph are dealt with in great detail in my The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press, 1974).

71 I elaborate this argument in “The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis,” Comparative Studies in Society and History (forthcoming).

72 “Experience has proved it: of all forms of breeding, that of human cattle is one of the hardest. If slavery is to pay when applied to large-scale enterprises, there must be plenty of cheap human flesh on the market. You can only get it by war or slave-raiding. So a society can hardly base much of its economy on domesticated human beings unless it has at hand feebler societies to defeat or raid.” Bloch, Marc, “The Rise of Dependent Cultivation and Seignorial Institutions,” in Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Postan, I. M. M., ed., The Agrarian Life of the Middle Ages, 2nd ed., (Cambridge: at the University Press, 1966), p. 247 Google Scholar.

73 See my The Modern World System, ch. VI.

74 See Rodney: “It is obvious that because of the Atlantic slave-trade people could not lead their ordinary lives. The majority of the population of West Africa lived by farming, and agriculture must have suffered during that period. In the first place, the loss of so many people represented a loss of labour in the fields. In the second place, those who were left behind had little reason to plant crops which they might never be around to reap. At the end of the eighteenth century, one of the arguments used by Europeans who wanted to abolish the Atlantic slave-trade was that abolition would allow the Africans to work and produce other commodities which Europeans could buy. They pointed out that as long as the Atlantic slave-trade continued people found it extremely difficult to carry on worthwhile activities.” West Africa and the Atlantic Slave-Trade, p. 16.

75 Godinho, Vitorino Magalhães, Os Descrubrimentos e a Economia Mundial, Volume 2 (Lisboa, : Ed. Arcadia, 1965), esp. pp. 528, 532.Google Scholar

76 ”The Venetian Cadamasto was told in 1455 that voyages to Guinea yielded a return of between six and ten times the outlay...Elsewhere [in West Africa] the Portuguese gathered less dazzling but still substantial riches.” Ryder, A. F. C, “Portuguese and Dutch in West Africa before 1800,” in Ajayi, J. F. Ade and Espie, Ian, eds., A Thousand Years of West African History (Ibadan, Nigeria: Ibadan University Press, 1965), pp. 220, 222Google Scholar.

77 Christopher Fyfe, “West African Trade, A. D. 1000-1800,” in Ajayi and Espie, A Thousand Years of West African Trade, p. 248 (hereafter cited as “West African Trade”).

78 Fyfe, “West African Trade,” p. 249.

79 Fyfe, “West African Trade,” p. 249.

80 Fyfe, “West African Trade,” p. 252.

81 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, ch. VII.

82 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 172.

83 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 172.

84 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 172.

85 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 176.

86 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 177.

87 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 188-189.

88 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 192.

89 Rodney, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, p. 199.

90 See my “The Colonial Era in Africa: Changes in the Social Structure,” in Gann, L. H. and Duignan, Peter, eds., Colonialism in Africa, 1870-1960, Vol. II: The History and Politics of Colonialism, 1914-1960 (Cambridge: at the University Press, 1970), pp. 399–421 Google Scholar.

91 Amin, Samir, “Transitional Phases in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Monthly Review, 25, 5 (Oct. 1973): 54–55 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (hereafter cited as “Transitional Phases”).

92 See “The Range of Choice: Constraints on the Policies of Governments of Contemporary African Independent States” in Lofchie, Michael F., ed., The State of the Nations (University of California Press, 1971), pp. 19–33 Google Scholar

93 See “Dependence in an Interdependent World: The Limited Possibilities of Transformation Within the Capitalist World-Economy,” Journal of Development Studies (forthcoming).

94 Amin, “Transitional Phases,” p. 56.