 | A history of the Guyanese working people, 1881-1905 Completed shortly before Walter Rodney's assassination in June 1980, A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905 provides an original, well-informed, and perceptive contribution to the historiography of nineteenth-century Guyanese society. This comprehensive examination encompasses the history of African and Asian immigration into Guyana, the interaction of ethnic groups, the impact of British colonialism, economic and political constraints on the working class, and the social life of the masses. Rodney argues that the social evolution of the Guyanese working people has been guided by specific material constraints and extremely powerful external focuses from Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America. He emphasizes the destructive fragmentation of the working class along ethnic, political, and social lines, encouraged by the legacy of slavery, postslavery immigration, legal distinctions between various classes of labor, and the economic bases of the society. in contrast to the well-defined middle and upper classes, the working people appeared divided, disorganized, and leaderless. Rodney's account ends in 1905, when the hardships and frustrations of the masses exploded into violence. A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905 will stand alone as a landmark study of the profound social upheaval that characterized Guyanese society in the years following emancipation. Anyone interested in the problems of underdeveloped nations, labor control, and the after-effects of colonialism and imperialism will appreciate the significance of this work. Walter Rodney was born in British Guiana (now Guyana) and educated in England. He taught African history at the University College of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica, until 1968, when his Marxist views were deemed subversive and he was forced to leave. He spent the next four years teaching at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He then returned to his home in Guyana as chair of the department of history at the University of Guyana. When his position was revoked under pressure from the government, he assumed leadership of the Working People's Alliance. His leadership was cut short by a car-bomb explosion that took his life on June 13, 1980. By then Rodney had achieved an international reputation, not only for his scholarship, but also for his vigorous advocacy for the rights of African Americans throughout the world. Rodney's Marxist writings denounce capitalism and imperialism for the destruction they brought upon African American societies. His expulsion from Jamaica had resulted from his 1967 work, West Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade and the series of lectures he published in 1969 as The Grounding with My Brothers. In 1970 he published A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545--1800, in which he raised new questions about the nature of African societies and their impact on the Atlantic slave trade. Despite Rodney's critics, the book was clearly an important contribution to the history of Africa. His most influential work, however, was How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972). Written from an African perspective, this Marxist interpretation of colonialism and imperialism in Africa has insured Rodney's place in the writing of the African past. (Bowker Author Biography) |
