Africa and the West's Role In The Global Economy

Dr. Rosetta Codling

I recently met Dr. Rosetta Codling, an African American scholar and critic whose critiques of African and African American literature have appeared in numerous journals. Her latest critique appears in The Journal of African Literature 2010. Her professional career spans over 25 years in education. She recently shared her enlightening thoughts on the roles of Africa and the West in the global economy with me. Below are excerpts.


What are your thoughts on Africa and the African Diaspora in the global economy?

They face many challenges including the Diaspora's involuntary contributions to the global economy in the past and in the new Millennium. They have always contributed to the advancement of the global economy, in favor of Europe and America. Our single, pivotal contribution was the Atlantic Slave Trade, including the Middle Passage, which funded the industrialization of Europe and America.

Africa's servitude continues in the 20th century. The Black Migration in America and the Windrush Era in England contributed greatly to the redevelopment of Post-War America and England. Currently, Africa contributes to the new Millennium, which engages techno-advancement by supplying the world with mineral wealth. Africa's current 'Go Africanization' credo may be a means for the realization of Africa's great internal and external wealth. This concept may serve as a means for Africans, not foreigners, to capitalize upon their own wealth. In doing so, there should be a means for Africa and the African Diaspora to reap the benefits of their mineral wealth and labor.

What are the links between globalization, capitalism and access to free labor?

Prior to the intrusion of the Iberians in the 1400's, Africa was sought by Europe for intellectualism, minerals, and human labor. The Greek civilization, the catalysis for Western thought discussed in the Richard Poe book, Black Spark, White Fire: Did African Explorers Civilize Ancient Europe? spawned the development of Roman intellectualism. However, much of the ancient Greek civilization and thought was derived from the Egyptians.

The classic Black Athena, a scholarly text illustrating the African imprint upon Greek civilization, explores the African practices of engaging conduits and the harvesting of crops, took seed, which later blossomed into Western Agricultural Science. Most importantly, African principles regarding Philosophy, Mathematics, Medicine, and Politics, also took seed and became rooted in the basis of Western thought.

The famed researcher, Chiek Anta Diop details in his treatise, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, the role of Africa as a founder of Western civilization and of contemporary commerce. Yet, with the commencement of a new globalization, or the making of the Atlantic World, in the 1400's, things changed for Africa. The new globalization became an enterprise to bring together the diverse economic aspirations of Europe. Industry and trade were organized and centralized for the mutual benefit of all European parties. In other words, Capitalism was at the forefront of the making of the Atlantic World. There were no altruistic or religious motives involved. Profit was the objective and the means to achieve it was cheap labor.

What roles did America and Europe play in this emerging world market?

America played a role through the discovery of the continent. America's wealth was not to found precious metals. It offered a new and inexhaustible market for European commodities. According to book, Capitalism and Slavery by Eric Williams, America was able to "raise the mercantile system to a degree of splendor and glory, which it never otherwise would have attained." America's rise led to an enormous increase in world trade. For Britain, the triangular trade of slave served as "the first principal and foundation of all the rest and the mainspring of the machine, which sets every wheel in motion."

From its inception, America has played a vital role in globalization. The Colonial Americas played a vital role in the advancement of trade for England, France, and Spain by becoming a base for exports, ships, African slaves, plantations, and materials. Africa was an integral core of the operations for globalization, the triangular trade, and the making of the Atlantic World. Yet, Africa was the loser, while Europe and Europeans reaped the profits.

Commerce and trade with Africa started out as an enterprise among equals and regressed to a policy of exploitation. Africa was ravaged and depreciated of its human and natural resources. Previously, within the Annuals of the famed Equiano, as stated in The Life of Gustavus Vassa, all of West Africa enjoyed a healthy climate of free-trade along the coast, but this climate was short-lived and the ensuing changes summoned the decline of the continent and the ascent of Western culture and industrialization.

Eric William's book, Capitalism and Slavery reveals that the industrial revolution obtained capital through slavery's free labor. In current times, with African descendants’ relocation movements such as the Windrush Era of the Caribbean in England and the Great Migration of African Americans in the US, old policies of exploitation re-emerged. Within these new exploitative policies, the involuntary relocation and dislocation of peoples of color further sponsored globalization.

What was the goal of making the Atlantic World at Africa's expense?

John Thornton's work, Africa and Africans: The making of the Atlantic World and Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations share a similar perspective regarding the objective and focus of the making of the Atlantic World. Ironically, within these works, the self-serving role of slavery is conveniently glossed over. Theories presented in these Eurocentric publications assert the noble objective of Europeans to forge a broader scope to be known as the Atlantic World. However, Africa did not harbor romantic notions of the European presence in Africa and in African affairs in the 1400's. Thornton cites the indigenous people's initial naval resistance.

The Iberian raid and trade practices weren’t met with approval. Africans forcibly demanded that trade be conducted voluntarily and between equals. According to Thornton, the Portuguese Crown needed instructions to relearn these lessons in equitable trade several times or risk losing their license to trade on Africa's West Coast. Portugal, an early interloper in African affairs, eventually gained the upper hand and seized Angola to establish a colony for the sole purpose of developing a commercial factory. Also, Portugal needed to regulate trade from Ndongo. This endeavor had no benevolent utopian goal. Raw, unwavering, and capitalist greed was the goal. Walter Rodney's work, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa exposes the true nature of Europe's African enterprise. Capitalism and the notion of a global economy are concepts rooted in the exploitation of one group for the furthering of another.

How did the process impact Africa?

European trading with Africa enhanced Capitalistic objectives. The act of 'trading with Africa' declined to 'stealing from Africa.' This policy was not restricted to Africa alone. The Atlantic Slave Trade extended to India, the Pacific Islands, South America, and the Caribbean Islands. In an essay written by Elika M'bokolo, she states: "The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes; including from across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic Ocean for more than four centuries of regular slave trade, which began from the end of the fifteenth to the nineteenth century to build the Americas and the prosperity of the Christian states of Europe. "

M'bokolo's essay, The impact of the slave trade on Africa, presents figures regarding the numbers of individuals enslaved. She estimates four million were exported via the Red Sea, four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, and perhaps as many as nine million along the Trans-Saharan Caravan Route, and eleven to twenty million, depending on the author, were exported across the Atlantic Ocean." Africa reaped the agony and Europe reaped the benefits of this mode of trade.

M'bokolo states ―The great slaving companies were formed in the second half of the seventeenth century. America and other countries of the world, benefited from the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas and various papal edicts which reserved African districts for the Spaniards, the Portuguese, and other nations of Europe. In essence, Europe - France, England, Holland, Portugal, Spain, and even Denmark, Sweden and Brandenburg shared the spoils, and established a chain of monopoly companies in Africa. Sporadic raids by the Europeans soon gave way to regular commerce. African societies were drawn into the slavery system under duress.

Slavery was vital to funding the global economy in Europe. The European powers including France, England, Holland, Portugal, Spain, Denmark and Sweden needed cheap labor to sponsor their advancements. Unfortunately, the old manner of accessing cheap labor force from the African Diaspora was not forgotten in the Post-Modern world.

Discuss the involuntary funding of globalization through the relocation and dislocation of Africans and their descendants?

Professor Thomas Holt's current treatise Children of Fire: A History of African Americans provides the most concise account of the legacy of African Americans in America. He relates the fact that: "Although much of their history is likely to remain enigmatic, we can be fairly certain that the twenty Africans on that Dutch man-of-war were at the apex of a triangle formed by Europe, Africa, and America. At that moment, in particular, three European powers---England, the Netherlands, and Spain, struggling for supremacy in Europe---were pushing the boundaries of their conflict into Africa and the Americas. Twenty Africans landed at Jamestown as part of a cargo of slaves on a Portuguese ship."

Africans, in terms of globalization during the 1600's, were an integral part of the European economic venture into the Americas. Africans became the transferred chattel of this new group of European 'Creoles' known as Americans and the continued containment and displacement of Africans and African descendants still thrives today.

How was early slavery facilitated?

The famed text, The Willie Lynch Letter and The Making of a Slave whose authenticity is often disputed reveals the science of enslavement .Yet, the logic and the utilitarian purpose of such a philosophy is undeniable as it expresses the materialistic viewpoint of Southern plantation owners in America and the West Indies. Slavery was a business and slaves were pawns in an economic game of debauchery and cross-breeding.

The conditioning of slaves was vital to the survival of plantation life. Certain codes, edicts, or principles, facilitated their domination. They were repressed and perceived as unequal or inhuman. Therefore, they were cross-bred, raped, and conditioned without the perpetrators feeling any guilt. William Lynch, a Southern plantation owner, stated, in an address titled: The Willie Lynch Letter, six cardinal principles which directed slave owners to govern their slaves as livestock, break their spirits, cross-breed, enforce a new colonial language, and contain the slaves psychologically and physically. If these edicts were followed, slaves would be slaves for life. Economically, these principles were feasible and sound.

The acceptability of Willie Lynch’s theories must be compared with the results, which indicate that slavery was successful and profitable. The cotton, sugar, and tobacco exported from the Americas to Europe reaped profits. Such trade was vital to the Western and global economy. America's Civil War was not fought to abolish slavery, but to save the nation because internal disputes regarding slavery imperiled the union of the American states, was costly to trade and suffered during the war.

How was the post slavery’s psychological and economic slavery of African Americans facilitated?

Jim Crow laws, which impeded African American freedom, were developed in the South after the Civil War. These laws maintained the order of slave society and the North covertly sanctioned the American Apartheid system to politically appease the defeated Caucasian Southerners. American farmers gained confidence and assurance through Jim Crow laws, that Colored, indentured groups would still work their lands after emancipation. Thus, African Americans in the South were restricted. However, a new global world was on the horizon with the Second World War. Industrial labor markets in the Northern cities of America needed cheap labor to work the factories and African Americans were lured North with tales of equality and higher wages. Subsequently, Southern family farms in America became a dying industry and the Great Migration began.

Discuss the Great Migration. How did it impact African Americans?

The Great Migration is the term for the mass exodus of African Americans from Southern, agricultural states to Northern, industrial cities. When a train's whistle was heard across the cotton fields, scores of African Americans defected from sharecropping, domestic servitude, manual labor, and even families. People immediately left siblings, spouses, and children without notice. They left everything, jumped on trains in pursuit of the Northern cities’ Promised Land and as a result, African Americans, again, experienced displacement and relocation to the unwelcoming hostile territories of the Northern cities.

The writers of this period described the disillusionment and despair. Richard Wright wrote American Hunger, Native Son, and Black Boy. James Baldwin wrote Go Tell It on the Mountain. Ralph Ellison wrote Invisible Man. Each writer sounded the cry of a people manipulated again. Later, Claude Brown wrote Manchild in the Promised Land and Toni Morrison wrote Jazz and Sula. A current study of the Great Migration is provided via Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts' book Harlem is Nowhere. She gained residence in Harlem to write a retrospective glimpse into the pilgrimages of the early African American settlers in Harlem, New York. Her study reveals that African Americans came buying land and developing the disfavored community of Harlem, but they were met with hostility and anger. The 1900's Caucasian residents of Harlem preferred to let properties decay, rather than sell to African Americans.

Currently, Harlem is morphing into a Caucasian community again. African American families were displaced because they were priced out of the real estate market. The nouveau pursuit of capitalistic progress finds African Americans standing in the way of the globalization and gentrification of the “new” Harlem. The historian Thomas C. Holt chronicles these current events in his study titled A History of African Americans. The chapters Ragtime and A Second Emancipation focus on this dilemma. Again, relocation and displacement serve the global minded Capitalist and not the workers.

Discuss the post-modern deployment of African resources to aid globalization through England's Windrush Era?

Andrea Levy's novel, Small Island tells the story of the migration of Caribbean people from small islands to a mythical, “Mother Island,” named England. The Windrush Era was a modern day plan for the relocation and displacement of the descendants of the original Atlantic Slave Trade. Small Island illustrates the bittersweet chronicle of several people who find their way through this tumultuous period in the Diaspora's history. From 1947-1954, post-war England sought the energy and vitality of their Caribbean chattel. Caribbean people were seduced to come and work in the most deplorable conditions in England's cities. For a paltry sum, the illusion of opportunity and kinship, Caribbean people answered the call to come to England.

In reality, British Capitalists only needed a cheap labor force again. However, since overt slavery was politically incorrect in the post modern world, this new, labor force had to be lured voluntarily. Historical records indicate that these brave Caribbean people reminiscent of slavery, traveled by boats provided by England. Upon arrival, they disembarked from the ships, gracefully and in such finery that was exclusively Caribbean, that the English locals were astonished and responded to the newcomers with vile hostility and utter racism. However, there were labor shortages in the UK and cheap labor was needed, so the British Capitalists weren’t troubled by the frustration and anger of their beleaguered underclass citizens. The Capitalists weren’t concerned about the welfare of the newcomers who served the purposes of industry.

What did that lead to in England?

It led to incidents including the infamous April 11th, 1981 Bloody Saturday in Brixton which was the result of brewing racial clashes. In South London, riots developed initially to protest the stabbing, improper care and death of a black youth by the police. However, the continued unrest was rooted in the despair stemming from poverty, joblessness and the segregation of the Black populous into red-lined communities in Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester.

The rationale for the relocation and dislocation of Caribbean, Indian, and Brown peoples was no longer viable for the England of the 1970's and 1980's. A second generation of Caribbean immigrants was not needed and very problematic. They sought better jobs and opportunities that were never envisioned for them by the British society. In fact, Caucasian underclass of British society was still scampering in the 1970's and 1980's for limited jobs. All of England was wrestling with a crippling recession in the 1980's, which continues to this present day.

The Caribbean people and the Caucasian underclass began to clash in semi-organized and organized fashions. Anger against the upstart, Caribbean people rose. Eventually, England rescinded its policy of freely admitting Caribbean people and other Commonwealth peoples. This shift in policy took the form of definitive legislation that required that a prospective Caribbean immigrant prove that he or she had a parent in the UK or a bona fide relative possessing the status of British Subject. Abruptly, Caribbean people were no longer welcome in England after the 1980's.

The 1995 Brixton riots and the 2011 riots, across England were replays of similar circumstances which led to the 1981 Brixton riots. Despair erupted into smoldering flames; ignited by the mistreatment of Africans and African descendants by the British police and resulting in violence, fanned by feelings of disenfranchisement and disillusionment of minority youths. These young people were mostly Caribbean, Indian, and Brown peoples, but many were also from the Caucasian underclass.

How did America respond to Britain's immigration policy changes?

America granted free access to Caribbean and other peoples of color to come to America in 1965 because African Americans in the Civil Rights Era of the 1960's refused the menial labor of their forefathers. Great social changes, which were the catalysts for major shifts in America's immigration policy, were led by Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. The Civil Rights Movement made things difficult for accessing cheap, indigenous, and Colored labor in America, and America, like Europe, needed cheap labor for production to compete globally. After the passage of legislation during the John F. Kennedy administration, America freely opened its doors to those once restricted.

Previously, preference was given to European immigrants. Adam Smith in his text, The Wealth of Nations stresses this point. The Caribbean Islands were traditionally under the Commonwealth protection and parentage of the "Motherland," but, with Britain's abdication/retreat from open immigration, America tapped a new, cheap labor market. The pattern was repeated and globally, African descendants continued to meet the needs of another market.

What is Africa's continued role in globalization and China's success?

The Atlantic World continues to expand and encompass the Pacific World. China and India are developing world powers which require raw materials, and Africa is once again, the source for human and mineral resources. China's ventures in Africa are supposedly purely mercantile. Still, one must critically wonder due to history.

China conducts trade in Africa by extracting raw materials, which ravages the land for a moderate price. There appears to be little concern for the harm inflicted upon the land, and the environment. Humans and animals suffer the consequences. China brings trade to African nations through the business conducted; however, African workers are rarely hired by Chinese firms in Africa. China imports Chinese workers for the most lucrative and professional positions. Few Africans are hired in unprofessional capacities, are poorly paid and vulnerable to injury or death because there are no labor laws protecting their interests. China isn’t concerned with the violation of human rights. One might construe that China's venture in Africa is a self-serving pursuit. History is repeating itself as an emerging global power, currently China, is gaining strength at Africa's expense.

Africa's oil industry, not the Middle East’s, supplies most of America's fuel. America's oil interests, in Africa including Nigeria's Niger Delta, exploit and disenfranchise the local people and blatantly ignore human rights violations. England, again, prompts cause for concern in Africa. The vast oil reserves found in many African countries are exploited by England too and Africans obtains little of the profit because of the neo-colonial governments installed by European global powers. Belgium and France, in the pursuit of the minerals like coltan, which is vital for making computer chips and cell phones, incite internal disputes in African nations in places such as Congo. Companies such as Nokia, Ericsson, Intel, and Sony lust for African resources, consequently, a dozen years of war over tin and coltan mines -- minerals vital to modern technology -- have created the largest humanitarian tragedy in modern history with women being the most common victims and the West largely ignores this.

Many other legitimate sources of these minerals are available in Western countries such as Canada, Australia, and even in South American. For example, Brazil has vast mineral reserves, but the focus is on Africa because resources are obtained in Africa for little or no fee. Likewise, the global diamond market is almost entirely dependent on the cheap labor and minerals found in places like Namibia and South Africa. Internal civil wars and conflict are inspired and/or supported by European powers that profit from African strife.

What is your assessment of the current state of Africa in the global market?

Africa of the past and present offers little hope for the future because Africa's rich human and mineral resources, historically, has been vulnerable to Europe’s and America’s selfish aspirations. Now, China assumes a similar self-serving role. When will real global trade be realized where all parties reap the same benefits? Africa awaits such a venture and future of a mutually beneficial partnership amongst equals.