Blackwell Reference Online

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On June 13, 1980, an explosion broke the evening peace in Georgetown, the capital of Guyana, taking the life of Guyanese historian Walter Rodney . He was assassinated – though there has been no official investigation to date – by the People's National Congress (PNC) regime, led at the time by Forbes Burnham. The bomb was reportedly placed inside a radio device that had been given to Rodney by a member of the Guyana Defense Force. Rodney's pioneering documentation and lectures across the world illuminated the repercussions of European colonialism, and increased awareness of the conditions of Africans and the African diaspora. His numerous publications include his influential book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), which is an often-cited reference in the literature on third world development and has given impetus to the evolution of Pan-Africanism. Being a preeminent scholar, Rodney also became internationally renowned as a self-defined Marxist and political activist. While in Jamaica, where he held a lectureship at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Rodney frequently left classrooms for groundings – a Rastafarian term for reasoning through discussion – with and lectures to the underprivileged in the ghettos of Kingston, particularly those who professed Rastafarianism. He believed that Rastafarians were the “leading force of the expression of black consciousness ... log in or subscribe to read full text