The primary thrust of this book - using dialectical materialist/Marxist analysis to demonstrate the evils of Colonialism - seems kind of wild to me, from a historiographical standpoint. The only people who I can imagine these days denying the abstract notion of colonialism being bad are precisely those who would also deny out-of-hand any conclusions wrought from dialectical materialist analysis. Of course there is colonialism and colonialism, and while the explicit forays of the past are widely derided as probably-a-bad-idea, the colonialism (explicit or more socioeconomically implicit) of the present is less acknowledged - yet here, still, those Marxists I know are the first to call it out.

So just from the start it is an interesting peek into the zeitgeist of the politically left of the time. On the other hand, the repeated facts and figures brought to bear on his argument begins to dull a bit because I am a) already persuaded and b) a bit dubious of some of the presuppositions of the arguments (the clear delineation between Marx’s historical epochs, the successes of the socialist countries of the time, with North Korea being used as a positive example). But the argument is consistent and comprehensive and worth knowing.

Parts of this argument of course jump out - I found the analysis of the educational systems of colonial Africa being used as a tool by the metropoles to be quite fascinating, and I found the numerous references to a Sir John Hawkins being a pioneer in the lucrative industry of trading in enslaved people to be a bit distressing. Those parts and others will stay with me. But - earlier this summer I criticized Graeber’s writing for being too full of anecdotes that don’t, in the end, seem to comprise a compelling argument, and here I find the opposite problem: I kind of like anecdotes, I love a story, and maybe I am just a little bit bored by history writ large.

The most interesting section for me was the somewhat foreshortened history of Africa before the Europeans started wreaking havoc (foreshortened because after all it was not the subject of the book). This is an area of history of which my education has left me largely ignorant, and which of course the rest of the book throws into sharp contrast. I should know more about King Shaka, and Benin City, and so much more.