Walter Rodney (1942-1980) was a Marxist historian and grassroots labor activist from Guyana. His educational training laid the groundwork for How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Rodney attended Queen’s College, the top all-boys high school in the country, where he graduated first in his class in 1960. Rodney’s success in high school earned him a scholarship to the University of the West Indies in Jamaica (UWI), where he received an undergraduate degree in history in 1963. He then attended the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, one of the world’s leading institutions for the study of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. He earned his PhD in African history at age 24, completing a dissertation titled The History of the Upper Guinea Coast, published by Oxford University Press in 1970.

In contrast to most academics, Rodney combined his scholarship with activism to become a leading voice for the underrepresented and disenfranchised. Rodney’s father nurtured his interest in politics and working-class struggles, issues Rodney continued to engage beyond his student years. His dissertation combined his interests in scholarship and activism by challenging assumptions about Africa and proposing new frameworks to study oppressed people, an approach he repeated in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.