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Amílcar Cabral: a Theory of Imperialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Jock McCulloch
Jock McCulloch
Affiliation:
Parliament House, Canberra, Australia
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Extract

The speeches and articles of Amílcar Cabral represent an attempt to think of imperialism and the colonial relationship in a new way. His published works sought to explain how a subsistence agricultural society was being transformed under the abnormal conditions attendant upon colonial domination. Superficially, Cabral does not present any new or particularly complex interpretation of colonialism. With the exception of a few rather brief essays, most of his work is a description of a guerrilla war fought against the last of the great colonial powers. Yet the appearance of the terms ‘mode of production’ and ‘productive forces’ indicates that his understanding of imperialism is founded on a new set of presuppositions. Cabral used these terms before they became common among the ranks of the ‘advanced left’, and at a time when the concept of the mode of production was essentially a possession of Soviet Marxism. In the early 1960s, Soviet visions of the ‘Asiatic Mode of Production’ were achieving much the same effect as modernisation theory in the West. That most of Cabral's important essays were written at this time only emphasises the innovativeness of his work.

Type
Africana
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , September 1981 , pp. 503 - 511
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

page 503 note 1 Cabral, Amílcar, Revolution in Guinea: selected texts (New York, 1969), pp. 56–75 and 90–111.Google Scholar

page 506 note 1 Cabral, Amílcar, ‘Recenseamento Agrícola da Guiné: estimative em 1952’, in Boletim Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa (Bissau), XI, 07 1956, pp. 7–243.Google Scholar

page 507 note 1 Amin, Samir, Neo-Colonialism in West Africa (New York, 1973), pp. 3–40.Google Scholar

page 507 note 2 Cabral, Amílcar, ‘Acerca da contribuição dos “povos” guineenes para a produção agrícola da Guiné’, in Boletim Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa, IX, 10 1954, pp. 771–7.Google Scholar

page 507 note 3 Amílcar Cabral and Maria Helena Cabral, ‘Breves notas acerca da razão de ser, objectivos e processo do execução do recenseamento agrícola da Guiné’, in ibid. IX, January 1954, pp. 195–201.

page 507 note 4 Amílcar Cabral, ‘Acerca da Utiização da Terra na Africa Negra’, in ibid. IX, April 1954, pp. 401–16.

page 508 note 1 Amílcar Cabral, ‘A Propósito de Mechanização de Agricultra na Guiné’, in ibid. IX, April 1954, pp. 389–400.

page 508 note 2 Amílcar Cabral, ‘Para o conhecimento do problema da erosão do solo na Guiné. I-Sobre o conceitode erosão’, in ibid. IX, January 1954, pp. 163–94; ‘A proposdu cycle cultural Arachide-Mils en Guinée portugaise’, in ibid. XIII, April 1958, pp. 149–56 the text of a speech first presented at the Conference Arachide-Mils at Banbey, Senegal, in September 1954; ‘Queimadas e pousios na circunscrição de Fulacunda em 1954’, in ibid. IX, July 1954, pp. 627–43.