The contribution to sterling reserves by any colony was a gift to the British treasury, for which the colony received little interest. [...] Men like… - Walter Rodney

It is only the organization and resoluteness of the working class which protects it from the natural tendency of the capitalist to exploit to the utmost.

The first four centuries of Afro-European trade in a very real sense represent the roots of African underdevelopment. Colonialism flourished rapidly from a European viewpoint, because several of its features were already rooted in Africa in the preceding period. One of the most decisive features of the colonial system was the presence of Africans serving as economic, political, and cultural agents of the European colonialists. Those agents, or “s,” were already serving European interests in the pre-colonial period. The impact of trade with Europe had reduced many African rulers to the status of middlemen for European trade; it had raised ordinary Africans to that same middleman commercial role; and it had created a new trading group of mixed blood—the children of European or Arab fathers. Those types can all be referred to as “compradors,” and they played a key role in extending European activity from the coast into the hinterland, as soon as Europeans thought of taking over political power.

It is the practice of monopoly concerns to move into new fields which supplement or even replace their old business. That is necessary to avoid their entire capital from being tied up in products that go out of fashion.