The Italo-Ethiopian War ended James’s tutorship under European radical thought.

Evidence

Obviously, James was in conflict. But by early 1936, the situation had resolved itself for the moment: the occupation of Ethiopia was an accomplished fact, and the emperor was in exile in Britain. By the end of the year, however, the Spanish Civil War had begun. Now the entire international Left was at war. And Blacks from Africa, the Caribbean, and America joined the International Brigades to fight against the fascist forces of Spain, Germany, and Italy. (And some Blacks fought for fascism: the Moroccan soldiers, General Franco’s “storm-troopers”) But even before the International Brigades were withdrawn from Spain in 1938–39, the West Indies exploded into strikes and brutal repression. The world seemed enveloped in struggle and Blacks and the Black struggle were a part of that world. For many radicals, an unavoidable lesson of the era was the necessity for armed resistance to oppression and exploitation. … Africans and people of African descent, especially those who have been poisoned by British Imperialist education, needed a lesson. They have got it. Every succeeding day shows exactly the real motives which move imperialism in its contact with Africa, shows the incredible savagery and duplicity of European Imperialism in its quest for markets and raw materials. Let the lesson sink deep. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1271

Categorization

• XREF: The pivot from European Marxism to autonomous Black radicalism echoes the arc traced throughout this book on the Black radical tradition’s formation.