Book Club - Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War by Howard French

Note: Registration opens one month in advance.

ABSTRACT

Born in Blackness provides a historical narrative that begins with the commencement of commercial relations between Portugal and Africa in the fifteenth century and ends with the onset of World War II. Howard French cogently demonstrates the centrality of Africa to the rise of the modern world and reveals a long-concealed history of trivialization and, more often, omissions in African history of the achievements of sovereign African nations and their far-flung peoples throughout the last five hundred years. In this important book, the story of medieval and emerging Africa is reframed to demonstrate how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in the West, and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe’s dehumanizing engagement with the African continent. In fact, the author reveals, the first impetus for the Age of Discovery was not Europe’s yearning for ties with Asia, but rather its centuries-old desire to forge a trade in gold with legendarily rich Black societies sequestered away in the heart of West Africa.