Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War

Howard W. French
W. W. Norton & Company

Traditional accounts of the making of the modern world afford a place of primacy to European history. What if, instead, we put Africa and Africans at the very center of our thinking about the origins of modernity? In a sweeping narrative spanning more than six centuries, Howard W. French does just that, for Born in Blackness vitally reframes the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating 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 “dark” continent. Born in Blackness is epic history on the grand scale. In the lofty tradition of bold, revisionist narratives, it reframes the story of gold and tobacco, sugar and cotton―and of the greatest “commodity” of them all, the twelve million people who were brought in chains from Africa to the “New World,” whose reclaimed lives shed a harsh light on our present world.

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A Better Life for Their Children: Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington, and the 4,978 Schools That Changed

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Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way