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

by Howard W. French

Overview

Revealing the central yet intentionally obliterated role of Africa in the creation of modernity, Born in Blackness vitally reframes our understanding of world history.

Traditional accounts of the making of the modern world afford a place of primacy to European history. Some credit the fifteenth-century Age of Discovery and the maritime connection it established between West and East; others the accidental unearthing of the “New World.” Still others point to the development of the scientific method, or the spread of Judeo-Christian beliefs; and so on, ad infinitum. The history of Africa, by contrast, has long been relegated to the remote outskirts of our global story. 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. In fact, French reveals, the first impetus for the Age of Discovery was not—as we are so often told, even today—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.

Creating 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, Born in Blackness interweaves precise historical detail with poignant, personal reportage. In so doing, it dramatically retrieves the lives of major African historical figures, from the unimaginably rich medieval emperors who traded with the Near East and beyond, to the Kongo sovereigns who heroically battled seventeenth-century European powers, to the ex-slaves who liberated Haitians from bondage and profoundly altered the course of American history.

While French cogently demonstrates the centrality of Africa to the rise of the modern world, Born in Blackness becomes, at the same time, a far more significant narrative, one that reveals a long-concealed history of trivialization and, more often, elision in depictions of African history throughout the last five hundred years. As French shows, the achievements of sovereign African nations and their now-far-flung peoples have time and again been etiolated and deliberately erased from modern history. As the West ascended, their stories—siloed and piecemeal—were swept into secluded corners, thus setting the stage for the hagiographic “rise of the West” theories that have endured to this day.

“Capacious and compelling” (Laurent Dubois), 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324092407
Publisher:	Liveright Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	10/25/2022
Pages:	544
Sales rank:	94,425
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 5.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Howard W. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a former New York Times bureau chief for the Caribbean and Central America, West and Central Africa, Tokyo, and Shanghai. The author of five books, French lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part I The "Discovery" of Africa

1 The Crackling Surface 17

2 Black King, Golden Scepter 28

3 Rethinking Exploration 36

4 Enter the Aviz 48

5 Islands in the Offing 55

6 The African Main 66

Part II The Essential Pivot

7 The Mine 87

8 Asia Suspended 96

9 Wealth in People Versus Wealth in Things 102

10 Circuits Old and New 111

11 Unto the End of the World 119

12 Pathways of Resistance 128

13 Becoming Creole 138

Part III The Scramble for Africans

14 For a Few Acres of Snow 147

15 Fighting for Africans 160

16 Endless Death in Lands with No End 168

17 The Perpetual Oven 176

18 The Cockpit of Europe 185

19 Dung for Every Hole 197

20 Capitalism's Big Jolt 208

21 Masters of Slaves, Masters of the Sea 225

Part IV The Wages of the Python God

22 Shatter Zones 233

23 Negros Seguros 239

24 The Slave Rush 247

25 Bargains Sharp and Sinful 255

26 The Spread of the West African Slave Trade 262

27 The Wages of Resistance 269

28 Seized by the Spirit 275

29 Dark Hearts 293

30 War for the Black Atlantic 305

31 People Scattered, a Continent Drained 320

Part V The Black Atlantic and a World Made New

32 The Scent of Freedom 333

33 The Black Jacobins 352

34 Gilded Negroes 361

35 Blues and the American Truth 375

36 The Gifts of Black Folk 385

37 How the West Was Made and "Won" 395

38 Toward a New Vision of Our Origins 411

Afterword 423

Acknowledgments 427

Notes 433

Index 485

About the Author 500

Editorial Reviews

"The way we think about history is entirely wrong, says Howard W French at the start of this magnificent, powerful and absorbing book.... This is not a comfortable or comforting read, but it is beautifully done; a masterpiece even.... French writes with the elegance you would expect from a distinguished foreign correspondent, and with the passion of someone deeply committed to providing a corrective."

The Observer - Peter Frankopan

"This book is filled with countless eyeopeners… All history is, by definition, revisionist. In connecting the various dots, French is inviting us to reconsider what we understand about how we got here.... Painful and necessary… [an] infuriating and hugely enlightening book."

Financial Times - Dele Olojede

"Born in Blackness is laced with arresting nuggets... Filled with pain, but also with pride: pride at the endurance of oppressed millions, at the many slave uprisings and rebellions culminating in the Haitian revolution, which defeated ‘the idea of Black slavery itself,’ and in the cultural riches of the African diaspora... Searing, humbling and essential reading."

New York Times Book Review - Nigel Cliff

08/16/2021

Gold and slaves from Africa were “the very fulcrum of modernity,” according to this eye-opening if tendentious history. Columbia journalism professor French (A Continent for the Taking) argues that the rise of the West relied on West African gold exports, which stimulated Europe’s economy, and the trade in African slaves who produced sugar on Caribbean islands and cotton in the antebellum American South. These two fabulously profitable commodities were central to the rise of British and American capitalism, French contends, and birthed regimented production processes that were a model for industrial labor regimes. Though French elucidates much neglected history here, especially on relations between early modern Europe and the sophisticated—and pro-slavery—polities of Africa, his claim that without slave labor Europe might have remained a “geographic and civilizational dead end” lagging eternally behind Asia and the Islamic world goes too far, and he doesn’t fully explain why Western industries and societies kept flourishing even after slavery’s demise. Elsewhere, French assigns near-magical properties to slave-grown sugar, suggesting that it was essential to the Industrial Revolution, newspapers, and the birth of the “modern public sphere.” The result is an intriguing yet overwrought take on the global economy’s dire origins. Photos. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"A tour de force, so much so that it’s almost impossible to write about it without lapsing into hyperbole.... French brings a journalist’s writing skills and eye to his subject, building a comprehensive and compelling argument that Africa and Africans were central to the construction of the modern world.... On top of meticulous research into primary and secondary sources, French builds the narrative with accounts of (and pictures from!) his travels to many important sites.... Because he comes to the story with a journalist’s eye — and, just as important, with a journalist’s ability to write in clear, compelling language that anyone can understand — French’s book is invaluable. “Born in Blackness” takes these narratives that have mostly been limited to scholars and graduate students and makes them accessible to a broad audience, from undergraduates assigned a few chapters for a class to people who will pick up a popular history book that looks interesting at their local bookstore. “Born in Blackness” is a compelling, impossible-to-forget read. This is the book for those who say they “don’t know anything about Africa” and want to learn more. But those readers will quickly learn they have known many of these things all along. French’s gift is to show us how."

Laura Seay

"Born in Blackness is laced with arresting nuggets... Filled with pain, but also with pride: pride at the endurance of oppressed millions, at the many slave uprisings and rebellions culminating in the Haitian revolution, which defeated ‘the idea of Black slavery itself,’ and in the cultural riches of the African diaspora... Searing, humbling and essential reading."

Nigel Cliff

09/01/2021

Award-winning reporter French (journalism, Columbia Univ.; China's Second Continent) argues that citizens of Western countries too-often believe that their nation's economic power is the simple byproduct of its own success. Oftentimes, there is little to no credit given to the enslaved African who paid the ultimate price for white nations' wealth and prestige; French aims to correct the record in this book. He seamlessly guides readers through an immense 600-year global history of slavery, skillfully weaving in his own anecdotal experiences. French argues that it is time for historians to full-throatedly acknowledge that the events that marked significant global change (the Enlightenment, the American Revolution, industrialization) could not have happened without stealing the labor and resources of enslaved Africans throughout the Atlantic world. There are few words that can express the resounding impact of French's breathtaking work on the known historiography of African and African American history. VERDICT Highly recommended for any audience (professional or general) with an interest in African or African diaspora studies, history of the Atlantic slave trade, the Atlantic world, pre-industrialization, U.S. history, general world history, or sociology.—Monique Martinez, Univ. of North Georgia Lib., Dahlonega

Library Journal

2021-08-26
A Black journalist reframes modern history by restoring Africa to its rightful place at the center of the story.

In his latest sweeping book, French, a journalism professor at Columbia and former New York Times foreign correspondent, argues that Europe’s conquest of the world was driven not by a desire for access to Asia, but rather a yearning for the modernity and economic prosperity of Africa. The author believes that restoring Africa’s true place in world history and current affairs is a step toward combatting the racist “diminishment, trivialization, and erasure” of Africans from world history. To this end, French traces “the deeply twinned and tragic history of Africa and Europe that began with geopolitical collisions in the fifteenth century.” The author maintains a particular focus on the roles of African gold, sugar, and slavery in shaping the modern global economy. Throughout, French dispels countless historical myths, including many that render Africans disempowered victims rather than key actors. For example, the author recounts how, in the 1440s, Portugal stopped raiding African countries for slaves, opting instead to negotiate trade agreements with powerful African leaders who profited from the sale of their own people. French also describes the ways in which—despite being painted as a backward continent—African industries were more sophisticated than European ones. The Portuguese were especially covetous of textiles and metalwork Africans produced using complex techniques unknown in Europe. The author effectively argues that these early beginnings shaped the modern era all the way to African independence movements in the World War II era. This meticulously researched book eloquently debunks conventional understanding of European conquest. While each page is so densely packed with facts that it sometimes feels more like a textbook than creative nonfiction, French’s underlying argument and accompanying cogent analysis make for essential reading for anyone looking to decolonize their understanding of the Western world.

A fascinating retelling of modern history that restores Africa to its rightful place.

Kirkus Reviews