'Born in Blackness': A book talk with author Howard French (03-22-2022)
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- Опубликовано: 14 июл 2024
- Howard W. French, Professor of Journalism, Columbia University
In conversation with Daniel E. Agbiboa, Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
'Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War'
About the book:
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.
About the author:
Howard W. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and former New York Times bureau chief in the Caribbean and Central America, West and Central Africa, Tokyo, and Shanghai. The author of five books, French lives in New York City. To learn more, visit howardwfrench.com.
I love Professor French. He is one of the few African Americans that really have my world view. I'm a black Cuban Puerto Rican and my Yoruba Nigerian culture and religion brought to Cuba by my enslaved ancestors has been the center of my culture for 500 years. Professor French shows the truth who African people truly are, a global people outside of the Western narrative. Without a yt gaze he reveals the global scale of the African continent and its people. Thank you Professor French for clarifying our story putting it in its proper context. Also I found Skip Gates need to create a moral equivalency between European slavery and African slavery ridiculous. His combative nature with him seemed odd not just regular scholarly disagreement but pushback from someone who has been paid to be an apologist for the yt supemacists system that pays him to stay in his place
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It is wonderful to hear Prof. French put together so many of the facts that while known, are seldom laid out in a comprehensive review. The book is powerful and detailed. Skip Gates nitpicking was a distraction. The Trans-Atlantic Slave trade was a demand-driven enterprise. Nobody in Africa erected a sign hawking "People for Sale" come get them and do something with them!" Racialized, perpetual, cattle slavery was Europe's most consequential contribution to humanity. Prof. French tells the historical facts in ways historians have been unable.
Agree....! I could see Dr Gates getting uncomfortable when he started talking about the qualitative difference in slavery in Africa & the West ...the distinction should be made..the Arab & Western models of slavery had many similarities...than in Africa. .But Still love this in-depth conversation ..Just got Born In Blackness...Thank you Prof Howard French..
Fantastic overview of an insightful book that sheds new light on a story that we all think we know but we actually don't.
I've enjoyed all the interviews and discussions about this book and I commend Professor Howard French for this book as well as the other Professors for helping to delve into this topic for the viewers.
Thank you
I ordered the book this week and look foward to extend my knowledge.
Invariably we go through life being able to identify dots and recount specifics. Professor French has taken these historical dots and arranged them into a picture that places Africans squarely in the center of modern history. He's done what no trained historian could do by painting a picture the world can all see. He's kicked open the door. A fascinating read.
All super interesting, but also, concerning the naturalization of Black-centered stories, the best French books are in France, the best Italian books are in Italy, etc.; there may not be a welcoming of such stories here in the US, under the glare of the cameras which record and propagate its values. A new capital may have to be located in Africa for such stories to be able to "breathe".
Great video. Worth a watch.
Deep facts
I would like to examine the 2 billion man hours of stolen labor figure a lot closer.
12 million Africans were brought to the Americas (North, South and the Caribbean). The period of stolen wealth spans 500 years which also includes wealth generated via prison labor, sharecropping and wage theft (from a capitalist perspective).
born without color