Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War
“Born in Blackness” is laced with arresting nuggets. It was news to me that the trade of colonial North America was overwhelmingly directed toward the Caribbean, “the boiler room of the North Atlantic economy.” In the late 18th century, white Jamaicans enjoyed an annual income 35 times that of British North Americans. French notes that more slaves were trafficked to Martinique, less than one-quarter the size of Long Island, than to the entire United States, while the French so prized tiny Guadeloupe that they swapped it for the whole of French Canada. The evidence that Africans made the New World economically viable is overwhelming... French repeatedly circles back over his material like a picture restorer revealing a lost world as he calmly insists that we rewrite history. I found the book to be searing, humbling and essential reading. ~ NYT Book Review
The way we think about history is entirely wrong, says Howard W French at the start of this magnificent, powerful and absorbing book. The problem is not just that the people and cultures of Africa have been ignored and left to one side; rather, that they have been so miscast that the story of the global past has become part of a profound “mistelling”... 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... This is not a comfortable or comforting read, but it is beautifully done; a masterpiece even. ~ The Guardian
Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War. “Born in Blackness charges into the roiling debates about how modernity began, with a powerfully argued case for placing Africa and Africans at the heart of the process, giving voice to a silenced history.”—Kwame Anthony Appiah
