Advance Praise

Born in Blackness:

Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War

“What happens if we put Africa and Africans into the center of our thinking about the origins of the modern world? In this powerful account of six centuries of global history, Howard W. French takes us on a journey that effectively undermines many of the almost mythical narratives that we have been taught about the sources of Europe’s strength, wealth and modernity. Pushing back against a prevailing current of purposeful forgetting, French shows that Europe’s ‘Great Divergence’ would have been unimaginable without Africans; their wealth, capital and labor played an important role in powering the emerging global economy. To understand the world we live in today, this book is a must-read.” ―Sven Beckert, author of Empire of Cotton: A Global History

"Howard French's Born in Blackness is a vitally important re-telling of a story from which Africa and Africans have long been wilfully excluded: it renders visible their role as leading actors in the making of modernity. This is essential reading for anyone with an interest in world history." ―Amitav Ghosh - author of Sea of Poppies

“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, author of The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity

“Born in Blackness is a brilliant reworking of the conventional wisdom about the rise of the Modern World. This deeply researched and elegantly written book rewinds the tape past Christopher Columbus, and shows how the tragic relationship between Africa and Europe, which began in the 15th century, created modernity as we know it.” ―Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

“A necessary book. A compelling narrative that systematically dismantles one prop after another in the academy’s master narrative of how Europe brought light to ’the Dark Continent’ over the past six centuries. A worthy successor to Du Bois’ The World and Africa.” ―Mahmood Mamdani, author of Neither Settler Nor Native

“Born in Blackness does for traditional Eurocentric history what Copernicus did for the pieties of his time when he showed that the Earth revolved around the Sun and not vice versa. Africa, its peoples, and its wealth, the superbly qualified Howard French shows us, are far more central to the formation of the modern world than we usually think. And, unlike Copernicus, French has been to all the places he writes about.” ―Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost: A story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

“Born in Blackness is an urgent, searching and imaginative retelling of the decisive role of Africa and Africans in shaping world history. French covers a huge amount of ground with style, asking vital new questions and foregrounding the role of Africans in creating―and fighting for―the world of democratic freedoms which is now taken for granted.” ―Toby Green, author of A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution

“With this powerful retelling of global history, Howard W. French challenges us to discard long-accepted mythologies that have obscured to foundations of our contemporary world. Through a riveting account of the centrality of Africa and Africans in shaping economic systems and political thought, he offers a capacious and compelling explanation for how this world came to be. Born in Blackness offers us a new understanding of our common history, and reminds us that confronting that past is precondition for the construction of a different future.” ―Laurent Dubois, author of Haiti: The Aftershocks of History