Review of My Books

A History of Modernity That Puts Africa at Center Stage

In 1444, the citizens of Lagos in southern Portugal witnessed a novel spectacle. As they crowded the beach, some 235 newly arrived Black captives were drive. Oct. 14, 2021n ashore. Overseers dragged families apart as despairing mothers clutched their children and threw themselves on the ground, absorbing the blows raining on their backs. Presiding from horseback over Europe’s first sizable market of sub-Saharan slaves was Portugal’s Prince Henry, known to history as “the Navigator,” and watching nearby was his official biographer, Gomes Eanes de Zurara. Abandoning his usual sycophancy in the face of the captives’ anguish, Zurara bitterly protested that he could not help but “cry piteously over their suffering” and found scant comfort in the thought that their heathen souls, if not their scarred bodies, would be saved. Oct. 14, 2021. NYT Book Review.

Have China’s Value Propositions Become More Attractive Than America’s?

After my first book came out in 2004, I received a surprise phone call from an assistant to former United States Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, asking if I would meet with him to talk about Africa. Sitting together in his executive’s office at Citibank’s headquarters in Manhattan, he averred that if Al Gore were to win that year’s presidential election, he could return to a leading position in government, and he wanted to know if there was one initiative Washington could take to engage with Africa, what would I suggest?. Wednesday, June 5, 2019, WPR.

America’s Collision Course With China

The Chinese superpower has arrived. Could America’s failure to grasp this reality pull the United States and China into war? Howard W. French’s “Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power” does so through a deep historical and cultural study of the meaning of China’s rise from the point of view of the Chinese themselves. Judith Shapiro review, front page, Sunday, June 15, NYT Book Review.

The Chip on China’s Shoulder

China’s leaders wield historical maps like a bludgeon, and their spurious claims now constitute what many Chinese believe is a “natural order” that must be restored. Stephen R. Platt reviews “Everything Under the Heavens” by Howard W. French. March 24, 2017. WSJ

Book Review: 'China's Second Continent' by Howard W. French

Africa is seen as El Dorado in China—more than a million Chinese have settled on the continent. WSJ

The Settlers

‘China’s Second Continent,’ by Howard W. French
Review by Alexis Okeowo for The New York Times

China's Second Continent

French’s stories form an often brutal tale of exploitation, racism and mutual mistrust. He summarized his findings in his new book, China’s Second Continent, an easy-to-read, shocking account about the Chinese presence in Africa. — Read the complete FT review