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

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He writes: “The gigantic boost that [this gold] provided the [Portuguese] crown … made it possible for Lisbon to keep pace with Spain in their headlong course into ocean faring, discovery, conquest, crusading, and intercontinental trade.” Specialists aside,” French writes, “few imagine that islands like Barbados and Jamaica were far more important in their day than were the English colonies that would become the United States.” The two islands produced substantially more wealth for Britain than all 13 colonies taken as whole. The riches that underwrote the expansion of the British Empire flowed not from North America but from the Caribbean—and it was wealth on a scale that few had dreamed possible. The North American colonies played only a peripheral role in this commerce—as merchants. The farmers, fishermen, and tradesmen centered on Boston, Philadelphia, and New York supplied food to the islands and clothed the slaves, themselves growing prosperous in the process. Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

Born in Blackness by Howard W French review - The Guardian

I was drawn to this book primarily because Bill Gates recommended it as one of his top two reads this year.This book provided me with a clearer insight into the evolution of the Atlantic slave trade. It traces the progression of primary commodities — starting with gold, then transitioning to sugar, and finally to cotton — that acted as catalysts for the spread of slavery. While this progression is eloquently presented, what truly astounded me was the immense demand for sugar and the lengths nations would go to secure its substantial profits. 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”. From 1979 to 1986, he lived in West Africa, where he worked as a translator, taught English literature at the University of Ivory Coast, and lived as a freelance reporter. 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 MD5 of a better version of this file (if applicable). Fill this in if there is another file that closely matches this file (same edition, same file extension if you can find one), which people should use instead of this file. If you know of a better version of this file outside of Anna’s Archive, then please upload it.

Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the

In the 18th century, Haiti was the richest colony in history. And when its slave population successfully rebelled against the French and defeated huge armies sent by the French, British, and Spanish in the succeeding years, “Haiti rivaled the United States in terms of its influence on the world, notably in helping fulfill the most fundamental Enlightenment value of all, ending slavery.” And the impact on the size and shape of the United States was also profound.

By the late 1600s the sugar trade was a driver of the economy in England (197). Probably more accurate to see the sugar mills, rather than the put-out textile system in England, as the place where farm and factory first met, capitalist forms of corporations and investment by disparate people unknown to one another, and coordination of highly synchronized activities first took place (206). A "file MD5" is a hash that gets computed from the file contents, and is reasonably unique based on that content. All shadow libraries that we have indexed on here primarily use MD5s to identify files.

Born in Blackness by Howard W. French | Waterstones

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. I wish he had gone beyond the middle of the 20th century to bring us up to date, not least because problems of historical legacy, of race and racism and of inequality are among today’s most important issues – while the future of the people of Africa, which will be magnified by climate change, is the defining topic of tomorrow. This is not a comfortable or comforting read, but it is beautifully done; a masterpiece even. I believe that the sooner denial about the large and foundational role that slavery played in creating American power and prosperity is put to definitive rest, the better Americans as a people will come to understand both themselves and their country's true place in American history." (394)

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’ Review: Slavery and Capital at the Dawn ‘Born in Blackness’ Review: Slavery and Capital at the Dawn

I also wish that when we talk about the evils of white settler colonialism, we would understand how much the genocide against indigenous peoples here inspired these devilish colonizers. How many of us connect the French colonization of Algeria to the American model, for example? Howard W. French is an associate professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he has taught both journalism and photography since 2008. For many years, he was a Senior Writer for The New York Times, where he spent most of a nearly 23 year career as a foreign correspondent, working in and traveling to over 100 countries on five continents. From the Samuel Johnson Prize-winning author of China After Mao , a sweeping and timely study of twentieth-century dictators and the development of the modern cult of personality. Points out that the slave trade created shatter zones and more slave trading within Africa, as depleted populations tried to replace lost labor through slaves or incorporating others through kinship (326).This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by French points out that early European exploration and colonization were highly focused on trying to get access to sources of wealth from central Africa, first in the form of gold, which had always been a source for European specie (49-50), and later in the form of enslaved humans. One of the great books that helps you think about the world in an entirely new way (whilst being horrified that you'd never learned these things before).