Born in Blackness
Howard W. French's 2021 history makes the case that the conventional story of how the modern world was built leaves out its true foundation: Africa. Beginning in the fifteenth century, when Portuguese ships reached the West African coast in search of gold, French argues that the search for African wealth, and then for African labor, drove European expansion, the plantation economies of the Americas, and the industrial fortunes that followed. He traces how enslaved Africans and their descendants produced the sugar, cotton, and other commodities that powered Atlantic capitalism, and how their contributions were written out of standard accounts. Drawing on travel, scholarship, and his own reporting across the continent, French reframes some 500 years of global history with Africa at the center. The book combines big arguments with vivid detail.
What you might want to know about Born in Blackness
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A wide-ranging history argues that Africa and Africans were central, not peripheral, to the rise of the modern world and the wealth of the West.
French argues that Africa and enslaved Africans were central to the rise of the modern world, driving European expansion and the wealth of the West, rather than being marginal to that history.
It spans roughly 1471 to the Second World War, beginning with early Portuguese contact on the West African coast and following the long legacy of the Atlantic slave trade.
Born in Blackness was written by Howard W. French, published in 2021 by Liveright.
Born in Blackness is 544 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Born in Blackness takes most readers 8 to 12 hours to finish.
Born in Blackness is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
