Born in blackness: Africa, Africans, and the making of the modern world, 1471 to the Second World War

THE "DISCOVERY" OF AFRICA -- The Crackling Surface -- Black King, Golden Scepter -- Rethinking Exploration -- Enter the Aviz -- Islands in the Offing -- The African Main -- THE ESSENTIAL PIVOT -- The Mine -- Asia Suspended -- Wealth in People Versus Wealth in Things -- Circuits Old and New -- Unto the End of the World -- Pathways of Resistance -- Becoming Creole -- THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICANS -- For a Few Acres of Snow -- Fighting for Africans -- Endless Death in Lands with No End -- The Perpetual Oven -- The Cockpit of Europe -- Dung for Every Hole -- Capitalism's Big Jolt -- Masters of Slave, Masters of the Sea -- THE WAGES OF THE PYTHON GOD -- Shatter Zones -- Negros Seguros -- The Slave Rush -- Bargains Sharp and Sinful -- The Spread of the West African Slave Trade -- The Wages of Resistance -- Seized by the Spirit -- Dark Hearts -- War for the Black Atlantic -- A People Scattered, A Continent Drained -- THE BLACK ATLANTIC AND A WORLD MADE NEW -- The Scent of Freedom -- The Black Jacobins -- Gilded Negroes -- Blues and the American Truth -- The Gifts of Black Folk -- How the West Was Made and "Won" -- Toward a New Vision of Our Origins.

"Revealing the central yet intentionally obliterated role of Africa in the creation of modernity, Born in Blackness vitally reframes our understanding of world history. In a sweeping narrative that traverses 600 years, one that eloquently weaves precise historical detail with poignant personal reportage, Pulitzer Prize finalist Howard W. French retells the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in America, and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe's dehumanizing engagement with the "darkest" continent. Born in Blackness dramatically retrieves the lives of major African historical figures whose stories have been repeatedly etiolated and erased over centuries, from unimaginably rich medieval African emperors who traded with Asia; to Kongo sovereigns who heroically battled seventeenth-century European powers; to ex-slaves who liberated Haitians from bondage. In doing so, French tells the story of gold, tobacco, sugar, and cotton-and the greatest "commodity" of all, the millions of people brought in chains from Africa to the New World, whose reclaimed histories fundamentally help explain our present world"--