Born in Blackness; Africa,Africans and the making of the modern world,1471 to the second world war
- New York; Liveright; 2022
- 483 pages; ills.; 5.3 by 8.2 inches
The author demonstrates how European engagement with Africa, initially through trade and later through the brutal institution of chattel slavery, was absolutely foundational to Europe's economic ascendancy, the development of modern capitalism, and even the Enlightenment ideals that are often seen as purely European in origin. He reveals how the wealth extracted from African gold and the forced labor of enslaved Africans on plantations in the Americas, particularly in the Caribbean with crops like sugar, fueled European industries, financed empires, and drove technological innovation centuries before the commonly accepted Industrial revolution in england.