Born in Blackness: The Central Role of Africans in the Making of the Modern World

February 28, 2022

Presented by CIPS as part of Black History Month

Traditional accounts of the making of the modern world place Europe at the centre: the Renaissance, the Age of Discovery, the Industrial Revolution –this is the conventional textbook story of how Europe’s scientific, political, cultural, and intellectual advancements made the world as we know it. In this talk, by contrast, Howard French places Africa and Africans at the heart of the historical narrative. In a radical reversal, French demonstrates not only the centrality of Africa to the rise of the modern world, but also the deliberate erasure of its contributions from the history books.

Speaker:

Howard W. French is a career foreign correspondent and global affairs writer and the author of five books, including four works of non-fiction and a work of documentary photography.

He worked as a French-English translator in Abidjan, Ivory Coast in the early 1980s, and taught English literature for several years at the University of Abidjan. His career in journalism began as a freelance reporter for The Washington Post and other publications in West Africa. He joined The New York Times in 1986, and worked as a metropolitan reporter with the newspaper for three years, and then from 1990 to 2008 reported overseas for The Times as bureau chief for Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan and the Koreas, and China, based in Shanghai. During this time, he was twice the recipient of an Overseas Press Club Award, and his work received numerous other awards.

His most recent book “Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War” was published by Liveright in 2021.

He is the author, previously, of “Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power,” published by Knopf in March 2017, and widely reviewed and featured by The Guardian and other publications as one of its notable books of the season. He is also the author of “China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa,” published by Knopf in May 2014. China’s Second Continent was named one of 100 Notable Books of 2014 by The New York Times, and was cited by The Economist, The Guardian and Foreign Affairs and several other publications as one of the best books of 2014.

He is also the author of “A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa” (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), which was also named a non-fiction book of the year by several newspapers. His book of documentary photography, “Disappearing Shanghai: Photographs and Poems of an Intimate Way of Life,” was published in 2012 (Homa and Sekey). It was produced in collaboration with the Chinese poet and novelist, Qiu Xiaolong.

Chair:

Dr. Rita Abrahamsen, Director of CIPS and Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa

https://www.cips-cepi.ca/event/born-in-blackness-the-central-role-of-africans-in-the-making-of-the-modern-world/