The painful, erased history of how Africa made Western modernity possible

Published: Nov. 9, 2021, 10:26 p.m.

b'With few exceptions, traditional accounts of the development of the modern world put European history at the center of everything, often focusing on the \\u201cAge of Discovery\\u201d and global expansion, the Enlightenment, and so on. \\u201cThe history of Africa, by contrast, has long been relegated to the remote outskirts of our global story,\\u201d as Howard W. French asserts in his critically acclaimed and game-changing new book. \\u201cWhat if, instead, we put Africa and Africans at the very center of our thinking about the origins of modernity?\\u201d

In this segment of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc talks with French about his new book, Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War, and about the forcibly forgotten history of Africa\\u2019s central place in the making of the modern world. Howard W. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and former New York Times bureau chief in the Caribbean and Central America, West and Central Africa, Tokyo, and Shanghai. He is the author of numerous books, including A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa and China\'s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa.

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Pre-Production/Studio/Post Production: Stephen Frank

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