Africa's Discovery of Europe: 1450-1850

By David Northrup

Book Overview

What did Africans think of the first Europeans they saw? Why did some Africans seek political and religious alliances with Europeans? How successful were African traders in acquiring what they wanted from Europeans in the new Atlantic trade? Africa's Discovery of Europe: 1450-1850 provides surprising answers to these and many other questions.
This groundbreaking book on African-European interactions is the first to look broadly at the subject from an African perspective rather than from a European one. David Northrup explores the African side of this cultural collision as it unfolded in Africa, Europe, and the Atlantic world between 1450 and 1850. Featuring extensive use of life stories and quotations from Africans, the text is organized thematically with chapters devoted to first impressions, religion and politics, commerce and culture, imported goods and technology, the Middle Passage, and Africans in Europe. Northrup examines Africans' intellectual, commercial, cultural, and sexual relations with Europeans and describes how the patterns of behavior that emerged from these encounters shaped precolonial Africa. The book concludes with an examination of the roles of race, class, and culture in early modern times, and suggests which themes in Africa's continuing discovery of Europe after 1850 were similar to earlier patterns, and why some themes were different.
Africa's Discovery of Europe: 1450-1850 is ideal for undergraduate courses on modern African, Atlantic, and world history and is also engaging for general readers.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195140842
• ISBN13: 9780195140842
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.0" x 0.6" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Good

This book offers a different look at Africans at a crucial time in history.

Through African Eyes

David Northrup provides the reader with a unique experience in AFRICA'S DISCOVERY OF EUROPE, 1450-1850. Using direct and indirect quotations from 16th-19th century Africans whenever possible, he recreates four centuries of African reactions to Europe and Europeans. Emphasizing the diversity of African experiences and opinions, he documents their interactions with and opinions of European traders, priests, and rulers. He examines the impact on Africa of European products, technology, and religion (as well as the slave trade), always focusing on the actions and choices of specific African groups and individuals. Individual Africans appear vividly on his pages, sometimes in a single sentence, sometimes in more detail: rulers and slaves, traders and slavers, Christian converts and Eurafricans, Africans who visited Europe and those who spent a lifetime there. Amply footnoted, the slender (200-page) volume is very readable and does not overwhelm the general reader with masses of detail or a pedantic tone. Challenging not only the dominant Eurocentric viewpoint of most American books on Africa but also the monotone view of Africans as passive victims of European domination, Northrup's approach is refreshing. He attempts not a definitive account but one that provokes speculation and invites further research, while sharing sources that personalize these critical centuries of African history. A thoroughly enjoyable book.