Africa's Discovery of Europe

This groundbreaking book examines the full range of African-European encounters from an African perspective rather than from the customary European one. By featuring vivid life stories of individual Africans and drawing upon their many recorded sentiments, author David Northrup presents African perspectives that persuasively challenge stereotypes about African-European relations as they unfolded in Africa, Europe, and the Atlantic world between 1450 and 1850.

Africa's Discovery of Europe features thematically organized chapters that explore first impressions, religion and politics, commerce and culture, imported goods and technology, the Middle Passage, and Africans in Europe. In addition, Northrup offers a thoughtful examination of Africans' relations--intellectual, commercial, cultural, and sexual--with Europeans, tracing how the patterns of behavior that emerged from these encounters shaped pre-colonial Africa. The book concludes with an examination of the roles of race, class, and culture in early modern times, pointing out which themes in Africa's continuing discovery of Europe after 1850 were similar to earlier patterns, and why other themes were different. Brief, inexpensive, and accessible, the third edition of Africa's Discovery of Europe offers an insightful look at the tumultuous and enduring relations between these two continents.

David Northrup is Professor Emeritus of History at Boston College. He is the co-author of The Diary of Antera Duke: An Eighteenth-Century African Slave Trader (OUP, 2010) and author of How English Became the Global Language (2013), The Atlantic Slave Trade, Third Edition (2011), and Crosscurrents in the Black Atlantic, 1770-1965 (2007). He is also a contributor to the Oxford Handbook on the Atlantic World, c. 1450-1820 (OUP, 2009), Oxford Bibliographies Online, the Oxford History of the British Empire (OUP, 1999), and its companion series, Black Experience and the Empire (OUP, 2004).

1. FIRST SIGHTS--LASTING IMPRESSIONS
Elite Africans in Europe to 1650
Enslaved Africans in Europe
Discovering Europeans in Africa
Southeast Africa, 15891635
Kongo Cosmology

2. POLITICS AND RELIGION
The Meanings of Religious Conversion
Benin and Warri
The Kingdom of Kongo
Swahili and Mutapa
Ethiopia
Conclusion

3. COMMERCE AND CULTURE
African Trading Strategies
The Eighteenth Century
Language, Trade, and Culture
Sexual Encounters
Conclusion

4. ATLANTIC IMPORTS AND TECHNOLOGY
Evaluating Inland Trade
Textiles and Metals
Tobacco and Distilled Spirits
Guns and Politics
Economic and Social Consequences

5. AFRICANS IN EUROPE, 1650-1850
African Delegates and Students
Servants High and Low in Continental Europe
Anglo-Africans
Scholars and Churchmen
Conclusion

6. PASSAGES IN SLAVERY
Capture in Africa
The Middle Passage
New Identities
Creolization
Africanization
Conclusion

Epilogue: Trends after 1850
Index