Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War

by Howard W. French

The first impetus for the Age of Discovery was not Europe’s yearning for ties with Asia, as so many of us have been taught in grade school, but rather its centuries-old desire to forge trading ties with legendarily rich Black societies hidden away somewhere in the heart of “darkest” West Africa. Iberia’s most famous sailors cut their teeth not seeking routes to Asia, but rather plying the coastline of West Africa. This is where they perfected techniques of mapmaking, and navigation, where Spain and Portugal experimented with improved ship designs, and where Columbus came to understand the functioning of Atlantic Ocean winds and currents well enough so that he would later be able to reach the western limits of the sea with a confidence that no European had previously had before him, of being able to return home.