The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World Paperback – 2 Jun. 2022

This is a must have book for any Conscious Black Mans library. Brilliant book.

A wonderful book that highlights how we need to acknowledge the past, learn from our history, and see through the rhetoric that has whitewashed us into believing the world is more inclusive, and colonialism is a thing of the past. The narrative provides evidence that we still have an empirical mindset which must be removed from society if we are to live in this world as one without racism.

I can’t say that this is really an enjoyable book – but I do think that it is a necessary and urgent one. Kehinde Andrews is in the business of debunking myths about empire and race. Starting with the Enlightenment, and especially Emmanuel Kant, who among his better-known treaties, also advised slave owners of the best way to beat their slaves in order to optimise the process. I certainly wasn’t taught about this when I studied him at university, which proves the point nicely. He describes how Europe stole a lot of ideas from Africa and India and passed them off as their own, for example Pi, which was used in the construction of the Pyramids of Egypt, and not actually invented by the ancient Greeks. He puts jaw dropping facts to back up his arguments on nearly every page to challenge the received wisdoms of the West.He describes in detail the horrific genocide involved in slavery, what slavery itself did to Africa, and goes on to describe how things haven’t really changed so much since then through colonialism and empire. It looks at international trade and development – and asks where the money really goes and why it is given. I would certainly agree with him that there is still a long way to go in terms of racism. The Black Lives Matter protests have been energising but just serve to show how little has changed in America since segregation and Jim Crow. He describes how genocide was used as a weapon by colonial powers – diseases like smallpox were purposely spread to wipe out native populations. And how China is doing the same thing today to the Muslim Uighurs.Just a minor point – but I was disappointed that when he rightly describes the inextricable link between the cotton mills of the north of England and the slaves who picked the cotton, that he didn’t mention a famous episode of which I think Manchester is rightly proud, where mill workers continually voted to back the embargo of cotton picked by slaves during the Civil War, even though it destroyed many of their own livelihoods. It is good to see the albeit rare reality of examples of such solidarity where they exist, even if they don’t quite suit the argument being made.The last bit of the book skirts over climate change and the COVID pandemic a bit in a bit to make the book as up to date as possible before publishing deadlines I guess.Andrews is outlining what the actual problem is – in a bid to come up with solutions. But coming at the end of the book he says that he is not addressing white people at all. That only black people can make the wholesale revolution that will overthrow this whole system and create a truly equal world. So he is making Malcolm X style arguments. I don’t want to be accused of being a bleeding heart white liberal, but I have to believe that there is a way forward - a radical revolutionary one at that – that will involve people of all skin colours. I think this is where the book falls down a bit, even though I did find it a riveting and eye opening read. We need solutions that we can all buy into – or I feel the radical overhaul of this pernicious system will never take place.

As we negotiate this age of information, it was comforting to read this excellent book which has the highest standard of academic evidencing of its thoughts. The two books I read preceding this work were, Dr. Eric Williams Capitalism and Slavery and Cheikh Anta Diop’s Civilisation and Barbarism. In my opinion Professor Andrews nicely bridges the gap by discussing events such as the George Floyd murder and the Covid19 pandemic and linking the oppression of our peoples all the way back to the ideas discussed in the works I mentioned above.Starting more or less at the beginning of our “horror story” with Christopher Columbus’s murderous exploits of the so called West Indies, Dr. Andrews clearly maps the wealth of the European power elite all the way to artificial intelligence and machine learning with supporting evidence.Every black community leader needs to read this work. Every black household should have a copy. It helps one to understand that racism is linked to wealth and power of a small minority who will not give it up for anything. But, there is hope. We are cosmic people who work on a 26000 year cycle. The world is a circle and what goes around comes back around. The rise and falls of empires are clearly documented in our history and as the saying goes “this too shall pass”.All good books deserves at least a second reading and i will be reading this work again before the end on 2021.Thank you for this work my brother. keep on keeping on!

A good read

This is definitely is a go-to book that helps trace the relationship of slavery, white supremacy and capitalism that have and continues to structure the West. Really enlightening!

Must buy if you care about black people and what has been done to them.

This book changed my life for the better said things in the book I only said to myelf